Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/11/when-machines-replace-humans-at-work.html

by jseliger • 13 years ago

73 97 13 years ago

newyorker.com

bayesianhorse• 13 years ago

More unequal? Maybe. More for everyone? Certainly.

It's not like "computers" can be stopped...

crazygringo• 13 years ago

Smart software... is ushering in an era of "hyper-meritocracy."
...the cognitive requirements of working with smart software...
Online education... will only deepen inequality... Because of the premium it places on conscientiousness. some people are pure self-starters... But at the same time, I think it’s a pretty small percentage of the population.

These are all excellent points.

It's funny -- centuries ago, when there was no meritocracy, if you stayed poor, it probably wasn't your fault. You were born a peasant, and there really wasn't any way out of it. Some people argue that it made for happier people. (And if you were rich, it wasn't because you were really smart or capable, you were probably just born into aristocracy.)

But the kind of ruthless economic meritocracy we have today is much less forgiving, as your shortcomings are made so much more obvious. If you're the kind of person who enjoys reading programming manuals and studying Fourier transformations for fun, then you'll probably have a great career ahead of you. But that's just not the case for most people.

pradocchia• 13 years ago

Some day, when the AI systems take over, and the world no longer needs so many people that enjoy reading programming manuals and studying Fourier transformations, the great bulk of programmers will be lined up and shot, in retribution for their years of pampered arrogance.

And it won't be the people we put out of work, it will be the people who paid us, who will have long since had enough of it.

nathan_long10• 13 years ago

I find your comment bizarre. A baker doesn't spend $X on flour unless she can make more than that from selling the bread.

Companies don't pay programmers big bucks and give nice benefits unless they make a lot more off the software programmers build.

Nobody is getting ripped off here.

VMG• 13 years ago

But the programmers will have encoded preferential treatment for their class into the AI.

Checkmate unmeritants.

_delirium3• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how this really relates to merit or shortcomings or being your fault. I'm good at technology, and I make money at it, but I don't see this as a particularly great merit or the result of my hard work and prescience. I've liked and been adept with computers since I was 4 or 5; I'm "the kind of person who enjoys reading programming manuals" you mention. I'm no good at drawing, though, and I'm not particularly skilled at face-to-face interaction with people. It just so happens, through nothing of my own doing or foresight, that programming computers is, at least today, a more lucrative skill than realistic sketching or good retail service are. If the opposite had been true, I would be paid less and a number of other people would be paid more, through no change in our own skills.

I see it more as a matter of alignment: my strengths currently align with market demands. This is not something I predicted when I developed those strengths. As a kid I, perhaps naively, didn't think playing around with computers was even a real thing you could do as a job. Partly that might've been because the people I looked up to and read stuff by didn't seem to be doing it as a job (e.g. the author of a typical 1990s Phrack article). I assumed when I grew up I would have to get a real job, doing proper engineering, or carpentry, or accounting, or something.

randomdata4• 13 years ago

You are certainly lucky that your natural interests lead you to something lucrative, but you are good with technology because you presumably spent considerable amount of time practising with the technology. If you spent more time drawing, you would eventually become good at that too.

If we imagine technology jobs dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow and drawing suddenly became a high paying career, would you invest the time and effort required to become good at drawing, or would you rest on your innate interests and watch your job opportunities fade away? That is the distinction the parent appears to be making. The tools are available to become good at just about anything you can imagine, but it requires a certain type of person to push towards that goal when the natural curiosity is not present.

codemac• 13 years ago

[..] your shortcomings are made so much more obvious. If you're the kind of person who enjoys reading programming manuals and studying Fourier transformations for fun, then you'll probably have a great career ahead of you. But that's just not the case for most people.

This made me chortle a bit.

True, there are some nerds in ghettos across the world, but I doubt they have safe shelter, food, water, and a half decent education. If you can't fucking read, it doesn't matter if you're the "type of person that enjoys reading".

I think poverty is a HUGE reason why African American's aren't highly represented in tech. Or hell, West Virginians.

AndrewKemendo• 13 years ago

I think you overlook the still overwhelming amount of impact your early upbringing causes on later life.

