Hacker News Reader

Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

This is the eternal evolution of individual labor.

But then the question is - do you think going backwards to an earlier time is a solution?

Go far enough back to individual homesteads doing some light farming, hunting, fishing. You'll be self sufficient, but you won't be able to afford a phone or television!

It's going to be a difficult problem (always) solving for the future of individual contributions to society as labor gets replaced by automation, and even knowledge work gets replaced by machine learning.

But I still think great minds (and also the minds that get put in charge) should look forward and try to build a good future, rather than cling to a dying past.

View on HN

> But then the question is - do you think going backwards to an earlier time is a solution?

It's not "backwards in time." The need for machine tools didn't disappear. There's an essential machine-tool industry that the US depends on very much, it's just in places like China.

The problem is that the US is already behind in innovation on that field, and better machines produce better machines. So it’s “backwards in time” because you have to start manufacturing the shovel to start digging when your competitor has a backhoe. And even if you could somehow steal the design and build it you don’t have anyone who could operate it.

> The problem is that the US is already behind in innovation on that field, and better machines produce better machines.

That's not a permanent situation, proven by the fact that the countries that are now ahead in machine tools used to be behind the US in machine tools.

> So it’s “backwards in time” because you have to start manufacturing the shovel to start digging when your competitor has a backhoe. And even if you could somehow steal the design and build it you don’t have anyone who could operate it.

As aptly demonstrated by China: it's a lot easier to catch up than to develop at the cutting edge. All you need is a little bit of investment and will.

And personally, I think the government should conscript some crypto and adtech startups (and their employees) to build up an operator pool, because they're obnoxious and those people should be doing something useful instead.

>All you need is a little bit of investment and will.

We’re cooked then. To give you some perspective I had some Chinese sales reps visiting my shop, they saw us working on some designs and casually asked about working hours i told them about 40hs/wk they laughed and said “in China engineers work 12hs a day 7 days a week”.

> We’re cooked then. To give you some perspective I had some Chinese sales reps visiting my shop, they saw us working on some designs and casually asked about working hours i told them about 40hs/wk they laughed and said “in China engineers work 12hs a day 7 days a week”.

Oh, the fallacy that grinding harder and longer leads to more and better results. Do you think you do your best work when you're exhausted?

Also, 996 is more typical in China, hated, and I believe illegal too. That kind of thing is one of the (many) reasons their population is starting to collapse.

Deepseek begs to differ?

> Deepseek begs to differ?

Please not a non-sequitur like "some Chinese grind, so here's some thing from China, therefore grinding is good."

Show me the reason for Deepseek's success is people grinding for longer hours.

I could sit in the office that long if I had to and I would appear productive. However I need several hours of mindless meetings everyday as is because my brain can't engineer for 40 hours a week.

It would take you 10+ years of skilled labor savings in any case to afford a homestead capable of sufficient farming and hunting output to sustain a family. Because you are competing not with homesteaders but rich professionals or pensioned .gov retirees who want some escape from the pollution/crime/cramp of the city.

Even if all of US became homesteaders this would likely still be at least a little bit the case, because foreigners would simply buy the property instead. Take a look at places like Spain, Portugal, etc and the high land prices are based on global competition not vs the low local wages.

> pensioned .gov retirees who want some escape from the pollution/crime/cramp of the city.

What is this stereotype? Government retirees aren't some elite wealthy class. IIRC government pensions haven't been anything to write home about since 1982 (or something), and are roughly equivalent to private sector retirement benefits.

Might just be regional. An insanely high proportion of my rural neighbors are people who did 20 years in the military and started receiving benefits around age 40 and were able to use those benefits to supplement a homestead. How many private sector people drew a pension at 40 and then double dipped? I'm not damning them for it, it's not like many in the military didn't work hard for that money, but it's incredibly difficult for a working class 40 year old these days to fuck off into a rural area and buy a homestead with rural salaries without something functioning as a substitute to that backing it up.

In any case in my rural homestead region there are mainly three classes

1) .gov pensioners 2) successful professionals 3) inherited property

The key to government pensions here I think is that they get benefits early enough in life that they are young enough to build and live a homestead life. At age 65+ you might be able to maintain an established property but buying something affordable (read: rough or vacant land) out and getting it up and running would be pretty rough for most at that age.

> How many private sector people drew a pension at 40 and then double dipped?

Military is a unique subset of government, and IIRC most people who join don't stay long enough to draw a pension.

When you said "government retirees," that brings to mind the civil service, which I believe is larger.

But it isn't just the military. There are government civil servants that draw pension at 20/25 years as well such as FBI agents. Makes more sense to say .gov rather than just the military.

If I had to guess, it has more to do with the type of person who is willing to save diligently for decades. Government work (at least until the last few months) tended to be lower paying but steadier. The type of risk-averse person who takes a government job is also more likely to save over time, taking advantage of compounding. Just correlated, in other words.

>This is the eternal evolution of individual labor.

This argument of "fuck others' jobs, I got mine" works if you're OK with having a handful of prosperous cities full of multinational conglomerates with smart/educated people in the service industry, surrounded by slums of poverty, crime and homeless people on drugs who can mug you, as their industry blue collar jobs got offshored and they couldn't "just learn to code bro".

There's a reason countries with a solid industrial base like Germany are livable almost everywhere with a lot less income inequality, poverty and homelessness, and try to hold on to these jobs.

UK's deindustrialization is also another point on the map. Great if you work at some bank/tech company in London, not so great otherwise.

>Go far enough back to individual homesteads doing some light farming, hunting, fishing.

No one's arguing about going back to the stone age. But having moved nearly all manufacturing to Asia was a mistake, not only we lost jobs but also scale, competencies and bargaining power.

Remember the covid pandemic when you couldn't get masks initially because most were made in China and they were hoarding them all for themselves? What then? Use stonks as masks?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com