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Comment by rznicolet | Hacker News Reader

The 100 richest people are (by design) going to be very unrepresentative of the whole, depending on how "rich" is defined. How does the balance between inheritance and other sources of wealth shift if we look further down the list?

I suspect the late 1800s, another era when inheritance was a lesser source of extreme wealth, may also be unrepresentative of the "typical" state. Massive upheavals in technology (mass production, computerization/Internet) seem to me to be more likely to be exceptions, rather than the rule, over very long time horizons.

Regardless, we may be entering another era of consolidation since this article was written. It will be... interesting... to see how it shakes out.

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Also, the top 100 on a list like this are going to be the 100 who can't hide their wealth well. That usually will bias you towards "new money" since those are people who have gotten rich through things like IPOs rather than through things like owning large tracts of land under shell companies.

Yeah this was more my take - Industrial Revolution was a step change, and you saw that flow through to future generations / inheritance.

The Industrial Revolution was a step change, sure, and unrepresentative of the last 1000 years. But is it unrepresentative of the next 1000? As technology advances, there are increasing numbers of things unlocking new industries or efficiency gains.

Microprocessors and the internet were another step change. What will be next? AI? Biotech? Robotics? Energy? The fact that there are so many options that could be, makes me think that the 1890 and 2020 states are more likely than the 1982 state to be present for at least the next couple decades.

(Making no judgment on the next 1000. Only making the observation that the inheritance is the result of the prior step change.)

Ah, I see what you're saying. Sorry, I misinterpreted you.

I don't see any compelling reasons that the next 1000 years will even have the social structures that largely defined the previous 1000. This is because production has never been completely automated in history. Humans have always had to play a direct role in production, so society has always had to structure itself in a way that is conducive to maintaining at least subsistence levels of it.

I think the next 1000 years of society/social relations between people will be more directly defined by human nature itself rather than actual material conditions, because some of the major constraints on how society can function will be lifted.

I would argue that production right now is "functionally" completely automated, when compared to 1000 years ago.

A single typical center-pivot irrigated field has an area of about 125 acres. For most crops, this can be planted, fertilized, and harvested by a single person driving a specialized, mostly autonomous machine. A single family can effectively farm dozens of such fields with the right equipment, totaling thousands of acres.

1000 years ago, the average family farmed about 12.5 acres each and had time for little else.

> I would argue that production right now is "functionally" completely automated

Sorry, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Humans work significantly more today than compared to 1000 years ago. Most humans don't even have cushy office jobs on this planet, they labor in factories, fields, mines, forests, farms, etc... so "functionally" it's about the worst that it has ever been. Maybe the work looks different, but it's still work.

Like most things, it depends how you measure.

Among things that humans were producing 1000 years ago, if you look at the quantity of output per unit of human effort input, it is many orders of magnitude larger. Food, textiles, lumber, mining...all of these things are so mechanized and automated these days, that doing things the "old" way has become a "hobby" that some people do for enjoyment. In terms of a means of production, the effort of a single human is no longer relevant.

Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.

You're missing my point.

Yes, capital (machinery, raw materials) does make up a much greater proportion of the over value added to items as compared to labor, but it's still not automated enough to let go of the requirement of human labor, not anywhere in the world. You can only say that it's fully automated when no more people are involved meaningfully in the process of production.

Ergo, it is not "functionally fully automated", because humans still work.

> Yes, we have come up with new jobs to be done as the old ones are automated away. I think we will continue to do so.

There is no basis for this. We're already struggling to find meaningful, productive employment for many people as a society. This is the same as "it will be X in the future because it was always X in the past".

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