Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

> "When people say we should raise the minimum wage. I worry about what that does to job creation ... potentially damping demand in the part of the labor spectrum that I’m most worried about."

Bill Gates has been saying this many times and I really, really don't get it.

Of course when the price of a commodity goes up, demand goes down; but if there's a perfect substitute that's free, demand for the non-free alternative should be zero anyway, so its "price" is irrelevant (as long as it's non-free).

Why would anyone hire a human at any cost to do a repetitive and low-added-value job that a robot can do perfectly, without error, without ever arguing or getting tired, etc. AND AT NO MARGINAL COST??

How does "minimum wage" matter in this scenario?

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Humanity has been wanting to not work since the dawn agriculture, 10 000 years ago at the latest. It's finally happening and we're freaking out about it.

What we need to think about is not how to get people employed, it's how to redistribute wealth so that what you earn is not somehow morally related to the job you're holding.

The solution is universal basic income, not "minimum wage".

"Why would anyone hire a human at any cost to do a repetitive and low-added-value job that a robot can do perfectly, without error, without ever arguing or getting tired, etc. AND AT NO MARGINAL COST??"

Because the robot costs money up front. If energy, maintenance, depreciation, and amortization of the robot exceeds the marginal cost, errors and oversight of the human, then it's rational to keep paying the human.

Raising the cost of the human makes the robot more attractive sooner.

> Raising the cost of the human makes the robot more attractive sooner.

Which is exactly why the minimum wage should rise. Just like the price of coal energy should rise or the cost of unsustainable goods should rise.

People are a limited resource and you can get only so many people over time. It is important that people, who are entities of incredible intelligence should be repurposed to harder and mentally more involved processes.

I basically agree, but that doesn't mean it's not hurting anyone in the short term.

For a few reasons I think a basic income is a better way to raise the price of labor than a minimum wage.

I really wonder what a society would look like if people didn't have to work to ensure a decent lifestyle (shelter, health, food). I'm thinking that in adult minds there's a psychological need to relate to others that is filled partway by working together and also a need not to have complete freedom about how you spend your existence (paradox of choice). And that when people say they'd love not to work, they mean they'd prefer to balance work ROI differently.

An 'arts, sports, and leisure' society. More people playing video games (the industrialized world is excellent at creating cheap entertainment - we could create WoWs and Candy Crushes forever); playing sports; exercising; socializing; nature walks/hiking/hanging around in parks; learning for learning's sake (with cheap books, MOOCs, etc. you could essentially do self-directed academia for life); amateur science/wilderness exploration; art and music creation; lots of recreational drug use, and eventually, wireheading or its equivalent (top-notch VR would probably get us pretty far down that road, anyway.)

You don't have to wonder. Take a look at any public housing development where the majority of residents depend on some form of public assistance.

I think it's irrelevant, these are minorities, and not first-class lifestyle or culture (not working is frowned upon).

Generally that public assistance comes with conditions that require you to remain non-productive if you want to keep having your needs provided for.

That's not at all the same thing.

>What we need to think about is not how to get people employed, it's how to redistribute wealth so that what you earn is not somehow morally related to the job you're holding.

Tell me again why you deserve to profit from my hard work? Or why I deserve to profit from your hard work? Shouldn't we both just profit from our own work?

This isn't to say I don't think we shouldn't help those less fortunate than ourselves. I try to give a decent amount to charity, but I don't think for a minute that everyone should get paid the same. If you don't provide any benefit to society you shouldn't be as well off as people who provide enormous benefit to society.

OP means to say that all work should be valued equally. Because all work is precious.

But then again, I have found that earnings usually commensurates intelligence and efficiency. A highly intelligent individual gets disproportionately more money than his counterparts because he is smarter than the median intelligence in the industry.

while i'm not sure i agree that all work should be valued equally, that would be more reasonable than what a basic income implies. a basic income means you get it whether you work or not, and that is the part that I find undesirable.

that being said the problem with valuing all work the same is that people's definitions of what work has any value at all will be different. it's much easier if the work actually has to have value, i.e. someone willing to pay for it.

To be clear, a basic income implies you get the stipend regardless. That doesn't mean you don't get more if you work.

This is HN and on HN most have brains; that is less common outside HN. So let's say you have an <

Wow.. This was cut off and not editable... What mobile client for iOS is good as there was a whole story here in the client i'm using and it just posted this :(

The idea that people's living must be tied to their job is not some fundamental axiom, rather it's a practical rule to build a society that works (examples where that rule did not apply could be slavery or communism). We are reaching (arguably have reached already) the point where there is more people than need for work to be done by people, and that rule is not valid anymore.

