Comment by orbisvicis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orbisvicis | Hacker News Reader

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> There's no reason every child has to have equal opportunity.

No evolutionary reason, that is.

On the other hand, if your descendents are born into such deep disadvantage without hope of redemption, that's another evolutionary black hole. The best hope would be to band together with others of similar circumstances and burn it all down.

It's in everyone's best interest for this not to happen. Which leads me to wonder if there is some optimal equilibrium between advantage and disadvantage.

And interesting corollary is that society has basically trumped evolution. There are so many competing contradictory forces that only the most basic changes have a hope of surviving.

Edit:

In hindsight I somewhat disagree with this. Nearly all post-scarcity fictions depict societies in which all are given equal opportunity to realize their personal ambitions. Status and additional allocation of societal-level resources then depends on the outcomes. So for some definition of opportunity I think it is theoretically possible to afford everyone equal opportunity.

> Nearly all post-scarcity fictions depict societies in which all are given equal opportunity to realize their personal ambitions.

Which, as GP pointed out, is a social dead end.

If your opportunities don't depend on your parents' achievements, then your children's opportunities don't depend on your achievements. Even in a positive sense.

Which means that probably the most important motivation to achieve anything is gone.

Such a society would crumble to dust really quickly.

And, of course, equal "opportunity" just means discrimination based on factors such as innate ability, rather than inherited wealth. Which means that talent takes the place that wealth has in our society, but the basic mechanisms of power (and the resulting inequalities) remain the same.

Why is everyone so nihilistic, but only in the short-term? To think success requires winning a zero-sum game, but forgetting that the winner is still a puny human in a meaningless universe.

Of course there are still achievements to strive towards. There are personal goals. There is the appreciation of your peers. There is social capital to convince others.

I think the countless grassroots movements stand as tribute to this. And not just open-source software, but countless online forums and communities dedicated to making the world a better place.

If your children have the best (as discussed above) opportunities thrust upon them, why must you spit in the face of good fortune, claiming your children would be better off if other children had fewer opportunities?

In such a theoretical and hopefully future society, I think power itself becomes much less consequential. What's the point of power if you have everything you want.

Or do you think if everyone's happy, they'll gladly follow some mad power-hungry lunatic into genocide just for shits and giggles?

> What's the point of power if you have everything you want.

To those that seek power, it is an end, not a means.

And there is no limit to what people want. Indeed, it expands faster than real possibilities do. By the standards of a thousand years ago, even today's "poor" people live like kings. But that doesn't mean anything.

A "post-scarcity" society would resemble the society of today far more closely than most people realize.

> To those that seek power, it is an end, not a means.

Perhaps that's just a psychological condition inculcated by modern society.

> today's "poor" people live like kings.

The actual standard of living doesn't matter as relatively poor people continue to make poor short-term economic decisions even after escaping poverty. That's why it's often called a disease.

This is an extremely reductionist take, to infer that all human progress is motivated by a better life for your children. Certainly some people are motivated by that, but human motivations are way, way more complex than this ridiculously simplified (and aggressively conservative) worldview suggests.

The assumption that society would "quickly crumble to dust" if children's opportunities were entirely independent of their parents' efforts and successes is quite possibly the most absurd take I have heard on this website in the 10 years I have been here.

> The assumption that society would "quickly crumble to dust" if we gave more children more opportunities

Another strawman. I wrote that society would crumble if children's opportunities were entirely independent of their parents' efforts and successes, in line with the comment I replied to. That's distinct from what you are claiming.

My reply remains the same with your clarification added, I have edited my comment accordingly. This is absurd.

For 1 Einstein that doesn't care to continue his bloodline the society requires millions who do. You can sure try and fight human instincts, many have tried and failed.

>No evolutionary reason, that is.

So, no reason that would stick a couple of generations down.

>The best hope would be to band together with others of similar circumstances and burn it all down.

They are trying, last seen on 7 Oct 2023. I'd say long odds.

>It's in everyone's best interest for this not to happen. Which leads me to wonder if there is some optimal equilibrium between advantage and disadvantage.

It's indeed undesirable that the evolutionary black hole is in your own group, therefore various safety nets. That's still just the lower bound, removing the higher bound is Harrison-Bergeron-style societal suicide.

>And interesting corollary is that society has basically trumped evolution. There are so many competing contradictory forces that only the most basic changes have a hope of surviving.

It's just the first time that we know of when the fittest don't want to breed. There's plenty of arguments out there to the effect that it sucks.

>In hindsight I somewhat disagree with this. Nearly all post-scarcity fictions depict societies in which all are given equal opportunity to realize their personal ambitions. Status and additional allocation of societal-level resources then depends on the outcomes. So for some definition of opportunity I think it is theoretically possible to afford everyone equal opportunity.

If the parents' success have no bearing on the children the best strategy is to push out as many kids as you can. Something of commons, can't put my finger on it.

> If the parents' success have no bearing on the children the best strategy is to push out as many kids as you can.

Hmm that's an interesting thought. You think that a post-scarcity society is impossible because the evolutionary urge to further one's genes will always outstrip the capacity to produce resources. That there can never be any equilibrium? Very Malthusian. Hopefully we can apply lessons from this article - that subtle social nudges can have outsized and hopefully beneficial effects.

Where is that post-scarcity society you're talking about?

The whole demographic catastrophe unfolding in the West is to do with how hard and expensive it is to raise even 1-2 kids to have good chances at life, and people largely choosing scarce commodities over having kids.

There are no lessons in this article other than that made-up preferences lead to silly outcomes.

Artificially scarce commodities, as any basic inquiry into social economics would illustrate. Naturally no one wants to have kids when they can't afford a home and need two jobs just to feed themselves and pay off their student debt.

Artificially my 50-hectar beachfront mansion ass.

Electronics and factory farm tomatoes are cheap, and near nobody lacks food or a phone.

Good teachers, black caviar, decent real estate away from poor people (lol) are inherently scarce. As for social economics enquiries, they always seem to require people to give up fruits of their labour for no compensation. As much as I like free stuff, I very much find this undersirable.

>Electronics and factory farm tomatoes are cheap, and near nobody lacks food or a phone.

The price of tomatoes has inflated at a rate of about 3.55% per year, up a total of 1,049% since 1953. In that same period, minimum wage rose from $0.75 to $7.25. In 1953, an hour's work would have bought you one tomato with a bit left over, today an hour's work leaves you short. Tomatoes have not become cheaper.

Source: https://www.in2013dollars.com/Tomatoes/price-inflation

The 50s were an anomaly (as was the Great Depression).

No they weren't? Look at the graph in my source. In any case, sure, start in 1965; tomatoes cost $0.85 and minimum wage was $1.25, so your purchasing power was even better by comparison to today.

Try 20s.

Or don't bother with canned tomatoes from your link - things like flour, butter, milk and meat all got cheaper relative to the minimum wage.

Fresh tomatoes went from 25-30 cents per pound to 1-2 dollars per pound, i.e. got cheaper too.

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