Being born poor and living in poverty has the biggest impact on long term health due to both restrictions in linguistic development and brain health from a poor diet. There was a study recently that reinforced that poverty was the #1 determinant of long term educational attainment.

It's too far a bridge to say that we are increasingly economically meritocratic, if anything some of the "meritocratic" tools we have are only benefiting those that can afford being outside of the mainstream.

larksimian• 13 years ago

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

We're at less than 50% global internet penetration. How many of those people without internet have access to programming books and computers?

The only reason being a self-starter is so important is because of how trash CS(/math/engineering/stem) education is, globally, and because, unlike the other STEMs, self-teaching programming doesn't require expensive equipment.

Online education will almost certainly not deepen inequality edit: among the 30% of the world population that has access to computers and a safe, healthy childhood since it will allow people to skip the real barrier to entry in software engineering: dreadful professors and boring, overwrought courses at expensive to attend institutions.

normloman3• 13 years ago

There's more barriers to entry in software engineering: Free time to teach yourself code, an attention span not used up worrying about gangs, drugs, or crime, a mind unencumbered by undiagnosed mental health problems worsened by poverty, social connections that can actually get you a job in software.

sanskritabelt3• 13 years ago

If the current situation were in fact a meritocracy, wouldn't we expect to see a lot more social mobility than we're seeing now? (http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/06/13-facts-h...) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-c...)

thedufer2• 13 years ago

Parent was comparing the meritocracy of today to the lack thereof centuries ago. I don't see where either of those links looks farther than a few decades back.

svachalek• 13 years ago

If you're the kind of person who enjoys reading programming manuals and studying Fourier transformations for fun, you have a solid middle income career ahead of you, and if you take some chances you may even hit a minor stock jackpot somewhere along the line. Which is great, just don't confuse that with being an investment banker.

MrBuddyCasino• 13 years ago

I call bullshit on this. The nordic countries have a pretty great tech sector too, and they don't suffer from this. Its a policy thing, and I was always under the impression that this is a choice that the USA has made consciously, and is widely acepted as a given - that cutthroat capitalism creates greater inequality, with (maybe) bigger growth rates.

api3• 13 years ago

I agree. Reaganomics started massively concentrating wealth long before the Internet came along.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

Surprisingly, cutting the (progressive) income tax rates and raising the (flat-to-regressive) payroll tax rates made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Who could have guessed?

kgmpers• 13 years ago

I was going to say this.

A good book on the policies that helped kill unions and weaken the middle class is Who Stole the American Dream by Hedrick Smith.

http://www.amazon.com/Stole-American-Dream-Hedrick-Smith-ebo...

guylhem• 13 years ago

It's funny how the "equality" thing can depend on various notions - including assumptions.

Unless we are talking about unconditional equality (i.e. same for everyone including slackers), what about an equality based on how productive people are? It's called marginal productivity ethics, and following that theory our current society is very unequal, and the society envisioned by the articled (the so called "hyper meritocracy") is much more equal.

"In the aftermath of the marginal revolution in economics, a number of economists including John Bates Clark and Thomas Nixon Carver sought to derive an ethical theory of income distribution based on the idea that workers were morally entitled to receive a wage exactly equal to their marginal product" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_product_of_labor)

If anything, computers put an emphasis on the fact that waking up everyday and showing up for "work" with the only qualification of having a pulse is not sufficient anymore to command a salary, especially when machines can replace the worker for a fraction of the cost (and do a much better job)

Things change. I for one will not lament on the fact that our society is becoming so productive and efficient that (gasp!) some people also have to become more efficient!!

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

I think it's partly that technology can multiply the differences in marginal productivity between people.

For example it's a common meme on HN to talk about "10X" or "100X" programmers. If such things are true then it probably makes sense for 100X programmers to be paid 100X more. The difference between a 1X and 10X programmer however may only be marginal in terms of actual intelligence etc.

Therefor if we assume a 10X programmer gets $100,000 , a 100X programmer get $1M and a 1X programmer gets $10,000 which is not going to be a living wage if one has a family.

