I like seeing people offering solutions against mass surveillance.
What I want to suggest is that you drop the requests you send to 3rd party services like Google. If somebody makes money off of collecting as much data about us as they can, it's Google, Facebook, etc. So, letting them track your users is a contradiction.
What I want to suggest is that you drop the requests you send to 3rd party services like Google. If somebody makes money off of collecting as much data about us as they can, it's Google, Facebook, etc. So, letting them track your users is a contradiction.
What are you referring to? There's no Google tracking code on the site. The only analytics is Mint (which is local to the server).
The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else.
Inequality (wealth-based) means nothing else than domination. If you are richer, then you dominate the poorer people. And richer countries dominate poorer countries.
This is the most basic and fundamental injustice [0] we seem to accept in our Western culture. Because we are those who dominate.
[0] If you remember that we keep telling ourselves the nice little story how every life has the exact same value.
Is the standard of living really growing for everyone? Or are there more people now (%wise) in poverty ?
This is an honest question as several people have mentioned the standard of living argument before on HN. I've read however that the rich-poor divide is growing and thus am just wondering about this..
Not only have both absolute and percentage numbers of people living in poverty dropped in the last two decades[0], but global inequality (unlike some intra-country inequality) is falling as well[1].
Both can be true at once. The richest are farther ahead than the richest were, in monetary terms, but the poor have made huge strides in absolute wealth as well: it's possible to live a 1950s upper middle class lifestyle on almost the same dollar amount in 2013. Our idea of what a middle-class lifestyle entails, though, is now far above that.
Well, there are also intangibles that nobody cares to measure, that matter a lot.
A 2013 "middle class lifestyle" might be far ahead a 1950 "middle class lifestyle" in pocessions, access to products, etc, but there are important differences too.
For example, in all likely the 1950 "middle class" family could get all they needed by only one person working. And that person work an 8 hour day, with benefits and security. He was also quite sure that'd he keep his job if he was half decent at it permanently. He rarely was in debt.
Today's middle class starts of with a large debt (college loans), both in the couple have to work their asses of, and are not very far from falling off middle class, should anything bad happen (from a market crash to a medical emergency).
As for the increased luxuries and such (compared to 1950), those don't mean nothing to them, as they are the assumed zero-level for all middle class in their time.
I believe your assertions about the 1950s need substantiation. I'd like to see some empirical data about things like poverty levels, life expectancy, job security, bankruptcy, and so on.
Keep in mind that this is only a couple of decades (at most) from the Great Depression. Even if the 1950s were clearly better, it's a rather cherry-picked data point considering how much worse the 1930s clearly were.
That being said, I'm not too excited about the intangibles of the 1950s. The Korean War was in the 1950s and Jim Crow was in full swing. Life expectancy was much lower. Just about any consumer good from today is clearly superior to the 1950s equivalent.
Just for starters, he is almost certainly warping his perception of the 1950s by only considering what movies and television showed the 1950s being like for white men in suburbia America.
Which doesn't matter much, because I can also do the exact same comparison to the same group in today's suburbia America.
And no, it's not "movies and television". There are numerous books studying the decline of the middle class since the seventies.
Heck, there's even an accepted term "Great Prosperity" (as opposed to the "Great Depression" that describes the era after World War II for the USA and the West in general.
Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
Back in the year 2000, more than 64 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of all working age Americans have a job.
The home ownership rate in the United States is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.
In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent.
Consumer debt in the United States has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971, and 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.
Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
> Which doesn't matter much, because I can also do the exact same comparison to the same group in today's suburbia America.
Compare the lives of minorities and women in America 60 years ago to their lives now. Quality of life for the majority of Americans has undeniably improved. You have massive tunnel vision if you cannot recognize this.
Remember that white American men are a plurality, not a majority.
I'm not too excited about the intangibles of the 1950s.
It actually was a pretty good time, if you were American and white. The post-war boom was in full swing, American economic growth was at its highest in the 20th century (stats for earlier periods are harder to estimate, though long-term data series such as those collected by Angus Maddison might show this -- and the railroad and industrialization booms of the 1840s and 1880s were likely close). The US was the world's largest producer of oil (though it had just begun importing from Saudi Arabia), and it had essentially no rivals for industrial production (Europe and Japan had been seriously damaged by the war and were rebuilding, Korea and China wouldn't emerge for decades).
The Korean War was in the 1950s
For three years, 1950-1953. The US's troop commitment was 300,000. That compares with 16 million US troops in WWII. Fatalities alone were nearly as much as the Korean War deployment at 292,000. Korea was significant, but much less significant.
and Jim Crow was in full swing.
