Let’s Start a Revolution | Hacker News Reader

Let’s Start a Revolution

writing.jan.io

71 pointsdecklin25 comments

I wish life were this simple.

Essentially, it seems Jan wants to replace capitalism with hedonism. Inevitably, we will find the problems with hedonism and need a (second) revolution. I'm not arguing that we live in the "perfect capitalistic society"—far from it. However, we can't fight fire with fire here, i.e., we cannot replace one broken system with another inherently broken system. Instead, we need to change people's ideas about life, money, and happiness. It's only when we change focus that balance will be achievable. Money, happiness, work are all amoral. Undue focus on money or happiness or work tends to bring about moral failure. So, we now know what it's like to live in a society that focuses on money (capitalistic). If we follow Jan we will know what it's like to live in a (more so) hedonistic society.

Instead of jumping from one school of thought to another, I think we really just want to find balance and purpose. That isn't found through revolutions; that's found through individuals changing and growing.

Edit: clarifications.

I think lots of people have this kind of revelation as they get a bit older. Glad you've found a new outlook that you like. I don't think you need to frame it as a revolution though.

Well, wrote an epic rant/rebuttal to the "hard work is just a story" and by the time I finished the link to post expired... So I'll be brief.

The argument that hard work is just a story is deeply offensive to me. Social mobility in the US is one of the highest it has ever been in history. AND this social mobility is non-violent! This has NEVER happened before in human history. Just think about that for a minute before you get on that soap box again.

Look at the crop of "new money" rich that technology has produced. Why? Hard work and value creation. Instagram may not be value in the sense of gold bricks, but the connections it created surpass most communication mediums in history. Still think it's just a photo app?

Sure, things aren't great right now. American exceptionalism and infectious optimism aren't what they used to be. Many of us are downright embarrassed by the current political situation. Forget that, I'm mortified by the disregard for the rule of law. But that doesn't mean we should take our proverbial ball and go home.

Hard work has made an incredible difference for me and my family in several generations, spanning Soviet Union and now US. No rhetoric can take that away from us.

What concerns me most, is that you seem to lack respect for your own work. I sincerely hope you find that respect. If you do not value your own work, how can others? How can you respect your trade? Your peers accomplishments?

> Social mobility in the US is one of the highest it has ever been in history

No, social mobility in the US has actually decreased fairly significantly in the last 50 years, and is much lower than other countries. That the US is somehow highly socially mobile is an enduring myth engrained in our collective psyche that is utterly wrong at this point.

It took me less than a minute to google "social mobility in the US today" (non-leading query) to find the following examples with data (and there are many more from other respectful sources):

1. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/in...

2. http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-a-myth-in-...

Maybe on average yes, but these averages do not represent ability to become financially independent. What they are based on is comparison of earning power of generations and other markers, such as education levels.

By these measures, if you are after 50's style middle class living, it is true, Australia offers a much better bet. Here's an article on a miner making 200k: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462190457701...

With proper saving and conservative living, you can easily save enough to be relatively secure.

I'll keep working in tech here.

On a related note, take a look at the US's gini coefficient, which measures income inequality (and strong predictor of social unrest):

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/map...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

We should try to lower this number as much as possible!

>It took me less than a minute to google "social mobility in the US today" (non-leading query) to find the following examples with data (and there are many more from other respectful sources):

Non-leading query. Hahahaha. As if that matters. There are two types of articles written on the topic, and you found the one you were looking for. This is evidence of exactly nothing.

NB: the presence of a '%' in an article does not a well-done study make. Further, studies on this topic have been commissioned by double-blind souls approximately never.

This reminds me of Juliet Schor's work (an economist). She talks about retreating away from urban areas some, like, in some revolution type way, but I think that is going a bit far.

Here's a video about her ideas and book:

http://vimeo.com/12034640 http://www.amazon.com/Plenitude-New-Economics-True-Wealth/dp...

One idea is: technology has resulted in efficiency increases. These increases have resulted into more compensation for those with capital to deploy technology, but the floor worker (though more efficient) has similar compensation.

So, the efficiency gains of technology, today, are routed toward (going back to the original link) maintaining the status quo. Instead we can 'redefine work' and spend less time working for the owners, and instead contributing to our local communities, etc.

I think the ideas are nice, but trust me: no office full of full-time people wants to hire you for 2 days a week. Part-time is generally unacceptable. I speak from experience - try replying to a recruiter as much.

