Dear Marc Andreessen

https://al3x.net/2014/06/17/dear-marc-andreessen.html

by steveklabnik • 12 years ago

352 186 12 years ago

Tragic that we all inevitably grow up to replace the old outdated system we grew up rebelling, nee disrupting, against.

Hunter S. Thompson said something profound and unique to his position. He remarked his biggest fear, and the man knows a thing or two about fear, was waking up to realization that the same people he went to high school with ended up running the show.

Here we are.

I'm at the same age now as when Marc grew out Netscape. His path shaped how I walked my path. Yet he's going to some place that I no longer understand. Maybe he sees it better, maybe he sees it differently, but jeez louise, what is going on?

The new boss isn't better than the old boss. And just you wait until my friends become bosses.

AngrySkillzz• 12 years ago

Paul Graham is now the man.

mattgreenrocks2• 12 years ago

In the end, how much of tech was just about a few guys aggrandizing themselves, not actually benefiting others? From my viewpoint, an enormous amount.

Disruptive, my ass. These guys are chasing the same stupid status symbols that everyone else is. They are not the ubermensch that society holds them up to be, just people who finally Made It (tm).

Motives are exactly why the outcome will be just as rotten as before.

alaskamiller2• 12 years ago

It's why Ayn Rand is so popular.

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

Nobody outside Silicon Valley ever thought these people were Ubermenschen.

WalterSear• 12 years ago

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." - Kurt Vonnegut

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/kurtvonneg103944....

paulbaumgart2• 12 years ago

The most meaningful disagreement is summed up in this sentence:

"Emerging technologies can also create demand for things that are inherently expensive – cutting-edge medical procedures and treatments, for example – driving up costs in entire economic sectors."

It boils down to: should we subsidize cutting-edge medicine for everyone, or treat it as a luxury because people who can't afford it are no worse off than they were before its invention (in absolute terms)?

The pragmatic answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

steveklabnik5• 12 years ago

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

SatoshiPacioli3• 12 years ago

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

lclarkmichalek• 12 years ago

r/philosophy has this in their "A Guide to Arguments" page:

Logical Fallacies -----------------

I’d like to close with some brief comments on invoking logical fallacies. These fallacies are essentially shortcuts through logical space that pick out common failures in constructing valid arguments without digging into the logical machinery at work. However, like most shortcuts, invoking fallacies means missing out on the complete picture of the argument and it can very well be the case that stating the logical errors explicitly (i.e. premise two does not entail premise three, etc) can expose helpful implicit premises or make it clear to your opponent how, precisely, his or her argument fails. These things are both important to charity and helpful to informative discussion about an argument. For these reasons and others, we recommend against invoking popular logical fallacies against an argument in favor of spelling out and objecting to arguments in more robust ways.

corford12• 12 years ago

Very nice to see pmarca's neoliberal idiocy taken apart so thoroughly. Peter Thiel could do with similar treatment imho.

patrickaljord4• 12 years ago

So things we disagree with now can just be labelled as idiocy?

And no matter how much you and other statists hate neoliberalism and how it's taken over the world, thing is the world has never been so rich, so peaceful and people have never lived so long and so healthy in the whole history of humanity. So, if neoliberalism is having a bad effect on the world, I wonder what it would do if it had a good effect.

I would also add that the countries that are doing better in this world are all pro free-market such as Switzerland and Hong Kong. In fact, as someone who has lived in Peru for 5 years, I can tell you (and numbers will show), in the 90's, Peru and Venezuela had similar economies. Then in the 90's and up to today, Peru has liberalized its economy and privatize a lot of industries, Venezuela has gone the opposite way. Today, Peru is prospering more than ever while Venezuelans unfortunately have to wait in line for hours to buy toilet paper, flour and meat. I think reality is on my and Andreessen's side.

Statists are obsessed with inequality gaps and how some people are so much richer than others. I and people like Andreesen are obsessed with fewer people dying of hunger, violence and disease. Once we get rid of that, maybe we can work on reducing that gap you're so obsessed about, but right now, let's help people not die of hunger at least and make make enough of a living to support themselves, and nothing is as efficient as free market economies for this who have lifted billions of people from extreme poverty from China to Peru.

corford12• 12 years ago

Neoliberalism (of the Milton Friedman kind) hasn't taken over the world. It gained traction in the mid 70's, peaked in the 00's and is now, thankfully, slipping back from its extreme heights.

Also, pmarca's particular interpretation of neoliberalism is what I was referring to as idiotic, not the broader concept as a whole (which I think is also very flawed but can at least respect).

Let's not confuse well regulated free-market capitalism and a dollop of social state support (which I think together represent the best model the world has so far come up with and is the one followed, more or less, by the best economies) with pmarca's extreme interpretation of how an economy should be run.

Edit: Oh, and finally, "people like Andreesen are obsessed with fewer people dying of hunger, violence and disease." It would be nice if his investments better reflected that apparent 'obsession': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments

To my eye he seems to care solely about making money for himself and whoever A16Z's LPs are. Nothing wrong with that (he runs a VC firm after all) but let's not pretend he's a saintly figure obsessing over the plight of the world's poor.

nationcrafting2• 12 years ago

Very well put, Patrick. Funnily enough, I'm living in Peru right now (been coming here for the past 15 years) and make the same argument to anyone who challenges what free markets can do to lift a country out of poverty. Chile's results are even more impressive, given that the country is now in the top-10 freest countries in the world, and the wealthiest per capita in Latin America.

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

You can't refute other people's ideas and establish the supremacy of proprietarianism by yelling "STATIST!" over and over again.

