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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

Sure, everyone [1] is better off, but that just sets the bar too low. You and the other guy each turn the crank for four hours, that is the fair outcome. If you insist, you get a couple of extra widgets for inventing and building the machine.

You spend a week building the machine, time worth 40 widgets, but you want - ignoring your finite lifetime - infinite compensation for that, free widgets forever for a 40 widget investment.

[1] A bit nitpicking, in the exact case you presented, the other guy might not actually be notably better off. Instead of manually making eight widgets for himself - assuming he is as skilled as you - per day, he now spends four hours making his widgets and then four more hours making your widgets. This can of course easily be tuned to actually make him better of or that might already be the case if turning the crank also improves the working conditions over the manual process.

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Wouldn't my time be better spent inventing more widget making machines to improve the lives of everyone around me?

Why is both of us turning the crank for four hours the ideal and fair outcome?

Are you better at inventing than the worker is?

Are your subsequent inventions better than the art they create?

Do we really need double the widgets?

I mean, the top post on this site yesterday was a self-balancing cube someone invented. This is precisely the community that should understand that inventions for inventions’ sake aren’t necessarily improving anything.

> Are you better at inventing than the worker is?

It would seem so, since I made one and they didn't.

> Are your subsequent inventions better than the art they create?

Not sure what art has to do with it. If they want to make art they can get a job making art instead of turning the crank.

> Do we really need double the widgets?

The market will decide that. If we don't then no one would buy them and it would no longer make sense to produce so many.

> I mean, the top post on this site yesterday was a self-balancing cube someone invented. This is precisely the community that should understand that inventions for inventions’ sake aren’t necessarily improving anything.

Interesting you should bring that up. That cube improved our understanding of self balancing machines and how to build them. That understanding can lead to better self balancing things, like maybe walkers for the disabled. You never know what it might lead to until you make it. Even machines that "have no purpose" have a purpose, of showing us what does not work or what does not make sense.

What then is a more fair outcome in your original scenario where producing widgets was the only activity?

If you keep working, making other inventions, that is a completely different scenario. That you should do your share of crank turning only applies to the scenario where turning the crank is the only work that needs to be done.

Clearly crank turning isn't the only job, since machine inventing must exist as another possible job.

But even if the machine is the only invention that will ever be made, it's still not fair that we each crank the handle the same amount of time, because I invented the machine. I built the machine and presumably spent my widget money on making the machine. My contribution was amassing the capital and resources to make the machine. I should get some benefit from that.

I already wrote that you can have some additional widgets for inventing and building the machine. Even if I had not mentioned it, that would be a reasonable thing to do, if I insist on splitting the crank turning work, you can pretty safely assume that I am also willing to split the inventing and building work in one way or another.

But even if you would not get anything for inventing the machine, it would not really matter significantly. As you both keep turning the crank, the relative amount of work you both did would approach one half and both of you would have half of all the widgets. Compare that to the other scenario where the guy does all the crank turning, there the relative amount of work you did approaches zero as the guy keeps turning the crank making his relative amount of work approach one.

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