Techy people can a lot of money, let's say 130k for mid-career at BigCorp in BigCity. Try to scale that down; can you work half-time and pull in 65k? Nope.

These are similar to the ideas of Buckminster Fuller too, about technology and society. I think it's very interesting but very difficult.

The base rate of positive outcomes from genuine revolutions is poor. Very poor. The American Revolution is an unusual exception which more closely resembled a standard war than the total dissolution of social order.

Think about what total dissolution of social order means.

It means that sociopaths and psychopaths are no longer making your life hell at work.

They are killing and torturing people. And the worst of the worst quickly rise to the top, because the sorting pool switches from "localised power structure" to "everywhere in this society".

The linked article isn't really about revolutions as such. The author has discovered that markets don't optimise for virtue, they optimise for value. Hayek has pointed out that this is why they work at all; if you try to impose outside virtues on markets they either distort or become actively dysfunctional. There are limits to what can be done to align the world we want to live in with the world we actually live in.

Beware the is/ought fallacy.

This answer is too good to merely upvote - it is not only informative and factual, but also very well written. Thank you for taking the time to add it!!

Funnily enough, it's sufficiently tangential to the linked post that I have considered deleting it.

This will take far too long.

Let's riot in the streets with weapons and convince the police to help us.

History proves this is the most effective way to promote rapid change.

Though not always the one you would have wanted.

Change, yes. Though not always in the direction you expect. Or desire.

As Egypt has shown, this is the quickest way to replace one power-hungry sociopath with another.

You can easily change which despot rules you via this method.

I dunno. I think there has been more social change through the introduction of technologies than through coups and revolutions. Things like the motor car or the telephone cause seismic shifts in a culture.

"On top of performing alchemy on a daily basis, the people in my profession get treated like unicorns"

I usually get treated like a mule... minus the beatings.

This brought back so much deja vu. I didn't have the privilege that he's had, but I can see how having things easier can diminish the appreciation for the difficulty others endure. I also don't think this needs to be framed as a "revolution", although that may be the operative word necessary to build the drive you need to push through it.

The best way would be to become successful and have your life serve as an example for others.

Well if you really want to start an revolution you might want to check out completely alternative structure of society. Such as Panocracy [1] or Constructive Utopism [2]

1: http://en.panokratie.net/2013/06/10/panocracy-intro/ 2: http://falkj.info/FJO_s_cu.htm

I like how your second link- links to a book with a good explanation but you first link doesn't link to a book or explains itself well. I prefer a Night-watchman State [0]. Panocracy is a system that can work as a separate entity to a Minarchist [1] society which happens to implement a Delegative Democracy [2] with Open-source governance [3] (something a minority of people dream of but the majority know it isn't feasible- take a look at Voting and Combinatrics [4] and Combinatorial Voting [5]-- it's all theoretical anyways since a Minarchist, Panocrist, or Combinatorial society has never exsited). I don't understand why don't you link to a Delegative Democracy and Open-source governance's definition, if that is what Panocracy is implying.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-watchman_state

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjApWH8R9c

[5] https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Femlab.berkel...

Note that Jan's call to action is not a 20th century one. This "revolution" has nothing to do with bloodshed in the streets and ideological hardlining(the twin failures of most revolutionary movements), and a lot to do with gradual engineering of social structures to create the "checks and balances" we so often ask for.

So, wait, you're saying there's more to life than money?

This article is completely filled with assumptions that are utterly faulty, but mostly for subtle reasons.

Some of them are widely held misconceptions; some of them are fairly juvenile. (For example, [1].)

And that's why we cannot fix the situation. If your analysis of what's currently wrong is bad, you certainly aren't going to come up with something better.

There is hope, but only in the very long term. We need better people in academic philosophy departments. Their ideas are the top of the intellectual food pyramid and eventually trickle down to everyone.

[1] A common mistake is to make the following equivocation which I will quote: "Business at large, 'capitalism',...". No, business != capitalism. Or if you really want to define capitalism that way, your model is insufficient detailed to capture important distinctions. For instance, think about big business under fascist ideology (such as Nazism), which is fully integrated and controlled by the government, though nominally held privately. Then think about the opposite: When all people are treated _completely_ equally by the government, which means that no business can get any sort of special advantage _at all_. In one of these situations, the economy will steadily decline into nothing. In the other, you have the best possible condition for economic growth. Our current system is highly mixed; literally, a mix of poison and medicine. How would the OP analyze this situation, and in which direction would he advocate going? He certainly wouldn't take a principled approach, because his model is insufficiently detailed to capture this issue.

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