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Comment by HammockWarrior | Hacker News Reader

That's the whole point of productivity gains... Either you're richer or you can work less or ideally both.

I own a business. I invest in a garden hose so my gardener can water the plants more productively than refilling a watering can constantly. Why would you expect the financial savings of my investment to flow to the gardener rather than to me? If anything, the gardener is now exerting much less effort, and may accept the job for less pay (or be replaced by someone less skilled and cheaper).

Well, at least at a societal level because you want to live in a relatively equal society and have all of the benefits that come with that as opposed to a feudal dystopia.

Feudal dystopias, as you call them, were characterized by minimal capital creation and the lack of rights to exploit that capital leading to both poverty and inequality.

On the other hand, the sudden explosion of capital creation and exploitation that sparked the industrial revolution led to the creation of the first societies in which wealth and freedom were attainable by families not of noble birth.

And that happened after the period of horrific exploitation of people in factories, including children. Economic growth is good not in itself but only if it is widely shared. It will be better for economic growth in the long run anyway because inequality comes with its own set of problems.

A society where everyone is poor is worse than a society where some are rich but most are poor. It is worse that everyone be in crushing poverty forever, than to have unequal distribution of wealth.

“Growth is only good if widely shared” is a meme that has led to immiseration every time it is implemented. If capitalism has to own child labor, then redistributionists have to own the violent mass scale enslavement of the peasants under Mao/Stalin.

And what people forget in this metaphor - the company that innovated and manufactured the garden hose has just made money too. Their engineer is now employed.

Sure.

But if you choose to work less, you probably shouldn't be surprised that you're not achieving as much.

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