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Comment by Legend2440 | Hacker News Reader

That's life unfortunately, demand goes up and demand goes down.

There is no degree that guarantees success, no job that lasts forever, and no guru with the secret to happiness. You've just got to be clever and adaptable and stay on your toes.

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"It's natural" is a lie we tell to shift profit from the masses to the rich. There is nothing uncontrollable about the human behavior we call economics.

"There is nothing uncontrollable about the human behavior we call economics."

Indeed. All it takes is a world government and tight surveillance and enforcement and for sure human behavior can be controlled.

Still, who controlls the controller?

I do not know what to make of this comment. It is so much of what you see on social media that derails constructive conversation. There is nothing terribly wrong with the comment but it feels adjacent to low effort. To make your point, you have constructed a scenario that may or may not happen, but, to me, it lacks introspection and "arguing in good faith".

I am not even disputing what you have stated as a possibility. It is just, there are other possibilities. Maybe the Government Pension Fund of Norway is a good counter example to what you propose?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

Governments influence economics all the time in subtle and not so subtle ways.

"Governments influence economics all the time in subtle and not so subtle ways."

They do. Influence, but not control.

So .. au contraire.

The demand to just "control" the market is a really low effort populistic approach to me, that refuses to analyse deeper.

Economy is made up of people. Who have a free will and act out of various motives. So if one instance is controlling the economy it means this instance is controlling all the free will of those people. History shows it can be done, but for a hefty price and I was born into such an experiment I consider failed all in all.

So I am not a free market fanatic, but I see the growing authorian tendencies very critical.

Btw. next time you come to criticize me, maybe check the guidelines yourself first.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

If the thing you want to change is the percent of money that the rich have, you mostly need to adjust taxes, not elaborately micromanage the world.

There are also other ways, printing money is one of them. (Yes, means inflation, but a bias towards existing riches)

Are you sure it is government that is doing the surveillance and enforcement?

But it's us who wrote current laws, not some magical entity.

Hm. The way laws are written in reality, it might as well be some (dark) magic entity to me. The process of giving input there is not made easy. But if your point was, it is in our hands to change anything and also that, then yes.

Good old TINA, because no other economic theory exists in the universe than laissez faire capitalism...

I'd at least have expected some more original retorts than just canned slogans though.

Are you constructing a strawmen here?

I merely replied to the very orignal and never tried out approach of "controlling the economy" indeed with the standard response. If you are willing to debate alternatives for real, I am all ear. But yes, totalitarian approaches I will not like.

> Good old TINA

There Is No Alternative

Exactly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

Human behavior is only one half of economics. There are real, physical limitations that make it so not absolutely everyone can live like a king.

So since “big tech” told kids to code now they have to hire them and keep them in an office twiddling their thumbs?

We saw how they tried to implement this in the Soviet Union. Sure there were almost no rich. Everyone was poor af. And there was no escape from it unless you willing to hijack a plane.

The current job market is a coordinated effort to wrest power back from workers after a few post covid years saw large increases in worker power.

It isn’t the weather.

> The current job market is a coordinated effort to wrest power back from workers after a few post covid years saw large increases in worker power.

Any kind of increase in "worker power" during Covid was promptly erased by inflation. It was a media meme and never existed.

The lowest wage workers have seen large gains.

Pre-covid Walmart used to pay $7.25/hr, now it’s $15-$20.

Just a straight up lie. I have several friends who worked at walmart since ~2013.

They were never paid as low as $7.25/hr.

> The lowest wage workers have seen large gains.

Again, statistically, nationwide false.

you could always support collective policies to address massive shifts in society.

No one in modern society is completely helpless or lone wolf unless they truly want to believe that.

No thanks, actually. I’m pretty happy with the status quo.

If jobs were guaranteed regardless of demand, allocation of labor would be less efficient, and we’d all be poorer on average.

Better that millions roam the streets starving and homeless than a single person receive a penny they didn't slave themselves out for.

Thats some binary logic no one suggested.

Exactly, if Godzilla were made king of mars, how would we afford umbrellas?

> There is no degree that guarantees success, no job that lasts forever, and no guru with the secret to happiness. You've just got to be clever and adaptable and stay on your toes.

Only because we've allowed society to make it so, to treat people as things to be used and consumed for money's benefit.

Society doesn't have to be this way, though the current system has apologists skilled (and not so skilled) at making it seem so.

Consider if it is possible that having kids start their working life in crippling debt to get jobs that don't exist is something we don't actually want as a society? Is it something that we can avoid and is not actually "life?"

I mean, what's the alternative? Should universities simply not offer courses for any amount of money for degrees without viable career paths? "It doesn't matter how badly you want to study anthropology, the market is full up, so go away!"

Incorrect. Tenured government jobs in some developing countries offer housing, protection from firing, and success if your definition of success is not needing to try ever again. Good luck on the search, you're competing with 1,000,000 equally qualified applicants for that position.

>That's life unfortunately, demand goes up and demand goes down.

Unless it's my life, then it's different.

>No thanks, actually. I’m pretty happy with the status quo.

Ok don't come crying when things change and you're no longer on top.

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