The sheer fact that you're reduced to this weak grade of "argumentation" shows you either need some serious instruction in rhetoric, or in logic, or you just don't have very good reasons for what you believe.

RichardFord4• 12 years ago

He didn't take anything apart. He's just another leftist that has a hard time comprehending that some people have differently ideological views that his own.

corford12• 12 years ago

I struggle to understand how a non-biased, rational person can read that post (and the linked articles within) and not, at the very least, leave in broad (not necessarily absolute) agreement with what al3x is saying.

SatoshiPacioli3• 12 years ago

"Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs. They want leverage to negotiate wages and working conditions so they aren’t barely scraping by. The pushback is on exploitative business models, not technology."

I have been on the receiving end of exploitative business models. The answer is Exit, not Voice. Here's why: enough people exit -> wages go up and/or working conditions improve. Period. Yes, it's that simple. The problem is that we are creatures of habit, driving around is a relatively easy job, and the self-awareness necessary to change is scarce.

But wait, survival of the fittest and I don't give a shit. I really don't. These taxi/uber drivers will be replaced by driverless cars. We need a government program to retrain these people and employ them, just like we had for farmers and factory workers. Or not. Seeing people try to fend for themselves is more interesting than seeing them do make-work in a federal building - who knows, they might actually adapt, thrive, and makes something of themselves.

ebiester• 12 years ago

Or they get a gun and start robbing you and kidnapping your kids for ransom.

When people can't eat, they get desperate. When enough people can't eat... well, let's just say Egypt's government didn't fall because people wanted freedom.

cariss5• 12 years ago

To the quote above: wages are determined by productivity, not negotiation leverage. The moral implications of "barely scraping by" don't factor in.

SatoshiPacioli3• 12 years ago

Ehrm, no, obviously not. A marketing intern can be more productive than an engineering intern and make 1/2 as much. It's determined by supply and demand, nothing else.

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

But wait, survival of the fittest and I don't give a shit. I really don't.

I'll remember that when I'm designing something that can ruin your life.

patrickaljord4• 12 years ago

Well, we’re three decades into an era of systemic deregulation and financialization. The result?

Not really, finance and banking are still the most regulated sectors on earth. Hardly deregularized.

cariss5• 12 years ago

Yep. Its passing attempt at economic analysis seems to omit the government's fingerprints all over the latest recession.

nl2• 12 years ago

In the US they are effectively deregulated in close to every way the actors care about (aka regulatory capture).

Additionally, enforcement of the few regulations that exist is close to nonexistent.

Edit: downvotes, so here's some references:

On Regulatory Capture:

a growing number of respected commentators now argue that regulatory capture of public agencies and public policy by leading banks was one of the main causal factors behind the financial crisis of 2007–2009.[1]

OTS consistently referred to the banks it oversaw as its “constituents.” They favored asking banks to correct problems rather than enforcing regulation, even though the banks rarely followed through on the agreements.[2]

On lack of enforcement:

Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.[3]

[1] http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_and_the_Financial_...

[3] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...

nickff2• 12 years ago

I cannot find any hard data on the very long term trend of numbers of SEC enforcement actions, but they seem to be on the rise in the long term, though they have fluctuated greatly. From the books I've read and interviews I've heard, it seems that the opposite is true; financial sector prosecutions have become so common that it is now regarded as a 'cost of doing business' more than a stain on one's reputation.

edit: the comment I responded to has been edited, and I have not yet had time to review the new citations

phillmv2• 12 years ago

A field can remain highly regulated while having certain aspects deregulated.

This is what we saw before the financial crisis. For instance, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act is credited with enabling the broad systemic risk that created Too Big To Fail - by allowing commercial banks to invest in securities and proprietary trading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislat...

This was further compounded in Europe by loosening up leverage ratio requirements - but I don't have a link handy for that one.

You're also not commenting on the second word in there - financialization. The 2008 crisis wasn't possible in the 90s, because the residential mortgage market in the US hadn't been fully securitized prior to the aughts.

Anyhow, to pretend like there has been no deregulation is to be disingenuous at best.

seehafer• 12 years ago

Anyhow, to pretend like there has been no deregulation is to be disingenuous at best.

True, but then to blame a financial crisis on free markets when no such thing even remotely existed is also disingenuous at best.

burntsushi5• 12 years ago

The claim put forth was that there is no systemtic deregulation, not that there is no deregulation at all.

adventured4• 12 years ago

Net regulations on banking and finance have increased drastically over the last 20 years. Indeed, regulation over the whole economy has increased drastically.

That's a fact that is easily demonstrated. The regulations are all public. The US economy is by far the most regulated economy on earth. There is no close second.

rdl5• 12 years ago

I don't think pmarca is saying people are against robots per se, but against the efficiency-driven unemployment they see. I'm firmly on the side of pmarca and technology here -- I'd love to see virtually all crappy jobs today disappear, and we could find new and better things for those people to do (through the market, ideally, but I'd be open to Basic Income or other forms of wealth distribution if needed).

I cannot imagine retarding technology just to preserve existing jobs being a winning strategy which makes the world better. If we did that in the 1700s, there would only be a few thousand people left over after primary agriculture to do anything else. That would suck.

People holding unionized or otherwise protected jobs are rent-seekers (albeit on a smaller scale than large companies in regulated industries). Rent seekers do not make the world a better place.

corford12• 12 years ago

I don't think that's really the point of al3x's post. I think it's more we should be very worried that someone with such a balck & white, infantile view of society and economy is in a position to throw billions of dollars at advancing his world view.

