csallen

1. Vocal minority will be, by definition, the loudest. And complainers/haters tend to be more vocal. Studies have looked at which emotions lead people to share, and outrage tops the list; satisfaction barely ranks.

2. Speaking of satisfaction, there is hedonic adaption to consider. None of us walk around day to day screaming, "Oh my god, airplanes! Computers! Tropical fruit! WiFi! Indoor plumbing!" We just acclimate, and it becomes background noise.

3. I think, culturally, there is just massive distrust for corporations. Look at any Hollywood movie or popular work of fiction. If there's a corporation, it's inherently evil, and helmed by some sort of sociopath who wants to harm as many people as possible.

It just violates my expectations, and thus feels frustrating. And there's almost no benefit.

It would be like if my shoes suddenly made me take steps at perfect widths, and no matter how/where I tried to step on my own, they forcibly move my foot to the spot they think is best. Like, okay, I see the good intentions here. But I have no trouble walking on my own. I don't need help. So I'm not sure what problem this solves. And this would obviously feel jarring and awkward, and would take a lot of getting used to until it didn't.

Except at least my shoes go with me, so presumably if I had a pair of auto-stepping shoes I would get used to them over time. But this website is a one-off, I'm going to visit once and never again, so it's just going to be weird and jarring, and then I'll leave.

I think this argument is jumbled, or at least way too complex to have such strong and simple conclusions. There are at least four issues at work, all of which are complex to measure and understand: wealth concentration, the conversion of wealth into meaningful political power, the health of democracy, and there's quality of life across income brackets.

My thoughts:

1. Wealth is indeed super duper concentrated. IMO we need a more effective tax system with fewer loopholes. But there's limited specific popular support for these measures, as they typically are getting co-opted by much vaguer messaging like "eat the rich" and "there are no ethical billionaires" and things like that, which politicians can easily shrug off.

2. Wealth is indeed converted into political power in very powerful ways. To me, I think this is a bigger problem than #1. Although yes, they are related. But it's also largely a cultural problem, as half the country has been happily VOTING for this to happen for decades.

3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy. Despite the increasing political power of wealthy individuals, there are other shifts happening as well. 70, 60, 50, 40, and even 30 years ago, a very small number of wealthy and powerful gatekeepers controlled almost all public messaging. There was less chaos as a result, but also an extreme limitation in the diversity of viewpoints. Fewer independent organizations. Less investigating reporting. Worse suffrage, in general. It was harder for citizens to organize and communicate cheaply. Etc.

4. I highly disagree that the quality of life across income brackets has gotten significantly worse for people at the bottom. I think this is based on misinformation and cherry-picking data that supports that case

So let's just look at #4.

Housing, healthcare, child care, and education are indeed way too expensive, especially in certain regions. But it's also the case that real wages have risen for almost everyone, and in post-pandemic years that's even more true for lower-wage workers. Also, not everything is getting more expensive. Lots of things have gotten cheaper and more accessible: consumer electronics, communications, clothing, appliances, lots of manufactured goods. And then there's quality and variety, too: we have bigger houses than ever, safer cars, more effective medical treatments, far more affordable and varied entertainment options, better phones and computers and connectivity. Technology in general is vastly better, and it's an extremely democratizing force that tends to improve quality of life at the lower ends more intensely than at the upper ends.

So it's not super duper clear to me things are so much worse.

If you went back to the 50s and 60s, sure, rich people weren't making as much money. But were lower-income people suffering less financially? I don't think so. Based on all the data I can find, there was much more widespread deprivation. People without enough food, with inadequate housing, with no plumbing, with very low consumption, or living in abject poverty. The US is far better off today. But at the same time, yeah, there's less security around housing, healthcare, and affordable education.

So ultimately I don't subscribe to any messaging similar to "the sky is falling" and "things are worse than ever" and stuff like that. To me this is misinformation, and an extreme oversimplification of what's actually going on today.

When you actually look at the data and you look at the information and you actually compare a broad perspective of today to the past, it's not at all so clear that things are worse for the lower income brackets, and in fact I think there's a much stronger and easier to make case that things are better.

Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

This is false. "Most decline" is not true.

Yes, people move out of the middle class in both directions. But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down. The reason the middle class has shrunk is much more to do with people graduating into the upper income brackets than falling into lower income brackets.

But of course this never gets talked about. Because it contradicts the narrative that things are getting so much worse, and that narrative is Sacred and Unquestionable.

So in fact, the exact opposite gets said, "The middle class is shrinking," and then it's just left at that, in order to imply something negative. But it's just a straightforward lie, it's total misinformation. Yet it spreads, because people like to repeat things like this.

And that's kinda how I feel about this "things are getting worse." The actual facts and complexity of the situation are taking a backseat to the fact that people just like to spread this narrative.

Why do you care so much about the divide between rich and poor, as opposed to say, just the quality of life of the poor?

If rich people got 10x poorer, would that make you equally as happy as if poor people got 10x richer?

If rich people got 10x richer and poor people got 5x richer, would you be upset?

Genuine questions.

It's not that hard for AI to generate images of handwriting.

- Society needs a strong middle class and social upwards mobility. The middle class is shrinking and this is by design. If we continue to vote in Billionaire backed politicians, who rig the system so it favors them and screws the rest of us over then the middle class will continue to shrink and poverty here will increase.

The main reason the middle class is shrinking is because the upper class is growing. And we do have a strong middle class. The fact that it has been stronger at times in the past does not mean that it is weak now.

- Under this administration, the progress we've made to address our pressing problems (like global warming) is being rolled back. Are you OK with making it easier to destroy natural habitats and increase pollution, just so some Oil or mining companies can make more money? Are you OK with consumer protection rights being weakened?

- Mr Doge thought it was a good idea to plunch many more people into poverty or removing vital resources to the poorest of the poor and causing their death, e.g. cutting USAID because he thought it was woke. You good with that?

No, I'm not okay with it. But again, I keep asking you this, and you keep not really explaining: what is your point of bringing up arbitrary things that are bad? I've already acknowledged that there are bad things in the world and that there will continue to be bad things in the world. In a world with a thousand axes by which to assess progress, there will always be some axes that are in the process of backsliding.

Progress is not a monotonically increasing thing.

What do you think is being proposed, exactly? Some sort of alternative sun that's going to shine on the entire earth, that we'll all be forced to look at?

Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.

The majority of people in Western countries are not in the lower income brackets, but in the middle and upper brackets. Plus extreme poverty has been in decline all across the world. In other words, things are working well on MANY people's machines, not just mine. And they're beginning to work better on many more.

what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)

And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back

Yes, there are new+continuing problems in the world. Duh. And not everything is getting better all the time. Duh.

These things will always be true.

What's your point? Why do you and other people like you feel compelled to bring up obvious statements like this anytime anyone tries to say that things are generally getting better? You act as if when people say things are getting better they are saying things are perfect. Nobody thinks things are perfect. But you react as if it's some sort of crime against humanity to list ways in which life is genuinely getting better for many hundreds of millions, if not billions of people over the decades.

What is this allergy that you have toward acknowledging progress when there is progress? Why do you think that somehow warrants some totally unnecessary lecture about how there are still obviously problems in the world?

it's not a guarantee it will continue like that

Again, has anyone ever said or even implied that progress is guaranteed to continue happening automatically?

Solar panels aren't nature. Shining lights on solar panels is not going to be an environmental disaster.

You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're [basing] that of.

Almost every major measure of human progress and prosperity over time?

What are you basing your doom and gloom beliefs on?

I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective

I would wager my perspective is much broader than yours. Being so anxious and pessimistic that you only focus on the negative, to such a degree where when people point out real positive progress you feel COMPELLED to say something negative, doesn't mean you have a broad perspective. It just means you're miserable.

Life is better for the poorest in society than it's ever been, thanks in large part to the nonstop proliferation and cheapening of technology in the past 200 years, esp. the past 100. I can't for the life of me understand why you people are so focused on trying to drag down the top when you could be focused on further bringing up the bottom. It's just such a miserable negative perspective on life, like crabs in a bucket.

But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?

