People being able to exercise their right to freely contract and control their own private property is sickening?
You'd prefer people being thrown in prison for refusing to surrender their private property rights, or for engaging in a voluntary economic interaction that some other party created a prohibition against?
Please help me understand your preference for authoritarian violence against peaceful people.
We've banned this account for egregious ideological flamewar and repeated incivility. Indeed, you've been using HN for almost nothing else. That's a serious abuse which destroys the culture we're hoping to build—thoughtful discussion—and stokes the flames the rest of us are working hard to damp down.
It's not a matter of the politics you espouse, much as it doesn't matter what brand of matches arsonists use. The patterns of flamewar are invariant across ideological flavor.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow HN's rules in the future.
>You'd prefer people being thrown in prison for refusing to surrender their private property rights
Yes, I'd prefer people be thrown in prison for refusing to feed the starving, rather than people starving to death.
I think property rights are valuable in-as-far as they improve overall utility, but insisting on enforcing them to the point where it could cause people serious harm is clearly beyond that point.
We can argue about the extents of property rights, but suggesting there be no limits is arguing for legalised economic murder.
EDIT: Just to note that I edited this quite extensively after posting.
>Yes, I'd prefer people be thrown in prison for refusing to feed the starving, rather than them starving to death.
So I guess you won't complain when some self-righteous modern-day Robin Hood engages in armed robbery against you to feed children in an orphanage in Africa. And if you resist? Well, the consequences fall on you. Who are you to deny others who are in need your income.
That actions that are unconscionable by any normal moral standard suddenly become socially acceptable to endorse when done through the political process shows how detached political ideology has become from humanity/morality. The political ideology you endorse is sociopathic and narcissistic to the extreme.
>So I guess you won't complain when some self-righteous modern-day Robin Hood engages in armed robbery against you to feed children in an orphanage in Africa.
An ad-hoc process controlled by an individual? Of course I'd complain.
A world-spanning democratic process? Well, it's hard to know if I would truly be willing to give up the standard of living that I'm used to, but in principle I would happy to do so if it would lift the entire world out of relative poverty.
>That actions that are unconscionable by any normal moral standard suddenly become socially acceptable to endorse when done through the political process shows how detached political ideology has become from humanity/morality.
Actions on behalf of a democratic system are different to actions of an individual, because they have the consent of a majority of the governed.
How do you intend that property rights be enforced? Who decides who owns what, and what gives them the right to make that decision? Would it be acceptable for an individual who disagrees (i.e. doesn't consent) to take action on their own to reallocate property as they see fit?
>An ad-hoc process controlled by an individual? Of course I'd complain.
Morally there's no difference. You just want the armed robbery to be done in a more organized and deliberative process. That doesn't change the moral quality of threatening you with violence to deprive you of your property, when you have not committed any offence to warrant such a violation of your rights.
>Actions on behalf of a democratic system are different to actions of an individual, because they have the consent of a majority of the governed.
Violating people's rights with the "consent of the majority" is just two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner. The justification is just an ideological cover for violating others rights.
>How do you intend that property rights be enforced? Who decides who owns what, and what gives them the right to make that decision?
Property rights would ideally be enforced by the government, with common law, which is based on protecting people's human rights (including the right to not be robbed to provide for the poor), determining who owns what.
>Would it be acceptable for an individual who disagrees (i.e. doesn't consent) to take action on their own to reallocate property as they see fit?
I don't know, because there are many factors to consider. If the judgment is unjust, but resisting it with force leads to far more violence against the innocent, then it could wrong to resist in such a manner. The best course of action in my opinion is to strongly argue for what one believes is justice as long as the freedom of speech exists.
>Property rights would ideally be enforced by the government, with common law, which is based on protecting people's human rights ..., determining who owns what.
And how exactly do they determine that? What happens when people disagree about ownership? What makes the government's decisions more valid than the individuals'?
>If the judgment is unjust, but resisting it with force leads to far more violence against the innocent, then it could wrong to resist in such a manner.
So it's okay to ignore property rights if enforcing them would cause harm?
>The best course of action in my opinion is to strongly argue for what one believes is justice as long as the freedom of speech exists.
And what will this achieve? What mechanism is there for government to recognise and rectify its mistake?
>is just two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
As opposed to two wolves agreeing that they own the grass, and enforcing that until the sheep dies. Power imbalances will always enable abuse, but democracy at least ensures that the power imbalance benefits more people than it harms.
Computers and horses don't have property rights or the means to exercise them. All of this automation is augmenting humans because we do. We've gone from 122 million people owning smartphones in 2007 to 2.5 billion people owning them at the beginning of 2017 for example.
