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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

I wish the author could address whether or not people can buy a house and raise a family by making hypercubes. The potter was able to make cups and pots because that's what the people needed. In this future of manufactured ceramics the author envisions, what is the material reality who dedicated themselves to the craft of pottery? How many ceramic factories do we really need?

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I think the author also misses that humans still make mugs. They're just low-skill, low-craft jobs in a factory instead. The parts that easy have been automated, while humans still handle the tough bits. The jobs have also been centralized and moved to a factory in a third-world country instead of being distributed, in every other town across the world.

To push <profession> the way of the potter is to commodify it, underpay the workers while draining the job of its craft and creativity. Then charge comparably wealthy people for the privilege of doing it for 2hrs a week as a recreational activity. A dozen people in major cities can get really good at it then have boutique studios where they charge wealthy people 100x the commodified price to be able to buy the same product but locally made.

We can't easily close Pandora's box of globalism and automation, but let's not glorify the destruction of craft and artisanship without recognition of the trade society made.

It seems silly to blame globalism and automation. These should be good things. More production with less should be good. There is another culprit, one that has been smoldering for centuries. Most creative work has already been commodified, because capitalism is incapable of seeing value in art other than what is can be exploited for and the system is very unkind to whomever is not productive in a very specific way. AI is just very potent accelerant.

I guess it really is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Just curious, what's the alternative to capitalism that has employed more creatives or produced more creative works across history?

Pick a metric of your chosing if mine don't work. I'm just genuinely curious what capitalism alternative is best for creatives.

Catholics?

qed on the lack of imagination.

Good faith funding the retirement stable of the horses put out of business once the car was invented.

So folks don't want to kill themselves with addictions living in a society that doesn't need them

Sure. You could buy a house and raise a family by making hypercubes. It won't be easy though.

I have empathy for my fellow potters. But to deny the factory down the street exists is foolish.

A house is a hypercube that houses 1000s of people.

The reason is a house is in 4D space with time as the 4th dimension. As people move in and out and there are parties etc. 1000s of people will have visited in spacetime.

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