5 ms·

Also it is a total lie and a very narrow definition of utility. Arguably, we’ve actually under priced some of the most important labor in our society (caregiver

Also it is a total lie and a very narrow definition of utility. Arguably, we’ve actually under priced some of the most important labor in our society (caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc), and over priced some of the dumbest (sorry, but if Uber disappeared tomorrow, society would be moderately inconvenienced, but little else). Finally, nothing in evolutionary biology teaches us that human beings ought to work. Studied hunter-gatherer societies are as multi-faceted as agrarian and technologically driven ones, but they all seem to share a 20 hour work week and a strong affinity for story telling and art. Honestly, if you followed evolutionary biology we all should be working quite a bit less and producing way more art. The idea that people will fall into dissipation without work is supported by very little science, and certainly no biological science. Human beings need missions, not labor, to be fulfilled. The market economy seems capable of only supporting a very narrow slice of mission oriented work, the rest does seem like drudgery to me.

7thaccount 7y ago
I think work is pretty important to being human, but working 40-60 hours a week is absurd. 30 seems like a sweet spot to me. If we could remote, do only 30, and reduce pointless meetings than I bet we'd have a lot more time for the things that make us happy like family, side projects, exercise, and Netflix.
- hacknat 7y ago
  Why do you think work in and of itself is important? Being useful to your community is absolutely important, but our definition of that utility is absurdly narrow in this market economy. In fact, sometimes what we value and what is useful are totally orthogonal (again teachers are probably undervalued way too much, because we are poor long term thinkers).
  - 7thaccount 7y ago
    Because nearly everyone wants to feel they're contributing to society in some way. I think we agree here. I'm not saying you need a horrendous office job.
    - svrtknst 7y ago
      Work is important but labor is not, so to speak.
    - clarry 7y ago
      I think people care less about contributing to society and more about having something meaningful to do. Many jobs are quite meaningless, and the only reason people work them is because they have bills to pay. On the other hand, creative people will find something meaningful to do that may or may not ever be a contribution to society.
  - weberc2 7y ago
    Work is important because we value a high quality of life. Things like comfort and shelter and medicine and protection from violence and all of the other trappings of civilization never mind luxuries like cars, Internet, cell phones, etc. These things have never existed apart from work. I keep hearing about how awful capitalism is and how absurd and morally wrong it is for humans to need to work, but no one has offered a better solution (certainly nothing that bears up to a layman’s understanding of economics). Substantiate your claims about how “absurd” things are—articulate a system that can appropriately channel resources “where they really should go” (e.g., caregivers) better than capitalism (specifically what imbues your system with more moral authority than a market? If your system depends on a majority of voters feeling the same way as you, what happens when you can’t guarantee that invariant? What happens when you realize that voters and their representatives are even less efficient at allocating resources efficiently than a market? And how does your system guard against corruption better than capitalism?).
- sabujp 7y ago
  change netflix to gaming and you might be onto something
carlmr 7y ago
>if Uber disappeared tomorrow, society would be moderately inconvenienced, but little else If you inconvenience 100 million people by costing them 15 minutes more a day, or a few dollars more for lack of competition, then the cost per person may be low, but the cost altogether will be high. This is the essential problem I see with the articles, they say so many jobs are useless, but often they're useful but only a small part of what is visible.
- hacknat 7y ago
  Totally, but now play the same scenario in your head if all the social workers or teachers disappeared tomorrow. Uber would be a societal inconvenience, but losing all of our teachers would be a catastrophe.
  - carlmr 7y ago
    Many people don't have children, many people with children don't have children in school age. They will not be inconvenienced in the slightest by a lack of teachers (at least in the short term). The effect of teachers is concentrated in a smaller age group, so to those that need the service, the need is very apparent. Parents could teach their kids themselves, this would cost them time and energy. Of course it would cost them more time than lack of Uber, however what if we add up all the teacher pay and divide it by time and money (opportunity costs) saved and do the same for Uber drivers? Could this be a similar number? I'm not sure, but I think there might be some surprises there.
    - hacknat 7y ago
      You’re assuming they we a. Are accurately pricing teacher pay (if the upper bounds of private schools are any indication, we are not) b. The downstream effects wouldn’t be catastrophic. Certainly most American parents could not afford to properly educate themselves enough to do this job, let alone educate their children. Finally, a miseducated generation of children would probably end up costing us trillions of dollars in incarceration, health care, etc. You must think about the nth order effects of these things. Hence our completely inaccurate valuation of them.