Uh, yeah. My TV's much better, my video games are better, programming is easier and more fun with these new AI options added on top of better frameworks than we had in the past, there are way more restaurants serving better food, way more great shows and movies, there's mainstream awareness of the ills of social media, I can take driverless taxis around my city, I can tap to pay pretty much everywhere, wayyyyyy more of my friends work remotely. I'm 40 now, and myself + most of my friends + family are making more money now than we were at 30.

Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?

You sound like you've been reading a bunch of gloom and doom scenarios. Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights. Stop reading so much negative news that's telling you the sky is falling and that everything is going to shit.

Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.

What's your point? Progress is not perfection. There will always be human suffering. Acknowledging that there's progress is not the same thing as ignoring the fact that there's suffering. I don't know what sort of cult mindset got everybody to believe that those are the same thing, but it's horrible and delusional and incredibly illogical.

Uhhh, I don't know what you're reading, but the comment I was replied to was complaining about the "subscription economy" and not having enough time to watch movies as evidence why life is getting worse.

A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.

The vast majority of humanity has benefited from progress, compared to most decades and certainly centuries in the past. So I don't really know what your point is here?

A gigantic source of light in the sky that lights up a part of the Earth and is too bright to look at is... the sun. I think we're all used to the sun.

*spoiler alert*

It seems clear to me that the Tallyman itself is the AI in this allegory, a man-awoken sentience that's mechanical and mathematical in its behavior.

It's also bound by rules it can't violate. It won't say more than it needs, it can't collect without squaring the account first, etc.

But I agree with you about the moral message, I can't find it. In the story, the rules it abides by seem to be its own, and there's nothing saying those rules should not exist.

You're on Hacker News. This is a site full of developers who are convinced that "proper software engineering" is 100% of what makes a business successful, and everything and everyone else is useless. You can't just waltz in here and point out that code in business is a means to an end and expect not to get downvoted.

… ephemeral stimulation you can't even remember 30 seconds after seeing it. I know 50 year old adults who can spend entire hours just in this mesmerized state of flicking through these random feeds, seeing but not seeing, like some kind of drug induced hypnosis

To be fair, most people who engage in "healthy" habits like reading, creating, meditating, socializing, or just sitting and staring at nature, could also said to be in a mesmerized almost-hypnotized state, and rarely remember much of what they're experiencing.

We have a world built for humans, designed for humans to walk around and get things done. How, exactly, would it not be useful to have a robot that looks, walks, runs, jumps, lifts, carriers, pushes, pulls, twists, bends, steers, and labors like a human? It would obviously be incredibly useful.

There's no risk because, like you said, "I could have easily gone and gotten a job at Google and made a lot more money very easily." You can always go back to selling your labor on the market.

The risk is the opportunity cost. Going and getting a job at Google pays a lot of money. Repeatedly starting and failing at startups, or getting rejected by YC, doesn't pay you anything. I was a student and then a recent grad with lots of debt, so I had all the normal risk of a college student living on ramen and giving up nights and weekends.

I think that startup founders are in weird sandwich between being exploited by VCs

What makes an agreement between two parties exploitation, exactly?

the star quarterbacks leave as billionaires.

I think it sucks that the NFL destroys people's brains and bodies. But why is it so bad that the star quarterbacks command such high pay?

I'm intentionally off the startup grid, for now at least. Happy travels, though. Seems really fun! I did the same after leaving SF

What's your definition of exploiting someone?

What's your definition of "through their own work/talent"?

What's your evidence that somehow up-coding medical charges was some crucial part of what led to Epic's initial success?

I didn't say that AOC said that things were better 70 years ago. I said she makes it sound like people have decreasing power due to income inequality, so I'm comparing to times where income was vastly more equal, and I simply don't think her claims hold up. Your-income-relative-the-richest-people's-income is, imo, a very small factor of how much overall power you have in society as an individual, compared to the other factors I listed. Yet it is repeatedly harped on as if it's the only factor that matters.

I don't believe I said that AOC thinks government spending should go unchecked. But the vast majority of comments I've read from AOC seem to blame the plight of the poor on the success of the rich.