I love technology but fear for the world we'll end up with if people like pmarca are left to pull the levers.

rdl5• 12 years ago

I would sure rather have pmarca pulling the levers rather than people like {politicians, bankers, ...}.

wutbrodo5• 12 years ago

I'm genuinely curious why you think that he has a black and white view of society. It seems like the one-dimensional, black-and-white technocrat view you're ascribing to him wouldn't be in full support of "creating an sustaining a vigorous social safety net", right? The only arguments I've ever heard against "Don't hamper technological progress but provide a robust safety net to take care of those left behind" are the kind of blatantly cynical strawmen used in the article:

Meanwhile, we don’t need to wait until a hypercapitalist techno-utopia emerges to do right by our struggling neighbors. We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow. Instead, you’re kicking the can down the road and hoping the can will turn into a robot with a market solution.

Isn't that Andreessen's whole fucking point? From reading his remarks, it seems evident that he _does_ think that we should "vote to pay for universal healthcare, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow". Who the hell said anything about _waiting_ for a hypercapitalist utopia? And how the hell is a "vigorous social safety net" hypercapitalist?

sanderjd2• 12 years ago

I'd love to see virtually all crappy jobs today disappear, and we could find new and better things for those people to do

I agree with you, but I won't share your optimism until I start seeing way more ideas for what this future would look like that are way less hand-wavy than what I've seen so far. Vonnegut's "Player Piano" feels a lot more familiar than Star Trek's no-scarcity-or-need-to-work-but-everything-is-amazing.

ericd2• 12 years ago

This is an interesting vision. Not concrete in a lot of ways, but you a lot of the core ideas seem at least somewhat plausible: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

The first story seems more plausible than the second, but I hope the future looks more like the second.

coldtea7• 12 years ago

I cannot imagine retarding technology just to preserve existing jobs being a winning strategy which makes the world better.

The problem is accelerating technology doesn't make the world automatically better either.

It can also make it patently worse. E.g, someone presses the red button, and here's a nuclear war. Or some idiot gets access to viruses, and here's a bio attack that wipes out half the population. It's technology that will have enabled both. Actually, the number of people that have died in World War I and II (from the mustard gas to Belsen and from Dresden to Hiroshima) is already tens of millions -- all due to improved technological efficiency.

Compared to that kind of harm to the whole of humanity, some people getting an "artificial heart", a guy walking on the moon, and being able to exchange IMs with WhatsApp on one's mobile is not that much of an balance at all. Just something to keep in mind, lest someone thinks technology is all just "embetterment".

People holding unionized or otherwise protected jobs are rent-seekers (albeit on a smaller scale than large companies in regulated industries). Rent seekers do not make the world a better place.

Quite the opposite. Protected jobs stop the madness of everything going forward for the sake of going forward, and ask for real improvements to the lives and treatment of real people. It's only a problem when the protection is to a small subclass of people, instead of extending to all workers. We have the 8-hour work day (well, had), we've had booming middle classes, and we've had safety laws and child labor laws because of those "unions" and protests. America was better in the fifties, middle class wise, when unions were strong, compared to what it's now.

sirkneeland• 12 years ago

It didn't hurt that in the 50s American industry was reaping the benefits of having blown their industrial competitors to smithereens just a few years earlier.

I can offer all the benefits you want if the odds of my products' prices being undercut by a competitor are roughly zero.

wutbrodo5• 12 years ago

Compared to that kind of harm to the whole of humanity, some people getting an "artificial heart", a guy walking on the moon, and being able to exchange IMs with WhatsApp on one's mobile is not that much of an balance at all. Just something to keep in mind, lest someone thinks technology is all just "embetterment".

Woah, what? Are you really saying that the negative uses of technology in the World Wars have outweighed the positive uses of technology (even if we limit ourselves to a timeframe that contains an unusual amount of war deaths)? It's beyond ridiculous to reduce the benefits of technology to "some guy" getting an artificial heart, the moonwalk (which depending on your perspective is either a prestige achievement or a step towards space exploration whose benefits we haven't seen yet), and a messaging app. I really, really hope you're being disingenuous instead of just ignorant because I'm practically rendered speechless at the thought of having to explain how electrification alone has saved countless lives.

OTOH, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, since it seems to be a very common phenomenon for people to ignore steady long-term effects in favor of flashier one-offs, even if the latter has a tiny, tiny, tiny cumulative effect in comparison.

As just a couple of examples (I tried to focus on things that would be the most affected by technological/scientific/economic progress):

- The five-year mortality rate of breast cancer today is roughly the same as the mortality rate of GIVING BIRTH in 1900 (also known as something damn near half the population does, several times in their life).

- The Spanish flu infected 500 million and killed 100 million people in 1918. Today you can go to Safeway and get a flu shot for 10 bucks.

- In the early 20th century, the life expectancy at birth was 31 years of age. In 2010 it was 67 years.

- Per CDC data, 60 years ago, 38000 people died of polio each year in America alone. These days, 300 people die of polio per year in the ENTIRE WORLD.

- From 1920 to 1980, 395/10000 people died from famine each year. In 200, that number was THREE out of every 10000.

Of course I agree with the larger point that's tangential to the one you're making: blind progress without ethical safeguards is definitely foolish. That's not really what this discussion is about at all though (there are people already talking about the need for ethical standards around AI development and I'm the first to agree with that).

America was better in the fifties, middle class wise, when unions were strong, compared to what it's now.

