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Comment by mlcrypto | Hacker News Reader

"I genuinely don't understand why people who have to work for their living are amazed at this." Also said after seeing the printing press, automobile, calculator, etc for the first time

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It's true, even if you lose your job as a programmer you can still get a job as a barista.

Except where will be the programmers paying for overpriced coffee?

Silly thought. No one has money for overpriced coffee if well paid jobs are gone

Can't wait for the barista and wicker basket based economy. Although personally I just make coffee at home, so I have no need for a barista with a PhD in neurosurgery to make it for me.

Plus it just takes too much time to go to starbucks, especially with all the starbucks job applications I will need to fill out if I want a chance of getting a job.

My god, the printing press was invented in 1440 when most people were living in abject poverty - it took until after WW2 for humans to demand a more shared amount of money between rich and poor. If you think technology delivers improvements in living standards rather than all working people demanding better conditions you’re living in an absolute fantasy and do not understand history at all. I honestly can’t believe you think this.

> If you think technology delivers improvements in living standards rather than all working people demanding better conditions you’re living in an absolute fantasy

Demanding better conditions does not just manufacture the technology, infrastructure, and productivity needed to provide the improvement in the standard of living. I think you're in the fantasy realm, my friend.

Which period of the last 2000 years was good for the vast majority rather than the ultra wealthy? And are these periods aligned with technology progress?

Living standards for ordinary people only started to improve in any meaningful way after the industrial revolution, a fact which is immediately obvious if you compare across generations. Technological progress gave us all of the things that distinguish the lives of 21st century Americans from the lives of medieval peasants. Central heating, indoor plumbing, electric lighting, general anaesthesia, antibiotics, automobiles, aircraft, limitless entertainment, food so abundant that poor people are obese. If you think that technological progress is intrinsically bad because it hasn't brought about a utopia of perfect equality, then I really don't know what to say to you.

No, you’re totally misunderstanding me, I don’t think technology progress is correlated with progress for humans at all. The point is only the post war period when taxes were 90%+ for the wealthy aligned with a growing middle class and a welfare state I.e. hospitals and housing for the poorest.

I didn’t die of pneumonia as a kid so that’s something.

Maybe if we all just sat around "demanding" to not die from disease, then we would be healthy

You're looking at it backwards. Simply existing doesn't automatically make technology accessible.

Not to be overly intensive but people "demand" rectification between rich and poor because they don't see that they have all the tools they need or they want a shortcut to smart/hard work and risk - the US, EU and many other parts of the world where societal discrimination is virtually none compared to previous generations give you what you need. I agree with you in the sense that, life never feels just, grass is always greener on the other side, etc.. Bit it's those that rise to a challenge and stop demanding, make a plan and start doing that change their fate. That's always been history. Check out all societies that demanded riches from "the rich" and ended up communist.. Didn't help most of them for sure. Massive redistribution of riches like high taxes never works long term and sets the wrong signals.

If machines start doing all of the work, even much or most cognitive work, then I think this has to change. Meanwhile look at Nordic countries for example. Not communist, rich, low inequality by design. They were the pioneers btw in social democracy, in which they all live. Interesting, "always been history" is actually not right, or at least, also, it's "not been pre-history" is right because early humans before and up to us as homo sapiens, did indeed from all evidence I've seen have dramatically greater social equality and sharing economies. Our current state is the less "natural" in the sense of being out of tune with our instincts.

It does and has done so consistently throughout human history, so I do not believe this will be any different. I couldn't care less what the shared amount of money is because it some billionaire gets another million and I get a thousand, that means I win regardless of whether or not that increases the wealth differential.

This becomes substantially less true when the billionaires transform their money into political power.

Why would that be different? It seems right now that tech billionaires are the group that is most in favor of advancing technology. What politically powerful group would it be more in my interest to hold power?

Elon Musk cares that Elon Musk benefits from policies.

He does not give a single solitary fuck about you. If you get lucky and your interests align, great. But Musk talks fairly openly about letting many humans die while a few rich elites thrive. And if you're posting on this website, you are not a rich elite.

You will absolutely care if the billionaire gets another million and you get a thousand if a thousand stops being enough to pay the bills. The value of money is nothing if not relative.

The printing press, automobile and calculator didn't threaten the employability of a large part of the population, so no, that sentence was probably not uttered by anyone at that time.

The problem with AI isn't that it's threating software development. It's that it's _also_ threating pretty much any other job that I could reasonably be retrained for.

Also, I'm pretty conflicted about the overall impact of automobiles.

> Also said after seeing the printing press, automobile, calculator, etc for the first time

Because society has found such sustainable solutions to capital wealth concentration in the intervening years.

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