I was disappointed by the backlash against Squashed on this site. Partly it's because he writes a personal blog, doesn't go out of his way to promote himself, and so probably wasn't writing for the Hacker News crowd; partly because as a former Tumblr user, he was one of the bloggers in the "in" crowd that wasn't snooty or irritating, and he spent a lot of time crafting his ideas to display online.
Also, the phrase "Lodwickian UberMensch" is worth a hundred upvotes. I'm a fan of Jake Lodwick's work, met him once in NYC at a concert, but his attitude towards other people is at least somewhat off-putting.
No, it's not. Again: I've read Squashed for a long time. He goes back to the very beginning of Tumblr. Usually, he writes for himself and, perhaps, for a small core of readers who like his opinions. You need to understand that Tumblr's different from most blogging platforms in that it has a built-in community, so that the people who use it frequently feel a lot more freedom to express their opinions in a more personal way. Marco Arment, who's on Tumblr's staff, just wrote this week about how he never tries to write for news aggregators anymore.
So Squashed disagrees with the people who flamed out against him, and I'm certain he believes what he's writing, but don't see it as him trolling. Rather, it's him writing how he feels without thinking about who's going to read it. I'm certain he didn't expect Hacker News picking on him, and so didn't make an attempt to round out his writing and make his ideas balanced.
He has that right. Since when do bloggers have to write for any audience other than themselves?
He doesn't, really. If things got bad enough, he could disable comments and ignore us all.
I think we're a mature enough community, however, to learn not to get ourselves enraged over one man's personal blog, and to let him keep to his own circle. We can just not upvote the things he writes that we decide offend us.
It would be a shame if the shrinking world led to alienation and hatred rather than to communities selective enough not to start flamewars with all the other ones.
I think grandalf is right on this one. That last article was pretty dickish.
I hadn't actually expected a whole lot of people to read it. (No, I'm not doing anything to promote the site. Some of the ... less gracious than usual comments tipped me off that something was up, and Google Analytics suggested I look at ycombinator to figure out why the heck it had increased my monthly traffic by 900%.)
The big regret? I was reworking the layout. Because I suck at CSS, this takes a few days. Normally it's not a big deal. There may be forty or fifty non-Dashboard visitors. When traffic spikes at the same time as the layout is unprecedentedly ugly, that's something to be ashamed of. I'm surprised anybody even read the article. I would have been tempted to comment, "D00d, ur site is uglier than ur m0m. tl/dr."
There are other ways to express one's opinion besides a comment section on the blog post itself. Granted, he can choose to ignore those too, but it's harder. HN and e-mail are two examples of places feedback can go.
I was disappointed by the backlash against Squashed on this site.
Worse, it's astonishing to see how many people here haven't bothered to read his post on entitlement, the one that "angered techno-libertarians", before flaming him on HN.
A few of his arguements rest on the idea that "techno libertarians" all got rich from the tech bubble, but I know plenty of them getting rich right now sans bubble. Indeed, one of my most succesful friends got a job right out of college, and the offer came in august of 2008.
The author points out that many people do not have the luxury of enjoying computers. Well there are plenty of other careers that are high paying and intellectually stimulating (sales, actuary, contracting all come to mind). All of them require several years of practice and hard work before they result in a middle class income however.
This is pretty much what I didn't get: only a very small percentage of those critical of the original post would have "made their fortune", only some subset of them during a bubble, and a further subset because of the bubble. Attacking a tiny fraction of your audience that are easiest to criticise is convenient, but not particularly compelling.
What about the other 20-somethings that joined the criticism? The ramen-subsisting founders using a flat as home and office?
His argument is more durable than requiring a "bubble" (plus, people keep talking about a new bubble, but maybe thats over already?). Ask yourself, is it possible for everyone in the country to do what your friends did.
Unless they are farmers, the answer is basically "no". More generally, are your friends doing something which actually makes the world more wealthy? Manufacturing, construction, cleaning, and public transportation are good examples of non-zero-sum (and non-derivative) industries. If not, it would still be impossible to suggest that everyone could be like them.
Not everyone can be CEO of a major corporation (who would work in this companies?). Not everyone can be an investment banker (there is only so much investment money out there), or a salesman (you have to sell someone else's product to a customer). Simply put, not everyone can have a desk job, or even a well paying job in the modern economy, because these are necessarily a subset of the total economy.
By itself, thats okay. It has always been, and will always be the case. The problem arising is that we are encouraging the population as a whole to put themselves into great debt under the pretense that they will be part this well paying economy. On top of this employee creation force, we have senior people not retiring, so there are a lot of additional employees looking for jobs. Which would be okay, except that the economy is contracting a little, and there is fewer demand for the growing supply.
This is a large, complicated issue. Its a bit naive to say that people just have to work harder.
I think there are few people that get rich without working hard or being 'smart'... but it depends on your definition of 'smart.' There are plenty of people that have gotten rich by being clever, while not well educated.
[ This obviously excludes people that have obtained wealth as some sort of 'birthright' ]
Disagree. I have known many actuaries in my lifetime (one of my exes was one), and the last thing I would do is describe their job as intellectually stimulating. High paying though, oh God yes.
I have known several actuaries who graduated from college, got great, high-paying offers from major actuarial firms... and then promptly quit their jobs two years later. The amount of tedious boredom in that job drives many people right out of the field.
It's one of those fields that you get into because it's a stable, high-paying job that has a high barrier to entry (years of licensing, so random guy off the street can't replace you - like you (potentially) can with hackers), not one of those fields where you can expect to be challenged and excited all day.
Maybe I'm crazy but this seems like an argument for communism. Basically he's saying success is due to luck and that the playing field will never be equal when some people can be lucky and others can't. Take this quote…
"This can lead to some awkward philosophical conclusions. If you have succeeded by doing something relatively simple, you have to ask yourself why everybody else hasn't done the same thing. You could tell yourself that they simply value different things and thus chose their lives. You sacrificed and worked hard-and even if somebody else looks like they've worked hard without the same results, they must be secretly lazy."
He's basically putting forth two premises: (a) 2 people can work equally hard and get vastly different results and (b) that there's something inherently wrong with that. But if both those are true than there's really only one solution which is communism. That's the very definition of communism in fact. Government is the only entity that has enough power over people to make things fair so it should control all the resources because it will act fairly and distribute rewards evenly.
I don't mean to accuse him of holding a belief he doesn't hold but how else could the world create the environment he desires?
I didn't say communism was inherently bad. Admittedly I think it is. But I went out of my way not to make a value judgment so as to not cloud the point I was trying to make which is that the stated philosophy is communism. My intent was just to state the facts as I saw them and let others judge.
As for your other point there certainly is a wide swath between the two but if you want complete fairness than you have to go all the way to the Government side.
That depends on your definition of complete fairness. I see "fair" as including the opportunity for success; fairness becomes a matter of never letting somebody sink into a pit they can't rise from. That can be achieved without much of a socialist bent at all: All you need are nets.
Out of curiosity, why do you think communism is inherently bad? Do you take the angle of "Man is entitled to the fruits of his labor", or is there something else to it?
Because it's never, ever worked. There are a lot of ideas that seem smart from an academic perspective but which, when implemented, fail. In the case of Communism it only works if a whole society can manage to bury their natural human desire to achieve more than their neighbor and history has proven time and time again that burying that instinct is not possible and when you try you simply get lethargy.
Okay. I was thinking Communism more in the idea of "let's not let the market be entirely free," not Communism in the sense of "everybody is forced to be equal." I'd argue that a completely free market would be just as terrible.
Clearly there's a spectrum. I mean, the market we have now isn't completely free and I'm not one that has a problem with regulations. My only issue is the piece basically saying "I became 20 in a bad economy but others became 20 in a good economy so the Government should step in and fund me to the point that my experience is equal"
Some people are luckier than others and that stinks but I don't think the Government can fix that. But I have no problem with Government safety nets that stop people from falling completely down the rabbit hole either.