This is so incredibly ignorant of history that it's unbelievable. You're aware there was a World War right before the 50's, right? And damn near the entire world was either coming out of centuries of suppressed economies under colonialism or trying to recover from being, you know, blown up? Might that have _anything_ to do with the success of American labor (it's not a coincidence that the opening of developing-world markets in the 70s and 80s coincided with the loss of America's unskilled-labor competitiveness)? Not to mention the fact that "middle-class wise" is an incredibly idiotic metric to use as a proxy for "better". Refer back to the list I had above for examples of _real_ ways that lives can improve (or seriously, just Google it: you can literally find HUNDREDS of ways life was worse back then, even if you limit yourself to the 50s and to America). The places that we _have_ gotten much worse (i.e. economic prospects for lower and lower-middle classes) is amply addressed by the grandparent comment's allusion to a proper welfare state and basic income. To put it another way, retarding progress so people can have pretend-productive jobs could not be stupider; through inefficiency, you're destroying wealth that can be redistributed to people who actually need it instead of to people who happen to hold arbitrary obsolete jobs. What you're fundamentally saying is that we should implement welfare in the most inefficient way possible and then give it not to the poor, or the sick, or the needy; but to people in arbitrary industries (like dockworkers or taxi drivers) at arbitrary income levels.

phillmv2• 12 years ago

I'd love to see virtually all crappy jobs today disappear,

On that note, Graeber is fun to read on this topic http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

I cannot imagine retarding technology just to preserve existing jobs being a winning strategy which makes the world better.

Well… that depends on the distribution of income, doesn't it? If my choice is between Elysium and the world of today, I'd rather stay put thank you very much.

The key criticism here is that there is a vast legal and cultural machinery in place that overwhelmingly benefits those who already have some form of wealth and that it is this class of people who disproportionately benefit - to the detriment of non capital holders.

I'm willing to accept a techno utopia where _everyone_ benefits and not one in which all the efficiency gains automation has to give accrue to a lucky few.

MaysonL• 12 years ago

Of course, you should take that Graeber article with a few grains of salt, given that he also wrote this:

Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages

IvyMike• 12 years ago

we could find new and better things for those people to do

I do not think this is universally true.

rdl5• 12 years ago

I don't think we could necessarily say "hey everyone, do whatever you want" and get more productivity out of most people, but I do think a lot of people would be happier, even if less productive.

If we can enslave atoms/the sun/computers/etc., and use the surplus from that to let some people be less productive than they otherwise would be if forced, but at the same time let other people be massively more productive than if forced to cover basic subsistence, we might be better off.

(I'd sure prefer if "the next Einstein" got to work in a cushy academic/office job while doing his thinking on the side, than if he were working 20h/day in a coal mine to support himself, leaving no time for anything else.)

So I'd use "better" in the sense of "people would individually be happier", and also that the absolute returns might be higher overall -- mainly because a billion people receiving a small subsidy on net productivity which trends toward zero actual cost are insignificant cost compared to be benefit of some thousands or hundreds of thousands being massively productive rather than a tiny bit net productive.

jdminhbg• 12 years ago

Taxi drivers protesting Uber aren’t saying that they want apps out of their cabs.

Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient fares or grab an easier ride on their way to a call? Uber's end-run around regulation is only possible because cabbies use regulation to make consumers' lives worse.

It's kind of crazy to me the degree to which the left is becoming a movement built around kneejerk status quo bias, based on nothing but a distaste for the idea that someone might be making money off of making consumers' lives better.

thenmar• 12 years ago

Can you clarify what you mean by "the left"?

cariss5• 12 years ago

Anti-market bias seems to be the unifying constant.

sanderjd2• 12 years ago

Your first paragraph is interesting but your second one really jumps the shark. The article is nowhere close to being "kneejerk status quo bias, based on nothing but a distaste for the idea that someone might be making money off of making consumers' lives better".

coldtea7• 12 years ago

Of course they aren't saying that, it would be political suicide to say it. But given the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions, do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient fares or grab an easier ride on their way to a call?

And why should they? I'm against micromanaging any sector to death, and getting them to work with the smallest margins possible. If they can hold their own, all the better to them.

When does "applying technology" stops and abuse starts? One can imagine employees in offices fitted with colars that give them electric shocks (or automatically reduce their paycheck) everytime they slack even momentarily (e.g check HN or think something of their own outside work).

Would we go for a automated hell of surveillance and micromanaging of every action and transaction to get everybody to work as a maximum productivity machine?

paul• 12 years ago

I feel like both the left and the right are trying to take us back to some idealized version of the 1950's. I want a political movement based on creating a new and better future, not hanging on to shreds of the past.

We now have the technology and resources necessary to provide everyone with adequate food, housing, healthcare, and education. That's what I want, not more "job creation" or preservation of obsolete jobs. The future could actually be BETTER than the 1950's :)

swah• 12 years ago

This is related to PG's essay on wealth: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

taurath• 12 years ago

What motivates people in a society where all their needs are met? Competition for resources has long been and will continue to be large aspect of humanity as a species, but I imagine we could reach for a truly golden age once a large group of people have the luxury of thinking about things like we're talking about now. It'd be amazing what we could build if more people had time to experiment - possibly bewildering and dangerous!

webmaven• 12 years ago

Exactly. Both the left and the right have stasists that think the future can be controlled to produce a steady-state ideal (some by being reactionary and seeking to duplicate an imagined past, others being technocratic and seeking to impose an imagined future), which frequently creates some very strange bedfellows. Meanwhile all their plans keep getting upended by generativity, engines of serendipity, black swans, virtuous and vicious circles, and accelerating returns.

colmvp• 12 years ago

With cash, isn't it also easier to pocket tips without declaring on your taxes?

x0x0• 12 years ago

did you even pay attention to why nyc taxi drivers didn't want customers to pay via credit cards? Because the answer was basically the company owners where taking a bigger cut and paying them at the end of the month instead of immediately (plus probable tax avoidance)

tedks• 12 years ago

The distaste isn't that people are making consumer's lives better, it's distaste that people are making worker's lives worse by making consumer's lives better, and thus enforcing and widening a social divide that makes it very unlikely for an Uber driver to be able to afford Uber rides.

