Hacker News Reader

Comment by yellowapple | Hacker News Reader

> Making money is going to be everyone’s primary goal

I disagree. Making money is a means to an end, that end being one's ability to live a comfortable life as a member of society. If other means are able to achieve that end, then that reduces the need (or even desire) for money.

While I'd cynically agree that modern society as structured today will fight tooth and nail to keep those other means from being viable (because the current powers-that-be are such specifically because they were able to accumulate the most money), that doesn't have to be the case. We can and should demand better.

View on HN

Exactly. Making money is a means to an end.

For those for whom making money is a primary goal, they miss their essential purpose in life.

That’s just a random platitude that everyone will agree with, but has no workable means of achievement in the real world.

OK so how do you acquire everything you need in order to achieve your essential purpose, without making money?

Who said anything about not making money?

"means to an end"

The first step is to quantify “everything you need”, and go individually from there.

What the hell does “demand better” even mean here?

Like global economic and political systems has a manager you can demand to speak to like a Karen getting subpar customer service?

Any change is going to require wide spread spiritual and moral change in the general populace first.

> What the hell does “demand better” even mean here?

Probably asking for $5000 checks from the government.

Trump has that covered.

Just vote Republican! He promised!

You can demand whatever you want, but most people are not going to be with you. Very few people at least in the US are going to agree with the communist perspective that a street cleaner or security guard should be paid the same amount as a doctor. You can suggest some form of workable socialism, which would be good, but I am mainly referring to the transition phase between now and some sort of utopian future where resources are unlimited and robots do all of our physical and mental labor. That transition period is going to last decades or for the rest of our lives and most of the early period, at the very least, for our kids.

“the communist perspective that a street cleaner or security guard should be paid the same amount as a doctor”

Nobody in this thread (AFAICT) is arguing for that. By all means, people who contribute more to society should be rewarded for it. The only thing being argued is that everyone deserves to enjoy a baseline standard of living, on top of which they might receive additional benefits in exchange for the work they do. As automation continues to expand, providing everyone with that baseline standard of living unconditionally becomes more and more practical to achieve, in which case it becomes more and more unethical for society to refuse to do so.

Humans as individuals and groups will fight tooth and nail to "have more" because that is our nature. Money was a brilliant invention that allowed people to get what they want without forcefully taking it from someone else, or having a particular skill or thing that you could barter.

No they won't..like, observably they won't. This is a problem almost every entrepreneur who looked at small businesses as a start up opportunity ran into immediately: most small businesses are run by people who are exactly happy with where they got to, and so showing up and promising you'll expand the business goes over as well as a lead balloon.

People are generally fine with a personal decision of "I have enough" they are much less happy about being told that by a government.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com