And starting to crack. Though it peaked in the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement had its roots in the 1950s, particularly the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. No, it wasn't great, and there's still a huge amount of inequity, but things were finally starting to change.
Not all that much especially when compared with improvements over the prior 50-100 years. Life expectancy at birth was about 66 years in 1951 for white males, 72 for women, vs. 75 and 80 years in 2004. That compares with 38 and 40 in 1850. The biggest single-decade jump for men was between 1911 and 1919 (six years), about the same for women. Much of that came from improved safety (particularly industrial conditions and automobiles), some in behavior and environment (decreased smoking, drinking, and air pollution). It was earlier advances in antiseptics, anesthesia, sanitation, waste disposal, food preservation, nutrition, and pharmaceuticals which accounted for the big jumps. For men, 1900 - 1950 saw an 18.08 year increase, 1950 - 2000 an 8.49 year increase.
Just about any consumer good from today is clearly superior to the 1950s equivalent.
I'll grant increased capabilities, complexity, and decreased costs, though overengineering (or lack of corner-cutting) meant that many electrical and mechanical products were more durable then. There's also the question of just how much such advances impact on quality of life.
Well, definitions have changed, completely. The average home size in 1950 was ~1000 square feet, while the average home size in 2004 is ~2400 square feet.
Similarly, the 'sane working hours' you mention, generally speaking, were 48 hours a week or more. In the 'upper' middle class, more hours were spent at the office as well. Today, the average worker works ~37 hours.
Assuming job accessibility (which I have no idea if there's a guarantee of or not), and more reasonable home purchasing, I think it's not "simply false" that one can live the same way as they did in the 50s on the equivalent working wage, one simply has to make more apt comparisons to see that the goal posts have shifted.
The average 1950s family only owned one car, while the average family of today owns more than one (likely, to support the second job). If each of us bought houses half the size of what we're currently buying, and half the cars, we'd likely be in greater parity with our 1950s brethren. Also, they had to pay less than half of what we did for college, and they also likely didn't borrow in order to afford it, which factors in even further in measuring debt load.
Anyway, I think your comparison is somewhat rose-colored.
> The average 1950s family only owned one car, while the average family of today owns more than one (likely, to support the second job)
Actually, it's an even greater difference than that. The median household income in 1955 was about $4k, while today it's about $50k. In 1955 the cheapest Ford cost about $2k, or half the median household income, whereas today the cheapest Honda costs about $16k, or a little less than a third of median household income.
If we just leave it at that, it sounds like things are about the same. However, the cheapest Honda today comes with airbags, air conditioning, power windows and locks, an FM radio, and a whole host of other features that were luxuries reserved for the most expensive cars (if they were even available at all). On top of that, my (and others') experience with modern Hondas is that they can easily go for 200k miles without major repairs or tune-ups, whereas 100k miles was considered a major achievement for a Ford of that era. Realistically, this difference in longevity alone means that a car from the 1950's cost about three times as many working hours as a car of today.
The average worker works 37 hours these days, because of a big shift to part-time no-benefits jobs. So, you've got people working 30 hours to make ends meet, and you've got people working 50 because 'that's what's expected if you want to go anywhere.'
To be fair, I probably misstated. The average of working hours is ~37, which doesn't necessarily mean that the average worker works that at all. It could be the averages are between 40 hour weeks and 20 hour weeks, and that's where it falls. Honestly, I don't know, nor was I attempting to ascribe motivation to the numbers, except to point out that stated premise was factually incorrect -- workers in the 50s did not work fewer hours, nor did they have larger houses.
I think you're actually proving my point - a second car isn't an indicator of marvelous bounty. It's a liability required to support a necessary second job and higher debt load.
It probably says more about the courting culture and independence in America than anything else. I suspect (but have zero proof or support for) that fewer marriages are formed from high school sweethearts than was the case in the 50s, which means that many relationships start with 2 cars vs 1.
Beyond that, cars were still a relative novelty in the 50s, and ownership was more sparse. I'd have to research to see, percentage-wise, what the cost equated to. It's possible that their rarity meant that purchasing one car was equivalent to purchasing two, in today's age, but again, I don't have figures on that.
And, of course, I think you're dramatically underestimating the role of gender equality on the work force. Women work, many times because they choose to, not necessarily because they have to.
