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Comment by jordanb | Hacker News Reader

In my career I've worked with people with PHDs in Physics. People with advanced degrees in fluid dynamics and turbine engineering, people with chemistry and ChemE degrees, postdocs in Geology.

All were working alongside me, a self-taught programmer making websites.

I've long thought that there's an oversupply of smart people in the world but for the field of software development, which was hiding that fact by soaking all of them up.

If SDE is collapsing as a field, a whole bunch of people who thought their intelligence and credentials guaranteed them a comfortable life are in for a shock.

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This is really looking at the problem from the wrong angle. It’s not that we don’t need all those degrees. The problem is that tech companies are making so much money that it makes other industries practically irrelevant when it comes to return on investment. It has thrown the economy completely off balance.

Strongly agree. Perhaps an economy shouldn’t be organized around money.

How would you propose an economy not be organized around money? Any examples you could think of that have worked well? I would also ask that in doing so if you can consider how these changes would work with today's nation states and the scale of 8 billion people or so too.

I find answers to this question meet idealogical hand waving more than concrete action plans or examples of success. YMMV

What will happen is not about what people prefer to happen or not. China grew rapidly too and the west is fearful of their success and that is why Americans are ramping up their Ai and drones and all that believing that spending money will deliver supremacy. There are/were many paths to success traditionally speaking and somethings will work and somethings wont. It is not a decision based phenomena. Its an outcome based on zillions of variables. Whether money will win or not and that everyone will benefit via AI is matter of conjecture.. Who knows.. Place your bets!!

I’m not sure people in the west are scared of China. I think it’s more so about the method in which they grew their economy. The downside for China’s model is the west can simply not buy their products except where required so there’s nothing to really be scared of.

What’s to be scared of anyway? Isn’t China a peaceful nation that abides by international law?

Absolutely not.

The PRC has land claims against almost every bordering country, which are many in number. It does wolf warrior diplomacy, surreptitiously moves border posts, and so on.

It also pretends to abide by international treaties but when a ruling against their absurd claims in the South China Sea were refuted, they rejected the ruling.

In the age of AI it uses from the same playbook as Russia to sow discontent and create internal conflict within countries in Asia.

It captures and kills dissidents abroad.

Let's start with the basics. Let's ban unlimited money from politics first (ban SuperPacs and return to 90s era political rules).

If rich people want to influence politicians, there should be hard caps on money and advertising.

There's nothing wrong in saying too much money is now destroying too much of the good parts of our country. Starting one step at a time is better than trying to build a massive reform that goes no where.

Once money in politics calms down, the next steps should become more obvious as the noise from the Billionaires no longer drown out our attention.

Regardless of what answers there are to an alternative (there are many, with both flaws and benefits that could work better or could be worse in practice), the question “how would it work at scale” is probably impossible to answer thinking in the framework of what currently exists. The people who benefit from the existing systems would make it impossible for anything else without disrupting power, which, if you view an economy built around profit as something that could not be sustainable into the far future, could be necessary.

This comment isn’t trying to be biased any specific way, just trying to be realistic while also saying alternatives exist but would likely be disruptive for better or for worse.

Perhaps you meant "financialization" instead of "money", b/c money is literally what makes up an economy.

No, labour and resources are what makes up an economy. The money is "only" the primary mediator

You can have billions in nominal units but it is inflated to worthlessness when resources or labour disappear

> The money is "only" the primary mediator

I have nothing to say to this sort of disingenuous characterization.

economy != money, economies have existed before markets have existed

I was talking to the turbine engineer at lunch one day and the way he put it is this:

There are about five companies who hire people with his background. They all go through boom and bust cycles together. When he graduated they were in a bust cycle and nobody was hiring new graduates, so he found a job in software. He was glad because the pay and working conditions are better, and at the time (a few years ago) it seemed like software engineering was a safe career with lots of employers, which turbine engineering was not.

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

Really interesting link, thanks!

> If SDE is collapsing as a field, a whole bunch of people who thought their intelligence and credentials guaranteed them a comfortable life are in for a shock.

Even if we accept your precondition as true, that SWEs contain multitudes of smart people who will jump to other industries, I don't think the conclusion holds.

In the US at least, SWEs are among the most entrepreneurial industry members. They'll bring that attitude to whatever their new industry is. I think there will be an explosion of new startups in different areas, and we'll Jevons Paradox our way forwards.

I guess we're going to have a bunch of people innovating on jet turbines in their garages?

South Korea would be an interesting point of comparison. High IQs, after-school tutoring, 70% of young people get degrees: result is a college wage premium of only 31% vs 54% average in the OECD

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-at-a-glance-2...

I would rather have SpongeBob making my burger patties than squidword. More intelligence is better than less intelligence.

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