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Comment by imaginenore | Hacker News Reader

I just don't get all the complaints.

Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?

If, let's say, tomorrow they invent an AI that can write great code, putting me out of business - I will say, well, time to switch to something that pays. And there are still TONs of jobs that pay - electricians, plumbers, carpenters, construction equipment operators, elevator repairmen, illustrators, real estate brokers - they all make good money. For now at least.

Why would I even waste my time as a waiter? That time can be spent learning a skill that's in demand, not something literally anybody can do.

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Because neither your landlord nor your supermarket proprietor is going to wait around while you learn the skills to become employable in some other field. You don't just decide to take up plumbing and bootstrap yourself from fixing leaky buckets to running your own plumbing company. As well as the skills, you need a pile of equipment, a vehicle, you probably need to be licensed in some fashion, you need to be bonded or insured before people will do business with you, and you need to spend a good bit of time networking.

You can of course bootstrap yourself into a lot of jobs, I've done it in more than one field. but it can take quite a while to break even, and it's not like there isn't competition. I was perticularly perplexed by your mention of illustrators - for sure some illustrators can make a lot of money, but I'm pretty sure that like every other branch of the arts, the average illustrator starting out is beset with requrests to work for free or on spec on the grounds that 'this will be great for your portfolio!'

I have savings and my credit history is nearly perfect. I'm pretty sure I can take out a loan and start one of the above businesses.

It's important to have other skills in life as a backup plan. That, and because it's interesting :)

I did wedding photography for fun, so I can tell you for certain - nobody who does it professionally bills less than $2K per wedding (which is 6-8 hours of shooting plus around 20 hours of photo editing). It's mostly $3-6K. If they want a professional looking album, it's another 5-10 hours of laying it out and ordering, and you can bill them another $500+ on top of the album cost. Of course, you need a portfolio, and you need skills, but I billed for my second wedding shoot - the first one was free for a friend.

How long will it take me to start a full blown wedding business? I'd say I will land my first one within two-three weeks. I will probably not have many clients at the beginning. In 6 months I will have more than I can handle. It's true of every single good wedding photographer - they are booked months in advance.

>If, let's say, tomorrow they invent an AI that can write great code, putting me out of business - I will say, well, time to switch to something that pays.

This is an absolutely absurd limiting case to take. "An AI that can write great code" can rewrite itself and "go all Singularity" on us. If that happens, there will not be any damn jobs.

>Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?

While there is any such thing as a job, yes, the social contract dictates that in exchange for forcing people to work to eat, with no access to the commons and all the Earth enclosed as private property, we give people a damn job to live off. Hell, basic morality demands it.

> Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?

This is a funny mindset. Since when were you entitled to claim large swaths of this planet as belonging to an arbitrary group of people, and subsequently feel entitled to this land's resources and bounty and the rights to dictate how it would be reaped and exploited in a very arbitrary manner as defined by the current so called "modern society"?

You have the cart and the horse backwards. Humans are primates, and we fight for our right to live. If a group of people is impeding that right unreasonably, they will face the consequences.

Don't be naive, and don't take this snapshot of the present era as an axiomatic law of the universe.

Nature is a cruel mistress.

> Since when were you entitled to claim large swaths of this planet as belonging to an arbitrary group of people, and subsequently feel entitled to this land's resources and bounty and the rights to dictate how it would be reaped and exploited in a very arbitrary manner as defined by the current so called "modern society"?

And where did I claim that?

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