Regardless, the point you made simply isn't supportable by the raw facts that you presented, nor were necessarily the facts that you presented even factual. I don't disagree necessarily that the upper middle class of today is disadvantaged relative to the upper middle class of the 50s, but if that's the case, it's not because they worked less hours or owned larger homes.
That may be true. I think the more general point (which you seem to agree with) is that touting simplistic indicators and claiming that people are better off today, is inconclusive and by no means the 'given truth' that many here assert.
Yeah, I really don't know, to be honest. It depends, I'm sure, on which indicators one measures against.
I think in some ways, even the poor are better off. In some ways, even the wealthy are probably worse off. I agree that any notion of "We're all {better|worse} off than 1950" is naive without a greater degree of specificity. It's equivalent to saying that football was "better" in the 50s. How? Certainly not in player safety. Certainly not economically. In pure terms of game play, what metrics? Certainly not in passing. Etc.
Even in among the lower middle class lifestyles, you'd have exactly the same minus the "relatively large house".
However, if you go back 50 years earlier, the lower class lifestyle was not that different from the favella living in slums around the world, where entire families lived in one or two rooms and everyone in the family who was able was responsible for contributing to making ends meet.
The lower middle classes can't afford a house/apartment in places with laws that make it difficult to build new houses or apartments, including many places with lots of tech jobs. But in rural areas, or many Midwestern cities, or much of the Sunbelt, a house is still very much within reach. But many of the most productive regions of the country are zoned such that very little new housing is built, and rising incomes for some just mean more competition for existing housing.
> The lower middle classes can't own any house at all with just one wage earner.
The lower bound on lower middle class is, according to Wikipedia, $32,500. There are plenty of houses available for purchase in the $60,000 range, which is well inside of affordability ranges.
There are a plethora of rural homes available within those ranges, but that level of income isn't necessarily exclusionary to city dwelling either. Dallas, San Antonio, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Tampa, etc., are all very affordable, and at least according to MSN[1], has homes available for less than the lower bound on lower middle class.
In Cincinnati, Tampa, etc., one would have to assume so. Regardless, that wasn't the point -- the point was that
> The lower middle classes can't own any house at all with just one wage earner
is not a true statement. If you'd like to qualify it further, feel free. I suspect I'd have to research more to answer, and I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment you're suggesting, but presenting falsities as facts doesn't do any argument any particular good.
Depression is also rising to epidemic proportions, suggesting that improving economic indicators may simply not have anything to do with quality of life.
I would probably be inclined to agree with that. From a report I read recently (which I can't find again, sorry) pertaining to my home town of Memphis, TN, apparently the general conclusion was that Memphians were happier than Nashvillians, despite the latter having better access to health care, better access to higher paying jobs, better community features (arts, entertainment, etc.)
The report didn't postulate on what the actual cause might have been, or how happiness was measured (or, if it was, I've forgotten), but I found it interesting, and it does support your point here. It seems that, at least since I've been paying attention, America has been trying to optimize for wealth or income, though statistically, it seems that there is validity to the notion that money doesn't buy happiness. If we could better isolate the causes of happiness, we could start optimizing for those factors instead.
Eh. That argument cuts both ways. Memphis blues aren't quite as big a deal as Nashville country, but it exists, and, on paper at least, should make musicians wont to sadness.
More like, mental health is not directly correlated with quality of life. Freed from the preoccupation of having to fight or work hard for basic needs, many people fail to find meaning in their life.
>This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created.
And it very much is.
>It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide, for the two centuries.
Those are not personal wealth.
Increased standards of living are a kind of background element, as they are more or less shared by the population. Statistically they even out, and only differences from them matter.
A guy living in a trailer park today, with a tv, microwave, electricity, some medical access etc, would be considered living like a king, compared to a 1600's peasant working in some feudal farm. That doesn't mean he feels (or is viewed) as such in our society.
Increased standards of living are a kind of background element, as they are more or less shared by the population.
You seem to have gone backwards, and defined wealth as "only the things other people don't have", in which case of course it becomes a zero-sum. But that isn't what wealth is.
The modern understanding of Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. [...] In this larger understanding of wealth, an individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources to the benefit of the common good is known as wealthy. -- Wikipedia
>This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created.
>And it very much is.
You may be confusing wealth with money, which is in fact a zero-sum game. Wealth, on the other hand, can be created and it's been constantly created all the time throughout history. The section on the Pie Fallacy in this article may help clarify it: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
Unfortunately money can be created for some by restricting access to wealth.