pgodzin 7y ago
What exactly is overpriced about Uber? The drivers aren't making that much and despite Uber's cut they still aren't profitable
- sandworm101 7y ago
  Because that core business isn't where all the money is going. The basic concept of software connecting buyers to sellers (riders to available drivers) is a simple software problem, easily solvable by a few guys and servers given time. Uber spends money on expansion, marketing and a constant game of legal stratego against any town/city/country that seems to get in its way. We are overpricing, over-rewarding, those companies who live to rise their stock price. We should be rewarding those companies whose continued existence is of the greatest benefit to society. That probably isn't Uber.
quotemstr 7y ago
Why do you think caregivers, teachers, and social workers are undervalued? Last time I checked, care facilities, classrooms, and social centers were fully staffed. On what basis can you claim that their pay is too low? Who gets to decide the right salary? You? Why? A particular job being important in aggregate does not entitle each individual who does that job to a salary higher than people who do some other job that might be less important in aggregate. Oxygen is very important and it's free. Certain comic books are expensive despite being of very little importance to our survival. The value of a thing is the price of one additional unit of that thing, not some statement about the moral significance of all of that thing in aggregate.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  Why do you get to say that working a "full time" job should not have to cover your full time living expenses?
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    Why are people entitled to a particular set of benefits in exchange for a particular time spent doing some activity? Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why?
    - Erem 7y ago
      > Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why? Practically speaking, voters do because we live in a democracy. It is perfectly fine for a society to decide "a full time job should have to pay enough to cover a person's full-time living expenses", to define all those terms reasonably, and presto enforce it as law.
      - lenkite 7y ago
        It is also perfectly fine for the free market to decide this. This is society too and captures relative value far more effectively and adaptably than a fixed one-time vote.
foogazi 7y ago
> we’ve actually under priced some of the most important labor in our society (caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc), Who is we? Who sets the price? People obviously don’t see more value in teachers or caregivers, price should not be mandated by law
- bb88 7y ago
  Prisons are arguably less important to society than education (since it represents the failing of citizens being productive members of society). However, prison expenditures were increasing three times faster than education from 1990 to 2016 [1]. Much of it going to corporately run prisons. And given the marijuana legalization trend as of late, I really don't believe that people see the value of locking people up we are angry at. People we're afraid of, sure, that's a different story. But a non-violent marijuana offense shouldn't get a 15 year sentence. Let's be clear, government should control the market, not the other way around. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/07/the-states-that-spend-more-money-on-prisoners-than-college-students/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/07/the-s...
  - foogazi 7y ago
    I’d say it is important to lock up those that hurt society But I agree that in most countries prisons are true hellholes In the US laws mandate certain level of care, and government prefer to pay someone else than handle the costs: unions, pensions for those prison staff
    - bb88 7y ago
      > I’d say it is important to lock up those that hurt society. That's part of how we got here. Prison is just one option. Fines and orders to curtail freedom is another. E.g. Court ordered monetary restitution and loss of one driver's license are examples. Here's a short version of how we got here: 1. Make more crimes to felonies subject to incarceration. 2. Imprison more people. 3. Remove felon's right to vote to make change to the current system. 4. Build more prisons 5. Privatize the prisons because government needs so much more of them now. 6. The prison lobby now argues for more harsher sentences. 7. GOTO 1.
nec4b 7y ago
What about farmers, miners, bakers,..., surely they are more important than caregivers and teachers or social workers? This is a silly argument to assign value to a certain profession based on how one feels. And what do hunger-gatherer societies do when they run out of food for whatever reason. Do they just say, no our 20 hour quota was already fulfilled this week, we'll starve now. The a amount of work neccesery to enable our modern lifestyles today is sometimes unimaginable to a person who has everything brought to them.
rayiner 7y ago
> Studied hunter-gatherer societies are as multi-faceted as agrarian and technologically driven ones, but they all seem to share a 20 hour work week and a strong affinity for story telling and art. Yes, and in pretty much every conflict against hard working agricultural societies, they got wiped out.
weberc2 7y ago
Evolutionary biology can only tell us the bare minimum about what we need to survive as a species. If you want anything more than that (say for example, a cushy third-world quality of life), evolutionary biology is the wrong field (or rather, not the complete set of fields) to look at.

