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Comment by halperter | Hacker News Reader

Innovation has pretty much always heightened the wealth disparity between the wealthy and the poor. A classical example would be the Industrial Revolution and America's guilded age, and another could be the circular investments between modern AI corpos (the whole nVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI funding loop), which is probably a bad thing in the long run (systemic violence and class revolt). We have to walk this tightrope between the need for constant innovation and justice.

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> Innovation has pretty much always heightened the wealth disparity between the wealthy and the poor.

In absolute terms however most poors in, say, the EU today live better than any king ever lived up until, say, the early 20th century (quality of clothes / bed, medicine, communication, knowledge, etc.).

I'd rather be working 8/5 at a gas station today (and then enjoy gaming or watching TV at home) then be an emperor with an infested tooth in the 17th century or a king with syphilis in the late 19th century.

True, I'd agree that my wellbeing today (as a member of a rich western country) is far more preferable to someone who lacks modern innovations. However, these innovations continue and will continue to help the rich far more than the poor. For example, medical treatments for life threatening conditions are still incredibly expensive. Even insulin, something so cheap to manufacture, is being gouged to eyewatering prices. The danger is that the disparity becomes so large that the rich become the only people who can afford these innovations, thus leading the innovations becoming only avalible to the rich and not the poor. Structural violence ensues and pretty bad things happen.

Why do we need constant innovation?

Because if spread equally and used responsibly, it raises quality of life for everyone. Generally speaking, the vast majority of people alive today have far easier lives than hunter-gatherers. There is less famine and starvation. There is less fatal disease, etc.

> Because if spread equally and used responsibly

That ‘if’ is Atlas carrying the entire world on its shoulders.

It should be clear by now that at global scales and with competing interests, the entire premise is impossible.

Not really, western countries were doing a lot of that in the 20th century (amongst themselves, anyway). Then the 80s happened.

Or what, do people think that the boomers were all that good, that they genuinely earned everything they got? The generations before just worked out how to govern properly.

The 80s happened because of the stagnation of the 70s.

I think the point hodgehog was trying to make is that overall wellbeing increased. Famine is down, disease is down, wars are down, security up, well-being up. Innovation overall benefits everyone in the long run. Global scales aren't the problem---goods once reserved for the wealthy are being copied and produced at markedly lower prices, with examples such as EVs and drones. I realize that "overall" is doing some heavy lifting but I think it's rather unreasonable to dismiss the entirety of human technological progress as only benefiting the elite.

only if you assume capitalism is the only stable economic system. without wealth differences there is nothing other than your own abilities that can make access to tech unequal.

I assume that capitalism is viral enough that no alternative can be realistically by established on a global scale.

Ignoring wealth differences is another instance of dreaming of a magical world where greed has disappeared.

A good read is Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism

So how does quality of life increase overall for everyone, if Nvidia builds now HA200 instead of HA100? (or whatever they are called)

GPU innovation in the past led to the development of new artforms and allowed researchers to solve tougher computational tasks. Today, not so much. You're missing the "spread equally and used responsibly" part here. Nvidia's customers now are the data centers, which have debatable impact on quality of life.

> Why do we need constant innovation?

Because, for example, no parents should lose their kids to leukemia.

At 17 y/o I was save from peritonitis / sepsis first misdiagnosed as harmless belly pain and hidden by painkillers. Then it became a matter of hours and from the moment the doctor saw me again and I undergo surgical operation, less than two hours happened.

My father got diagnosed a stage 3 bladder cancer with metastasis to the prostate about 3 years ago. He's still there and doing better.

That's why we need innovation.

And, no, science ain't a bag out of which you pick what suits you (medicine) and leave out what you don't like (the Internet / LLMs / etc.).

> And, no, science ain't a bag out of which you pick what suits you (medicine) and leave out what you don't like (the Internet / LLMs / etc.).

Uhhhh. Sure it is. We stopped nuclear weapons development. At best, rogue countries can catch up to where we are but there's no political will to build even bigger or more powerful bombs anymore. Thats an entire branch of science that we've literally cut off on a worldwide basis.

Science is, and must, be controlled to stay within the realm of useful to the people. The minute it is no longer serving us is the minute we should work on getting rid of it. Fortunately, science isn't a cohesive bathtub where everything must be thrown away with the baby. We can (and do) pick-and-choose what to develop.

Nuclear weapons development hasn't stopped outside of US. Maybe you mean it hasn't spread to any new countries lately... which is true but I wouldn't count on that lasting.

Both USA and Russia, have decided that ~Megaton Hydrogen Bombs are the biggest we're going to get and we don't plan to build anything bigger than that ever again.

The USSR wanted to make sure they were the ones who built the largest bomb of all time (the Tsar Bomba at 50 MTon). And after that, development on more ferocious weapons has stopped.

Right so now China, India, Pakistan all need to catch up. And France for some reason.

Good one!

Nitpicking here: I bet 100 USD that this type of innovation, is not that type of "innovation" meant by befores posting? :-D

Because I would like for a future with better health.

And technology is a great catalyst for that.

Because our economy is based on the sacred right to compound interest, and the only way this can work is with continuous growth. Lacking new markets, given the population growth is accelerating, the only way we can keep this running is by increasing consumption via new gadgets and innovation.

It's inevitable. We can't stop innovating.

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