Restrictions on housebuilding is a perfect example in the UK with its dysfunctional housing market. The older generations are happy to have their house prices artificially inflated by not allowing enough homes to be built for the younger generations and immigrants. Keeps rents and prices high while not creating any wealth.
Money as a form of credit is zero sum. For example on the other side of every US dollar is debt security (government or mortgage) that the Fed has bought. Money only has meaning if someone (maybe indirectly) owes you that money.
But it is correct that absolute wealth (or what economists call utility) is not zero sum. To focus on relative wealth is to invite unhappiness that no one or system can help. We don't live in Lake Woebegone.
This trope is so tired. Yes, I live better than a medieval peasant, and I have access to more computing power than ever. Yet, the standard of living across my entire family and most people I know is blatantly lower, in terms of human basics like housing and togetherness, than in my grandparents time, despite the fact that my grandparents were factory workers without even high school educations, and I am an experienced software engineer.
I think you have a rose-tinted view of the past. To take one example: I have much more togetherness with people in my family who would not be currently alive had they died of diseases with dramatically higher mortality rates 40 years ago.
Can we ask where you live? I wonder how local real-estate prices effect things. For example, I live in fly-over county in a $115,000, 1400 sq. ft. house on a large lot, while my brother-in-law lives in an 800 sq, ft. house on a tiny lot in Seattle that is apparently worth more than $400,000. I support my wife and 4 kids on one income, while he and his wife both work to support their two kids. So even though I make considerably less money, we have a lifestyle that is on par with the 1950's ideal.
Are you seriously attempting to make the case that automobile accidents and overabundance of food have made all of our other advancements a complete wash? That is delusional.
I only gave the example to say that what's basic is relative (compared to current standards), so saying that a trailer-park person has more access to more things than a peasant doesn't mean anything.
For one, because most people can not even point Canada on the map, much less know anything about the living conditions in the medieval age.
In fact, most things people associate with the middle ages are either BS or happened at other times. Witch-huns and the Inquisition for example, are phenomena of the Renaissance, not of the middle ages. Even the Plague happened on the tail end of the middle ages entering into the Renaissance.
Heck, even fewer know that the ratio of holidays (what we'd call bank holidays today) to work was extremely higher in the middle ages compared to today.
Most homeless/coupon-living/trailer individuals would be much better off in the middle ages compared to today.
True, but you can do so without fallacious reasoning that make you both wrong. Wealth is sometimes a zero-sum game and sometimes not a zero-sum game; not everyone who makes money is creating value for the world, but they usually are.
> Your view is hampered by your ignorance of the definition of the word value.
Given your reply, I'd say it's your ignorance on display here.
> If people are making money (i.e. selling a product or service for a profit) they are by definition creating value by default.
False. This naive notion assumes everyone is honest and consumers are informed, both of which aren't true. Plenty of people make money by duping customers into thinking they're providing value when they aren't and relying on customers laziness to take the loss when they figure out it was a scam.
That someone voluntarily gave you money does not mean you provided them value. There is no value in Homeopathy, there is no value in fake magic aura balancing bracelets; these are simply people scamming stupid people for money by pretending to add value.
When I am healthy, or plant a fruit tree (on previously unused land), or come up with a better or healthier way of doing something, nobody else looses anything. (That has been going on since the dawn of time if you will, and certainly not just since the last 200 years.)
But on the other hand, a million dollars is in no small part worth a lot because most people don't have it; if everybody did, that wouldn't make everybody rich, it would just mean a loaf of bread now costs a million dollars. You can't just ignore that "because rising standards of living". Wealth is first and foremost a word, not an actual thing, and the associated concepts can be complex... but wealth purely in the sense of market shares, of bank accounts, even of being an expert in comparison to non-experts.. there is so much of what we tend to consider as wealth that is obviously a zero-sum game.
Wealth is not zero-sum nor need it be, the only thing required for wealth inequality is that the current pool of wealth be heavily consumed and dominated by a small segment of people, leaving very little of the remaining pool for others.
This small segment of people actually created this wealth. Why shouldn't they be the one consuming it? And you cannot call the sum of all wealth owned by people "a pool" because it is not concentrated in one place nor should be.
I think that's a simplistic view. Most rich people became rich because they provided a particular value to society. This value is exchanged for money, which allows the rich to draw back this value as they see fit.
Lets imagine that Steve Jobs, instead of getting paid for his iPhones, sold them in exchange for a person's time. The average hourly wage in USA is approximately $24, meaning an iPhone would retail for about 25 hours. You can choose not to buy an iPhone, in which case you are free, or you choose to draw this value offered by Steve Jobs, but then you'd owe him 25 hours of work. The exchange is still completely voluntary, and therefore can't constitute domination.