So one needs to be at least say a 3X programmer to earn a living wage. But maybe there is no such thing as a 3X programmer, only 1X , 10X and 100X.

nagrom• 13 years ago

There's also the fact that if a 1x programmer gets forced out the market, the 10x programmers become 1x programmers (by the definition of a 1x programmer) and the 100x programmers become 10x programmers...

FLUX-YOU• 13 years ago

I think part of the 1X-10X-100X thing comes from knowledge acquired. It's really difficult to nail down what the industry values more: depth or breadth of knowledge, but I'm pretty sure there are jobs for both.

To me, a 10x has always been someone who's studied a ton of material and has solved a lot of problems. It'd be a bit strange if you couldn't be 10 times as productive as a junior guy if you had depth and breadth knowledge of, say, an entire web stack.

If technology gets to the point where it's a very large multiplier, then the human involved would basically be a constant in the face of a large value and multiplier -- almost irrelevant. That might mean that hiring can disregard any requirements (which would be nice for some of us!), but I think that's going to be a far cry since the industry seems to be going in the opposite direction (more languages/projects/knowledge required for an entry level position than 10 years prior)

gavinlynch• 13 years ago

Is the Horseless Carriage Making Society More Unequal?

bradly• 13 years ago

pg writes about a lot of this in his essay Mind the Gap. http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

pa5tabear• 13 years ago

I loved this line:

"the rate at which technology increases our productive capacity is probably polynomial, rather than linear. So we should expect to see ever-increasing variation in individual productivity as time goes on."

gadders3• 13 years ago

Good example of Betteridge's Law.

Also - inequality is a red herring. As long as the poorest people are doing better, it's irrelevant that Bill Gates is a Billionaire.

dctoedt3• 13 years ago

As long as the poorest people are doing better, it's irrelevant that Bill Gates is a Billionaire.

But the human psyche doesn't seem to work that way. There's a fair amount of research suggesting that we tend to measure our well-being not in absolute terms, but relative to those around us or who are otherwise on our mental radar. [ADDED:] No matter how well someone is doing, if he perceives that others "around" him are doing better, he's likely to feel bad about himself.

[ADDED:] Feeling bad about doing worse than those around us probably has an evolutionary advantage as a motivator. There may even be a dollop of sexual-preference selection at work, too: We probably recognize, perhaps unconsciously, that potential mates judge us in part in comparison to other available candidates.

(Tl;dr: Envy is a powerful force, which may have been built into us in part by natural selection.)

nathan_long10• 13 years ago

If most people are envious of Bill Gates, does it follow that they have the right to take away his money and redistribute it?

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

The modern poverty line is renting a cheap urban apartment and eating 3 decent meals a day. We're pretty far from shanty towns and starvation.

The poverty line for a 3 person home (mom, dad, kid) is 23k. That is far from wonderful, but in many markets that's a fair bit of cash, especially if you consider food stamps, section 8, state aid, tax breaks, socialized schooling, federal lunches, etc.

I'd rather be poor today than in the 30s or 40s.

gadders3• 13 years ago

And I'd rather be poor in the US or UK than in, say, Somalia.

erichocean• 13 years ago

Reminds me of a line from As Good As It Gets:

"What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good."

normloman3• 13 years ago

Still relevant because Gate's billions buys him a bigger megaphone. Even if the poor do better, Gate's money can buy power, and in a democracy, it's dangerous when so few people concentrate so much power.

PeterWhittaker• 13 years ago

A better headline would be "Intriguing musings about unexpected ways people working with computers will impact and transform society".

It's a set of notions extracted from a book - if the book is better written and more clearly organized than the article, it will be a thought provoking read. But if it parallels the article, it will be a tiring slog through disjointed assertions.

A key idea is that people with the right blend of conscientiousness and cognitive capacity and style will be able to use technology to enhance their lives in ways that most people will not. And that we cannot predict what these will be, but there there are analogs, and they show the power of the idea.

