tchaffee

> AI that can replace humans at most tasks within a couple years of R&D hasn’t happened before.

We've seen absolutely massive automation in manufacturing, and as you noted even in farming. And no massive unemployment as a result. I just won't believe that AI will do anything more than hugely increase productivity until I see the unemployment. People have predicted massive unemployment with every new technology advance. They were wrong every time.

> The ones unionizing are the labor producers, so not a valid analogy.

They are also the consumers. How are the wealthy supposed to get that way or even stay that way with no consumers?

The tax differences aren't that big, and they come with other nationalized services in addition to healthcare. Per capita healthcare costs in countries with nationalized healthcare can be 50% less than in the US. So you're getting much better value for your money when you pay taxes for that healthcare.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

> long-term disability insurance policy

It eventually runs out. Medical bankruptcy is pretty widespread in the US.

> long term disability plans

It eventually runs out. Medical bankruptcy is pretty widespread in the US.

> long-term injury insurance

It eventually runs out. The US healthcare system can eventually bankrupt you no matter how careful you are, if your health problems are serious enough.

> They're fairly competitive compared to the rest of the world.

That's accurate. But what surprises me is how much in demand software engineers are globally and how little they get paid in most countries. It doesn't make any sense to me that Dan Abramov could more than triple his salary at Facebook just by being employed by the US branch. The value he provides to the company would in no way change.

I was using this article for my source [1] which says:

"By the end of the new contract, full-time UPS delivery drivers will make an average of $49 per hour, which works out to nearly $102,000 per year, assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks a year. Those employees are guaranteed an eight-hour workday, a UPS spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.

Drivers also receive $50,000 in benefits that include health, welfare and pension contributions, the spokesperson said."

I think a base salary of $100k is a decent living for non-skilled labor. And the pension contributions, whatever they are, are reasonable to include. I'm also noting that the end of the new contract is in 5 years, so maybe it won't be as good of a living as I'm thinking, depending on inflation.

In any case the important point is that UPS cut earnings forecasts because of this which means that workers did capture more of the profits that would have gone to owners. I consider it a win. Could it have been a bigger win? If most other workers were organized, I think so. With so many workers negotiating as individuals in the US, companies still have the upper hand as a whole. Workers continue to underestimate their value to the economy both in terms of labor and as consumers. The rich need labor, the rich need consumers. We should be getting a bigger piece of the huge profit pie that productivity increases result in.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-drivers-170000-pay-benefits...

Sorry, but you gave no evidence that the average talented person would be handcuffed to a specific company as soon as they start a family. And you especially gave no evidence that they would "lose that cover". That was your original claim.

> This comes across as quite rude, TBH.

Sorry if you saw it as rude, but I was politely asking from my perspective. It's normal to ask folks for evidence backing up their claim when you don't find it believable. How could I have asked my question in a more polite way?

> Use your imagination before you just jump in and belittle an argument.

I did. And I failed to come up with an explanation based on my decades of work experience. Healthcare has never chained me to a job even when I had health problems. Pretty much every company offers a healthcare plan. The only thing that ever concerned me was becoming unemployed.

This is easy to demonstrate as false. The US Revolution and many others that followed put far more power into the hands of the average person. And unionized workers earn more almost everywhere you go. Union leaders probably do take more than they deserve, but not as much as the company owners would if you were negotiating as an individual against their organized management and legal team. So yeah, you do have to pay someone to lead your organization. But going without an organization is kind of nuts when the other side pays for one.

> Past results are not an indicator of future performance.

Sure, but we can't predict the future, so it's the best model we have.

> Today, both sexes work long hours just to afford a tiny apartment, they have to switch jobs every couple years and even started doing the gig economy on the side to get by.

What you've missed is that productivity (as measured by GDP) has gone way up. Someone captured those profits. Which is why we see such massive wealth gaps.

> Sure, some humans will be more productive, but then we’ll need less of them.

This has never happened before. I could be wrong and maybe it will happen, but the most technologically advanced country in the world has companies competing for workers and salaries going up. This is in the face of massive automation.

> And with AI, it’s easier to just have the AI learn the new “irreplaceable” skills much faster than retraining millions of humans.

> No amount of unionizing by horses would change that.

If horses were the ones buying your products and creating your wealth, then they would actually have a pretty big say. What us workers fail to understand is just how essential we are to the economy. We need to organize and demand our fair share of the productivity gains.

Yes, we mostly agree. The part I disagree with is humans being obsolete. We don't manually weave cloth anymore. Which is why we can afford far more clothing than folks 100 years ago. The jobs are there. That most of the profit from that work goes to the uber wealthy is the problem.

I already mentioned the problem of masssive wealth gaps indirectly. Us workers need to organize to recapture the profit that used to be shared with us. UPS workers just negotiated $170,000 TC. I think that's enough to live a nice life, especially if two people are contributing to a household.

Productivity has increased by a lot. It's up to voters and workers to get their fair share of those gains. The uber wealthy are not going to willingly give it up.