Yes, it's possible to make every single industry a brutal, dog-eat-dog race to the bottom. Yes, we can close every single factory in the Dominican Republic that tries to unionize. Yes, we can elastize production all over the world to make everyone compete with literally everyone else. Yes, we can uberify the entire world.

But as this article points out, in very well-argued and cogent thought that doesn't seem knee-jerk to me at all, such races to the bottom only really help the hyper-rich, and soon will not even help you or me.

What will the lifestyle of developers be when our industry is Uberized? When you no longer have a job to count on, with steady benefits and health insurance and security, but whatever comes down the pipe that day? What happens when you're commodified by technology?

Because, make no mistake, the ratchet of progress turns only every in one direction. One day the bell will toll for you. And then you'll find out too late that we really are all in this together, except for the people that are quite literally setting us against each other like dogs.

etjossem• 12 years ago

Relevant, if anecdotal: http://www.quora.com/New-York-City/Why-do-NYC-cab-drivers-ha...

wpietri3• 12 years ago

What's your evidence? I regularly use Flywheel, which lets me summon normal cabs. Every driver I've talked to is excited about it. And they say the reason they've not liked the credit card machines is that the cab companies force them to use a particular one and tack on substantial fees. I suspect that if anybody is using regulation to make riders' lives worse, it seems to be the cab companies.

sxyuan• 12 years ago

I recently took a regular cab from the San Francisco airport. The driver had some choice words to say about Uber, and told me that he's lost 80% of his customers inside San Francisco in recent years. He uses an app to find customers and I ended up paying him with my card using Square. I'm not sure there is a difference between him and an Uber driver, except that he's held accountable by regulation designed to protect those who ride in these cabs.

MichaelGG• 12 years ago

In SF the other night, coming from the airport, the cabbie told me the company CC reader had a 10% charge for him. Whereas if I used his Square account, it was only 3% or so. He seemed pretty excited about it and mentioned it several times.

He also shared my disgust at those ad-screens and provided a towel to cover up the bright display that would have otherwise assaulted my face.

couradical• 12 years ago

The issue with credit card vs cash is actually far more nuanced. For example, in Boston, cab drivers don't get to choose a payment processor, the processor/cab company takes about a 8-12% cut of the total, and it's quite often subject to payment delays of 3-5 days between fare and receipt of funds. Compared to cash, that's a pretty raw deal, and for someone who's shelling out a bunch of money to rent the cab, and run it, can be sometimes the difference between profiting on a fare and not.

drumdance• 12 years ago

the stubborn resistance to even using the credit card readers forced on them by utility commissions

They resisted it because it cost them money. When a corporation is forced to do something like this we call it burdensome regulation.

Fortunately for cabbies, fees overall are lower because Walmart won a massive lawsuit against Visa. That was back in 1996, but it looks like history is repeating itself: http://www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/4587

superuser22• 12 years ago

Drivers want you to pay cash because everything else involves a technology company (CC processor, Uber, or both) taking a cut of the sale and cash doesn't. If a tech startup were resisting middlemen in this way, we'd probably call it common-sense business acumen. When it's a taxi driver, he's the scum of the earth?

do people really think that cabbies are aching to have apps between them and their customers that would thwart their ability to skip inconvenient fares or grab an easier ride on their way to a call?

You do realize that these are regulations that the monstrous freedom-hating left gave you over your objections, right?

resu_nimda• 12 years ago

The key difference is that said startups use technology to cut out the middle man in a way that is transparent or even beneficial to the consumer. The cabbie, on the other hand, grumpily tries to pass the inconvenience onto the consumer.

eli_gottlieb5• 12 years ago

It's kind of crazy to me the degree to which the left is becoming a movement built around kneejerk status quo bias, based on nothing but a distaste for the idea that someone might be making money off of making consumers' lives better.

What exactly are you referring to when you say "the left"? The movements I'm familiar with as such are openly pro-technology and blatantly utopian and anticapitalist on those grounds.

Detrus• 12 years ago

An affordable safety net could be possible with cheap renewable energy and magic hydroponic farms that make food even cheaper. Anyone could have a small farm in their room! Then you just need housing. Maybe we'll make some fancy new materials in the next tech bubble, so that you can put up luxurious, energy efficient, 10 story housing with the ease of a trailer park.

These technologies were promised a while ago, we just need to make them work well. Any day now. Then tech progress can continue unchallenged by the needs of human sustenance.

On the other hand, the Amish approach has its own merits.

cariss5• 12 years ago

Technological innovation is driven by consumer demand to a much greater extent than the "decisions and whims" of billionaire VCs. If only it were that simple, r>g might actually be true.

This is crap.

bokonist15• 12 years ago

I'm with Alex generally, but disagree with this sentence: "We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow"

In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education. Much money has been allocated to increase college enrollment. But, IMO, for the vast majority of people, college education is a luxury social club. Spending more money on college is just a wealth transfer from tax payers to upper middle class teachers and administrators. I do not agree with Peter Thiel when he says that kids should start businesses instead of going to college. But I think there is lots of room for designing some sort of adult-life on-boarding process that was far more cost efficient than having the government write a check to subsidize teenagers getting black out drunk every weekend. I'm not sure what this system would be, but there are lots of options - could be some sort of apprenticeship, or a co-op mixed with classes, or a light-weight, low cost online education combined with assigned mentors.