And those involved in creating the iPhone (in countries with strong property laws) all entered into a trade agreement where they provided their time or skills in exchange for a certain amount of money.
Bill Gates had to give 30 cents of every dollar he earned to the US government to avoid going to prison. That's domination - the threat of force if penance is not paid. Wal-mart never made anyone work for them. They simply have said we will pay $7.25 for someone's time with basic skills - if no one was willing to work at that wage they would up it. The value of unskilled labor is low.
If the free market ensured that all people were given a wage that adequately reflected their value, the bottom 40% of earners would be getting more than 10% of the income.
Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system. Microsoft then abused its wealth to "embrace, extend, extinguish;" which is sort of a perfect illustration of how consolidating lots of money gives totally unbalanced market advantages to a few entities.
> Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system.
You make it sound as though it's a willful transaction between two parties. Yes, taxes go to those things, but it's compulsory. If I don't like Microsoft I can choose not to buy their products. If I don't like the NSA or CIA torture tactics, I can't opt out of their services. BIG difference.
Right? But the GP was asserting minimum wage is a willful transaction also. Actually if the laborers don't like their minimum wage, they cannot opt out of it either, they need to eat, pay for housing, and get medical insurance from somewhere.
It's absurd to me that someone would assert that Bill Gates is being dominated by paying taxes whereas these other people are somehow not being dominated by accepting a low wage in the same system.
Also Bill Gates has the resources to change citizenship if he thinks there's a better deal elsewhere. Many of these other people would not be financially able to move to another country and work there legally. So it's definitely more willful for him than for the minimum wage workforce.
They can't opt out of minimum wage because there are laws, not because it's otherwise coerced.
There are compelling arguments in favor of abolishing the minimum wage, just as there are compelling arguments in favor of increasing it. Neither position is necessarily wrong, and each requires making trade-offs for the other, but either way, the imposition of a minimum wage is not voluntary to those upon which it is imposed.
> They can't opt out of minimum wage because there are laws, not because it's otherwise coerced.
You missed the point. Let's get rid of the minimum wage. Suppose Alex is looking for a job, but all the jobs they can find that will hire them pay less than what they think is fair. Does Alex have a choice? No; if they doesn't get a job they will starve and die.
The point I made was that workers can't opt out of it because that would be illegal. There are, I'm certainly, many who are starving that would otherwise be thrilled to earn $4 an hour, but they can't. There are also a myriad of scenarios wherein paying someone less than the minimum wage doesn't mean that they starve and die. The minimum wage prevents those earners from finding a place in the market. Even further, there are a myriad of people who are thriving while currently sell their work for less than minimum wage, but they simply disguise the tasks as 'firm fixed bids' or 'flat rate bids' against a projected contract.
I acknowledge that there are bad actors in the system, namely Wal-Mart, who I'm guessing would be happy to pay workers as little as they possibly could, regardless of the burdens it imposed on them (I say because I believe their union-busting activities were unethical, not because I in any way despise their pay practices as they currently exist), but for the most part, a free exchange helps small business compete against bigger business.
In summation, hamstringing employers and employees is unnecessary. It's a shame, because in the tech community, we've already seen the value of a less-regulated workforce with things like oDesk and such. Companies who just need a Wordpress site are free to hire from oDesk, and will likely receive bids in the sub-$50 range which, in a more traditional arrangement, would violate labor laws. Similarly, we've seen it illustrated that those bottom-end producers aren't necessarily cannibalizing sales from up-market producers, as they're able to better distinguish themselves through marketability, experience and references. The artificial pay barrier we've imposed prevents many of the existing low-skill earners from getting experience and/or transitioning into higher-skill earners.
I think you and the GP (or whatever) are talking past each other. Their original point was that it's essentially impossible for a person to opt out of the labor market, because without money they can't buy food and will starve to death. This is true regardless of any kind of minimum wage laws.
Holy cow. With that mentioned, my re-reading of the GP and your prior comments make me wonder how I missed it at all. I remember replying to you before, then editing my reply after realizing that we seemed to be in disagreement, while my original apply had assumed agreement, then editing again to just reiterate my point, with no idea whether we agreed or disagreed.
That clears things up completely. Thank you for the clarification, and apologies for the confusion.
Completely agree. To be fair, every government of major superpower also pursues the same policies of "embrace, extend, extinguish;", including ours, the US Government.
