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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion.

I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial economy, or at the very least, how we assign moral culpability to people based on things they have little control over.

That is to say, it might be inevitable that pretty people or smart people will have advantages. But the only difference between attractiveness and intellect is that on places like HN, its socially acceptable to be smug about the latter.

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> the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do

The economy is an inanimate abstract. It does not strive for anything. It is not interested in anyone's perception of what is fair any more than my phone is interested in vulgar language.

The economy consists of billions of individuals getting together and saying "I have x to offer, I want y". To try to force some idea of justice, morality, fairness, equality, etc. into this equation is to say individuals do not have the right of free association; that they, the simpletons they surely are, are not smart enough to choose for themselves and judgement must be deferred to some all-knowing third-party.

Please, just don't.

> The economy consists of billions of individuals getting together and saying "I have x to offer, I want y".

No. It consists of that against the background understanding that parties cannot say " well I don't want to pay y, so I will kill you and take x." And in every extant example of a sophisticated economy, that understanding is enforced by a government that has guns. One can imagine scenarios in which that "all-knowing third party" does not exist, but I imagine if it were such a good idea it'd exist somewhere.

Once the people come together to create that third party that has the guns that creates the background understandings that allow economies to exist, then they are entitled to say: "well what else do we want?"

> the people come together to create that third party that has the guns

Can you cite me one example of this happening?

That understanding doesn't come from the people with guns. Else the US would not need to spend $billions on guns to fight the drug trade.

I don't say the folks with guns can't do constructive things to improve trade. They can. But they don't create that understanding you're talking about.

It absolutely does. Just look anywhere in the world where there isn't a government (or "dominant gang" if you want to call it that). Trade totally breaks down. In a world where there is no entity with guns to punish use of violence, its the game theoretic advantageous behavior. Not everyone will engage in it, and most won't, but enough will to cause the framework of trade to break down.

Underground black markets such as the Silk Road prove otherwise.

You mean that network where the operator tried to call in an hit on people? Look at how many Bitcoin networks have been hacked (the digital equivalent of using violence). And in real world black markets, (think mafia), violence is rife (even in areas where the underlying transactions aren't illegal).

That's beside the point. You stated without government the "framework of trade [will] break down". On the contrary, even after scandals and shutdown markets, new markets pop up and, incredibly, people continue to use them.

As for Bitcoin networks being hacked that is a red herring as we often hear of non-black market sites being hacked--even with the all mighty government protection.

Even with the black market, government provides a backdrop of expectations. Murderers are still prosecuted even if the murder happened in a black market trade. I'm talking about a situation where there is no disincentive to use force, e.g. a place like Somalia or rural Pakistan.

I've traded with people who I barely shared a language with. I could probably go buy weed today if I wanted to. I've watched thousands of dollars of business transacted in situations where enforcement of the deal was in practice impossible (offshore developers). Primitive societies without governments still understand and desire trade.

Again, the understanding you're talking about doesn't come from the sovereign.

If I could upvote twice, I would. The idea that the economy is a "being" is communist rot. The idea that we can (or should) control the economy is nonsense. Attempting to control the economy is like trying to control the weather. Certainly we can work harder to mitigate the effects of the weather, but a bunch of smart people thinking hard enough can't stop a hurricane, no matter how socially desirable that might be.

What would you think if I said there were indications that most conscious decision making isn't fully conscious at all? That, to a degree, free will is an illusory shadow of subconscious processes and that by the time you choose something, you've really already chosen it? And that genetics, prenatal development, and cultural influences all have a great say in those subconscious processes?

For example, if a child becoming a very aggressive person were totally predictable based on behavioral characteristics of the biological parents, would that matter in this discussion?

I know this is a departure from the way we typically like to think about ourselves, but there is actually some good evidence to indicate that we may not have as much control as we think.

It often leads to the same conclusions.

If people have free will, then we punish those who harm others.

If people are finite state automatons, then we punish those who harm others, because that's how you change inputs into the finite state automatons.

Hmm... I don't know about that. Justice is wildly different than reconditioning.

Not necessarily fixing those who are caught, but pour encourager les autres. There are no morals here, since we are all just machines, and we're just trying to get the machines to do what we want.

Okay, sure. We have evidence that certain behaviors are predictable, but that doesn't eliminate free will entirely, it just limits it.

It's also worth making a distinction between our subconscious and conscious choices, even if they are both more or less deterministic. At least we are aware of our conscious choices, and probably identify more strongly with them.

