Hacker News Reader

I perceive this as one of a species of comments that is well-intentioned and valuable in isolation, but that when introduced to the thread has the effect of making it harder to discuss the article on its own terms.

It's easy to see the subtext of the article that indicts unrestrained economic competition. So it's hard to ding a comment for surfacing that subtext and engaging with it.

But at the same time, having been on HN for a long time, it's also easy to see how the result thread will simply litigate capitalism, and how unlikely it is that anyone will learn anything from the ensuing debate.

I agree. Comments like this are stronger when they stay with the specific content of the article. They're weaker when treating it merely as a platform for some generic position ("obsession with the free market").

It isn't that the rhetoric is false, it's that it's impossible for it to be substantive here. Grand claims need grand substance, which there isn't room for in a mere comment post. People compensate for this with ersatz things like getting louder or angrier.

Tangents don't have to be bad. Ira Glass-style "I had an uncle who wore that kind of hat" tangents can be great. But generic tangents go somewhere uninteresting. The gravitational pull of the large, familiar topics has to be resisted because once the discussion gets stuck on one of those planets it is never getting off.

I don't care to post this, but meta begets meta...

Your (and tptacek's) meta comments seem unhelpful and clearly favor HN's status quo.

I've successfully demanded a shorter workweek from capitalist bosses, and helped coworkers fight theirs. And that comment you both meta-criticize is pretty sensible, in my view. If you're going to hack a system, it's worth getting familiar with the subversive lit.

(Though their last paragraph may indicate a lack of familiarity with that subversive lit. Because politicians will naturally fight/coopt revolutionary changes to the system they administrate. Post-capitalism is a revolutionary change, and a capitalist state would attempt to respond violently. But whatever.)

The story about how you helped workers organize shorter work weeks would be interesting.

The framing of advocacy for post-capitalist society isn't, because of the nature of the site.

The only people who will pay attention to the latter conversation either (a) are doing so because they are intractably opposed to your idea and enjoy pushing back on it or (b) are already on your side.

That doesn't mean there's no group (c) of receptive, persuadable people, just that the venue you've chosen doesn't reach them effectively.

> I've successfully demanded a shorter workweek from capitalist bosses,

Can you please explicate a bit? I have tried and failed. I tried to move to four days @ 8 hours/day from a a five days @ 8 h/d.

> but that when introduced to the thread has the effect of making it harder to discuss the article on its own terms

That isn't neccesarily a bad thing. I'm personally fine with a comment thread debating things unrelated to the article itself, as quite often articles aren't half as interesting and valuable as things that appear in the discussion thread.

> and how unlikely it is that anyone will learn anything from the ensuing debate

I'm not so sure. Yes, some debates are being rehashed, but I'm pretty sure that barring few HN-ers who like a particular topic and chime in every time, we see the same arguments being brought up by new people. I suspect that at each iteration some people learn what they were supposed to learn and leave the conversation.

That's a fair point, but I don't think asking the question "Why don't we have a leisure society yet?" is subtextual. I think the question follows immediately from the article and my commentary follows immediately from that.

> Why not? Because capitalism.

I believe you're mostly true. I can only see one slim chance for things to turn out better than expected: most capitalists get rich by making not-so-useful crap that can only be bought by plebes enjoying some disposable income. Ford vitally needs most American to be able to afford an SUV.

If automation continues and demand stays the same, things like 3-day work weeks will come about naturally. A capitalist system would not prevent that from happening.

Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time (even though it has been increasing since the industrial revolution)?

> Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time

It's actually a quite simple mechanism - people who would want to work 3 days will get replaced by people willing to work 4 days, which will get replaced to work one day more, etc. As long as people actually need jobs to survive, the end result is they work as much as possible within bounds of law. We sometimes forget about it, because IT industry is in it's golden age, with more jobs than suitable candidates. But look at non-specialized jobs like retail, and you'll find everyone working Monday-Saturday in shitty conditions for low pay. They'd be working Monday-Sunday, were it not the long fight against capitalism for leisure time.

Capitalism optimizes for profit, not for human values. Those are becoming increasingly separated nowdays.

Why would people who want to work less get replaced, instead of just accepting lower pay?

Because there are also other people that are more desperate, and are willing to work more for less.

That's obviously false. If there were an infinite supply of desperate people "willing to work more for less", wages would be zero, or minimum wage at most.

There is a finite supply of labor, and we are not anywhere near a level of technology where we no longer have an unbounded demand for labor.