That's is indeed where the US system fails. Overall though I think the risk reward ratio favors the US for young healthy engineers. Save up enough to retire at 45 and then get yourself to a country with good nationalized healthcare.

Is your claim that a Facebook engineer would have trouble finding a different job with high compensation and great healthcare? That's a bold and hard to believe claim.

The one case where your argument fails is very serious illnesses where you can't continue to work. In the US you will end up with worse care.

And let's hope the NHS problems are temporary. When I worked in London and the US ten years ago, I always preferred the NHS because the waiting times were shorter and the quality of care was much higher. I used the NHS a few weeks ago. It wasn't horrible and I got good quality of care within a reasonable time. But it's nothing close to how good it used to be so for the serious part of my care I went to the far better hospital in Brazil covered by my employer provided insurance.

I would guess the NHS will change. Voters are unhappy with the reckless defunding of what used to be a national pride.

The US does provide better care right now if you are rich or privileged enough to have a job that is in demand. But a well funded NHS is a far better system if the political will to get back to that exists.

Your reasoning seems logical at first glance so I can understand why you would come to your conclusions.

History shows you to be wrong. It doesn't take a high IQ to use a machine to hugely increase your productivity. And in some cases the machine is easier to operate. I'll take a car over a horse any day.

Salaries for low skill jobs in the US are going up. UPS drivers now get paid close to $200k. The labor shortage is not just for highly skilled, high IQ people.

New technology has only ever resulted in people doing more productive work. That might change. No one can predict the future. But based on history we will continue to see quality of life improve thanks to productivity increases, and employment to stay high.

The one change I would like to see is workers organizing to capture more of the profit and productivity changes they help create. UPS drivers did it. More of that means we all share in the wealth of productivity increases.

I agree you need to consider total compensation. It's still not even close though.

The company pays half the cost of excellent healthcare and the remaining payment is very affordable. Maybe in the case of a very serious long term illness you might go bankrupt, in which case the NHS these days is also not as much of a guarantee as it used to be.

The risk to reward ratio is acceptable. Most healthy young people with talent are far better off working in the US and saving enough to retire at 45 years old. I say this as someone who would like it to not be true having loved living and working in the EU and UK for many years. But the numbers do not add up. It's especially sad because it results in brain drain. The saddest part of it is that there is no reason Facebook can't afford to pay the Dan Abramovs of the world the compensation they would get in the US. I'd like to better understand why the gap is so big.

Well no one can predict the future but what's your reasoning that such an important technology partner to such massive companies will all of a sudden stop innovating and become less significant?

No the British news accurately reports on how bad it has become after over a decade of politicians defunding it. It's sad. When I left London a decade ago I had no reason to ever use my private insurance. NHS was excellent. Now I still use NHS when I visit but it not to the very high standards it used to be. And I have to sometimes use my private insurance. Everyone knows this and talks about it. I don't expect this to continue though. Most people want to return to a well funded and more functional NHS.

Compared to the US. Dan Abramov who works for Facebook and is one of the primary engineers of the hugely popular React framework makes less than one of my junior engineers.

> At no point in the history of human civilization has growth been static.

This is a bold and hard to believe claim. Weren't the Dark Ages in fact a reversal? Can you provide a source for your claim?

Except it already has. Car emissions regulations are a good example. Not just regulations on manufacturers either. Look at London's ultra low emissions zones quickly pushing folks to go electric.

The revolutions or sometimes evolutions resulting in democrat nations with regulated market based economies are what allowed the rapid pace of innovating you are praising. Those revolutions were radical social changes.

Agreed - all good points. As far as comparing now to before the French Revolution though I hear an awful lot of folks threatening civil war these days in the US. I would never have predicted Jan 6th a decade ago.

I kind of think the warning signs are almost always only accurately seen in hindsight.

The parent claim is that polarization is so bad right now because of social media and the digital media. If the press is more tame now, wouldn't that result is in less polarization?

What were the incentives in the past and what are they now?

That's a fair point. However I think blaming media lacks evidence. If media were a primary cause rather than simply reporting on underlying frustration then I would expect even more revolutions as media becomes more widespread. That didn't happen with radio as far as I'm aware. Maybe it happened in some very oppressed areas with social media. But I think it would be very easy to confuse causation with reverse causation.

The claim was newspapers and radio. While the printing press may have played a role I don't think it's an accurate characterization to say the Revolutionary War was caused by newspapers fueling outrage. The causation is actually more likely reversed. The pamphlets were a result of outrage.

Can you answer the question about the carbon footprint of manufacturing plant based foods?

The study on corn ethanol looks so-so, however it's only one study and has a lot of disclaimers about possible problems in methodology. They claim the difference could be as low as zero and as high as 24%. They also are quite strong in saying biofuels must be a part of managing carbon. Just that we need something more efficient than corn. And some scientists have already found problems with the study.[1]

As far as the numbers being the same for sugar cane, that's completely wrong. It produces close to double the fuel.

[1] https://growthenergy.org/2022/05/25/doe-scientists-release-c...

The French Revolution? USA Revolutionary War?