The first neathenderals to figure out how to use tools didn't have property rights, but the tools still augmented them. We are not so different from them, and faced with an overwhelming opposing power, (tech + extreme wealth) we don't have much of a chance, either.
Neanderthals faced a different species of humans whose culture they were not capable of integrating into. Humanity right now forms one unified global culture through which ideas and technology freely flow. The rising tide of technology is lifting all boats (massive wage growth globally).
Moreover, it's not clear that your premise is accurate. Neanderthals constitute 3 percent of Eurasian human genes, meaning that their genes were evolutionarily successful (3% * 6 billion > 100% * 100,000), and this is ignoring the success of their close kin, with whom they already shared >99% genes.
We are about to face a few individuals with technology will hold massive power over everyone else. Given human nature, I would guess they'd primarily will be concerned with fighting among each other, and would care very little about harming the masses, if we got in between them and something they wanted. How a "unified global culture" is going to fix that, I haven't any idea. (And you believe were in a unified global culture, really? From North Korea to Sweden, really?)
Your second point is baffling to me. Why not include mice, they have 97.5% of our genes, as being successful? Why not all mammals? Oh, except horses, of course, because you said in a previous comment we are different from them. If you can call neathenderals successful, then I don't know what you are actually arguing for.
>We are about to face a few individuals with technology will hold massive power over everyone else.
There are plenty of counterindications to that. For instance, many forms of technology are becoming increasingly widely adopted, at a rapid pace. I gave the adoption of smartphones as one example.
>Why not include mice, they have 97.5% of our genes, as being successful? Why not all mammals? Oh, except horses, of course, because you said in a previous comment we are different from them.
I would say the success of human beings is by some metrics a success for mice, mammals etc as well..
Technology adoption != power. Everyone using a cell phone which tracks their position, communication, and behavior, and then feeds them propaganda from a central server is not increasing their ability to fight back.
>I would say the success of human beings is by some metrics a success for mice, mammals etc as well..
But, again, as you stated previously, not horses? Seriously, you are moving the goalposts all over the place.
The proliferation of smartphones doesn't lead to everyone getting "propaganda from a central server". A smartphone is a personal computing device that enables far more peer-to-peer communication and interactive engagement with the world than the previous mass-media paradigm of the pre-internet age (where a small number of broadcast networks, newspapers and radio stations controlled the minds of the vast majority of the population through passive one-way communication).
I agree that the loss of privacy is a huge concern, but like I said, there are positive trends as well that you are simply hand-waving away.
>But, again, as you stated previously, not horses?
Horses as well!
> Seriously, you are moving the goalposts all over the place.
I directly addressed your argument and then I also made an additional argument that your premise is not necessarily true. That's not defined as moving the goalposts.
> I directly addressed your argument and then I also made an additional argument that your premise is not necessarily true. That's not defined as moving the goalposts.
You've stated or implied:
1. Property rights is the reason that technology is augmenting humans
2. Unified global culture is the reason that technology is augmenting humans
3. Having a genetic legacy is evidence my "premise is not necessarily true"
You are definitely moving the goal posts by #1 and #2.
Also, you've failed to address:
1. Why Neanderthals were augmented despite not having property rights (#1, above)
2. What my premise has to do with genetic legacy. From what I gather, you assume that as long as the people alive today share genetic material with other species, either alive or dead, my premise is inaccurate. Why?
3. What your premise actually is. Are you talking about genetically legacy, or something else? Is all that you are saying is that those alive tomorrow will at least share some DNA from those already dead? Not much of a shocker, is it?
You are being, seemingly intentionally, unclear about many things, as well as bringing up several different threads of thought at once, muddying the conversation.
>But as things stand now, the owners of the machines get richer, and the displaced workers get significantly poorer.
No they don't. We've had 200 years of massive automation fueled job destruction, and wages and the demand for labour are massively greater now than 200 years ago.
The last 20 years in particular have overseen the most rapid wage growth in human history.
The US isn't the world. The US has many traits that are peculiar to it, and not universal to economies that are becoming increasingly automated. The world has seen more wage growth over the last 20 years than any other period in history:
Well, but doesn't that mean that you already have a counter-example? In the US it IS the case that rich is getting richer and the rest aren't really benefiting too much from all this automation.
The world is certainly doing better, but I also have to wonder how much of this is thanks to automation, and how much thanks to the fall of colonialism over the past century.
> No they don't. We've had 200 years of massive automation fueled job destruction, and wages and the demand for labour are massively greater now than 200 years ago.
