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Comment by stein1946 | Hacker News Reader

stein1946

> You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive to, say, be a HVAC repairman. Educational requirements, permits, licensing, business insurance, waste disposal, etc.

How's what you wrote substantiated at all?

To me it seems you are suggesting we let people starve so that labour you characterize as "minimally-skilled backyard" is cheap.

You also seem to be suggesting that consumer protection policies need to go as well. I assume we are going to trust the end consumer to do due diligence cause "they know whats better for them?"

If they get a quote of 10k and they cannot get a better one, they might as well start writing that check.

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I don’t think that’s what they were saying, but instead, labor is expensive now because labor is scarce, which is true. And that regulation is expensive, which it is, but also necessary.

Perhaps the question is why wages are not high enough to support these prices (globalization, productivity wage gap over the last fifty years, etc). This will change over time due to structural demographics [1] making labor much more scarce (pushing up wages), we’re still in the early days. Software is not going to eat the trades and HVAC repair.

[1] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

I didn't see anything in their comment where they added "and therefore we ought return to rampant extreme poverty", did I miss it? They don't appear to be suggesting anything you say they are, just describing the effects of what exist.

It can be true that consumer protection laws raise the price floor for certain goods and services without "and therefore consumer protection laws are bad".

> I didn't see anything in their comment where they added "and therefore we ought return to rampant extreme poverty", did I miss it?

The US is already experiencing rampant extreme poverty. There are people in the US holding multiple jobs and still can't afford to eat, let alone healthcare.

Again, this argument that things are expensive because the poor can't work and regulation somehow is suffocating businesses is purely ideological and not supported by facts.

Yes, because if you get a leak in your air conditioner, instead of just patching the hole and refilling it with coolant, you have to replace your entire system in places like California because they require a more green, less gas, in the name of science, and still completely ignoring the simple fact that it doesn’t make a damn difference because we all live in the same globe.

The amount of waste that is generated is 1000 times that of just refilling the coolant. When will people realize that you can use an existential threat that you can’t prove to justify anything? What could be more important than our existence?

If the same scientist came out with a study that said if you don’t pay me $1 million by tomorrow, we are gonna get hit by an asteroid. Would you believe them and pay me? Or has this become a political issue we’re no longer thinking rationally

> Yes, because if you get a leak in your air conditioner, instead of just patching the hole and refilling it with coolant, you have to replace your entire system in places like California because they require a more green, less gas, in the name of science, and still completely ignoring the simple fact that it doesn’t make a damn difference because we all live in the same globe.

I don't think you are holding an informed opinion. Ozone layer depletion was tied primarily with CFC emissions used in air conditioning units, and since the production of CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals were banned in the late 1980s the ozone layer started to regenerate. In practical terms this means lower incidence of health issues such as skin cancer or cataracts. That sounds pretty neat.

But being able to use a 40+ year air conditioning unit is worth it?

A lot of refrigerants have a very high gwp.

OK, but you use very little amounts of the refrigerant. 1 pound of refrigerant that’s in a closed loop is the same as 1 ton of CO2, which is about the equivalent of burning one tree over 20 year period and that’s assuming it leaks out which it’s not supposed to.

Do you know what correlation versus causation is? How do you know that ozone holes don’t appear naturally? But let’s say we did cause it, then you acknowledge that humans also have the capability to fix it when we realize there’s a big enough problem. So the climate apocalypse scaremongering is never going to be a scenario anybody’s ever gonna have to deal with.

It’s either we can fix the problem or we cant. If we can’t fix the problem, then no solution that we’re doing now makes any sense. If we can fix this problem, again, no solution that we’re doing now. Makes any sense because the technology of tomorrow will be much better adapted when the problem gets worse enough to warrant spending $93 trillion a non-probable existential crisis that also conveniently can’t be disproven either. I feel like too many people don’t see that the average person is willing to steal cheat and lie to get ahead.

Which existential threat are you referring to here?

Global warming / climate change

People vastly overestimate science’s ability to predict the future, especially when they often can’t get the weather right, right now.

But it’s more than that. People who study the climate change don’t get funding if there’s no problem for them to study. Their job necessitates there being a problem. It’s a conflict of interest.

> this argument that things are expensive because the poor can't work and regulation somehow is suffocating businesses is purely ideological and not supported by facts.

"This argument" is also theoretical, or a straw man. I'm not making that argument, the original comment on the thread isn't making that argument, the person I replied to created the idea of the argument whole cloth to argue against.

It's a big leap from "some regulations raise the price floors on some goods" to "businesses are being suffocated by no longer allowing near-slavery, thus near-slavery should be permitted."

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