> If there were an infinite supply of desperate people "willing to work more for less", wages would be zero, or minimum wage at most.

Well, isn't it exactly what's happening? As far as I can tell, in the unskilled job market, like retail or fast food, wages are what they are because anything less is either illegal or makes it better for an employee to stay on welfare.

No. Zero wages would be all people working for free. And clearly most people aren't. Most people also make a lot more than minimum wage.

"Reduced labour" isnt produced by automation, increased profit is. To "give back" labour you have to reduce profits.

"Leisure time" was won by unions, collective bargaining and legislation. "The Weekend" only exists at all because of the collective actions of the workforce, not of capital owners.

Reduced labor (per output value) and increased profit are the same thing.

There is always a trade off between time spent working and wealth. Only through automation can we keep our current quality of life while working less, increase our quality of life without working any more, or do anything between those two possibilities.

No, automation just reduces the amount of repetitive labour. The remaining labour isn't distributed evenly across the workforce: some people take up more work to increase or maintain their level of wealth and some people become unemployed.

Envy and ambition create worst-case nash equilibria for all.

> If automation continues and demand stays the same, things like 3-day work weeks will come about naturally.

That's simply not true, otherwise we wouldn't be working the same hours at the same adjusted wages as we were 50 years ago despite massive gains in productivity.

A company's increased productivity doesn't benefit the workers, it benefits the owners/shareholders. What do you think the typical factory owner will do when a new assembly line component means he only needs 50 out of his 100 line workers? You're pretty naïve if you think he'll let those 100 employees work 20 hours/week now. No, he'll fire 50 of them and let the wages of the remaining employees stagnate at best since there's more competition for their jobs now. Why? because that's what reduces expenses and improves the immediate share price of his company. Economics 101.

We are working the same hours as 50 years ago because we want to be able to purchase cell phones and modern cars bad stuff. You could work a lot less and live with 50s level technology, but almost no one chooses to.

Also, if a shareholder makes more money, they buy more, creating new labor requirements elsewhere.

Your first point is true, but it's not the only explanation for why people still work 40 hours a week. My explanation is far more influential.

And your second point is blatantly false. That's the same, tired, rhetoric Republicans have been spewing since Reagan. Owners of companies doing well won't reinvest that into their companies unless there is demand on the consumer side and they don't spend all of that money on consumables like a worker would (since they have to).

We already have the leisure society - the bottom rung of the income distribution (in the US) lives in that society. People below the poverty line in the US work very little and have consumption and disposable income (after taxes/transfers) of about $20k/year.

http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/taxes-and-cliffs...

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2012.pdf

I don't know why people refuse to acknowledge that we are already there.

I don't see a claim in those links that people at the bottom rung have $20k in disposable income. I can't imagine they even have $20k a year to begin with. Your claims are very different from my experience living close enough to that bottom rung to know people in it.

In the second link there is a graph entitled "Disposable Income for a Hypothetical Single Parent with One Child, by Earnings", which doesn't fall below $20k. Of course, it may not be correct to generalize it, and it is incorrect to present it as "per person" since it represents two people - parent and child.

You can get consumption data from the BLS, which gives similar numbers:

http://www.bls.gov/cex/22013/midyear/income.pdf

You'll need to dig in to figure out what a "referent person" is.

Please explain how this supports your figure. I don't see it. Dividing the consumer unit "average annual expenditure" by the "average number of persons per consumer unit" per column there, only the top two exceed $20k, and only the top 3 approach $20k. It does all exceed $10k, but there's still 27 million households spending less than $15k/yr/person - where it would be more correct to say "about $10k" than "about $20k".

My mistake, I missed the fact that consumer units had multiple people in them. I thought those figures were for individuals.

Gotcha.

One of the biggest practical hurdles to that sort of wealth distribution is simply that there is a whole world of people outside the US ready and willing to accept investment and residence from the owner class.

That's not a problem. profits made within a country can be taxed within a country. Stopping the export of capital is a legal/legislative issue, not a logistical one.

The rich have already left. The mythical class we're "punishing" arent tied to nations/peoples any more. Their assets are however. Their companies operate within nations. They wealth is spent in deals/properties/etc. within countries.

If a Koch brother lands on US soil he can be arrested and all of his assets seized. If he does a deal with a US company, all of the transactions can be subject to US law.

It's a matter of political will.

Whats the difference between a leisure state and a welfare state?

Your preconceptions toward the latter, if I had to guess.

racism.

Ayn Rand's crack pipe.

Please don't.