Intriguing speculation, worthy of consideration, poorly presented in the article. Hopefully better presented in the book, but I ain't readin' it just yet.

ig12• 13 years ago

There was an article in the economist a couple of weeks ago which argued that because growing inequality was a global phenomenon it was unlikely to be related to tax policies, labour laws, etc. but rather due to global factors such as technology and globalization.

On a microlevel the argument seems to make sense the middle-market jobs are the ones that are being wiped out and having salaries driven-down by out-sourcing and technology.

ronaldx2• 13 years ago

OK, but globally inequality isn't growing, by many measures. Hans Rosling illustrated that this week[1].

World income now fits a more continuous curve compared to the rich- and poor- of the past. World equality has presumably been helped by out-sourcing: it's just that some of the 'equality' is no longer owned by the West.

[1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822

ig12• 13 years ago

I think we're talking cross-purpose; I think you're talking about inequality between countries while I'm talking about within countries.

alex-g2• 13 years ago

I don't care about inequality (of outcome). I care about suffering.

Automation may increase inequality between those who are able to take advantage of it, and those who aren't - but it is better to say that increased automation exposes an existing problem. Namely, it so happened that many people were recently able to make a reasonably comfortable living in less-skilled work. There was always a population who couldn't manage that, but now it is a larger group. So the idea that people below a certain productivity threshold don't "matter" isn't tenable any more. But that was never a morally acceptable idea, just a politically pragmatic one.

Reducing inequality shouldn't be a first-order goal. Of course we should make sure that everybody has a decent chance to make the best use of their abilities and resources. But we also need to structure our society to reduce suffering and improve the general quality of life, including for the economically unproductive.

liber82• 13 years ago

This is an excellent point, though I'm not sure you'll be in agreement with why I feel that way. The issue comes down to how you define "suffering".

One of the reasons income inequality is such a silly measurement of overall economic well-being is because people often believe it must be correlated with suffering. In other words, those at the poorer end of the spectrum must be suffering relative to those at the rich end (and usually because of those at the rich end). But this doesn't appear to be true in modern society at all.

In reality, those at the poor end of the spectrum have never experienced less (physical) suffering. Food, clean water, and basic shelter have never been cheaper. On a minimum wage salary, you can live a life without what I would call suffering, though it will look nothing like the typical portrayal of "middle class" life we see on TV. If you're sick, you can get extremely advanced medical care without cost (even in the US, there are free clinics in all major cities, and if you visit the emergency room, though you may be billed preposterous sums, you'll still get care).

What constitutes "suffering" is probably one of the biggest disconnects that plague liberals and conservatives.

alex-g2• 13 years ago

Perhaps we agree more than you expected. I certainly agree that it is too simplistic to say that poor people are suffering because rich people have the money (and that therefore, if we take from the rich and give to the poor, the problem is solved). But that's a pretty 101 sort of critique anyway. Economic and cultural hegemony have been part of the left-wing conversation for a while now, and my main original point was that the concerns of the unemployed and underemployed have tended to be politically ignorable (due to lack of numbers, cultural shaming, the perception that unemployment is always temporary, etc.).

And I agree that being poor in a contemporary rich country isn't as miserable as other ways of being poor. I see you were quite careful to pin your example to "a minimum wage salary", which is a level of income and security that many people don't have. Since I think we probably both care a lot about equality of opportunity, we should agree that being billed preposterous sums for healthcare is still not a brilliant situation, just like not being able to afford to go to college, lacking access to banking services, and so on. I'm not saying we need to buy everyone an Xbox One because that's the new baseline, but I hope that liberals and conservatives can agree that there are powerful mechanisms that entrench people in poverty, to the general detriment of society.

cam_l2• 13 years ago

"Food, clean water, and basic shelter have never been cheaper." Lack of these things are, and always have been, mere symptoms of powerlessness. And though nature played a larger part in this powerlessness in the past, it is largely a social problem. But still, this is only even arguable in the states because so much wealth, and so much power, was captured from the rest of the world during the last half of last century. If your supposed lack of suffering (which I would dispute) of some 300m citizens rests on the suffering of a couple of billion in other places, it doesn't exactly mean a whole hell of a lot.

humanrebar5• 13 years ago

we also need to structure our society to reduce suffering and improve the general quality of life

More concretely, people who are really passionate about inequality could invest in nonprofits to help exactly the people who need it through things like targeted scholarship funds, charter schools, food banks, foster care charities, mentorship programs, addiction recovery organizations, and the like.