The real issue is that any form of labor that is a commodity, and that does not have union or legal protection, has been screwed over by the trifecta of globalization, immigration, and automation. But, I disagree with both the neoliberals and progressives in that I do not think it is possible to educate the great masses and enable them to find non-commodity career paths. There are only so many content marketers, enterprise salesmen, management consultants, and product managers that the world needs. Those jobs are going to go to the genetically and socially privileged. Therefore, the only solution for the normal person, who will be at a commodity job in customer service or doing sales at a Verizon store, is collective bargaining.

One form of collective bargaining can take is democratic politics. My policy preference would be a law that creating a universal wage subsidy of $7.75 an hour, thus guarantees every worker a total wage of at least $15 an hour. I would couple that with a "job of last resort" program that would replace long term unemployment and disability insurance - everyone who wants to work can get a job, no matter how blighted their city, no matter what kind of disability they have. Even if they are a quadriplegic they can be assigned to monitor security cameras or something else.

jseliger• 12 years ago

In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education

I wrote about adjacent issues in "Why can’t we solve poverty, or solve it through schools?", which got started in emails and Hacker News comments on the issue (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/why-cant-we-solve-p...).

In addition, and as I discuss in the post, right now we can't "solve" poverty because poverty is a moving metric, usually defined as a percentage of income, rather than as an absolute value.

Thanks for your comment.

bokonist15• 12 years ago

In addition, and as I discuss in the post, right now we can't "solve" poverty because poverty is a moving metric, usually defined as a percentage of income, rather than as an absolute value.

Yes, and this reminds me a point I left out. We also need to look for ways to reduce the cost of living for the basic stuffs of life. In many ways a poor person now is wealthier than 40 years ago. However, the cost of living needed to simply live in society as a semi-normal person has also gone up dramatically. Most people cannot to work, or take a cheap moped to work, because the entire transportation structure was designed for cars. If everyone else is driving a three ton steel machine, you need to drive one too, and better get one with airbags and a four-star crash rating. Similarly, zoning laws have made even small homes in locations near healthy job markers quite expensive. Healthcare is much better now, but there is no option to pay Costa Rican healthcare prices for Costa Rican health quality. It's all or nothing.

The economy is also missing old-school solutions like boarding houses or dorm living for adults, that provide a very cost effective way for single adults to save money while working entry level jobs. Such accommodations now violate zoning laws.

Right now economic policy is geared around GDP and per capita GDP. I would prefer for the key metric we judge economic progress by to be the ratio between the most basic cost of living for a normal person (a two bedroom home near jobs, a food basket with protein and vitamins, transportation costs of getting to work, healthcare coverage that will cover major health problems, amortized costs of education needed to land that median wage job, etc. etc.) divided by the median income for a full time worker. We both need to focus on keeping the basic cost of living down as much as we focus on keeping wages up.

chongli• 12 years ago

Spending more money on college is just a wealth transfer from tax payers to upper middle class teachers and administrators.

This is the case in the United States. In several places in Europe, however, it is a different story. Higher education is cheap or even free and schools are not bloated with a glut of unnecessary bureaucrats and administrators.

briantakita2• 12 years ago

not bloated with a glut of unnecessary bureaucrats and administrators

In America, Education is about standardizing thought & systematically removing novelty from the students. That requires bureaucrats & administrators to ensure that the novelty is systematically removed on schedule.

burntsushi5• 12 years ago

Higher education in the US is also plenty cheap if you look at state schools and community colleges. I took the path of going to a state school and escaped with a very small amount of debt.

But that isn't popular to talk about. Instead, we blindly assume every school is $40K+ a year. (And indeed, some people are brazen enough to pay such costs.)

gbog• 12 years ago

Ok, but those who just do not want to be assigned a productive task, what would you do with them?

bokonist15• 12 years ago

Then they go hungry. When they are ready to work and to eat, their local employment office will be ready with a job and a paycheck. But in the meantime, they need to stay off my lawn. I am a believer in anti-vagrancy laws, so I think with the "jobs for everyone" comes enforcement against sleeping on street benches and panhandling.

rapind• 12 years ago

Show them a documentary about the working environment of the lower class in China.

sanswork6• 12 years ago

Support them as a society. There will always be a tiny % that won't or can't work. Unless you want to let them die you will spend more money and effort trying to find the people abusing the system then you will spend on their abuses.

pteredactyl2• 12 years ago

Define 'productive task.'

eqdw2• 12 years ago

My policy preference would be a law that creating a universal wage subsidy of $7.75 an hour, thus guarantees every worker a total wage of at least $15 an hour.

I really like this idea. Lately I've been thinking about minimum wage laws (SF, $15/hr min wage, etc) and something about it rubs me the wrong way. It feels like minimum wage laws are a convenient way for governments to take all the credit for improving the lot of the poor, while making others (companies) pay for it. It also feels like it disproportionately impacts small business owners, who are already stretched pretty thin.

Implementing a minimum wage like that, where part of the burden is on the government, and comes out of tax revenues (which can be collected in a more progressive fashion) really appeals to me

bokonist15• 12 years ago

Yes, exactly. The economic right wing has a valid point, that many small business owners cannot bear the burden of a higher minimum wage. Asking a factory owner who is barely making payroll due to competition from China to boost his wages could be a death knell. The money for wage increases needs to come from those who are the big winners in the winner-takes-all-games that are technology and globalization.

Kaizyn3• 12 years ago

You do realize that every time minimum wages are raised like this the cost(s) are simply passed on through to the consumers. The net effect is that the cost base rises with the wage base, so no one actually gets ahead - the nominal price point is just set to a higher figure.

TheOtherHobbes• 12 years ago

In the last sixty years, a tremendous amount of money has been poured into education.

That wouldn't be the last sixty years of explosive innovation and social growth, would it?

You mean the most inventive and creative sixty years in all of human history?

