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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

> I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again.

That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

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What is interesting is the new things are cheap while the old stuff is now expensive. Average house in Australia is $1,000,000 while a TV is $500. The internet, social media, etc are cheap. Having someone repair your shoes is expensive.

As predicted in The Diamond Age.

Automation made the TV inexpensive, but if you look at a chart on inflation almost everything that cannot be easily automated has risen in price.

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019-...

Surely U.S. housing was not twice as automatable 12-13 years ago as it is now.

No, that rose in price for different reasons

Economies of scale were realized in the tv, but not the house. Maybe bc they aren’t realizable in housing, maybe bc regulation, maybe bc of the nimby veto, etc.

I think it’s rather because of scarcity: you can’t scale and automate land/prime-location land

Well you can scale it, which is why housing affordability is higher in many places where the cities are actually far denser than Australia. There are perverse incentives not to though, property prices don’t rise (which is what investors want) if you actually focus on increasing supply.

People are building houses with way more features, that last longer, have better thermoregulation, and just more comfortable to live in.

Same goes for TVs too. That’s clearly not the reason why house prices rose so drastically.

Good quality Goodyear welted boots, adjusted for inflation, are cheap AF. I can get an excellent pair from Grant stone with horween leather for ~300 USD when on sale.

A pair of Nike jordans or air maxes is often in the ~120 range and made of far inferior materials.

Boots have never been cheaper/accessible before. The people that bring up repairable shoes don’t wear them or buy from shit brands like Thursday, doc martins, or timberland. You deserve your poor quality footwear.

Brand new boots are cheap because some child in a 3rd world country makes them. Having them repaired in my country costs enough to generally make it worth getting new ones.

It's more like automated, industrial stuff is cheap, while land and human labor is expensive (and thank God for that!)

Some old stuff is now cheap: Grain, oils, clothes, steel, heating, electricity and books, for example.

That is the famous Baumol effect.

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

>That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work

That's more because we are never given the chance. We only get to keep working or fall of the rat race and at best be delegated to Big Lebowski style pariah existance.

Yes, and housing is priced by competitive auction so if you drop out of the rat race and other people don't, you'll just get out-bid.

> That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

Is that trend still true? I can look from the 50s to 2000s and buy into it. I'm not clear it is holding true by all metrics beyond the 2000s, and especially beyond maybe the 2020s. Yes, we have better tech, but is life actually better right now? I think you could make the argument that we were in a healthier and happier society in that sweet spot from 95 - 2005 or so. At least in NA.

We've seen so much technological innovation, but cost of living has outpaced wages, division is rampant, and the technology innovations we have have mostly been turned against us to enshitify our lives and entrap us in SaaS hell. I'd argue medical science has progressed, but also become more inaccessible, and, somehow, people believe in western medicine LESS. Does not help that we've also seen a decline in education.

So do we still prefer improving our standards of living in the current societal framework?

Heck no. Given the choice most people would want to do remote work. COVID showed that we can actually achieve remote work, and suddenly many people realized they had a life they loved, without having to lose chunks of it to an unpaid commute that was baked into the cost of work.

Given actual alternatives, workers have made their preferences clear.

Culture also plays a part - America is uniquely mercantile and business first. Workers and citizens in other countries have made different choices.

> we could likely accomplish that by working very little

Yeah I know many people who do in the small town I live in. Mostly elderly who are used to it still, but also some young people who want to work just enough to buy what they need and not 1 minute more. I could've retired at <20 if I would've enjoyed that. Now I enjoy it more; it's kind of relaxing that kind of lifestyle; not because of not working but because of needing nothing outside your humble possessions.

Exactly.

Living quarters, transportation, healthcare, food. What were theses figures in 1926, and how much work is needed to achieve them.

Have you seen the land prices

What land prices? There's plenty of cheap land, it's just a bit far away from where most people live. But guess what, population densities were also lower a century ago.

Sure, just like less desirable products of every category cost less essentially by definition. But that’s not really a retort to someone asking by why land prices have risen so much.

Population increases through immigration or birth and the area (a city) staying the same size. Plus covid people valuing a house more.

> it's just a bit far away from where most people live

And now you need a vehicle which with its yearly costs adds up to the price of the land in the first place, because there are no trains, you can't ride horses on the highway and you don't have neighbors that are selling/trading what you need.

sure sure

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