I believe that we've already been restructuring society to ill effect. Let's start with restructuring our Thursdays. I'm sure our crossfit friends or trivia night at the pub will manage without us.

In other words, I would like us to "restructure society" not through programs, laws, and schemes but by personalizing the problem by taking care of our actual neighbors who have actual needs.

normloman3• 13 years ago

A world with high inequality but low suffering would still be undesirable, as wealthy people would set the rules. They have the money to spend on lobbying and advertising. The poor would be fed, but still be powerless.

cam_l2• 13 years ago

This is the crux of the matter. A world in which people have power over others, moreso where people want power over others, will always devolve into suffering. As per Lord Acton.. power corrupts.

jjoonathan• 13 years ago

I don't care about inequality (of outcome). I care about suffering.

I subscribe to a different argument with the same conclusion: I care about the inefficiency in the way we, as a society, handle our human resources. Poverty is a morass of catch-22s that conspire to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it, and that's a waste of human potential no matter how you slice it.

The minimum-wage worker who spends 1/3 of his time on his first job, 1/3 of his time on his second job, and 1/3 of his time in a perpetually unrewarding search for something better has no time or energy left for putting himself in a better position to create value for society. He is aware of the problem and he knows the theoretical solution. It is not necessarily a lack of discipline or market insight that hold him back, it's the inability to take on risk in the form of investing time and resources into a new mode of value production that make it an unattractive option. If he tries and fails, food, shelter, and health care become mutually exclusive "luxuries" next month.

HN is full of entrepreneurs who are acutely aware of the importance of being able to take risks, but it is important to realize that we (the software engineering profession) are, at the moment, comparatively well sheltered from the wrath of the market by the fact that we posses a skill that is currently in demand, and even with this shielding many of us opt for risk aversion. If we fail, our fallback plan is a cushy $100k job that we can use as a springboard for our next attempt. Our "punishment" is a temporary stint at helping someone else build their dream. On the other hand, if Sam the supermarket checkout clerk, Mike the aspiring musician, or Anne the academic go into business and fail, their punishment will be far more draconian and far less amenable to taking another chance.

The thing is, we (as a society) don't really want more supermarket clerks, street musicians, and struggling adjunct professors. We want these people to be successful because they will generate 100x the value if they are! But we are unwilling to invest the comparative pittance to cover their base needs to let them try and fail. If we played our cards right, social welfare would become an investment, not a parasitic nuisance. Unfortunately our current welfare policy (to include minimum wage) is filled with so many perverse incentives that it probably accounts for a solid half of the poverty-perpetuating morass of catch-22s I lamented earlier, if not more.

What's funny is that I regularly see people on opposite sides of the socialist/libertarian axis agree abut both the problem and the solution, even if their intermediate reasoning is different. I think you'll take my word about the socialists, but here's Milton Friedman discussing the negative income tax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

malandrew• 13 years ago

This is exactly why either the negative income tax or the basic livable income are such great ideas. Like most of on HN, we're among those best positioned to be on the winning side of this inequality. I'm very much in favor of the approach Switzerland [0] has taken couple with its social services, because it's enough money and social support programs for the following things:

1) A roof over your head (not the best housing, but adequate)

2) Food in your belly (not great food, but enough)

3) A healthcare program (where you don't have to worry)

4) Basic education (so you know enough to learn further on your own)

5) Enough money left over to afford a computer and an internet connection (so you can learn on your own)