I didn't really think Squashed was suggesting he ought to get funding, I think he was stating that the system as it stands now, where hard work leads to nothing, is flawed. You can see the implied solution as "I need money," but from his older writings, I'd be more inclined to think it's "There's a problem with a system wherein happiness is so based on the economy, and where we're told we need a good job to be happy, so that our happiness is based on a fluctuating system." The problem isn't the lack of a job, in other words, so much as it's the emphasis on having certain jobs.
ALSO: Can we please stop downvoting based on who we agree and disagree with? I'm enjoying this conversation quite a lot and I hate seeing Tom and myself dipping into 0 and -1 while productive debate's going on.
However, at the moment, your only comment downvoted below 1 in this thread makes the claim "I was thinking Communism more in the idea of 'let's not let the market be entirely free'".
That's such an aggressive redefinition of Communism it borders on falsehood, so I understand the downvotes. There are many, many critiques of the free market and proposals for moderating market activity for the greater good. Very few of these deserve to be lumped under the heading 'Communism'.
The Communist critique of markets and capital/ownership is larger, and their program, in both theory and practice, different. 'Communism' means something, and that something is much more than the innocuous "let's not let the market be entirely free".
(For example, you could wholeheartededly agree "let's not let the market be entirely free" and still be shot as a counterrevolutionary by a dedicated Communist.)
I was referring much more to Tom's being downvoted. He was at a universal -1 for a bit, which frustrated me.
I kind of misuse terms a lot. I say Communism when I mean socialism, and vice versa. In reality, I'm just anti-extremism. (I once discussed with some friends forming a political party on the concept of "extremist moderatism", or the idea that the only thing bad is extremist worldviews.) So in my view, neither capitalism nor communism is a be-all end-all, and the real solution is murkier and in the middle.
Remember, the ideas of any age are that of its ruling class. To say that the goal of capital accumulation is the "natural" state of humanity, is to ignore each set of social relations imposed on the populace by the ruling class of each social epoch. In the Feudal period, it was the divinity of the monarch and the "natural" state of the peasantry being tied to the land, surrendering a tithe to the king and the clergy. Before that, it was "natural" to conquer and subjugate the enemy within a slave society like Rome.
Also, everything that was tried before was either smashed by state intervention backed by capitalist interest, e.g. the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973, or Franco during the Spanish civil, or was a Stalinist dictatorship.
All the evidence we have suggests that human history and prehistory is primarily concerned with two things: firstly, people making stuff, and secondly, people taking other people's stuff and optionally killing them. This is widely true for societies ranging from stone-age tribal groups, all the way up to the present day.
Of course many beliefs are created and imparted by society at large, but not all are. The belief that our planet is roughly a sphere is more accurate than the belief that it is flat, and the belief that the Earth orbits the sun is more accurate than the reverse. I'm fairly sure we've hit on something with the whole "People would rather be rich than poor," idea.
They'd rather be "rich than poor" because we have a society that says rich is awesome, poor is terrible.
I'd agree with you if you'd said "comfortable rather than stressed", but there's a difference between the two. Everybody can be comfortable at once. Not everybody can be rich.
Everybody can be comfortable at once. Not everybody can be rich.
That's a poor criterion for deciding whether or not something is an intrinsic human desire. Whether or not something can be universally achieved is orthogonal to the question.
I don't doubt that we have a society that says rich is awesome, poor is terrible, but here's the thing: when we say that "society says foo", what we mean is that a large percentage of individuals are saying foo. Lots of individuals say "rich is awesome, poor is terrible" because they actually believe that they prefer the one to the other, not because some external "society" (I place it in scare quotes because any society does not have an existence independent from individuals) forces or tricks or brainwashes them into it.
But you can't separate a person from the context of their society. We had millenia of human existence without any idea of riches, so obviously it's not an intrinsic desire. Perhaps it's intrinsic in the context of a society that has things such as rich and poor, but that's different.
(I'm finding it hard to track replies in this thread, so apologies if I stop my side of the discussion.)
For the majority of humanity's history, man lived by producing roughly enough subsistence to survive day to day. With the advent of agriculture and domestication of wild beasts, etc, man, for the first time ever, had the capability to produce a surplus of goods. From this society formed--as well as the oppression of man by another for the purposes for controlling said surplus. Due to the inherent need to innovate within capitalism, i.e. revolutionize the means of production for the purposes of besting the competition, we have over time, gradually built up the means to produce such a quantity and variety of goods unrivaled in all of human history.
We possess the material means to provide for the needs of all people across the world many, many times over. One simply needs to look at the fact that industrialized U.S. agricultural production is so efficient it can be run by an extremely small pool of workers compared to the rest of the working populace, and yet produce such a glut of goods, that many times, the surplus (the very thing capitalism is compelled to produce over and over again) is destroyed in order to uphold food prices via enforcing an artificial scarcity of goods, e.g. in milk production.
The issue is not about being simply wanting to rich or poor (no one wants to be poor), it's about seeing the system for what it is and what its productive capabilities could potentially be harnessed for.
Communism works fairly well - in small doses: i.e. for groups small enough for everybody to know everybody else. This allows for discipline of goldbrickers and avoidance of takeover by charismatics. See, for example, the Hutterites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite
Reminds me of Gladwell's little bit on Dunbar's Constant in The Tipping Point. He brought up GoreTex as a company that, by splitting its company into miniature groups of under 150, thrived despite nobody having job titles.
I'd like to see a nation try to work itself using Dunbar's Constant. A government based on the idea that people can all relate to one another in small groups would be radical.
I've often thought that a government based on proxies, given only to personal acquaintances, with a hierarchical structure where 12 proxies at one level would elect you to the next level, might work better than our present representation. (Then again, maybe the old Athenian idea of choosing legislatures as well as juries by lot might work better too).
Where 'Communism' has been most earnestly tried...
- there has been death and deprivation, which has only let up as societies turn back to more traditional organizing modes
- because of the clash between the high hopes and sad reality, those expressing preferences to live another way are often imprisoned, while under non-Communist regimes 'Communists' are free to write books, be professors, start communes and cooperative living/production units, etc.
Sure, there are many axes of the possibility space, at least theoretically.
But you don't find many, if any, societies in the Communism + freedom quadrant.
The other three quadrants have many examples. And those tyrannies that have become more free over time have usually needed a dose of capitalism as the first step (ending collective enterprises, especially farms, and trading with capitalist markets, for example).
True, but I can't think of a country that tried Communism in good faith. And in this country when people tried the system in a microcosm like a commune, it works. So maybe it doesn't scale or maybe it requires different roots than the founding of most communist countries.
Everywhere Communism has been tried, the perpetrators really believed in it, really wanted it to do better -- for its predictions to come true, and for capitalism to be swept away by something better.
Even if there was cyncism among those who grabbed power, they then elevated Communism's texts and ideals in all official communication, celebration, and education. So generations were given every chance to try "Communism in good faith".
But it still didn't work. It turned out more corrupt, more polluting, more poor, and even in many respects less egalitarian than capitalism.
To claim all those proud earnest efforts weren't "in good faith" is at best a form of the "no true scotsman" fallacy.
> So generations were given every chance to try "Communism in good faith".
They weren't stupid. They knew the party line was an obvious load of crap, a fig leaf over a ruthless power grab. They went through the motions only out of fear of the secret police (in itself an acknowledgment the rulers didn't expect any loyalty). In particular, Russian cynicism about propaganda became legendary.
You don't judge actual democracy by looking at totalitarian hellholes and their blatant lies about how "democratic" they are, do you?
How come every Communist regime comes so quickly and easily to the 'secret police' rule-by-fear?