I feel like you should read about systems thinking. You're ignoring so many potential side effects, so much history, so many statistics, incentives, human psychology. The idea of capping wealth in order to try to prevent certain power imbalances like sex trafficking, is similar to firebombing your house to fix a leaky pipe. Not only would it mess up a ton of stuff, but it wouldn't even fix the problem.

I think she's wrong in almost every way. AOC is a demagogue who focuses on getting her constituents to dislike people with money, and in order to do so, she massively oversimplifies things.

First of all, the average person has more power today than at almost any point in the past. If you're obsessively focused on making people hate others with money, then, of course, you're going to spread the message that money is the only thing that contributes to power, but that's far from the case. Any scholar of personal power would tell you that that's incredibly oversimplified to the point of being almost laughable.

Compared to, say, 70 years ago, the average person has a greatly increased ability to: publish and distribute ideas, organize large amounts of people quickly, start a business, influence culture without being gate-kept by institutions, gain and maintain attention without being gate-kept by institutions, etc. Education is better and more broadly available, capital is more accessible, legal and bureaucratic tools are easier to use, geographic constraints matter much less, more paths to elite influence exist. And of course, far more people are included in what "the average person" is, more can vote, more can be part of society. And this is over the exact same time period that income inequality has increasing. Income equality is only part of the picture when it comes to personal power, not everything, as AOC would have you believe. Also, there are more people in the upper and middle classes today than there ever have been in the United States!

Also, she's hugely oversimplifying the economic landscape. There aren't just two parties, rich and poor. There's a huge third party known as the government. And that party's express mandate is to take care of the people. And the people pay into that party's coffers in order to help it do so. And they pay at progressively higher rates based on how rich they are. The top 1% alone pay about 40% of federal income taxes.

So yeah, if you just completely oversimplify things and pretend that this entity doesn't exist, and you came into a situation where the rich had all they money and power, you might propose a system exactly like this. And I would agree. We should tax people, and that tax should be progressive, and that tax should go to a central government, and that central government should have stewards who we elect to help redistribute the money. And that's what we do.

But these stewards are also so busy telling everyone to hate each other -- hate the trans, hate the atheists, hate the rich, hate the men, hate the conservatives, hate the business owners, hate the elites, hate the immigrants, hate the blacks, etc. The average person is extremely susceptible to demagoguery. It's much easier to hate and blame your neighbor than it is to actually look into government budgetary figures.

And it's much nicer as a steward of the government budget to get everybody hating their neighbors than to have everybody scrutinizing what you're doing with their money.

I do remember! I'm always happy to come across you and other IHers on HN occasionally. I left SF long ago, though

Significantly so.

Can you not join an intentional woodland community? What about moving to another country and living in the woods? If almost everybody you know would rather do this, it sounds like you've got quite the group. Why not pull together and make it happen?

Every time my mom comes to visit me, she insists on going to the store to buy things just like she always did. There are plenty of stores. In most cases, these brick-and-mortar stores have significantly fewer options than online stores, for obvious reasons -- because they're physical and have limited space. The online stores are often competitively priced, often cheaper, even with shipping, because they have the benefit of scale. I can get an incredible amount of high-quality goods off Amazon at blazing speeds, often the same day, without having to leave my desk, drive my car, burn any fuel, or clog any roads. It provides tons of value.

Not only that, but I have an incredible amount of competition. Thousands of alternative products, listings, websites, etc. I went to buy a standing desk last week, and there were literally thousands of choices all over the internet: solid wood standing desks, aluminum standing desks, tall ones, short ones, mid-century modern ones, futuristic ones, etc.

I have no idea what planet y'all are living on to say that people now have no leverage, few alternatives, no stores, slow delivery, and get no value.

So you're evil if you make a tool that "can enable" other people to do evil stuff. I guess most software developers are evil. Anyone who makes silverware is evil. Etc.

As I already pointed out above, your bar is going to be incredibly unrealistically low for what counts as evil, and I was right.

You're also just ignoring most of the people on my list anyway, picking on one person (quite poorly), and then trying to generalize that to all billionaires.