7thaccount 7y ago

I think work is pretty important to being human, but working 40-60 hours a week is absurd. 30 seems like a sweet spot to me. If we could remote, do only 30, and reduce pointless meetings than I bet we'd have a lot more time for the things that make us happy like family, side projects, exercise, and Netflix.

hacknat 7y ago
Why do you think work in and of itself is important? Being useful to your community is absolutely important, but our definition of that utility is absurdly narrow in this market economy. In fact, sometimes what we value and what is useful are totally orthogonal (again teachers are probably undervalued way too much, because we are poor long term thinkers).
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  Because nearly everyone wants to feel they're contributing to society in some way. I think we agree here. I'm not saying you need a horrendous office job.
  - svrtknst 7y ago
    Work is important but labor is not, so to speak.
  - clarry 7y ago
    I think people care less about contributing to society and more about having something meaningful to do. Many jobs are quite meaningless, and the only reason people work them is because they have bills to pay. On the other hand, creative people will find something meaningful to do that may or may not ever be a contribution to society.
- weberc2 7y ago
  Work is important because we value a high quality of life. Things like comfort and shelter and medicine and protection from violence and all of the other trappings of civilization never mind luxuries like cars, Internet, cell phones, etc. These things have never existed apart from work. I keep hearing about how awful capitalism is and how absurd and morally wrong it is for humans to need to work, but no one has offered a better solution (certainly nothing that bears up to a layman’s understanding of economics). Substantiate your claims about how “absurd” things are—articulate a system that can appropriately channel resources “where they really should go” (e.g., caregivers) better than capitalism (specifically what imbues your system with more moral authority than a market? If your system depends on a majority of voters feeling the same way as you, what happens when you can’t guarantee that invariant? What happens when you realize that voters and their representatives are even less efficient at allocating resources efficiently than a market? And how does your system guard against corruption better than capitalism?).
sabujp 7y ago
change netflix to gaming and you might be onto something

carlmr 7y ago

>if Uber disappeared tomorrow, society would be moderately inconvenienced, but little else If you inconvenience 100 million people by costing them 15 minutes more a day, or a few dollars more for lack of competition, then the cost per person may be low, but the cost altogether will be high. This is the essential problem I see with the articles, they say so many jobs are useless, but often they're useful but only a small part of what is visible.

hacknat 7y ago
Totally, but now play the same scenario in your head if all the social workers or teachers disappeared tomorrow. Uber would be a societal inconvenience, but losing all of our teachers would be a catastrophe.
- carlmr 7y ago
  Many people don't have children, many people with children don't have children in school age. They will not be inconvenienced in the slightest by a lack of teachers (at least in the short term). The effect of teachers is concentrated in a smaller age group, so to those that need the service, the need is very apparent. Parents could teach their kids themselves, this would cost them time and energy. Of course it would cost them more time than lack of Uber, however what if we add up all the teacher pay and divide it by time and money (opportunity costs) saved and do the same for Uber drivers? Could this be a similar number? I'm not sure, but I think there might be some surprises there.
  - hacknat 7y ago
    You’re assuming they we a. Are accurately pricing teacher pay (if the upper bounds of private schools are any indication, we are not) b. The downstream effects wouldn’t be catastrophic. Certainly most American parents could not afford to properly educate themselves enough to do this job, let alone educate their children. Finally, a miseducated generation of children would probably end up costing us trillions of dollars in incarceration, health care, etc. You must think about the nth order effects of these things. Hence our completely inaccurate valuation of them.