Was every Communist movement that took power -- Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh -- dominated by ruthless power-grabbers with no allegiance to Communist ideas except as a cynical route to power from the beginning?
(If in fact these ideas are so useful to ruthless power-grabbers, and so hard to implement 'in good faith', might that alone not discredit them? Attractive, in theory; but when you try to build a popular movement around them, nastier people than ever wind up on top.)
Why, when cracks in the secret police's power finally emerge, do the people embrace property, markets, and profits rather than a chance to finally implement 'Communism in good faith'?
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in
its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
-- Tom Paine, Common Sense
Gov't is at best a necessary evil - communism is unmitigated evil.
Quoting a guy that lived over 200 years ago doesn't prove a point, though I like Paine quite a lot. Remember that he lived in a simpler, quieter society.
Government is necessary to avoid a lot of sorrow. It gives us regulated foods and highways and it stops a lot of greedy people from doing bad things, while in theory allowing the people who're rich based on merit and talent to thrive without punishment.
I think that government should be a choice on parts of the people - I'd like a few more anarchic societies in the world for people who don't want to deal with regulations and are fine with risking themselves for freedom - but civilization thrives under a good government.
Good gov't huh? That's the one where 2 wolves and a lamb vote for what's for dinner? Democracy is the ultimate expression of might makes right, the only justification of voting is that since the majority can beat up the minority the minority better go along from the start. Can anyone here point me to ANY rational reason anyone should go along with a gov't other than to avoid being assaulted or worse?
I kind of like the idea that my food's been inspected for poisons, my highways won't collapse on me, I won't be raped and killed when I go for a walk outside, and that companies don't have permission to turn into dictatorships. I like the last point a lot because I wasn't a fan of Internet Explorer and I'd have hated to have to use it. Petty reason to like antimonopoly practices, but hey, I'm free to be petty.
Even the stuff the government fucks up on are fundamentally good ideas that I hope one day get revised. I like the philosophy that I get a say in who gets elected, though I wish we had instant runoff voting and caps on campaign expenditures. I like the idea of having free education, though the school system is awful. I also like that I have a right to avoid the government in favor of private practices in most cases.
The problem is that gov't FORCES everything on everybody; markets allow each to choose what is important to them. A really good example of the conflict is the current health care debates - if you want to see both sides in close argument, look at the comments on Megan McArdle's blog at The Atlantic. Megan claims to be a libertarian, but she's not much of one, I follow her blog mainly because of the interesting conflict in the comments.
Also, I am serious about does anyone have any rational justification for gov't other than its ability to threaten.
The government doesn't inspect whether food is kosher but if a package of food has a kosher symbol on it I am fairly certain it is. Private organizations certify for kosherness and that seems to work pretty well. Why can't it work for food safety?
EDIT:
I would trust a private organization much more than the govt. in determining food safety because there can be competition amongst food safety certifiers and financial responsibility(I could sue them if food they said was safe, wasn't).
If food being kosher was a matter of sickness and health, I'd want to make sure there was a nationwide focus on it. Kosher is a small industry, and it's a religious industry, meaning that it's all relative anyway. If a Jewish man accidentally eats an unKosher meal, there's no harm to anything but his psyche, and chances are if he ate it by accident he wouldn't tell.
The police have absolutely no responsibility to protect you. Look it up. The chief of police of your town could know that a murdering rapist is coming over to your house this evening to murder rape you and the chief would not be responsible in a court. The private individual is alone responsible for protection of his or her life and property.
I didn't read it as an argument for any particular environment or world view. I read it as an argument that certain people online need to pull their head out of their ass when they're proclaiming why others would be as successful as them if they only tried.
Only if the original author believes in complete inaction. I didn't take the author's point to be that life's unfair but that's cool because it's ok that way. I took the author's point to be life's unfair and it should be changed.
But there is no 'call to arms' for change. The only thing that he seems to be advocating is that 'techno libertarians' need to realize that "do what I did and you'll be rich like me" is a fairytale. It's a fairytale even if a libertarian's utopian wet-dream where to come true. Everyone in a society can't be highly successful, but most of the people he's referring to don't seem to think about their calls of "just grab life by the ball, and you'll be ok" beyond their own anecdotal evidence.
But the only way to remedy his concern is the opposite extreme. Because no matter how hard the Mexican immigrant works he's never going to achieve anywhere near the same amount as the guy whose parents sent him to Harvard.
Again, keep in mind this guy started out by saying "I'm 20, I went to all the right schools and I didn't get a great job so life is unfair". So he's not arguing for lifting those who are profoundly disadvantaged out of poverty (which I have no problem with). He's arguing for fairness among the upper classes meaning everyone should be equal. I have no problem with making sure the kids of the Mexican immigrant can go to college but this guy's arguing for equal treatment for all and that's just not something the Government should be trying to do (because it will profoundly backfire)
There are many types of “fair” and equal. One thing that makes our system unfair is the failure to communicate what happens, not just how the system actually works. (You must spend lot's of time and money to find all the available tax breaks.)
With my version of “fair” you should rework the federal tax code to be as simple as possible. Everyone get’s 700$ / month from the government, free health care and pays ~35% in taxes with zero tax breaks of any kind and no minimum wage of any kind. Donate to charity or retirement and you get no help from the government. You are still protected from starvation, but there is no unemployment insurance, social security or medicare.
The real advantage is the simple system is easy to understand and does what most “social” programs (SS, Medicare, Medicaid etc) try and do. There are also just 2 numbers to debate, the tax rate and the government subsidy.
PS: A true tax code would need to be longer than that, but the goal would be something that could be printed legibly on a single sheet of paper and understood by most people with an 8th grade education.
With my version of “fair” you should rework the federal tax code to be as simple as possible. (snipped)
And you've hit the crux of the problem. Everyone has their own version of "fair". There's a whole spectrum, even if we just restrict it to taxation:
(Note well that I don't claim most of these justifications are reasonable, only that a case could be made)
- Poor people have proven that they don't effectively use their money; rich people have proven that they do. So we shouldn't tax the rich at all, because an optimal allocation of resources would dictate that they should be concentrated where they are most effectively used.
- The poor tend to use more government money than the rich, so the poor should pay higher taxes in dollar amount than the rich do.
- Everyone has the right to consume roughly the same amount of government resources, regardless of what they actually use, so "fair" means to charge everyone for their share, i.e. everyone should be taxed the same dollar amount.
- Poor people shouldn't pay as much dollar-wise as the rich, because that's a bit cruel, but they do consume more "free money" from the government, so should pay proportionally more than the rich; to be "fair" we should tax poor people a percentage that is a bit more than the rich.
- "Fair" can only mean that we take a given percentage of everyone's income, and that this percentage is the same for everybody.
- "Fair" should mean that everybody hurts the same, and it hurts a lot more to lose 10% of $1000 than it hurts to lose 10% of $1 million. So we should have an income dependent rate that goes slightly up the more money you make.
- The last entry is right, but income doesn't effectively estimate how much a tax hurts, because the real pain you feel from tax is that relative to your total wealth. Rich people tend to have far more non-income wealth than poor people, so since we can't really measure wealth, we need to tax their income even more aggressively.
- Fuck Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and the Google guys, they have more money than God anyways, let's just tax the living crap out of the top 5% progressively (i.e. a billionaire still pays more tax than a millionaire) and leave everyone else alone. There's still a small incentive to make more money, and most companies don't grow based on the personal greed of their most wealthy members anyhow, so our economy will still do just fine, thank you.
Unsurprisingly, people's beliefs about fair taxation tend to correlate fairly strongly to where they lie along the income curve. But the point is, there are a lot of different ways to evaluate "fair" in this context, and "flat" is not necessarily the best answer.
FWIW, if you look at tax rate relative to total wealth, the curve is fairly flat, and it turns out that the middle class actually makes out the best - both the poor and the rich get just about equally screwed.
