Oddbean new post about login | logout @96fb9d01 Thats the fault of the people and their spendings not automation. Automation has been happening for thousands of years.. plumbing automated the process where people would haul out shit on carts, the wheel and wagons provided an automation for transporting goods... it is nothing new. The thing is when each new automation increased the wealth for EVERYONE people also had new demands on their quality of living. Imagine if everyone lived like the amish, a life style similar to what it was 1000 some years ago.. no electricity, no modern anything... It would cost you 100$ to live and you could literally work just an hour or two a day and sit by a river all day. You can have that leisure from automation right now... but you dont want that, instead you want all the wealth and do more work, so you get the electricity and the modern home, and decide to work and pay more for it too.
@b05df304 I do not understand. How do you expect to spend wisely if they don't get anything? After all, productivity gain wealth is not distributed but concentrated.
@96fb9d01 See titus in kentucky as an example.. He has no job, and very little expenses.. its a prime example of how people could easily have a life of leisure off just 5 hours of work a **month** but they dont because they want their iphones and electricity.
@b05df304 I get it. You want to ignore the majority of gains going toward business owners, because you wish to have your own business and reap all there is to reap without any bad feelings. Not an evil thing, quite natural really. Well, nothing against you personally, but i do not like the concept.
@96fb9d01 No, I am addressing what you actually claimed rather than dealing in moving the goal post fallacy is all. You said we dont have leisure from automation.. yet we do.. if you live a life like before automation (1000+ years back) your life would have a great deal of leisure relative to what it was like living that same lifestype pre-automation.
@b05df304 I don't get it. You say you don't sidestep, yet you do absolutely nothing to adress what i brought up. You just point to poor people and say they need to think about their spending, ignoring completely what i say. I really wonder, is this a blockage in your thinking, an inability to consider such thoughts as "when someone gets rich, maybe that was not their doing alone, but also that of others that have not benefitted equally"?
@96fb9d01 I dont address you moving the goal post.. you said something, it was wrong, if you want to move the goalpost first you have to admit it was disproven and wrong and then you move the goal post and set a newtangent, then i will bite and address your new point.. but i wont waste time addressing your new tangent if you arent closing up the initial point faithfully
@b05df304 Well, i think we should end this discussion then. If you just accuse me of being wrong without actually getting the point, good evening to you and i will rather play a bit instead of discuss.
@96fb9d01 enjoy.. If you want me to "get the point" try making the point the first time rather than being hyperbolic as you tend to do... since its much easier to disprove a hyperbolix stance and then when you go "no thats not the point" all that looks like is goal post moving
@b05df304 Well, i have to concede that i am sometimes a bit all over the place. Let me try it a bit more structured: As productivity gains happen, there are multiple consequences. 1- Production increases, given that the investment of material and labor is not protracted to the point where it declines (assumption: it does increase) 2- There is more product 3- Less work is used Now, deriving from that, we get: a- More availability of the product, decreasing prices (your main point) b- More profits as a consequence of 2 even though a, because the cost went down due to 3 So far, i guess you would agree? Now my point is that increased profits from b are concentrated on the owners of businesses, something that is not a law of physics, but due to the design of private instead of collective ownership. It may be what is established as normal, but i see no convincing argument that it had to be that way. If we had a distribution of those arising profits that was more broad, we could argue for a direct increase in free time from 3 and b, yet what tracks is only the decreased prices from a, making this way less efficient in terms of "people and their spendings" (citing you) as b affects only a very small amount of people. I hope this clears things up.