Unions have another take on that subject. Wage slavery is a real thing. Its only 'free will' if there's another option available. In many early WalMart locations they placed the store optimally to starve out local small-town businesses. After a year or two they were literally the only game in town.
And everybody that wanted to distribute copies of Windows in the United States was forced to pay for a licence to avoid going to prison, by that same government that collected 30 cents of every dollar Bill Gates earned. Let's not pretend that private property isn't backed by force - necessary or otherwise - here. The average person has a lot less choice over whether to work for a living than Bill Gates has over whether to do business in the United States on its terms or not.
Not true; there's a reason why we have police, military and (in the US) the world's biggest imprisonment rate.
Let's reframe. Our economic system is capitalism. That means I can exclusively control (via state force) a region's natural resources (a "property" relation between me and everyone else in the universe). It also means that most people try to rent themselves out, giving themselves up to someone's command for half their waking lives, in what is called wage slavery.
The more bargaining power the wealthy elites have, the less they have to pay their subordinates, and can impose worse working conditions. Another phenomenon is you can have a city with as many empty houses as homeless people... when property relations are extended to the virtual, unauthorized sharing/using ideas and computer bits are criminalized.
Among Forbes top 20 billionaires, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's made his fortune from natural resources.
A person who seeks value from society - value originating at the work of others - has to provide such value back. If all you can do is simple manual labor, you will need to provide quite a lot of it to purchase scarce items that have a high degree of inherent value (such as an iPhone).
> Most rich people became rich because they provided a particular value to society.
Evidence? I think quite a lot of rich people are rich not because of an ability to create value, but an ability to extract cash. E.g., 95% of Wall Street's activity. And even those in the value-creating category often attribute much of their wealth to right-place, right-time luck rather than an unusually high ability to create value.
I think most people consider growth of their investments and savings "valuable".
>And even those in the value-creating category often attribute much of their wealth to right-place, right-time luck rather than an unusually high ability to create value
Irrelevant. Point is that the value has been created and thus so has their wealth.
> I think most people consider growth of their investments and savings "valuable".
The growth of investments mainly comes through the work of the people at the company invested in. There is little evidence that the people managing retail investments do more than add overhead. And managing retail investment is a pretty small part of what Wall Street does.
> Irrelevant. Point is that the value has been created and thus so has their wealth.
Entirely relevant. Those people didn't become rich because of their ability alone; it was ability plus luck. That means using wealth alone to imply virtue isn't very persuasive.
The same logic applies to each of them. It is assumed they chose to work for Apple, and that their salary reflects whatever value they bring the company.
That assumption is an oversimplification, concealing myriad dependencies, power/negotiating imbalances, information asymmetry, imperfect markets, lack of choice, restricted individual freedom, etc.
In free exchange (me trading with my boss or with Google or with a grocery store) I will never enter into a trade that has a lower expected value than the dollar value I'm giving up. In other words in every exchange I will either gain value or match value.
On the second side of the spectrum I (me with the government, me with a slaver) will enter into a trade regardless of its outcome - meaning that I could lose value on any trade (for instance by paying into a poorly run social program, supporting a war that I disagree with or paying to be spied on). Also closer to the second range there becomes a coercive aspect where I am forced into something at the threat of violence (pay taxes or go to prison).
Evidence shows the more freely exchanged goods and services there are (with some exceptions) the more productive the country. See: http://www.freetheworld.com/release.html
If strong property laws are in place alongside an impartial justice system and limited government (one not influenced by wealth) human choice, good or bad, is respected and freedom reigns. When government is large and powerful or the justice system doesn't function properly (can be bought) coercion reigns.
Those who would rather not provide value (or believe that their value is worth more than others will give them for it) may prefer the coercive side.
The Capitalist order was created with the closure of the commons, creating large masses of people with nothing to sell but their labor. The resulting 'Enclosure Riots' where put down with great force.
As a consequence, 'Free exchange' then consists of people with massively unequal bargaining powers coming to an agreement. To see this arrangement as fair, one has to twist their sight up quite a bit.
A defense of the free market without redistribution to counter the effects of this and other historical crimes is a defense of oligarchical privilege.
My argument is practicality as well as theory. First - who had "the commons" before it was closed? From what I understand there has always been someone who had more control over property than another.
Who will redistribute in a practical way? Who watches that person to make sure they are both efficient and fair?
Also - look at a list of the richest people in America. You'll notice that most came from middle or low class backgrounds. It seems like redistribution occurs fairly rapidly (within one or two generations) compared with other times.