Which is precisely what the tax burden distribution should look like in a democracy, since the majority of people reside in the middle of the Bell curve and apply downward pressure on the wealth-adjusted tax rate there. The only surprise is that the highest 0.01% doesn't get hit harder than they do, since so much of the wealth is there; that's an indication that our democracy is not person-weighted, but at least partially dollar-weighted.
My point is complexity is often used to hide people being fucked over. An example of this is the US tax code.
If you include SS, Medicare, and Tax breaks a single person in the middle class is totally fucked over by the tax code. Warren buffet has even said his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. But, by hiding specific truths you can make it look like the tax code says just about anything you want.
PS: I think most people would look at my suggestion and think, they would get a worse deal, which says more about how little they understand the tax code than it does about what's actually happening. Lot's of people would be worse off, but plenty of people who think they would be worse off, would actually come out ahead.
Edit: Back to his original essays, devoting a lot of time and money to an ivy league education is risky. So, is starting a company. The average ROI might be good, but the worse case is horrible. Ignoring outliers is disingenuous, because not all people find themselves on the happy path to heath and wealth. And it's hard to separate drive and intelligence from luck.
* I have no problem with making sure the kids of the Mexican immigrant can go to college but this guy's arguing for equal treatment for all and that's just not something the Government should be trying to do (because it will profoundly backfire)*
As a matter of fact that's exactly what the government should do. Equal treatment at the hands of the government wherever it interferes is precisely the point of a democracy.
I'm really just being a weenie, though; I understand perfectly well that where you wrote "equal treatment" you really meant "equal results", and I agree with that point.
However, I don't think that was really the main thrust of his argument, anyways. What I got was "If you've succeeded, that's great, but stop being so damn smug about it and don't you dare try to pretend that anybody could do the same if they just worked hard enough - things could have just as easily gone the other way, and the same efforts could have left you struggling just like me."
Which has some validity, in my opinion. Hard work is merely a necessary prerequisite to financial success, it does not guarantee it (and as time goes on, things like college play less of a role since everyone does them, and there are fewer straightforward ways to shift the odds in your favor).
The very rich tend to mistakenly assume that chance played a negligible role in their ascent, which is almost never the case. Bill Gates probably never would have been poor, but absent a few lucky coincidences he could easily have ended up as a senior programmer making a middle-of-the-road wage instead of one of the world's richest men...
Communism? I certainly didn't read it that way. Have you considered the idea of a basic income - it's been mentioned before here, most recently http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=756880
Via the inspiration for that thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income: "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully support a basic income include Herbert Simon[24], Friedrich Hayek[25][26], James Meade, Robert Solow[27], and Milton Friedman[28]."
Hardly communists, or even Marxists. It seems to me that the original poster is not arguing for government enforced fairness (and communism isn't any better at delivering that than capitalism IMO), but for mitigation of the worst inequities. Over in Europe colege education is heavily subsidized by the state, on the understanding that the state will collect a rather greater share of subsequent income in the form of taxes. This is by no means perfect, and indeed European college graduates are not assured of a job or promising opportunities on graduating either, far from it; but at least they graduate without enormous debts.
On the flip side, America provides far better business opportunities for entrepreneurs, not least the simple fact of a single market of 300 million with a single dominant language and a national media landscape, which is not to be sneezed at. Indeed, in 50-100 years, when China or India have caught up with the developed world in terms of GDP per capita, the potential entrepreneurial gains from being able to market to a Billion people at once will make US business fortunes look modest.
I think the point being made here is not that communism or any other system is better than capitalism, but that diligence and loyalty are socially exalted but economic rewards flow more towards opportunists and rent-seekers.
> Indeed, in 50-100 years, when China or India have caught up with the developed world in terms of GDP per capita, the potential entrepreneurial gains from being able to market to a Billion people at once will make US business fortunes look modest.
I don't know about India (but I'm sure it's a similar situation), but in China you have vastly different cultural groups across different regions. It's a large country. And I'm talking a larger cultural divide than "East Coast" vs "West Coast" in the USA.
I doubt that you'd be able to having a marketing campaign that included all 1 billion people... It might be viewed by close to a billion people, but you'd have to be targeting a smaller demographic.
I think the point being made here is not that communism or any other system is better than capitalism, but that diligence and loyalty are socially exalted but economic rewards flow more towards opportunists and rent-seekers.
I suspect the reason that technology and libertarianism go hand and hand are very different from those presented here. People who are technological are generally more engaged by machines than people, and have less of an appreciation of social norms. They also are more likely to appreciate the Austrian school of economics which is very mathematical in nature, and be less susceptible to emotional appeals in favor of certain policies (i.e. "oh how the poor kittens are starving, let's spend 1 billion on animal shelters this year").
Many libertarians latch on to austrian economics because they already agree with the conclusions austrian economists come to, and it's easy for lay people to understand. Conversely, it takes quite a bit more effort to understand a neoclassical dynamic partial equilibrium model.
I perhaps should have explained a bit more clearly. The Austrian school relies on mathematical proof, as opposed to experimentation and the resulting analysis with statistics. Yes, statistics is math, but hardly anyone who finds logical rigor psychologically satisfying gets the same enjoyment out of a p-value of .082.
They also happen to lack any sense of balance. Most of their arguments can (and should be, if we accept them at all) be taken to the extreme, coming up with conclusions such as 100% tax rates for the poor and 0% for the rich and similar ridiculousness. Of course this is not what the arguers are pushing for, but since they are arguing that things should be changed in a certain direction away from what they are now, they usually don't bother to even consider the counter-balancing factors that would let things settle in to an equilibrium.
As the other poster mentioned, the Austrians explicitly reject statistical or modeling methods, and usually argue with words, dressing them up as if they are "pure logic". The problem with arguing with words is that it is far easier to decide your conclusion and then grope towards a justification in words than it is to start with some assumptions and figure out what the conclusion should be.
When I read the Austrians, I never get the same feeling of dispassionate honest investigation that I do when I read any other science (or even soft "science", like econ). I just feel like they've always already decided the answer before they started working on the problem, and that rubs me seriously wrong.
Not that I think most other economists are much better, to be fair. And the Austrians may be right in some of their claims. But I get the distinct feeling that they are so committed to their conclusions that even if they found evidence against them they would pay it no attention.
"Nor do they have any monopoly on a distorted view of reality." Libertarians' views of reality are almost always less distorted than the downright wacko views held by most Democrats and Republicans, socialists and conservatives.
Nor are all, or even most, libertarians particularly successful, much less the money worshipping conservatives the socialistic "social responsibility" whiners like this essay like to criticize.
Libertarians' views of reality are almost always less distorted than the downright wacko views held by most Democrats and Republicans, socialists and conservatives.
There are two kinds of people in the world, libertarians (whether or not they call themselves that) and evil scumbags who want to control other people. It makes no difference what excuses you make for your evil; you all still have to twist reality to justify it to each other and to yourselves.
There are many kinds of people in the world. One similar dichotomy I could draw is between people who appreciate the nuance and complexity of being alive and having to make millions of decisions as you grow up, and people who think it's possible to draw a line and declare some people as evil and other people as good based on a single part of their existence.
People are extremely multidimensional; but the fundamental political division is willingness or unwillingness to coerce others, that is to use force to make others do what you want them to, which is THE fundamental feature of gov't.
I'll agree with you to some degree, but in some cases force is needed. See my response to you elsewhere regarding regulations, which I think is an important part of society.
A true libertarian believes that the only thing the government should do is protect our country from others protect the rights of the people.
Thats it. Not a single thing more.
The number of people who really believe that is vanishingly small.
I know, I was a party member for a long time. I did a lot more than just post on blogs and read reason.com.
So if that 1-3% of the population were able to have its way, who is really the evil tyrant?