This is different. In the past, technology has been a multiplier for the productivity of workers. The confluence of robotics and AI will mean the eventual evaporation of low-skill and/or laborious jobs as they are completely replaced by automated agents.
Unless we somehow go through a revolution in education in one generation, start augmenting humans, or place greater value and importance on artistic/creative endeavors, there simply won't be many things that humans are better/more cost-effective at than machines. Certainly not enough to make up for the displacement of jobs.
For example, there are ~3.5 million truck drivers in the US currently. Add those to the number of Lyft, Uber, taxi, etc. drivers. In less than 10 years, those jobs will most likely be completely gone except for bespoke, upscale professional drivers as a luxury. These people do not have a unique skill set they can apply to something else. Remember, low-hanging fruit jobs like working at fast food restaurants and jobs involving manual labor are also gone. That's not even mentioning jobs like customer service via phone or online chat, air traffic controllers, etc. which will be gone.
> The last 20 years in particular have overseen the most rapid wage growth in human history.
Forcibly redistributing income from low resource generators to high resource generators creates an incentive for people with fewer resources to have more children than they are capable of supporting. This dynamic will in the long run lead to more people that produce fewer resources.
Currently government is redistributing income upward by economic prohibitions (regulatory barriers):
Annual spending growth on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):
>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%
>Healthcare: 5.7%
>Welfare: 4.1%
Annual economic growth over the time frame:
>2.7%
The only thing it has to show for giving people more "free money" to spend is a higher trade deficit, stagnant wage growth, and, I would argue, an explosion in the amount of single parenthood:
But hey, since 40 years of social democracy has failed, let's keep doubling down and giving people more "free" money.
The end result of this bidirectional forcible redistribution is the productive middle class being destroyed, and two classes becoming increasingly significant: a small upper class controlling a growing share of national output, and a large unproductive underclass that is dependent on the taxes that upper class pays, constituting an increasingly large portion of the population.
That argument (Malthusian) goes back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. But since pretty much every technologist, scientist and engineer currently working can trace their lineage in less than 4 generations back to the working class, I think I'll go with greater and better distributed wealth and education solving more problems than it creates.
The fundamental issue addressed by positive incomes is simply that money serves two processes in economies that are at complete odds with each other, 1) a store of value and 2) the fluid that drives economic activity. The more money that is held in the fewer hands, the less well it is able to fulfil the second and far more important purpose. In the limit, all the money is held by very few people, and shortly after that, those people find themselves at the hands of a very angry mob.
The Malthusian argument has never been tested for an extended period in a situation where resource usage has been decoupled from resource generation.
From the brief experiment we've had with massive forcible income redistribution (social democracy), we've seen the following:
* slow down in wage growth and improvements in life expectancy
* slow down in productivity growth
* explosion in the rate of single parenthood (perfectly in line with economic theory on how availability of resources affects child rearing choices)
But hey since 40 years of social democracy has failed so utterly, clearly we should keep blaming the free market and doubling down on social democracy.
> * explosion in the rate of single parenthood (perfectly in line with economic theory on how availability of resources affects child rearing choices)
This has more to do with the evolution of freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Any economic theory rooted in rational decision making is incomplete at best. We could lower this rate by going back in time when marriage was treated like a contract with the intent of producing viable offspring.
> * slow down in improvements in life expectancy
You mention that you're against any regulation. Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, making it by far the leading cause of death from cancer and on its own the second leading cause of death. This is nearly one in five deaths. I shouldn't have to bring up the behavior of the major tobacco companies in the past and how life expectancy would be now without government regulation.
Also, if you're going to blame this on social democracies and not that we may be reaching what the limits of human lifespan are in the anthropocene era, I don't know what to say.
What I can say is that we will likely see an uptick in human lifespan due to CRISPR related technologies (discovered at a public, government funded university with research grants provided by public and private sources).
Free market ideologues make the same fatal mistake that economists did when creating decision theory. They eschew psychology and replace it with the mythical rational, utility maximizing individual. Also, humans are horrible at pricing things and rarely take externalities into account. For example, is the cost of submerging pacific islands and displacing the inhabitants taken into account when doing things that release greenhouse gases? It's like a cult or religion that thinks they uniquely have the solution for all the world's ills.
> But hey since 40 years of social democracy has failed so utterly,
There is more to life than simply money. I'm not the biggest fan of social democracies, but I am thankful that I have things like the right to vote after Jim Crow was shut down. I am thankful my cousin was finally able to come out of the closet and marry the person he loves. But I guess since I can't put a value on that, social progress is irrelevant =P
I'm not sure why you think the extraordinary increase in world wide prosperity, general living conditions, health, and access to information that the last 40 years has ushered in is a "failed experiment in social democracy".
