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Comment by jlebar | Hacker News Reader

Because automated weaving makes clothes a lot cheaper.

Put another way, when workers become more efficient -- one factory worker able to control many weaving machines, or a relatively small group of programmers able to control many cars -- people's standard of living increases.

Maybe you're willing to pay more for clothes, or transportation, or any one thing. But paying more for all of the things that have gotten cheaper due to increases in efficiency since time X is tantamount to going back to the standard of living of time X.

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What's the point of making things cheaper when it centers the wealth on just a few owners? When there are lots of workers working low income jobs versus just a few workers working high income jobs, it creates a healthier more distributed economy.

An estimated 2.3 Billion people now own smartphones. That number is growing at about 10% per year. All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well as (some would argue even better than) the students of the most expensive universities.

They can communicate with anyone else at almost zero marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically anyone else on the planet. All because things keep getting cheaper.

That's the point of making things cheaper.

Sure, a consequence of that is that the founders and executives and financiers of Google, Samsung, Apple etc are wildly rich. And that means they can (and do) invest in new products and services to keep improving peoples' standard of living, as well as funding benevolent projects.

It's pretty amazing if you ask me.

> All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well (some would argue even better) than students of the most expensive universities. They can communicate with anyone at almost no marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically anyone else on the planet.

Is this even happening though?

Out of Coursera's 18 million registered learners, 1.3 million are from India with top registered learners hailing from Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, the website said today.

Driven by the vast interest coming from Bengaluru, technology hub, nearly half of enrollments in the country are in technology courses such as computer science (25 per cent) and data science (18 per cent).

- http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educat...

Top Freelancing countries on Elance:

India $312,865,112/649,566 freelancers

United States $310,023,579/1,123,935 freelancers

Ukraine $72,429,514/29,341 freelancers

Pakistan $71,061,107/176,011 freelancers

United Kingdom $35,320,646/126,670 freelancers

Canada $31,379,228/85,639 freelancers

Romania $28,062,831/44,305 freelancers

Russia $27,416,743/21,045 freelancers

Philippines $18,261,489/178,725 freelancers

Argentina $17,796,295

China $17,518,704/28,752 freelancers

Serbia $13,600,638/18,577 freelancers

Bangladesh $11,092,326/66,970 freelancers

https://www.elance.com/trends/talent-available/geo#GeoRankin...

And when you try net income per person, you get:

   Ukraine  $2,468.54 
   Russia  $1,302.77 
   Serbia  $732.12 
   Romania  $633.40 
   China  $609.30

Thanks, I'm capable of using a calculator :D

There will naturally be a distribution of incomes among those people, with some people earning little or nothing, and some people earning a lot.

The point is that whatever the income a given person is earning, that is income that was unavailable to them before modern computing and communications devices became affordable to them.

That's money that people are using to build better lives for themselves, their families and their communities.

As I said, that is the point of making things cheaper.

The point is that it delivers real, tangible quality-of-life factors, which typically matter more to someone's well-being than his feelings about aggregate wealth inequality.

I could stick it to the rich bastards who own energy stocks, but I'd rather be warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

If wealth was a zero-sum game, thia would make sense. Fortunately, it's possible to create new wealth so that everyone is better off, even if some get richer than others relatively.

If things have gotten cheaper, why does everything in a 1917 sears catalog, adjusted for inflation, look so inexpensive? Solid metal tools used to cost less than the modern walmart plastic thing.

You got me curious, so I looked... page 1082 and 1083 of the Sears catalog, from 1912 https://archive.org/details/catalogno12400sear shows that a standard hammer was $0.66, and a hand saw was around $1.50 (there are several models from $1.05 to $1.95). So $0.66 (from 1912) is $15.82 in 2016, and $1.95 is $35.96.

Not sure if this is right but maybe because wages were lower back then even with inflation?

Sounds like a possible factor. Inflation-adjusted median household income in 1900 was around $12k. Now it's around $55k.

For things like your solid metal tools, it's because the demand for metals is higher now than it was then, compared to supply. Also, solid metal may not actually be better than plastic or other options. It's heavy, and it rusts.

Even more radically, you might as well just give everybody a universal basic income instead of heading back for a pre-industrialized way of life (though the Amish people seem to like it?!).

If you give people a universal basic income, you need to both increase taxes a lot and completely restrict immigration - a basic income in the US is incredibly luxurious for people who live in sub-saharan Africa. Or else the universal basic income is going to be too low in first world countries to make a difference.

I am fully aware that UBI is an utopia that would require at the very least a Zeitgeist well evolved beyond our species' current, most common world views. But a similar "time-inverse" utopia is trying to stop technological progress with laws.

Or you just start taxing corporations and rich people again. Some stupidly huge percentage of dollars are just sitting in their coffers doing nothing.

Corporations and rich people have ways (completely legal) to get around taxes. If the tax burden becomes too onerous, they'll just move residences and/or stop doing business in your country.

You can see this in one of the founders of Facebook - he renounced his US citizenship, because of the onerous tax burdens. (https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/a-facebook-founder...)

It's foolish to just say "we should tax rich people and rich corporations more." You're incentivizing them to not play the game, and wealthy people generally have more abilities to evade taxes than people in the lower upper class or middle class, which is who the burden will inevitably fall upon.

We just have to start guillotining them again, I guess. You need a good revolution once every generation or three to keep capital scared.

Did you not see my previous comment about capital flight?

This is not the middle ages anymore, where peoples' riches are tied up in real estate and machinery. Immovable capital.

Capital is fluid these days. If you start guillotining people for absolutely nothing except being rich (which is what you're insinuating) they'll just leave and take all the capital and productive capacity with them. See Venezuela.

UBI seems unlikely now, maybe very low level like 500 dollars per month, but definitely not going to support a comfortable living, that is only fantasy.

Perhaps if the costs to maintain a comfortable living are lowered? It might be that people end up choosing between city living and the 40 hours a week of work required to support that, and living in a regional area where you can get by working 10 hours/week.

> not going to support a comfortable living

It's not supposed to.

Depends on whom you ask, and on the definition of "comfortable".

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