With all those needs met, everyone has what they need to do well for themselves. Those at the winning end of inequality know they've given everything necessary for others to join them if they make the effort. The winning end can reap further rewards by deserving it in the form of making the five line items above insanely efficient to deliver. Create cheaper, adequate housing, make food more plentiful and nutritious for cheaper, make healthcare more effective and cheaper, make basic education more effective and cheaper and make computers and internet access cheaper. The people who contribute the most to those goals deserve to live the best because they've done the most to contribute to the general welfare of all.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532738

msluyter• 13 years ago

Tyler Cowen is one of my intellectual heroes. If you found that article interesting, you might enjoy his blog, Marginal Revolution:

http://marginalrevolution.com/

KaoruAoiShiho• 13 years ago

Yes any tool or productivity increase (wheel, horses, printing press) naturally increases inequality. Redistribution is the only answer if you think equality is important.

api3• 13 years ago

It's common during rapid shifts in technology to have a kind of gilded age when "robber barons" who are early adopters amass absurdly huge fortunes very quickly. Same thing happened with the railroads, telephone, television, automobiles, etc.

Eventually things tend to even out. Money wants to flow, and you can't have an economy with all money concentrated in so few hands and nobody to spend it.

nathan_long10• 13 years ago

Why is the sale of labor considered so different than the sale of anything else?

You don't feel immoral selling your car to the highest bidder. Why should selling your labor be different?

You don't feel immoral buying bananas as cheaply as possible. Why should purchasing labor be different?

I'm not trolling; I'm genuinely trying to think through these questions.

Tarrosion• 13 years ago

I disagree that I don't feel immoral when trying to optimize my financial situation when selling cars and buying vehicles.

First, a silly hypothetical that at least shows that when selling a car, I care about something other than price. Option 1: sell my car to a single parent trying to support a family for $5k. This parent's old vehicle was destroyed in a wreck (not their fault) and they need a way to get to work. Option 2: sell my car to an eclectic billionaire whose hobby is running over little cars in his monster truck. This billionaire is offering $5k + $.01

Almost certainly I will take option 1 despite the lower payout, and I suspect almost all of us would. When the difference between payouts is large enough - and that value will vary depending on the person - we will take the higher payout.

When buying food, especially meat, I absolutely do feel immoral sometimes. E.g. if I purchase low cost beef, with high probability I am supporting an agricultural organization which contributes to negative externalities. For example, many animal feeding operations create waste which harms the environment (and by extension many individuals), but this harm may not be fully reflected in the price.

It's not at all obvious to me what this means for buying and selling labor. For example, perhaps I'm an employer and I have a job opening for a full time position which pays well below a living wage, and further assume that somebody voluntarily fills that position. On the one hand, I feel bad that I'm paying my employee well below a living wage. I wonder about their happiness and health and that of their family, and this keeps me up at night. On the other hand, I believe that the employee would not have voluntarily taken this job unless they believed that the exchange of time for money was strictly beneficial to them. So every night I fall asleep content in the knowledge that I have improved someone's life...

nicholas733• 13 years ago

I don't believe it should be different, and so far no better way of pricing has been found than a free market. However a completely separate issue is inequality. This is important to the winners as well, as it provides a measure of stability to the system. What governments (or unions for that matter) should not do is impose new labor laws on businesses. This merely distorts free markets and creates burdens which might cause them to simply move elsewhere. What is needed is a basic income so people can pursue opportunities. Oh, and maybe the grubmint can be more efficient at spending money.

twistedpair• 13 years ago

One difference is the asymmetric information. There are hundreds of places to determine the fair value of your car. However your HR department uses every draconian policy available to keep you from knowing what your coworkers make. Until Glassdoor came along, it was very difficult to know what you're worth, and its dataset is still quite sparse.

Go around and ask most people (i.e. non-tech) what they make relative to their coworkers and industry and they probably don't know. Hard to auction yourself when the numbers are secret.

daughart2• 13 years ago

Labor is a complex commodity because it is linked to a human being. It's natural and right that the value of labor is influenced by supply and demand. However, value is also determined by the cost of production. What is the cost of production of the laborer? The very fact that labor is intrinsic to the laborer sets it apart from other commodities, and gives it additional social, cultural, and moral dimensions. Labor laws are designed to address these additional aspects. In the same way, treating labor as a pure commodity is dehumanizing and exploitative.

nathan_long10• 13 years ago

> In the same way, treating labor as a pure commodity is dehumanizing and exploitative.