And if there's an explosion in single parenthood due to woman having more choice, because of these benefits - well maybe their partners should think about that a little.
> Currently government is redistributing income upward by economic prohibitions (regulatory barriers)
Forgive me for the double post, but part of a sibling comment of mine is especially relevant here:
> I'm regularly floored by people's ability to talk about network effects, economies of scale, information asymmetries, moats, winner-takes-all games, and mergers/acquisitions with one breath -- all of which are non-regulatory market forces that suppress competition and innovation -- and then with the next breath assert that deregulation is the most straightforward way to spur innovation and competition.
I agree that eliminating rents should be a (if not the) primary goal of government, but I don't agree that eliminating regulation is synonymous.
Why is that contradictory? It only seems contradictory if you expect government regulations to reliably (i.e. on net) decrease market inefficiencies. That is certain a plausible argument, but it needs to be made rather than just assumed.
All regulations, except on natural resources like land, should be eliminated in my opinion, as they are forceful interventions against people exercising their legitimate right to freely contract and utilise their own private property. In industries where network effects emerge, the government should fund open-source protocols that can compete with privately owned options. For example, applications built on a distributed consensus public blockchain (e.g. Ethereum) could be competitive with many existing centralized services.
>All regulations, except on natural resources like land, should be eliminated in my opinion, as they are forceful interventions against people exercising their legitimate right to freely contract and utilise their own private property.
That's a sickening utopian vision, but luckily we live in the real world.
A valid contract requires consideration. It also requires an understanding, by both parties, of the terms of the contract so, no you couldn't _force_ someone into _slavery_ if they _inadvertently_ blah blah blah. I'd say none of those words make sense in context of a valid contract.
> But hey, since 40 years of social democracy has failed, let's keep doubling down and giving people more "free" money.
... you mean the countries with the highest quality-of-life measures? The Scandanavian nations, Canada, Australia, NZ, all of which have vibrant economies, high average wages, and strong middle classes?
The US with their pathological fear of their own government is not what I'd use as a particularly characteristic example of social democracy.
They don't have "vibrant economies". They have strong economies, that long ago stopped being "vibrant" (by vibrant, I mean fast-developing).
Europe and Canada have seen stagnant wage and economic growth since adopting social democracy. What are you basing your claim that these policies are working on? I strongly advise you to stop assuming that what you're told by the media and echo chambers on the internet is correct, and actually do research on these issues, by looking at statistics.
Social democracy has not worked in Scandinavia. The author of Scandinavian Unexceptionalism explains how it has harmed Sweden:
"From 1870 until 1970, Sweden was a free market success story. Sweden had the highest growth rate in the industrialized world. .. [After taxes were raised in the late 60s and 70s] Sweden stagnated":
Sweden was the 3rd wealthiest country in the world in 1968. After it created a massive welfare state in the 1970s and 80s, its growth stagnated, and by 1991, it was 17th highest income country in the world.
• Scandinavia is often cited as having high life expectancy and good health outcomes in areas such as infant mortality. Again, this predates the expansion of the welfare state. In 1960, Norway had the highest life expectancy in the OECD, followed by Sweden, Iceland and Denmark in third, fourth and fifth positions. By 2005, the gap in life expectancy between Scandinavian countries and both the UK and the US had shrunk considerably. Iceland, with a moderately sized welfare sector, has over time outpaced the four major Scandinavian countries in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality.
• Scandinavia’s more equal societies also developed well before the welfare states expanded. Income inequality reduced dramatically during the last three decades of the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, most of the shift towards greater equality happened before the introduction of a large public sector and high taxes.
If you want a more equal society, you need a more free market. It is regulatory prohibitions (anti-free-market policy) on economic activity that are contributing to growing income disparity:
"Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it":
>The US with their pathological fear of their own government is not what I'd use as a particularly characteristic example of social democracy.
By every broad-based objective measure, the scale of forcible income redistribution has massively increased in relative and absolute terms in the US. The raw statistics show that the US has by every objective measure moved drastically in the direction of social democracy over the last 40 years. The same applies to every other major Western economy.
Nice, you take a word I introduced to the conversation, explicitly redefined it in a way I wasn't using it, and then proceed to demand I prove your new definition. Why should I bother, if you're just going to change the way I was using a word and then tell me I'm sheeple?