The problem now is that universities have become degree mills and social networking clubs. The subscription fees are insane, and because education has become commoditised, and too much of the process exists to exploit students instead of educating them, the results are becoming ever-more mediocre.

But it would surely be possible to make useful adult education a part-time thing, with the rest of the time spent on useful work.

It's not as if there aren't enough jobs that need to be done in healthcare, infrastructure maintenance, childcare, teaching, and all the other work that counts towards social, not investor, dividends.

Unfortunately these jobs are deemed 'too expensive' and 'a drain on resources' - which is code for 'we're not going to make money from them in the next six months, so fuck everyone.'

bokonist15• 12 years ago

That wouldn't be the last sixty years of explosive innovation and social growth, would it? You mean the most inventive and creative sixty years in all of human history?

The sixty years prior were pretty explosive too - we got the car, airplane, nitrogen fixation, radios, etc.

In my observation, you maximize returns to education when a) 90+% of people are literate in terms of both words and math b) ~20% of your population has a good trade education and/or apprenticeship c) 5-10% of your population has a good technical education (engineering, accounting, medicine, etc.). Beyond that, there are diminishing returns. The benefit of giving 50% of your population a "business and communications" "education" at State U is pretty low. Especially when that "education" is really just a four year party.

The U.S. was probably at maximal educational efficiency in the 1950's. And we are getting a lot of benefit from the small percentage of education that is actually technical. But the marginal, additional, dollars spent since then, IMO, have had little impact.

rokhayakebe• 12 years ago

1) If we moved from theoretical/general teachings in college and focused on apprenticeship, the benefits of universal education would be clearly noticeable.

2) My policy preference ... of at least $15 an hour. Why does everybody need to work? Just look around your own company, (arbitrarily) less than 50% of your workforce creates (arbitrarily) 95% of the value. We would save money by paying the rest to stay home.

3) The way productivity is being enhanced by technology means that sooner or later, only a small part of the population will make the workforce, and they will create more value than all of us are creating now. The only question at that point will be how will this value/profit be shared and benefit the "unproductive" population.

bokonist15• 12 years ago

Just look around your own company, (arbitrarily) less than 50% of your workforce creates (arbitrarily) 95% of the value.

That was not the case at my last company, as we were quite cutthroat about cutting away deadwood. But the company was in the marketing space, so arguably the entire company could just stay home and society would be no worse off.

But to answer your question - why does everybody need to work? Because most people are not natural aristocrats. They are not going to be tinkering in their home laboratories, crafting programming languages or writing ebooks. I fear that most people will degenerate in every manner if not subjected to the discipline of work. They will end up drinking and playing video games all day long. Furthermore, I think most people want to work, it provides purpose and fulfillment.

If we needed to create work on a massive scale (as opposed to just a stop gap for particular disadvantaged people) I would prefer that the government create some sort of massive, purposeful project. For instance, I'd love to see the U.S. president throw down the gauntlet and challenge China and the EU to race to Mars. (Although I'm not actually sure how many jobs such an endeavor would actually create).

gvr• 12 years ago

I went to the best physics program in Sweden. It was pretty amazing and at something like $50 per year essentially free. In addition, the government provided ~$300 per month in assistance plus a low interest ~$900 loan.

Any good policy or form of governance (including socialism) will look bad if executed poorly.

lukasm• 12 years ago

Sure, a lot of stuff will get cheaper, but how are you gonna pay for that without any income? I speculate that countries in Europe will choose some form of Minimal Activity available for everybody. The transition faze will hurt. A lot.

glesica2• 12 years ago

..."job of last resort" program...

But why? Why is it so necessary that everyone spend their days working? Why not just allow the structurally unemployed to pursue whatever it is that they want to do? I'm not saying we have to give them all mansions and butlers, but why do we have to make up fake, worthless jobs for them to do? It seems as though overall human happiness would be better optimized by allowing them to stay home or perhaps contribute to society in other ways than clocking in for a 9-to-5. The goal shouldn't be for all of humanity to be employed, the goal should be for all of humanity to have happy lives.

bokonist15• 12 years ago

I answered that same question here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7907937 I think most people are not natural aristocrats. They are not going to be tinkering in their home laboratories, crafting programming languages or writing ebooks. I fear that most people will degenerate in every manner if not subjected to the discipline of work. They will end up drinking and playing video games all day long. Furthermore, I think most people want to work, it provides purpose and fulfillment.

That said, as long as I'm social engineering a solution to the nation's problems, why not try an A/B test? Try giving the money away with no strings attached in one city or state (far away from me please) and see what happens. I am just more pessimistic about human nature than you are, so I do not think it will end well. I think there is a lot of evidence about the problems of idleness from the history of welfare and housing projects.

A compromise would be to make one of the "make work" options be an artistic or technological fellowship. So if you went to your employment office for your make work, and said you were working on an art project or new programming language, they would pay you to do that, you would just have to show some progress along the way.

Kaizyn3• 12 years ago

As an adult-life on-boarding process, why not compulsory service? At least then, every person is guaranteed to have contributed at least something to society.

bandushrew2• 12 years ago

Money has beenb poured into education, but not spent on actually teching people.

check out the budgets for the universities, and tell me where the money has gone.

tomasien2• 12 years ago

Just a clarification: Cab drivers are protesting Uber because Uber takes away their business and there's nothing they can do about it. It's not because they feel pressured to become Uber drivers and take less money - Uber drivers make a shit ton of money. It's the cab OWNERS who are really fucked.

acdha• 12 years ago

It's not because they feel pressured to become Uber drivers and take less money - Uber drivers make a shit ton of money

What evidence do we have that this is true or, if so, will remain so past the period when they're recruiting to enter a new market? It seems a lot more likely that Uber is going to keep gradually lowering the rates paid to drivers to maintain their profit margins amidst competition.

tomasien2• 12 years ago

I've spoken to every Uber driver that I've ever had, every one in SF was on pace to make 6 figures this year and thrilled with it. Average seems to be 80-100k depending on how much you drive. Cab drivers have to work their asses off on someone else's terms to even approach that.

adventured4• 12 years ago

Cab drivers can protest their own backwards industry instead, which is exactly what they should have done a long time ago.