The original discussion was about when someone deserves credit for their actions. And if there are two poles of always and never, can we land somewhere in between? And where?

> You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion.

It's not well-defined at all. If person A is "smarter" than person B, how can you tell whether that's the result of A working harder than B or A having lucked into greater intelligence? Measure how much time each spent studying in college? If person C "chooses" to be an alcoholic and is therefore unproductive, how much of that is "free will" (what does that even mean?) and how much is bad luck?

the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into

The choices you make are heavily influenced by factors you lucked into, like intelligence, family, culture. And the choices you are presented with are even more influenced by your country of origin.

It's not just outliers. What do you do at 90th or 50th percentile of intelligence? Those two people can make the same choices, say majoring in CS, with very different outcomes.

How do you reward choices under those conditions? You could pay only for the results you like. But we pretty much already do that. What else is there?

This is like a just world fallacy episode 2: the world may not be fair but surely we can make it so.

I choose how wealth is distributed every time I make a purchase. As do you.

Except not quite.

The invisible forces at work here are in the nature of your “choices” and your agency to participate within that value system.

Few here may be able to participate in the distribution of wealth within the high end of the luxury car market via their purchases, and fewer still via their purchasing or selling of energy market entities.

Along this path, we can also be critical of the options available and the hegemonic / power forces at work that birthed them.

All in all, it is a questionable suggestion that buys into (no pun intended) a cascading wall of myth.

The only difference?

If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?

I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest.

But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larger economy is made up of ordinary people. They are poorly compensated not because their contribution doesn't matter, collectively, but because they are fungible. Is fungsbility a fair criterion for structuring an economy?

>You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth?

If I were to bet on it, I'd bet very heavily on him creating wealth under those circumstances. As measured by creating a system for survival. Obviously not as well as someone trained in such things (as implied by your dodge), but better than someone who lacked his intelligence, and more importantly, his drive.

Ordinary people are compensated ordinarily because their contributions to the economy are ordinary. That actually does seem quite fair to me. I appreciate the work cleaners do, but their jobs simply don't contribute to the economy as much as building a large company like Facebook does.

That's not to say everyone who is highly compensated contributes highly to society, we all know that isn't true. But that's also not really what we're discussing.

Maybe it only seems ordinary to you, because it doesn't interest you. Its upper-middle-class arrogance showing, that nobody's job is as important as jobs like mine. What makes cleaning 'ordinary'? Try firing your cleaner/garbage man/street sweeper for a month and see how that impacts you.

And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit? That's pretty circular reasoning. I'd argue that the esoteric jobs of building web gadgets are the fluff and foam of our economy, unimportant to real health and welfare, and way, way overcompensated.

>And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit?

I have no idea where that came from or what it means, so I can't respond to it.

I made a point of saying that I respect the importance of ordinary workers. I've spent most my life in ordinary jobs, your assumptions about me aside.

However, the fact remains that individually their contribution to the economy is much, much less than the individual contribution of someone who founds and directs the construction and growth of a large company.

Glad to hear about respecting 'ordinary' workers. Still, I suspect there's a difference between respect and understanding the importance of these workers.

If the pay of 'ordinary' jobs is to be set to some low minimum level, then the 'job making' or 'economy building' of the non-ordinary people will have no benefit for most folks. Its fine to brag about building wealth; but if its the highly-educated building wealth for themselves then who cares? But them of course.

The economy is not the plaything of those that have figured out the system. Its not there to make them wealthy, though I have no problem when that happens. As long as we remember the whole system is supposed to be for everybody.

There is a long chain of responsibility in an organization to allow anyone to function effectively at their job. Repeating what I wrote above, take away 'ordinary' tasks and the company grinds to a halt exactly as dead as if the CEO were removed. Maybe not; a company can go on for a year or so without a CEO on momentum; it stops dead if payroll stops processing, or heck if the lock on the front door breaks and nobody can get into the building.

I agree with you in general, but you are not winning any loyalties to your idea with this attitude. Shaming a person and accusing of snobbery is a bad way to drive your point across.

When I debate the social good aspect of entrepreneurship and tech entrepreneurs priorities, I try to appeal to the rationality of the self-interested agents. We, as a humanity, have two unambigous pathes in future. Either everything is really good or everything is equally bad. We are heading to near-utopia or to full-blown dystopia.