> I don't think for a minute that everyone should get paid the same

Conflating your concept of "everyone should get paid the same" and basic income is a logical fallacy (false equivalence?). Nothing about basic income requires that everyone's total income be identical.

Further your "you don't provide any benefit to society you shouldn't be as well off" again has nothing to do with basic income. Nothing about basic income requires everyone to be as "well off" as everyone else.

What will society look like when there are only highly skilled jobs available? How would unskilled parents improve the lot of their children? I find it difficult to imagine that a permanent underclass is likely to lead to a society that is stable over the long term.

"Nothing about basic income requires that everyone's total income be identical."

Basic income will need to come from somewhere. As these costs increase, the people actually earning above and beyond the basic income will be have their income redistributed in the form of high taxes and depending on how high these costs increase over time, will reach a point where the reward != effort. I predict that with a system like this, the costs (and taxes associated) will most definitely reach this point.

Human nature is a bitch. Why would I even bother putting the effort into working when I can get almost the same amount of money back from the government, for free? If enough people think the same way, there won't be enough to fund the system anymore. The government will then need to assign jobs to people to keep the system going.

A Utopia where nobody needs to work sounds great, until you need to figure out how to divide all of the resources.

Most of the great technologies and innovations we see today are a result of a great risk->reward structure. Any system that doesn't foster this doesn't see this sort of innovation.

Your prediction that basic income would eventually mean a total leveling of all incomes and your assumption that everyone would eventually do nothing are also fallacies (fallacy of the single cause? nirvana fallacy?).

Basic income is not about utopia, it is about creating a long term stable society where member's basic needs are meet (food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, security, etc).

"Your prediction that basic income would eventually mean a total leveling of all incomes and your assumption that everyone would eventually do nothing are also fallacies (fallacy of the single cause? nirvana fallacy?)."

It's based on history and human nature. My point still stands and it's not a "fallacy"..which it seems you just made up on the spot because you don't agree with my reasoning.

I also didn't say that "everyone would eventually do nothing". I said that we would cross a threshold where the amount of people just getting a basic income would eventually outweigh the people working and putting money into the system, and the system would need to be changed by the government or it would collapse.

"it is about creating a long term stable society where member's basic needs are meet (food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, security, etc)."

The best way to help someone is to teach them to go out and help themselves...not just pay for all of their needs and tech them to depend on the government.

I used to feel this way and I understand where you are coming from. You are right in the sense that people providing huge benefit to society should definitely be compensated to a greater extent than a person that contributes nothing.

The problem is that in an ideal situation, two things will happen: 1) human labor will be replaced by technology and 2) human population will increase with technology. Both trends will leave us with a society where there isn't enough work to occupy 40 hours per week for each person.

As we move closer to this 'utopia', I think it makes sense as a society to decide on a basic standard of living and provide that for every person while having additional lifestyle benefits for those that contribute to society.

It will also help if we move towards more employees working for fewer hours, so we all have more free time and more people have employment.

Obviously, the implementation of something like this is extremely hard and will probably create problems, but I think it is the ideal future situation. Additionally, to implement this type of society, it will require some level of 'redistribution'.

> Tell me again why you deserve to profit from my hard work? Or why I deserve to profit from your hard work? Shouldn't we both just profit from our own work?

Take Mark Zuckerberg, and have him do everything he did to build and launch Facebook, working just as hard, but instead of being in the U.S. targeting a product at Ivy-League kids, he's in Bangladesh. Is he worth $33 billion in that scenario? Is he worth $3 billion? Probably not even that.

Every unit of hard work we put in here in the U.S. is multiplied using social and economic infrastructure we did not personally build but rather inherited. Robotic technology is the ultimate expression of that. Whoever owns the robotic technology in the future will not have built that technology from scratch. And when the robots do all the work, why should distribution of the production be based on something like who owns the robots?

What happens when there is no work left for you to do? Eventually robots are going to take all but the most specialized of jobs. Longer term, we're all probably going to be made obsolete by AI. I understand the sentiment of living on your own dime, but we have to think about the fact that technology is very quickly making human labor obsolete.

Edit: After rereading you comment I realized you were talking about something else completely. My bad. This is still a discussion I'd like to have with somebody, if not you.

How about that: Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business.

http://www.wired.com/2008/04/bill-gates-what/

If by "improve" he means creating a mediocre clone of an existing and successful product, leveraging a monopolistic position to wreck the original, and then go through a long process of incremental improvement on the clone until it is objectively better that what was available 20 years ago (and selling every milestone along the way)... then I guess he's more or less right.

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