Mind the Gap | Hacker News Reader

Mind the Gap

paulgraham.com

12 pointsjustinmares5 comments

[2004]

You may want to append that to the title. Some people here already know it's not a new essay, but it's a courtesy to those that either forgot or don't know because new pg essays attract a lot of interest on this forum.

In the discussion about the ratio in incomes between those earning the least and those earning the most, pg does not seem to be aware of the fact that this ratio has been changing over large time spans (even ignoring the excesses from pop culture which can be explained by a structural change in how that part of society functions).

Curiously, these changes correlate with the rise and fall of certain political movements. It is then quite reasonable to wonder if, perhaps, the disreputable ways of earning money via political manipulation are really not a thing of the past after all.

"In a free market, prices are determined by what buyers want" - sure for products but it is not entirely true when it comes to compensation. If janitors, in some united way, stopped cleaning our bathrooms for minimum wage then we would pay more. I'd say their service is "worth" more then we compensate them for, we are just collectively taking advantage of their position in life.

If janitors charged much more than the reasonable market value for their services we'd invest more in self-cleaning technology and tools so those few janitors that remained employed were less necessary and were really effective such that they could do more work per unit time. We'd also probably just adapt to a lower level of cleanliness. Or clean the bathrooms ourselves as needed or as an extra add-on task to some more valuable job.

Another point of view is that money equals power. Societies rightfully worry that uber-accumulation of wealth leads to power imbalances; i don't think it's just a superstition. There are also a number of points i disagree with. I wonder how he would write about it today, after the crisis.

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