[HN Gopher] Modern Malaise
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Modern Malaise
Author : mikalauskas
Score : 42 points
Date : 2022-08-13 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ava.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ava.substack.com)
| andrewmutz wrote:
| The problem is not that wages are growing too slowly, that is the
| symptom.
|
| The problem is that productivity is growing too slowly.
|
| Fixing the problem requires far more technology and automation
| than we have delivered.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| If productivity grows primarily because of enabling capital,
| the proceeds from this growth will accrue more to the owner of
| capital than the laborer, roughly proportional to the
| contribution of each.
|
| The problem is that human capital has saturated for many
| people. This is borne out by stagnating gains in education.
|
| If productivity gains occur mostly because of technology with
| little human input, then that further bifurcates society
| between owners of that technology and everyone else. This does
| not help alleviate the modern malaise.
|
| People are quick to point out the dropping of the gold
| standard, the end of cheap fossil fuels, the neoliberal
| economic changes, etc. that all occurred during the 1970s, and
| those all matter. But there's another factor which is that
| educational outcomes began to stagnate.
|
| I don't think returning productivity growth to the postwar rate
| would have as much of an effect as it did then, because more of
| the productivity growth would be because of technology with
| concentrated ownership rather than broad gains in human
| ability.
| burlesona wrote:
| I think a major problem with globalization is that workers in
| relatively wealthy nations don't care that workers in relatively
| poor nations are doing massively better than they were a
| generation or two ago. Being able to buy cheaper stuff from
| abroad is a no substitute for experiencing upward mobility
| yourself.
| peatfreak wrote:
| I was taking this article seriously until I arrived at the
| Terrence McKenna bit. His opinions are highly subjective, based
| on personal experience with drugs, and they aren't a compelling,
| testable, or comparable line of thought. Not to mention that TM
| is pretentious as hell and basis his whole outlook on life on
| doing loads of DMT (he hardly talks about anything else).
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| Not only that, Terrence McKenna followed by Ayn Rand
| svnpenn wrote:
| > https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1335725267340251137
|
| Even people in the top 10% are making basically nothing. This was
| taken two years ago, but I would suspect the current situation is
| the same or worse. I'm not sure how to fix this, but I think
| something should be done. People in the top 1% or 0.1% should
| make more per month than someone in the top 10%, but the
| difference shouldn't be this stark.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Why should the difference not be so stark? That's how the power
| law works, most people follow only a few accounts.
| svnpenn wrote:
| > That's how the power law works
|
| who says that the payout distribution has to follow the power
| law? And even if it does naturally, OnlyFans doesn't have to
| just let it happen. They could take a bigger cut from the
| larger accounts, and distribute it such that the payouts are
| more linear.
| svnt wrote:
| If they do this, won't they just fracture and drive the
| larger accounts elsewhere?
| svnpenn wrote:
| If every single user wants to be a soulless robot (pure
| capitalism), then yes. However if the userbase
| understands that larger accounts will be subject to
| larger fees, _in order to support smaller accounts_ ,
| then I would like to think at least some users would
| support that. Not everything in life has to be decided on
| a purely selfish basis.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| >who says that the payout distribution has to follow the
| power law?
|
| The payout distribution is proportional to the number of
| subscribers, which follows a power law.
|
| >And even if it does naturally, OnlyFans doesn't have to
| just let it happen. They could take a bigger cut from the
| larger accounts, and distribute it such that the payouts
| are more linear.
|
| How is taking a larger relative cut from the content
| creators bringing in the most traffic a good (much less
| optimal) business decision?
| metadat wrote:
| Do YouTube, Insta, and TikTok also have similar
| distributions?
|
| Maybe slightly less skewed but these sorts of networks seem
| to promote a winner-takes-all situation for each
| differentiated subsegment.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _In the 80s Thatcher and Reagan broke down trade barriers and
| ceded government power to banks and corporations. This created a
| consumer world driven by debt, where everything was assessed by
| utility. Politics essentially "became a wing of management,
| saying that it could stop bad things from happening instead of
| imagining how things could be better."_
|
| Consumer debt has fallen since the peak in 2007-2009 or so.
|
| https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/...
|
| Rather spending seems to be driven by the wealthy, upper-middle
| class, who don't need as much debt to consume and boost the
| overall economy.
|
| _Now politics feels like pantomime, with both parties bickering
| over social issues while neither has the political will to
| meaningfully affect the economy. Curtis: "Online psychodramas
| create waves of hysteria that make it feel like the world is
| transforming. In fact, nothing actually changed in the last four
| years. Trump made himself a pantomime villain, and we booed
| rather than imagine an alternative."_
|
| Agree. I think the power of the federal government to affect
| change peaked in 2001-2008 or so, first with massive buildup
| homeland security and defense apparatuses following 911, and then
| in 2008-2009 during the financial crisis . After that the federal
| government has significantly stopped having influence as far as
| policy is concerned. Rather, much if its power is through
| administrative functions, like the FBI , NSA, IRS, SEC, etc.
|
| _Money became our religion, and now money is starting to run
| dry, as the world's largest economies slow in their growth. Both
| democracies and dictatorships are in a moment of crisis._
|
| Money is like a religion, but scant evidence to suggest it's
| running dry. As stocks and home prices boom since 2020, there is
| more wealth than ever before.
|
| _Purchasing power hasn't changed in the past 40 years, according
| to the Pew Institute: "Today's real average wage (that is, the
| wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same
| purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there
| have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of
| workers._
|
| Again, you have to look at the top 10% or so. That is where the
| purchasing power is coming from...stuff like Disneyland tickets,
| NFL tickets, lifted trucks, expensive elective cosmetic
| procedures, home renovations, and so on.
|
| _All meritocratic platforms are winner-take-all, with the top 1%
| of performers collecting a vastly disproportionate share of
| rewards. Look at Substack and Onlyfans. This is not a conspiracy
| engineered by anyone: when anyone is allowed to compete, a small
| percentage of people tend to capture most of the profit._
|
| It's been like this for a long time, and recent trends have only
| accelerated this. The Ivy League is more importent and
| competitive than ever before; Covid has not changed this at all.
| Same for top 50 schools overall. Same for high stakes testing,
| math competitions, top tech & finance jobs, etc...everything more
| competitive and difficult. More people applying, fewer people
| getting in. Winners get bigger and bigger, whether it's top
| Substack content creators or Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.
|
| _The American dream, the idea that anybody could make a good
| living for themselves and their family through nothing but hard
| work, has become far less realistic. You know the Steinbeck line
| about how Americans think they're temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires instead of exploited proletariat. But they don't
| believe that anymore, do they?_
|
| It's still realistic if you have a high IQ, choose a good career,
| and have good work ethic...people in tech, consulting, finance,
| healthcare, law, etc. making record income even after accounting
| for student loan debt and inflation. (The so-called school to
| career STEM pipeline.) Reddit 'FIRE' subs are full of such
| individuals, in their 20-40s, doing just that, with not
| uncommonly millions of dollars. But for those at the middle/left-
| side of the IQ distribution, maybe not so much. They tend to rely
| more so on lottery-like systems of success/promotion compared to
| more meritocratic ones.
| https://greyenlightenment.com/2022/03/19/losers-iq-and-the-l...
|
| _This clearly isn't true, since people obviously aren't free:
| they're controlled by socioeconomic circumstances._
|
| And also biological constraints, like again, IQ. But I have also
| read many stories on Hacker News and Reddit of people born in the
| lower-middle class or worse circumstances rising up due to high
| intelligence and getting scholarships and landing decent-paying
| jobs.
|
| Good article...a lot of food for thought.
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