Also - please explain who in America has massively unequal bargaining powers?
In another comment you said you needed to use "counter propoganda". The internet and forums are largely dominated by your way of thinking. Maybe it's because people who hold your view would rather type about issues than do solid work.
And I've also been thinking about this practically. It is right that claims on property, the foundation of many forms of capitalist forms of economies, are not inherent. However couldn't powerful property taxes be useful as this? If we defined property well and taxed ownership then redistribution would be built in and taxes would fall on the richest (those who use the most resources)? I'm just playing with that idea.
Also - there is one prominent example of someone living on $7,000 a year comfortably (early retirement extreme) which is far below the minimum wage. This person lives a lifestyle far better than almost anyone two generations ago and most a generation ago.
I'm pretty sure that if the commons had been divided up equally among the people who previously had the right to use them, we would be exactly where we are now.
Capitalism results in inequality regardless of initial conditions, because people differ in their abilities, and in their luck.
A much more powerful argument for redistribution than capitalism original sin, is that (1) we all live in a society, where we rely on the state to provide the security and infrastructure in which the free market is even possible, and (2) redistribution is the least intrusive, least restrictive method of improving societal wellbeing. It is (potentially) completely indifferent and blind to everything a person is and does, except for their total income.
I know this argument seems weaker because it involves utilitarian aspects, but it is really a more powerful argument because it doesn't rely on an accident of history.
I agree with you (excepting that the violence evidenced in primitive capital accumulation is a historical accident), but the thrust of my argument was to demonstrate that Libertarian philosophy is wrong on it's own terms.
There are a variety of other arguments you could advance against it - for example that the self is social fiction with no scientific basis, the increasing communality of all labor, the inherent instability of Capitalism evidenced by the Long Wave cycle, the sociological fact that people's consciousness is shaped by their relationship to the means of production (evidenced, on their part, by their almost uniformly advantaged upbringings)...
Speaking for myself, I have lost my taste for extended intellectual debate on the internet, and all of these vectors of criticism would (if I were being intellectually honest) lead to extended debate. It may not be fair of me, but as a Marxist I do believe that the material world will change much more workers minds than some logic arguments arrayed in an online discussion.
I don't have the stamina to debate with libertarians, but I also have found that "beating them at their own game" is not a useful strategy.
Suppose, for example, you manage to prove to a libertarian that the current distribution of wealth is the result of unfair actions in the past. Then for them, the next best option would probably be to redistribute wealth, and then press "play". Which isn't what you wanted to argue for in the first place, so why make that argument?
You say you have lost your taste for intellectual debate online, but I think you would regain it if you were to engage in real debate rather than point-scoring.
Your starting point is that you know the truth, and it is "material" factors that prevent others from knowing this truth. But to have this point of view underestimates the power of debate and reason. But of course I can't really convince you that I haven't been subconsciously made blind to the intellectual power of Marxism by my comfortable middle class lifestyle.
>I don't have the stamina to debate with libertarians...
Probably true; I guess my comment can thought of more as counter-propaganda.
>Suppose, for example...
I imagine if I could get someone to question the premises of their hateful, retrograde philosophy I could get them to engage in further inquiry, which might open their eyes.
>You say you have lost your taste for intellectual debate online...
True, but I could also cultivate other interests. I'm sure eventually it will entice me again,
>Your starting point is that you know the truth
Marxists don't believe in absolute truth.
Do 'debate and reason' derive their power from the material world? It seems to me that they only exercise power in shaping one's consciousness to the degree that they reflect facts about the material world.
Following on the heels of that, what facts about a humans physical presence in the world carry more import for every other facet of their life than their economic position (position meaning, in particular, class)?
For what it's worth, people can and do argue against economic determinism. The degree of success that they have in that regard is a matter of continuing debate.
I disagree. If have a $100,000, and somebody else has zero, neither of us have any value until I spend the money.
If I spent the $10,000 to have someone do my laundry for the year (increasing my free time), then they have $10,000 with which to buy things that they might value more than the time doing my laundry. It may be groceries, it might be books, it might be a vacation.
If I invest the remaining $90,000 (let's say by buying a bank CD) then the bank will lend the money out to people, who have an opportunity to buy houses, start businesses, or otherwise put it to use.
Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others. Nobody forces them to accept it.
In fairy tales maybe. In real life, need to feed the family, debt, hunger, mortages, need for shelter, medical treatment needs, etc etc are forcing them to accept it.
>Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others.
The same thing happens with giving slaves food. It helps them. That doesn't mean it's the best kind of help they can get.
>Why other people should provide food, housing, medical treatment, etc if the person provides almost nothing in return?
They do provide stuff in return. Actually they do all the important stuff: cooking, cleaning the streets, driving the cabs, delivering packages, extracting oil, mining coal, replacing the hospital bedsheets, growing and picking our food, taking care of the dead, and tons more besides, while the rest of the population gets to play "highly specialized professional" for doing high level BS from marketing to accounting.
>Another question: Would you replace your doctor, who earns 50x minimum wage, with 50 random minimum wage earners to do a medical procedure on you?
No, I'd replace him with a doctor that earns 1x mininum wage -- so everybody can afford him. If he doesn't like the job enough to do it for what it is and for the service he offers, then he's not a passionate doctor anyway. (In the same way real hackers would even program for free, just because they enjoy it so much)
And that's exactly why money is freedom, when you have it, at least.
Having money or, more specifically, not needing money means that you are free to engage in whatever business engagements you see fit. For the illegal immigrants, oftentimes, their options are "work for less than what is fair" or "not work at all". For them, the decision is easy.
For many Americans, overextended, and with no way to feed themselves without work, we see a similarly exploitative environment as well. The minimum wage is designed to prevent against that, and it does, though now people are suggesting it doesn't, but either way, economic freedom is freedom from having to enter into an agreement that you wouldn't do if you didn't have to.
Unfortunately, only having money buys you that economic freedom.
You're putting Mother Teresa into other people's mouths.
If there is large unemployment, and lots of people need work, is it morally better to spend $1,000 hiring one person or $500 each for 2 people, or $100 each for 10 people?
> The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else.
There are three wrong assumptions here: 1) that wealth is zero-sum 2) that wealth is the only possible way to obtain freedom 3) that for each individual the same quantum of wealth buys the exact same quantum of freedom.
Prime-facie, neither of these three are true.
There are all kinds of problems with associated with inequality (and the literature is far too rich for me to go into detail here), but this isn't one of them.
That one is very obviously and patently flawed: me to raise my arm in the air right now does not decrease your freedom. The only it could have been true about particular kind of freedom is if the assumptions the parent poster were true.
Wealth-based inequality is not domination. In order to wield your wealth, you have to give it away, or at least offer to.
political inequality, however, often results in domination.
Moreover, wealth is not a zero-sum game. In any free transaction, both parties are made better off (otherwise the transaction would not have occurred). With politics however, there can only be a limited number of any given political position. Therefore, it is a zero-sum game.
There are legions of wealthy people who conspire to trade in their wealth for political power, but do not confuse the nature of one form of power for the other.
I agree with you. Not only we accept this, but many are not even conscious about this injustice. I think it's not an exaggeration to say this is still slavery, in a less direct form than what it used to be.
I cannot upvote you enough. The way I usually put it is that if you're putting those blinders on, focusing just on you and your family, and living large, you're like a person a dinner who gets up, fetches the ice cream and cake, and starts eating out of the carton in front of everyone who's still on the salad. Yeah, in a sense you aren't hurting anybody, there's just something globally rude about it.
First: peer review. If your design documents are readily available, researchers don't have to reverse engineer them. Also, by open sourcing hardware design you lower the bar for critique: you might get feedback from an experienced electrical engineer who might not know how to write and upload a custom firmware for a USB controller.
Second: you can easily change it because it's not a black box.
I'm just playing devil's advocate here... Your argument for "open software/hardware" doesn't apply here. There was an exploit found in almost 6+ year old hardware/software. Has nothing to do with the fact if it is open or not. "Open" != "non-exploitable" || "flawless".
Also applies to crypto-accelerated CPU instructions.
With OSS and OSH, at least there's a chance of auditing what one has is what was released, and a chance to audit that there's no funny business going on.
> “I won’t call him a hero, but he’s sure as hell no traitor.”
No hero? What does it take for you then?
Actually, he's not a hero, he's more like Jesus of our times, giving away his (perfect) life for us (who - of course - don't even appreciate his sacrifice, let alone act).
You should paint a new rendition of the Last Supper with Snowden as your Jesus, and you can have Assange, Manning, ..., (choose 10 more of those types) as his disciples. Have fun.
What I want to suggest is that you drop the requests you send to 3rd party services like Google. If somebody makes money off of collecting as much data about us as they can, it's Google, Facebook, etc. So, letting them track your users is a contradiction.