Remember, international waters is only a few dozens of miles from our coast. People say that communism has never succeeded - but neither has libertarianism. You can start today.
The difference is GOV'T IS COERCION, that is the whole purpose and justification of gov't. Libertarians object to being coerced and to coercing others. Can anyone give me ANY rational reason to do as gov't orders other than to avoid being assaulted or worse? (This is an adequate reason, I obey the law, but I don't think it is a good or rational reason).
If the libertarians were able to take power tomorrow and started eliminated government programs, you don't think ANYONE would feel like they were being forced to do something they didn't want to do?
It's only coercion when you're forced to do something YOU don't like, but when it's something you like being forced on everyone else that is OK?
There is no possible route to eliminate coercion as long as people within the society disagree.
So others will obey the government when it asks them not to infringe on your freedom. It's not like the government is immune to change. If you don't like it, get involved. If you're in the minority, that's why the United States Federal Government wasn't originally supposed to be very big. States rights are supposed to exist so that you have the option of going elsewhere and gelling with likeminded individuals who will have their local government enforce your will.
What is his point? Either you grow rich in a bubble by sheer luck, or being a worker drone is your only option?
Seems to me he misses a few grey areas in between. Also, if you are not a Computer whizkid, there are other areas where you can succeed. Some people even got rich with a multitrack. (Not that getting rich is the only meaningful measurement for success).
What is the more cynical attitude: to assume people are miserable because they are sheep and just too scared to try anything, or that they are miserable because they are hopeless?
It looks like somebody should ask Santa for a thicker skin next Christmas.
The advice I read here was of the tone: "Hey, we were once where you are now. Take it from us: It gets better, but your current mindset is set for failure."
The author should spend a day picking through the youth-directed angsty tunes and movies of the early 90s. He's not the first to go through crap like this, even in recent history.
Suck it up and take on a McJob to pay the bills until things recover. The experience in social survival will do you a load of good the next time things get rough.
So you see a problem, which is, "The way that modern society works puts a lot of people in soul-killing menial jobs and wastes their childhood", and your solution is "It's okay, other people have gone through it, stop complaining"? That's both cruel and obtuse.
Hardly! I'm saying "we're not strangers to what you're experiencing, but your conclusions are incorrect".
You can believe whatever you want, but belief alone won't make it true. Accept the environment you've found yourself in and then do what you can to adapt to and correct it. That's what I've done.
Bitching about it without action is going to do squat.
Many, many generations have come before you with exactly the same idea, and all struck out (most notably the "boomers", who went a long way towards giving us the environment we're facing now). It sounds as though you want someone else to fix the problems you're facing rather than pick up your tools and fix them yourself.
Learn about the environment you've found yourself in and then try to fix it to the extent you are able. If _everyone_ did that in their own corner of the world, we'd get the result we wanted.
I faced a load of crappy jobs when I graduated in the early 90s and found myself far, far behind where I thought I'd be. Today, I'm running the kind of company I wanted to work for when I graduated.
I've worked at fixing my corner of the world and have succeeded to some small extent -- what have you done?
I don't agree with the people who're looking for some huge revolution in society. I prefer the guys who're quietly ducking out and finding some place where they can be happy. That's the subject of a whole different diatribe that doesn't belong here.
However, I sympathize with the thought that society as a whole does a lot of harm, and I don't like the people who get mad at the people who complain about it. That holds even if I disagree with some of the ideas of the original complainers.
My actual stated plan was to worry about my world, which is to say the people and places that matter to me. If people stopped trying to treat the world as a single breathing mass, we'd have less conflation and we'd all be a lot happier.
Don't act like you're on some sacred mission I'm not. You're on Hacker News. I know why I'm here - I get a thrill out of debating people. You're here for no better reason. The difference is that you seem to think that your argument is above mine.
> If _everyone_ did that in their own corner of the world, we'd get the result we wanted.
That's awfully naive. Systemic problems can't be fixed piece-by-piece, and it ignores the fact that there are people actively working against these kind of corrections.
Surprisingly well written article. I'm going to check the rest of his blog; let's hope it's all this good.
The article is supremely smug (because he doesn't seem to consider for a second that his point of view may be incorrect), and he shamelessly dismisses the counter arguments as delusional Ayn Rand fanaticism. However, it made the rant all the more compelling, so I don't mind.
The problem is that he made no real effort to acknowledge any of the counter arguments. Starts strong. Digresses in the middle. Ends abruptly.
He constructs a narrative of a hn user who does not feel "entitled" because he got what he wants. This hn user must be in constant anxiety because he is more successful than he deserves, so he rationalizes his position by explaining why others do not deserve as much success.
The author is saying that libertarians are the product of luck, moderate intelligence, and a bad understanding of sociology that limits their perspective to introspection alone.
The author's observation is based on a product of his bad luck, moderate intelligence, and a very selective view of the arguments advanced by libertarians.
Maybe I'm too much of a geek, or not enough of one, but I got a kick out of the "a dozen or so comments" turning into "71 comments" a second or two after page load.
Odd. I generally only pull in a few comments a day—and most of those are fairly constructive—even when they are critical. Something was wrong.
half of the comments on that post are just stuff like "great post. thank you.". To the other half he replies with snark. Somehow this blog post is the opposite of the ideal HN discussion.
1) Some young graduate is bitter because he didn't fall into an awesome job right out of college.
2) His blog post about that was somehow worth someone linking it here, and people getting pissy about it.
3) He's followed it up.
4) That follow-up is somehow worth a huge debate here between people who can't meaningfully discuss libertarianism and people who can't meaningfully discuss libertarianism.
Seriously?
"Graduate unhappy about not being given job" is not news. Complaints about the "young generation" are not news. Talk about how the "old system" that handed out jobs has "broken down" is not news.
These are stories that are older than many of the people posting here.
Maybe a discussion of why anyone in 2009 goes through life with 1950s-vintage ideas of how the world works is in order, but that seems under-examined.
The truly limiting aspect of this article is the author's assumption that a person can be typed as believing anything philosophically simply because of what he does or what he has or has not achieved.
This incorrectly assumes that one's belief in something being true cannot vary from a particular life perspective.
Can a student be a libertarian even though he has yet to accomplish much in life? Can a wealthy mogul believe in communism even though he is positively dripping in filthy lucre? Not according to the author's (implied) premise and yet we know that in both cases the answer is yes. It is the premise that is false.
Thus, the author basically answers his critics by slipping in, sub silento, an ad hominem attack to the effect that only an unthinking person who happens to have gotten quick financial success in life can possibly be a libertarian. The unexpressed corollary to this is that no one could otherwise possibly be so stupid as to believe in a libertarian philosophy.
I am not defending any particular philosophy in saying this; just noting the below-the-belt mode of argumentation. I think this is why it can rub people wrong even if points made along the way might otherwise be interesting to consider.
106 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 237 ms ] thread+5 to your nerdosity
Also, the phrase "Lodwickian UberMensch" is worth a hundred upvotes. I'm a fan of Jake Lodwick's work, met him once in NYC at a concert, but his attitude towards other people is at least somewhat off-putting.
So Squashed disagrees with the people who flamed out against him, and I'm certain he believes what he's writing, but don't see it as him trolling. Rather, it's him writing how he feels without thinking about who's going to read it. I'm certain he didn't expect Hacker News picking on him, and so didn't make an attempt to round out his writing and make his ideas balanced.
He has that right. Since when do bloggers have to write for any audience other than themselves?
I think we're a mature enough community, however, to learn not to get ourselves enraged over one man's personal blog, and to let him keep to his own circle. We can just not upvote the things he writes that we decide offend us.
It would be a shame if the shrinking world led to alienation and hatred rather than to communities selective enough not to start flamewars with all the other ones.
I hadn't actually expected a whole lot of people to read it. (No, I'm not doing anything to promote the site. Some of the ... less gracious than usual comments tipped me off that something was up, and Google Analytics suggested I look at ycombinator to figure out why the heck it had increased my monthly traffic by 900%.)