Inherently, or only when it leads to abuses, like in "The Jungle"? Are worker treatment laws sufficient?

> value is also determined by the cost of production

In what way? If it costs me $500 to make something, but nobody wants it, its value is still $0 (eg, a crappy sculpture). If it costs me $0 to make something and everybody wants it, its value could be millions.

frogpelt• 13 years ago

Wealth has always been closely linked with the amount of value a person can provide to other people. Of course I am leaving out wealth created through corruption or sheer power.

Intelligent machines, software and connectivity have only made it easier for a single person to provide value to millions of other people.

Lebron James makes $60 million a year because the NBA, the Miami Heat, and the companies that he endorses feel he provides at least that much value to their organizations and brands. NBA players fifty years ago didn't make that much because the fans weren't able to have the kind of access that is available now through 24/7 sports TV channels, the Internet, social media. That increased access through technology means Lebron can provide more value.

sanskritabelt3• 13 years ago

On the other hand, capital accumulates, and is consolidated over time.

Also part of the reason athletes make so much more today is because of sustained labor agitation on the parts of the unions. Go read 'Ball Four' for an example of what pre-union sports was like.

kenster07• 13 years ago

I was going to post my take on this matter...but something struck me when reading the replies. The quality and thoughtfulness of the discussion here is so good compared to the utter crap that is regurgitated on TV and most newspapers. I'm happy that discussions of this level can be found on the internet, and that computer systems enable them.

mlyang• 13 years ago

Once you factor in genetic selection (Gattaca style -- many aspects of which we are ALREADY capable of), inequality will not just become a matter of knowledge/education/motivation as this article states, but BIOLOGICAL - and that will really be the turning point in global inequality.

This is-- from a scientific perspective-- not far off at all, and we haven't figured out the ethical system that can help us navigate this coming phenomenon.

Even start-ups like Counsyl, which are doing great work with respect to genetics and family planning, are a part of this movement towards genetic variation between the rich and poor.

jl6• 13 years ago

Technology is a force multiplier. If there was a gap between the most and least able before, it will be larger now.

nicholas733• 13 years ago

The amount of education required to make a decent living has increased, to the point that today you might need a graduate degree to make a middle class white collar living. Whereas 50 years ago, high school was enough. Pre-tractor farming days you hardly needed middle school. This is a significant mobility problem when you virtually have to crapshoot your life and hope you chose the right field. With increased automation, the level of understanding of a subject or business needed is so great that the average person may never find a genuine opportunity to break out on their own. Try being a rockstar entrepreneur straight out of college outside of app development. At some point even apps will be full of entrenched players like other fields. Contrast that to that not too long ago even a neighborhood corner store could compete and offer an alternate to the wage system.

This is why I believe this time is different - a basic income is needed or else the populace will be like serfs with little mobility from their trade. In other words, a caste system.

johngalt2• 13 years ago

If you wanted to work as a banker prior to the adoption of computers you'd need an education advanced enough to calculate amortization tables. Now you'd simply need to know where to put the numbers into a spreadsheet. Same for accountant. Attorneys can now run instant searches for relevant case law rather than spending time in a law library. Construction workers have instant access to information on a variety of materials and methods. Doctors have computers giving guidance on diagnosis as opposed to consulting experts. Students worldwide can learn from the best teachers in many subjects. I could make this list much longer.

In general, the individual knowledge requirements for most jobs have gone down drastically, and the potential paths to acquire that knowledge have grown.

nicholas733• 13 years ago

The caveat is middle class living. If all those jobs were easily done or trainable, thereby removing the tendency towards credentialism, then by and large those workers should be interchangeable. That lowers the pay and forces the would-be middle class to specialize further in yet something else.

johngalt2• 13 years ago

Articles like these seem to make the superficial assumption that technology only puts downward pressure on the unskilled or uneducated. That improving technology can only benefit the existing elites. I couldn't disagree more. Tech improvements are more often used to allow the relatively unskilled to replace the highly skilled. Innovation is commonly driven by scrappy upstarts who have no choice but to try something new because they can't beat the existing order at their own game.

Are Computers Making Society More Unequal?

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