And since you like statistics so much, population growth, a foundational element in economic growth, also stagnated in Sweden starting in the '80s. If the population stagnates, then of course you expect growth to stagnate. So not only are you missing the point and creating a strawman, you're also being hypocritical about your own patronising demands on 'looking at the data'. Likewise this crazy expectation that human lifespans just linearly expand with improved circumstances - but what would you expect when you're citing data from a source whose raison d'etre is specifically promoting the free market? Hardly a neutral source.
But I will leave you with this: economic growth isn't everything. That's the point of quality-of-life measures. People have a high quality of life in Sweden. Whereas China has recently had a rapidly-growing economy, and life sucks there. People escape it when they can. The gradient of the growth chart doesn't tell you much about freedom of expression or the happiness of citizens.
>Why should I bother, if you're just going to change the way I was using a word and then tell me I'm sheeple?
It doesn't really matter how you define it. What matters is that they have not improved much from the position they were at when they adopted social democracy, and the reason is because their rate of economic growth has stagnated.
The way to measure the success of a policy is to see how much a country has improved from the position it was at when it adopted the policy relative to other countries.
>And since you like statistics so much, population growth,
Gee why would anyone base their views on large-scale phenomena on statistical evidence!? Why don't I just base my ideas on what's culturally popular and which notions give me warming feelings!?
>If the population stagnates, then of course you expect growth to stagnate.
You're taking an amateur approach to this, in missing all sorts of facts to arrive at your predetermined conclusion. The fact is that per capita GDP growth has slowed, not just GDP growth. Moreover, wage growth has slowed, and wages are a per-capita measure.
>Likewise this crazy expectation that human lifespans just linearly expand with improved circumstances
There's no indication that it's a "crazy expectation". The point I was making is that there is no evidence that social democracy has actually made anything better in the countries where it has been adopted. The trends in place before the adoption of social democracy were superior to the trends that came into effect after its adoption. So there is no objective evidence to support your ideological inclinations.
>but what would you expect when you're citing data from a source whose raison d'etre is specifically promoting the free market?
There's absolutely no evidence that the source's raison d'etre is to promote the free market. It's entirely possible that they want to further public welfare, and have concluded, based on empirical evidence, that the free market is the best way to do that.
>But I will leave you with this: economic growth isn't everything. That's the point of quality-of-life measures. People have a high quality of life in Sweden. Whereas China has recently had a rapidly-growing economy, and life sucks there.
More bullshit logic indicative of an amateur approach to economics and society.
China is still extremely poor relative to the West. But people in China are FAR better off now than they were 30 years ago, and that's primarily down to the massive economic development the country has experienced. Wages growing by a factor of 4-5X is hugely important to quality of life.
> Gee why would anyone base their views on large-scale phenomena on statistical evidence!? Why don't I just base my ideas on what's culturally popular and which notions give me warming feelings!?
'number of humans' is a statistical measure, not a huggy feeling, you dolt. You are the living definition of selection bias. And for proof:
> There's absolutely no evidence that the source's raison d'etre is to promote the free market.
It was once widely agreed upon that slaves had no rights. Just because something is widely agreed upon doesn't make it right. I would argue that the proceeds of the private trades you engage in are fully yours by right, and that no reasonable case can be made to the contrary.
To suggest that it is not a right is to imply that it is okay for a government to demand that two private parties divulge information about a private trade they engaged in, and throw the two parties in prison if they refuse to divulge this information, or if they refuse to hand over a share of the value they received in this private trade.
>Remember, by definition, your tax obligation is not yours.
What a strange debt: one that a person assumes without their consent, and which you only know about by violating their privacy.
With regard to the last point: if I trade $1 million worth of goods with another private party, you have no way of knowing I "owe" you and the rest of society anything unless you somehow get details about that private trade. If myself and the private party do not divulge any information about our private activities, you would need to violate our privacy rights and force us to divulge information about our private interactions for you to uncover the existence of this debt that we owe you.
It would be unfortunate if someone reads the headline and thinks this means that this study negates the meat consumption-cancer risk correlation studies.
Though, when considered in regards to the large body of plant based diet studies, this study does add more evidence to the notion that to benifit from plants we probably need to omit the animal products altogether.
There's never been a pre-property era. Humans have always been territorial, and even intra-group, have recognized private property. Non-human animals are also territorial and observe principles like First Possession, which is the foundation of property rights.
Thr currency you receive in private trade is unquestionably your own private property. The fact that income tax law requires you to surrender your privacy rights and disclose all of the transactions you engaged in in order to collect an income tax is an indication that the activity being taxed is private.
You'd prefer people being thrown in prison for refusing to surrender their private property rights, or for engaging in a voluntary economic interaction that some other party created a prohibition against?
Please help me understand your preference for authoritarian violence against peaceful people.