The big regret? I was reworking the layout. Because I suck at CSS, this takes a few days. Normally it's not a big deal. There may be forty or fifty non-Dashboard visitors. When traffic spikes at the same time as the layout is unprecedentedly ugly, that's something to be ashamed of. I'm surprised anybody even read the article. I would have been tempted to comment, "D00d, ur site is uglier than ur m0m. tl/dr."
Worse, it's astonishing to see how many people here haven't bothered to read his post on entitlement, the one that "angered techno-libertarians", before flaming him on HN.
The author points out that many people do not have the luxury of enjoying computers. Well there are plenty of other careers that are high paying and intellectually stimulating (sales, actuary, contracting all come to mind). All of them require several years of practice and hard work before they result in a middle class income however.
What about the other 20-somethings that joined the criticism? The ramen-subsisting founders using a flat as home and office?
Unless they are farmers, the answer is basically "no". More generally, are your friends doing something which actually makes the world more wealthy? Manufacturing, construction, cleaning, and public transportation are good examples of non-zero-sum (and non-derivative) industries. If not, it would still be impossible to suggest that everyone could be like them.
Not everyone can be CEO of a major corporation (who would work in this companies?). Not everyone can be an investment banker (there is only so much investment money out there), or a salesman (you have to sell someone else's product to a customer). Simply put, not everyone can have a desk job, or even a well paying job in the modern economy, because these are necessarily a subset of the total economy.
By itself, thats okay. It has always been, and will always be the case. The problem arising is that we are encouraging the population as a whole to put themselves into great debt under the pretense that they will be part this well paying economy. On top of this employee creation force, we have senior people not retiring, so there are a lot of additional employees looking for jobs. Which would be okay, except that the economy is contracting a little, and there is fewer demand for the growing supply.
This is a large, complicated issue. Its a bit naive to say that people just have to work harder.
E.g. People get rich without being smart or working hard. They also don't get rich by being smart and working hard.
Ergo Rand-ian assumptions are debatable and their conclusions in serious doubt.
[ This obviously excludes people that have obtained wealth as some sort of 'birthright' ]
Disagree. I have known many actuaries in my lifetime (one of my exes was one), and the last thing I would do is describe their job as intellectually stimulating. High paying though, oh God yes.
I have known several actuaries who graduated from college, got great, high-paying offers from major actuarial firms... and then promptly quit their jobs two years later. The amount of tedious boredom in that job drives many people right out of the field.
It's one of those fields that you get into because it's a stable, high-paying job that has a high barrier to entry (years of licensing, so random guy off the street can't replace you - like you (potentially) can with hackers), not one of those fields where you can expect to be challenged and excited all day.
"This can lead to some awkward philosophical conclusions. If you have succeeded by doing something relatively simple, you have to ask yourself why everybody else hasn't done the same thing. You could tell yourself that they simply value different things and thus chose their lives. You sacrificed and worked hard-and even if somebody else looks like they've worked hard without the same results, they must be secretly lazy."
He's basically putting forth two premises: (a) 2 people can work equally hard and get vastly different results and (b) that there's something inherently wrong with that. But if both those are true than there's really only one solution which is communism. That's the very definition of communism in fact. Government is the only entity that has enough power over people to make things fair so it should control all the resources because it will act fairly and distribute rewards evenly.
I don't mean to accuse him of holding a belief he doesn't hold but how else could the world create the environment he desires?
* There's a wide swatch of gray between the market and the government, and it's acceptable that society should fall between the two.
As for your other point there certainly is a wide swath between the two but if you want complete fairness than you have to go all the way to the Government side.
Out of curiosity, why do you think communism is inherently bad? Do you take the angle of "Man is entitled to the fruits of his labor", or is there something else to it?
Some people are luckier than others and that stinks but I don't think the Government can fix that. But I have no problem with Government safety nets that stop people from falling completely down the rabbit hole either.
ALSO: Can we please stop downvoting based on who we agree and disagree with? I'm enjoying this conversation quite a lot and I hate seeing Tom and myself dipping into 0 and -1 while productive debate's going on.
However, at the moment, your only comment downvoted below 1 in this thread makes the claim "I was thinking Communism more in the idea of 'let's not let the market be entirely free'".
That's such an aggressive redefinition of Communism it borders on falsehood, so I understand the downvotes. There are many, many critiques of the free market and proposals for moderating market activity for the greater good. Very few of these deserve to be lumped under the heading 'Communism'.
The Communist critique of markets and capital/ownership is larger, and their program, in both theory and practice, different. 'Communism' means something, and that something is much more than the innocuous "let's not let the market be entirely free".
(For example, you could wholeheartededly agree "let's not let the market be entirely free" and still be shot as a counterrevolutionary by a dedicated Communist.)
I kind of misuse terms a lot. I say Communism when I mean socialism, and vice versa. In reality, I'm just anti-extremism. (I once discussed with some friends forming a political party on the concept of "extremist moderatism", or the idea that the only thing bad is extremist worldviews.) So in my view, neither capitalism nor communism is a be-all end-all, and the real solution is murkier and in the middle.
Also, everything that was tried before was either smashed by state intervention backed by capitalist interest, e.g. the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973, or Franco during the Spanish civil, or was a Stalinist dictatorship.
Of course many beliefs are created and imparted by society at large, but not all are. The belief that our planet is roughly a sphere is more accurate than the belief that it is flat, and the belief that the Earth orbits the sun is more accurate than the reverse. I'm fairly sure we've hit on something with the whole "People would rather be rich than poor," idea.
I'd agree with you if you'd said "comfortable rather than stressed", but there's a difference between the two. Everybody can be comfortable at once. Not everybody can be rich.
That's a poor criterion for deciding whether or not something is an intrinsic human desire. Whether or not something can be universally achieved is orthogonal to the question.
I don't doubt that we have a society that says rich is awesome, poor is terrible, but here's the thing: when we say that "society says foo", what we mean is that a large percentage of individuals are saying foo. Lots of individuals say "rich is awesome, poor is terrible" because they actually believe that they prefer the one to the other, not because some external "society" (I place it in scare quotes because any society does not have an existence independent from individuals) forces or tricks or brainwashes them into it.
(I'm finding it hard to track replies in this thread, so apologies if I stop my side of the discussion.)
We possess the material means to provide for the needs of all people across the world many, many times over. One simply needs to look at the fact that industrialized U.S. agricultural production is so efficient it can be run by an extremely small pool of workers compared to the rest of the working populace, and yet produce such a glut of goods, that many times, the surplus (the very thing capitalism is compelled to produce over and over again) is destroyed in order to uphold food prices via enforcing an artificial scarcity of goods, e.g. in milk production.
The issue is not about being simply wanting to rich or poor (no one wants to be poor), it's about seeing the system for what it is and what its productive capabilities could potentially be harnessed for.
I'd like to see a nation try to work itself using Dunbar's Constant. A government based on the idea that people can all relate to one another in small groups would be radical.
- there has been death and deprivation, which has only let up as societies turn back to more traditional organizing modes
- because of the clash between the high hopes and sad reality, those expressing preferences to live another way are often imprisoned, while under non-Communist regimes 'Communists' are free to write books, be professors, start communes and cooperative living/production units, etc.
But you don't find many, if any, societies in the Communism + freedom quadrant.
The other three quadrants have many examples. And those tyrannies that have become more free over time have usually needed a dose of capitalism as the first step (ending collective enterprises, especially farms, and trading with capitalist markets, for example).
Even if there was cyncism among those who grabbed power, they then elevated Communism's texts and ideals in all official communication, celebration, and education. So generations were given every chance to try "Communism in good faith".
But it still didn't work. It turned out more corrupt, more polluting, more poor, and even in many respects less egalitarian than capitalism.