Tech entrepreneurs and investors hold the power to change the world faster than anyone else. More wealth inequality --> closer to the dystopia. It rational for anyone with power to influence the world and possible future to contribute to the decrease of wealth inequality.

I guess such approach to discussion would be more beneficial to your cause.

>> Tech entrepreneurs and investors hold the power to change the world faster than anyone else. More wealth inequality --> closer to the dystopia. It rational for anyone with power to influence the world and possible future to contribute to the decrease of wealth inequality.

Unless they think that their lives will be better by increasing inequality, particularly in their individual case (cf. Tragedy of the Commons). And that may well be true, as they would disproportionately hold power and capital. Is it better to be a rich man in a society slowly going to hell or a poor one in a society slowly on the rise?

It's a non-empathic viewpoint, but I can understand why some would consider it rational and self-interested.

Wealth hoarding is mostly a hyperprophied survival instinct. The rational person would optimize for happiness, not wealth. The connection between those is not linear, see: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/07/the-perfect-salary-fo...

Also helping other is a significant factor in emotional wellbeing.

I mostly blame the current snapshot of evolving social system, not the actors, even psychopathic ones.

IMHO, it has nothing to do with importance or impact of the work one does. It has to do with the supply and demand: Even if we assume the irrational that e.g. a cleaner's work is 100x more important than Zuckerberg's work, the fact that for every Zuckerberg we can find much more than 100 cleaners means that a Zuckerberg is much more important than a cleaner, not that cleaning is more important or less important that Zuckerberg's work. In fact, personally, the impact from absence of cleaning would be much bigger than the impact from absence of Facebook. But if I take the importance of cleaning and multiply it by the scarcity of cleaners I get a smaller product than multiplying the importance of Facebooks with the scarcity of Zuckerbergs.

I don't think there is a true scarcity of Zuckerberg's as every day I walk down the street and am amazed at the overwhelming mass of self important d-bags walking around....

All trolling and snark aside your comment is the antithesis of the point that many factors outside of the individual contribute to their success. If you believe that then the number of those individuals capable of similar success rises dramatically. Also those who clean and do "ordinary" jobs are people who are similarly shaped by many factors they don't control.

Also I am very certain that people would get by better without Facebook then they would with the lowly legions of those toiling away to keep the world merely "clean".

> Also I am very certain that people would get by better without Facebook then they would with the lowly legions of those toiling away to keep the world merely "clean".

I totally agree with that. That's why I weight it with the scarcity. Of course you disagree with the scarcity of Zuckerberg, but in my comment I assume that what defines a "Zuckerberg" includes the outside factors that the individual doesnt control.

"You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth?"

I doubt that ability grow the company and be the CEO correlates much with the ability to hunt and kill an animal. Especially if we are talking about hunting in isolation, CEO skill is mainly in dealing with people and making strategy. If you drop someone alone in the middle of woods, he needs to be strong, fast and know a lot about nature. Otherwise said, Zuckenberg would do as good as any other random man.

> If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?

The naively obvious answer is "smart", but given that what people have evolved to find attractive in general (before distortions from makeup, etc., designed to fool natural attraction) is somewhat tied to health and physical fitness, and ability to contribute in a survival situation is very much affected by that as well as smarts, then if those are the only two measures available, there's reason to at least seek some balance between then rather than purely favoring smarts.

I knew someone would likely make that response.

Fitness is related to, but not the same as, attractiveness.

Of course it's possible to imagine a scenario of puny or fat nerds vs gorgeous athletes, but that's adding in things that don't necessarily relate and it's pretty clearly avoiding the intent of the scenario.

> Fitness is related to, but not the same as, attractiveness.

Sure, and if you have free reign to choose on any traits you want, you'd probably not consider attractiveness directly, but instead consider a balance of general health, physical fitness, survival experience (and specific context if the expected survival situation was known in more detail), and general intelligence (though the latter wouldn't necessarily be very high on the list of priorities.)

If all you have is intelligence and attractiveness, though, given that attractiveness has a correlation with (even though it isn't identical to) important things other than general intelligence that the hypothetical has prevented you from considering directly, you'd be ill advised to neglect it in favor of intelligence alone.

In fact, the whole reason attractiveness evolved is is exactly about choosing who to be stuck in a long-term survival situation with (which is why it is linked to both general health and physical fitness.)

There are studies that claim attractiveness is also correlated with intelligence. (And others claim that it is not).

It is one of this science "just-so-stories", but the idea being that other attributes being equal more intelligence would allow you to more successfully mate with attractive people.

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