Then their existing industry can choose to compete in an actual market, instead of using the government to protect them from competition.

comboy2• 12 years ago

Seems that both authors don't really see strong AI as a possibility (at least within say next 50 years). I wonder what HN readers take on that is, but to me it seems quite likely. Not necessary designing one from the scratch, but "uploading" human brain (once we have good enough resolution and technology). It changes quite a bit about everything.

J_2• 12 years ago

Like you said, strong AI would change everything. The richest will be the first to utilize them. Things get scary from that point on.

Unless we massively redistribute wealth, then inequality will arrive at unimaginable levels. It's hard to think of a world where the top 1% owns many multiples of what the bottom 99% owns.

I'm guessing at some point that we'll decide as a species that strong AIs cannot be owned by individuals. I'm guessing that it won't be a smooth transition. Instead, we'll become quasi-communists and fairly evenly distribute gains made by the strong AIs.

Also by "uploading", I'm guessing you mean simulate the human brain? Actually uploading a human consciousness would come a while after the advent of strong AI.

comboy2• 12 years ago

Yes I mean simulating human brain (of course with all advantages of digital form, including increased speed and multiple copies).

I don't think that wealth would matter at all after strong AI.

itisbiz• 12 years ago

"Like you said, strong AI would change everything. The richest will be the first to utilize them. Things get scary from that point on."

Warrants repeating / highlighting.

wpietri3• 12 years ago

Strong AI has been 30 years away for 60 years. That's not to say we'll never get there. But it does mean that our intuitions that we're close aren't very reliable.

J_2• 12 years ago

Not all predictions are created equal.

Those past predictions tell us that we weren't very good at predicting the coming of strong AI in the past, but it doesn't necessarily mean that current predictions are unreliable.

nomedeplume• 12 years ago

tl;dr: Rich assholes abuse language to protect their power by rah-rahing the weak into spirituality-based causes. Business as usual.

jgalt212• 12 years ago

Finally a Marc Andreessen take down by a respected member fo the hacker community. In short, Marc and Ben just need to STFU.

guiambros• 12 years ago

Worth watching the talk by Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO, during last SXSW. The interesting part starts at 20:30s, when he talks about the impact of technology on our economy and society.

He's not against technology or robots. Quite the opposite; he's a maker, geek and technology enthusiast. But he still raises good points of what will happen with jobs and wealth distribution, due to technology growth.

We're on a one-way street, and yes, this is completely different than what what happened 50, 100 years ago. We'll have significant changes in our society as we all learn how to live in a world with less jobs, explosion of technology, increasing wealth concentration, and fast gentrification of main cities.

Kudos to Al3x for bringing light to these important topics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npYV5bzy7ug

sinwave• 12 years ago

Some points in Andreesen's post were eerily reminiscent of Keynes' musings about the fifteen hour work week. See link http://georgemaciunas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Economi...

freshhawk• 12 years ago

Apparently this is an unpopular opinion here but fucking mental standing slow clap in my head when I finished that.

That's a nice piece of cogent writing.

tempodox• 12 years ago

This post (+ the comments, of course) should be on position 1. I think there are few topics more worthy of discussion than that.

nationcrafting2• 12 years ago

<blockquote>Well, we’re three decades into an era of systemic deregulation and financialization. The result? Global recession, lingering structural unemployment, and an accumulation of capital at the top of the economic pyramid.</blockquote>

To blame systemic deregulation for the recession is to be profoundly unaware of the system in question. One cannot speak of a free market when the very thing at the core of that market - i.e. money, the one thing that everyone buys when they're selling something, and that everyone sells when they're buying something - is in the hands of a monopoly, and a politically motivated one at that: its raison d'etre is not even the quality of the product it provides.

If money were edible, you would see much more clearly just what a centrally managed, soviet style style system this really is, because there'd be queues of starving citizens just as we saw back in the era of soviet resource management.

If anything, it could be argued that without the level of free market we've enjoyed, things would be much, much worse. After all, the one sector where there's been close to zero regulation, the internet, has been the sector that's enjoyed massive growth over the last few decades. Compared to the days when telephony was state managed and nothing worked, we've been progressing in seven league boots, thanks to the free market.

PS: how does one quote on HN?

fpgeek• 12 years ago

Did I miss one of Asimov's Laws that says androids are always programmed to be more socially-minded than neoliberals?

If you missed Asimov's Zeroth Law [0], then yes, you did.

That being said, since, AFAIK, we don't know how to program robots with Asimov's Laws anyway, I'm not sure how relevant that is.

[0] "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." (with the expected modifications to the First, Second and Third Laws).

tormeh2• 12 years ago

We live in the techno-utopia today. Food and shelter are not problems anymore. If it were otherwise, we would all be farmer-lumberjacks. It used to be like this, but it's solved now. We have enough for everybody - it's just about spreading the goods a little bit more evenly.

mempko• 12 years ago

Really? Have you seen the solved problems of food and shelter in places like Detroit?

tormeh2• 12 years ago

My comment consisted of five to six sentences, depending on how you count them. It's not hard to read all of them before replying.

Dear Marc Andreessen

Related Stories