To claim all those proud earnest efforts weren't "in good faith" is at best a form of the "no true scotsman" fallacy.
They weren't stupid. They knew the party line was an obvious load of crap, a fig leaf over a ruthless power grab. They went through the motions only out of fear of the secret police (in itself an acknowledgment the rulers didn't expect any loyalty). In particular, Russian cynicism about propaganda became legendary.
You don't judge actual democracy by looking at totalitarian hellholes and their blatant lies about how "democratic" they are, do you?
Was every Communist movement that took power -- Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh -- dominated by ruthless power-grabbers with no allegiance to Communist ideas except as a cynical route to power from the beginning?
(If in fact these ideas are so useful to ruthless power-grabbers, and so hard to implement 'in good faith', might that alone not discredit them? Attractive, in theory; but when you try to build a popular movement around them, nastier people than ever wind up on top.)
Why, when cracks in the secret police's power finally emerge, do the people embrace property, markets, and profits rather than a chance to finally implement 'Communism in good faith'?
-- Tom Paine, Common Sense
Gov't is at best a necessary evil - communism is unmitigated evil.
Government is necessary to avoid a lot of sorrow. It gives us regulated foods and highways and it stops a lot of greedy people from doing bad things, while in theory allowing the people who're rich based on merit and talent to thrive without punishment.
I think that government should be a choice on parts of the people - I'd like a few more anarchic societies in the world for people who don't want to deal with regulations and are fine with risking themselves for freedom - but civilization thrives under a good government.
Even the stuff the government fucks up on are fundamentally good ideas that I hope one day get revised. I like the philosophy that I get a say in who gets elected, though I wish we had instant runoff voting and caps on campaign expenditures. I like the idea of having free education, though the school system is awful. I also like that I have a right to avoid the government in favor of private practices in most cases.
Also, I am serious about does anyone have any rational justification for gov't other than its ability to threaten.
EDIT: I would trust a private organization much more than the govt. in determining food safety because there can be competition amongst food safety certifiers and financial responsibility(I could sue them if food they said was safe, wasn't).
His point-- and it's one I think I agree with-- is that majority decision making really only differs from tyranny only numerically.
The alternative, I suppose, would be voluntary governments, and decion making by consensus.
No. Just because one extreme position is wrong it does not follow that the opposite extreme position is right.
Again, keep in mind this guy started out by saying "I'm 20, I went to all the right schools and I didn't get a great job so life is unfair". So he's not arguing for lifting those who are profoundly disadvantaged out of poverty (which I have no problem with). He's arguing for fairness among the upper classes meaning everyone should be equal. I have no problem with making sure the kids of the Mexican immigrant can go to college but this guy's arguing for equal treatment for all and that's just not something the Government should be trying to do (because it will profoundly backfire)
With my version of “fair” you should rework the federal tax code to be as simple as possible. Everyone get’s 700$ / month from the government, free health care and pays ~35% in taxes with zero tax breaks of any kind and no minimum wage of any kind. Donate to charity or retirement and you get no help from the government. You are still protected from starvation, but there is no unemployment insurance, social security or medicare.
The real advantage is the simple system is easy to understand and does what most “social” programs (SS, Medicare, Medicaid etc) try and do. There are also just 2 numbers to debate, the tax rate and the government subsidy.
PS: A true tax code would need to be longer than that, but the goal would be something that could be printed legibly on a single sheet of paper and understood by most people with an 8th grade education.
And you've hit the crux of the problem. Everyone has their own version of "fair". There's a whole spectrum, even if we just restrict it to taxation:
(Note well that I don't claim most of these justifications are reasonable, only that a case could be made)
- Poor people have proven that they don't effectively use their money; rich people have proven that they do. So we shouldn't tax the rich at all, because an optimal allocation of resources would dictate that they should be concentrated where they are most effectively used.
- The poor tend to use more government money than the rich, so the poor should pay higher taxes in dollar amount than the rich do.
- Everyone has the right to consume roughly the same amount of government resources, regardless of what they actually use, so "fair" means to charge everyone for their share, i.e. everyone should be taxed the same dollar amount.
- Poor people shouldn't pay as much dollar-wise as the rich, because that's a bit cruel, but they do consume more "free money" from the government, so should pay proportionally more than the rich; to be "fair" we should tax poor people a percentage that is a bit more than the rich.
- "Fair" can only mean that we take a given percentage of everyone's income, and that this percentage is the same for everybody.
- "Fair" should mean that everybody hurts the same, and it hurts a lot more to lose 10% of $1000 than it hurts to lose 10% of $1 million. So we should have an income dependent rate that goes slightly up the more money you make.
- The last entry is right, but income doesn't effectively estimate how much a tax hurts, because the real pain you feel from tax is that relative to your total wealth. Rich people tend to have far more non-income wealth than poor people, so since we can't really measure wealth, we need to tax their income even more aggressively.
- Fuck Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and the Google guys, they have more money than God anyways, let's just tax the living crap out of the top 5% progressively (i.e. a billionaire still pays more tax than a millionaire) and leave everyone else alone. There's still a small incentive to make more money, and most companies don't grow based on the personal greed of their most wealthy members anyhow, so our economy will still do just fine, thank you.
Unsurprisingly, people's beliefs about fair taxation tend to correlate fairly strongly to where they lie along the income curve. But the point is, there are a lot of different ways to evaluate "fair" in this context, and "flat" is not necessarily the best answer.
FWIW, if you look at tax rate relative to total wealth, the curve is fairly flat, and it turns out that the middle class actually makes out the best - both the poor and the rich get just about equally screwed.
Which is precisely what the tax burden distribution should look like in a democracy, since the majority of people reside in the middle of the Bell curve and apply downward pressure on the wealth-adjusted tax rate there. The only surprise is that the highest 0.01% doesn't get hit harder than they do, since so much of the wealth is there; that's an indication that our democracy is not person-weighted, but at least partially dollar-weighted.
If you include SS, Medicare, and Tax breaks a single person in the middle class is totally fucked over by the tax code. Warren buffet has even said his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. But, by hiding specific truths you can make it look like the tax code says just about anything you want.
PS: I think most people would look at my suggestion and think, they would get a worse deal, which says more about how little they understand the tax code than it does about what's actually happening. Lot's of people would be worse off, but plenty of people who think they would be worse off, would actually come out ahead.
Edit: Back to his original essays, devoting a lot of time and money to an ivy league education is risky. So, is starting a company. The average ROI might be good, but the worse case is horrible. Ignoring outliers is disingenuous, because not all people find themselves on the happy path to heath and wealth. And it's hard to separate drive and intelligence from luck.
As a matter of fact that's exactly what the government should do. Equal treatment at the hands of the government wherever it interferes is precisely the point of a democracy.
I'm really just being a weenie, though; I understand perfectly well that where you wrote "equal treatment" you really meant "equal results", and I agree with that point.
However, I don't think that was really the main thrust of his argument, anyways. What I got was "If you've succeeded, that's great, but stop being so damn smug about it and don't you dare try to pretend that anybody could do the same if they just worked hard enough - things could have just as easily gone the other way, and the same efforts could have left you struggling just like me."
Which has some validity, in my opinion. Hard work is merely a necessary prerequisite to financial success, it does not guarantee it (and as time goes on, things like college play less of a role since everyone does them, and there are fewer straightforward ways to shift the odds in your favor).
The very rich tend to mistakenly assume that chance played a negligible role in their ascent, which is almost never the case. Bill Gates probably never would have been poor, but absent a few lucky coincidences he could easily have ended up as a senior programmer making a middle-of-the-road wage instead of one of the world's richest men...
Via the inspiration for that thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income: "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully support a basic income include Herbert Simon[24], Friedrich Hayek[25][26], James Meade, Robert Solow[27], and Milton Friedman[28]."