pgodzin 7y ago

What exactly is overpriced about Uber? The drivers aren't making that much and despite Uber's cut they still aren't profitable

sandworm101 7y ago
Because that core business isn't where all the money is going. The basic concept of software connecting buyers to sellers (riders to available drivers) is a simple software problem, easily solvable by a few guys and servers given time. Uber spends money on expansion, marketing and a constant game of legal stratego against any town/city/country that seems to get in its way. We are overpricing, over-rewarding, those companies who live to rise their stock price. We should be rewarding those companies whose continued existence is of the greatest benefit to society. That probably isn't Uber.

quotemstr 7y ago

Why do you think caregivers, teachers, and social workers are undervalued? Last time I checked, care facilities, classrooms, and social centers were fully staffed. On what basis can you claim that their pay is too low? Who gets to decide the right salary? You? Why? A particular job being important in aggregate does not entitle each individual who does that job to a salary higher than people who do some other job that might be less important in aggregate. Oxygen is very important and it's free. Certain comic books are expensive despite being of very little importance to our survival. The value of a thing is the price of one additional unit of that thing, not some statement about the moral significance of all of that thing in aggregate.

FireBeyond 7y ago
Why do you get to say that working a "full time" job should not have to cover your full time living expenses?
- quotemstr 7y ago
  Why are people entitled to a particular set of benefits in exchange for a particular time spent doing some activity? Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why?
  - Erem 7y ago
    > Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why? Practically speaking, voters do because we live in a democracy. It is perfectly fine for a society to decide "a full time job should have to pay enough to cover a person's full-time living expenses", to define all those terms reasonably, and presto enforce it as law.
    - lenkite 7y ago
      It is also perfectly fine for the free market to decide this. This is society too and captures relative value far more effectively and adaptably than a fixed one-time vote.

foogazi 7y ago

> we’ve actually under priced some of the most important labor in our society (caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc), Who is we? Who sets the price? People obviously don’t see more value in teachers or caregivers, price should not be mandated by law

bb88 7y ago
Prisons are arguably less important to society than education (since it represents the failing of citizens being productive members of society). However, prison expenditures were increasing three times faster than education from 1990 to 2016 [1]. Much of it going to corporately run prisons. And given the marijuana legalization trend as of late, I really don't believe that people see the value of locking people up we are angry at. People we're afraid of, sure, that's a different story. But a non-violent marijuana offense shouldn't get a 15 year sentence. Let's be clear, government should control the market, not the other way around. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/07/the-states-that-spend-more-money-on-prisoners-than-college-students/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/07/the-s...
- foogazi 7y ago
  I’d say it is important to lock up those that hurt society But I agree that in most countries prisons are true hellholes In the US laws mandate certain level of care, and government prefer to pay someone else than handle the costs: unions, pensions for those prison staff
  - bb88 7y ago
    > I’d say it is important to lock up those that hurt society. That's part of how we got here. Prison is just one option. Fines and orders to curtail freedom is another. E.g. Court ordered monetary restitution and loss of one driver's license are examples. Here's a short version of how we got here: 1. Make more crimes to felonies subject to incarceration. 2. Imprison more people. 3. Remove felon's right to vote to make change to the current system. 4. Build more prisons 5. Privatize the prisons because government needs so much more of them now. 6. The prison lobby now argues for more harsher sentences. 7. GOTO 1.

nec4b 7y ago

What about farmers, miners, bakers,..., surely they are more important than caregivers and teachers or social workers? This is a silly argument to assign value to a certain profession based on how one feels. And what do hunger-gatherer societies do when they run out of food for whatever reason. Do they just say, no our 20 hour quota was already fulfilled this week, we'll starve now. The a amount of work neccesery to enable our modern lifestyles today is sometimes unimaginable to a person who has everything brought to them.

rayiner 7y ago

> Studied hunter-gatherer societies are as multi-faceted as agrarian and technologically driven ones, but they all seem to share a 20 hour work week and a strong affinity for story telling and art. Yes, and in pretty much every conflict against hard working agricultural societies, they got wiped out.

weberc2 7y ago

Evolutionary biology can only tell us the bare minimum about what we need to survive as a species. If you want anything more than that (say for example, a cushy third-world quality of life), evolutionary biology is the wrong field (or rather, not the complete set of fields) to look at.