Hardly communists, or even Marxists. It seems to me that the original poster is not arguing for government enforced fairness (and communism isn't any better at delivering that than capitalism IMO), but for mitigation of the worst inequities. Over in Europe colege education is heavily subsidized by the state, on the understanding that the state will collect a rather greater share of subsequent income in the form of taxes. This is by no means perfect, and indeed European college graduates are not assured of a job or promising opportunities on graduating either, far from it; but at least they graduate without enormous debts.
On the flip side, America provides far better business opportunities for entrepreneurs, not least the simple fact of a single market of 300 million with a single dominant language and a national media landscape, which is not to be sneezed at. Indeed, in 50-100 years, when China or India have caught up with the developed world in terms of GDP per capita, the potential entrepreneurial gains from being able to market to a Billion people at once will make US business fortunes look modest.
I think the point being made here is not that communism or any other system is better than capitalism, but that diligence and loyalty are socially exalted but economic rewards flow more towards opportunists and rent-seekers.
I don't know about India (but I'm sure it's a similar situation), but in China you have vastly different cultural groups across different regions. It's a large country. And I'm talking a larger cultural divide than "East Coast" vs "West Coast" in the USA.
I doubt that you'd be able to having a marketing campaign that included all 1 billion people... It might be viewed by close to a billion people, but you'd have to be targeting a smaller demographic.
Quote of the day.
Many libertarians latch on to austrian economics because they already agree with the conclusions austrian economists come to, and it's easy for lay people to understand. Conversely, it takes quite a bit more effort to understand a neoclassical dynamic partial equilibrium model.
As the other poster mentioned, the Austrians explicitly reject statistical or modeling methods, and usually argue with words, dressing them up as if they are "pure logic". The problem with arguing with words is that it is far easier to decide your conclusion and then grope towards a justification in words than it is to start with some assumptions and figure out what the conclusion should be.
When I read the Austrians, I never get the same feeling of dispassionate honest investigation that I do when I read any other science (or even soft "science", like econ). I just feel like they've always already decided the answer before they started working on the problem, and that rubs me seriously wrong.
Not that I think most other economists are much better, to be fair. And the Austrians may be right in some of their claims. But I get the distinct feeling that they are so committed to their conclusions that even if they found evidence against them they would pay it no attention.
Nor are all, or even most, libertarians particularly successful, much less the money worshipping conservatives the socialistic "social responsibility" whiners like this essay like to criticize.
From the perspective of a libertarian, perhaps.
Thats it. Not a single thing more.
The number of people who really believe that is vanishingly small.
I know, I was a party member for a long time. I did a lot more than just post on blogs and read reason.com.
So if that 1-3% of the population were able to have its way, who is really the evil tyrant?
Remember, international waters is only a few dozens of miles from our coast. People say that communism has never succeeded - but neither has libertarianism. You can start today.
It's only coercion when you're forced to do something YOU don't like, but when it's something you like being forced on everyone else that is OK?
There is no possible route to eliminate coercion as long as people within the society disagree.
Seems to me he misses a few grey areas in between. Also, if you are not a Computer whizkid, there are other areas where you can succeed. Some people even got rich with a multitrack. (Not that getting rich is the only meaningful measurement for success).
What is the more cynical attitude: to assume people are miserable because they are sheep and just too scared to try anything, or that they are miserable because they are hopeless?
The advice I read here was of the tone: "Hey, we were once where you are now. Take it from us: It gets better, but your current mindset is set for failure."
The author should spend a day picking through the youth-directed angsty tunes and movies of the early 90s. He's not the first to go through crap like this, even in recent history.
Suck it up and take on a McJob to pay the bills until things recover. The experience in social survival will do you a load of good the next time things get rough.
You can believe whatever you want, but belief alone won't make it true. Accept the environment you've found yourself in and then do what you can to adapt to and correct it. That's what I've done.
Bitching about it without action is going to do squat.
Many, many generations have come before you with exactly the same idea, and all struck out (most notably the "boomers", who went a long way towards giving us the environment we're facing now). It sounds as though you want someone else to fix the problems you're facing rather than pick up your tools and fix them yourself.
Learn about the environment you've found yourself in and then try to fix it to the extent you are able. If _everyone_ did that in their own corner of the world, we'd get the result we wanted.
I faced a load of crappy jobs when I graduated in the early 90s and found myself far, far behind where I thought I'd be. Today, I'm running the kind of company I wanted to work for when I graduated.
I've worked at fixing my corner of the world and have succeeded to some small extent -- what have you done?
However, I sympathize with the thought that society as a whole does a lot of harm, and I don't like the people who get mad at the people who complain about it. That holds even if I disagree with some of the ideas of the original complainers.
Now, what are you going to do about it out here in the Real World?
I don't care much about the Real World. I'll just keep things stable and happy where I am, and avoid the rat race as much as possible.
Kindly stay out of the way whilst the rest of us continue trying to improve things.
Don't act like you're on some sacred mission I'm not. You're on Hacker News. I know why I'm here - I get a thrill out of debating people. You're here for no better reason. The difference is that you seem to think that your argument is above mine.
That's awfully naive. Systemic problems can't be fixed piece-by-piece, and it ignores the fact that there are people actively working against these kind of corrections.
The article is supremely smug (because he doesn't seem to consider for a second that his point of view may be incorrect), and he shamelessly dismisses the counter arguments as delusional Ayn Rand fanaticism. However, it made the rant all the more compelling, so I don't mind.
The problem is that he made no real effort to acknowledge any of the counter arguments. Starts strong. Digresses in the middle. Ends abruptly.
I thought it was one of the worst articles ever linked from HN, both in its annoying tone, its irrelevance, and is lack of actual points.
Also: techno libertarians on the internet == unintentionally hilarious.
EDIT: this comment score is a pretty decent sign I'm doing something right. :)
He constructs a narrative of a hn user who does not feel "entitled" because he got what he wants. This hn user must be in constant anxiety because he is more successful than he deserves, so he rationalizes his position by explaining why others do not deserve as much success.
The phrases "entitled", "deserve" and "dumb luck" are much too overloaded. (PG essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html)
The author's observation is based on a product of his bad luck, moderate intelligence, and a very selective view of the arguments advanced by libertarians.
half of the comments on that post are just stuff like "great post. thank you.". To the other half he replies with snark. Somehow this blog post is the opposite of the ideal HN discussion.
1) Some young graduate is bitter because he didn't fall into an awesome job right out of college.
2) His blog post about that was somehow worth someone linking it here, and people getting pissy about it.
3) He's followed it up.
4) That follow-up is somehow worth a huge debate here between people who can't meaningfully discuss libertarianism and people who can't meaningfully discuss libertarianism.
Seriously?
"Graduate unhappy about not being given job" is not news. Complaints about the "young generation" are not news. Talk about how the "old system" that handed out jobs has "broken down" is not news.
These are stories that are older than many of the people posting here.
Maybe a discussion of why anyone in 2009 goes through life with 1950s-vintage ideas of how the world works is in order, but that seems under-examined.
This incorrectly assumes that one's belief in something being true cannot vary from a particular life perspective.
Can a student be a libertarian even though he has yet to accomplish much in life? Can a wealthy mogul believe in communism even though he is positively dripping in filthy lucre? Not according to the author's (implied) premise and yet we know that in both cases the answer is yes. It is the premise that is false.
Thus, the author basically answers his critics by slipping in, sub silento, an ad hominem attack to the effect that only an unthinking person who happens to have gotten quick financial success in life can possibly be a libertarian. The unexpressed corollary to this is that no one could otherwise possibly be so stupid as to believe in a libertarian philosophy.
I am not defending any particular philosophy in saying this; just noting the below-the-belt mode of argumentation. I think this is why it can rub people wrong even if points made along the way might otherwise be interesting to consider.