Ask HN: How can software engineers solve the problem of Income Inequality?

[bsn54]

Imagine Case 1: Software engineers develop a system which happens to be a AI graph network...the network has 7 billion nodes representing people's bank account ...the network "knows" who is running short of money or who has excess money to loan.The network helps them get connected and transact further..

[EJTH]

How does that solve income inequality? Why is it a problem and why should it be solved?

Maybe it is because I am not a native english speaker, but I wouldn't want to live in an economic regime where everyone was paid the same regardless of what effort they put into their work.

[onion2k]

I wouldn't want to live in an economic regime where everyone was paid the same regardless of what effort they put into their work.

Income inequality is the problem that people who put the same effort in don't get the same pay. It's widely believed that women are paid approximately 10% less for doing exactly the same work as a man. There are plenty of caveats and arguments around the issue, but that's it in a nutshell. The real issue centres around salary negotiation. Women seem to negotiate less than men. They often take the first offer given, which pushes women's average wage down. It might be tempting to say it's their fault if they don't negotiate, but that would ignore the fact that someone who is paid less than their peers will leave their earlier, or quit the industry they work in entirely, which leads to a reduction in productivity across society and then everyone loses. Fixing the income inequality problem (whether it's real or perceived) would benefit all of us.

No one is suggesting that people shouldn't be rewarded more if they work harder than their peers. They absolutely should, but that reward should only be based on work done.

How we get to that point though is a really hard problem to solve. I suspect the way to do it is through a combination of blind interviews (company doesn't see the personal details of the person during hiring) and teaching everyone to negotiate their salary better. I don't think it's an engineering problem beyond the fact we can build the tools necessary to do stuff.

EDIT: You're entirely right that the suggestion in the Ask HN post has nothing to do with income inequality.

[mindcrime]

Income inequality is the problem that people who put the same effort in don't get the same pay.

That's one aspect of inequality. There's also "absolute income inequality" or what might be better termed "wealth inequality" or something. TBH, I assumed that was more what the OP had in mind.

[mindcrime]

Opportunity inequality happens when people cannot have access to the same level of education that rich people have. Poor people don't get the same high level counselling that rich people have.

I think this is so true. It's not necessarily that everybody needs to go to Princeton or whatever though... I think a lot of poor people get essentially no education on finance, entrepreneurship, etc. at all. Certainly when I graduated from high-school, I'd had effectively no education on any of these topics.

If we did nothing more than find a way to give everybody a certain baseline of knowledge about how finance works, financial markets, the basics of entrepreneurship, etc., I think that would go a LONG way towards helping this problem.

It doesn't have to be all high-tech stuff either, in terms of entrepreneurship. My best friend was a truck driver until an injury forced him to give up that line of work. In response, he opened his own landscaping service. His first year, he only made $30,000, but he was just telling me that he's already almost hit that for this year. Assuming nothing crazy happens, it looks like going the entrepreneurial route is going to work out really well for him.

But he was lucky enough to have a fairly intuitive understanding of what it takes to run a business like that. I think that for a lot of people, a little education on things like "how to form an LLC", "basic business taxes", "basic employment law", etc. would do a ton to enable them, and give them the confidence, to take a leap like that.

So to answer the OP's question: I think software developers can help income inequality by:

1. Developing educational / information sites/apps that share quality information on the subject matter mentioned above.

2. Create better / less expensive / easier to use tools for small business owners / entrepreneurs, to plan/manage/run various kinds of businesses.

3. Create tools to leverage "open data", machine learning, predictive analytics, etc., and make that stuff easy enough to use so that "Joe's Screen Doors and Small Engine Repair" can benefit from those things.

Also, to loop back to tech a little bit... I don't think all the solutions need to involve pushing people into "doing technology" but that said, technology does open up lots of opportunities to create value. Just imagine all the things you can do/create using Arduino, Raspberry Pi, the ton of open source software that's out there, open data, etc. So with that in mind, another thing that we could do might just be offering to do some teaching/tutoring around the things we are knowledgeable about, and help expand the areas where people use these things to create value.

Take the example of my friend the landscaper - I haven't even given it any thought yet, but I can't help but think that if he learned to use microcontrollers, some basic electronics, and a little software, that he could do some really cool stuff for his customers. Maybe automating turning certain yard lights on and off depending on ambient light, maybe automating a legacy sprinkler system in a better way, etc.

[trmr]

OP has asked whether his/her idea ie--@@Software engineers develop a system which happens to be a AI graph network...the network has 7 billion nodes representing people's bank account ...the network "knows" who is running short of money or who has excess money to loan.The network helps them get connected and transact further..@@ will work towards solving the problem

[mindcrime]

The broad question was "How can software engineers solve the problem of Income Inequality?" and that's what I was addressing in my post above. I have no thoughts to offer on the OP's specific idea. shrug

[dragonbonheur]

More than half of the problem of income inequality is opportunity inequality. A rich person's assets are not only what he has, but what he knows and who he knows.

Opportunity inequality happens when people cannot have access to the same level of education that rich people have. Poor people don't get the same high level counselling that rich people have. I have been personally misled about what subject combinations to study (education in some countries work like that, there must be subject combinations at secondary school level to get access to higher education ) along with my friends by an educator who discriminated against me because of my African origin.

More than money, people need information repositories on how to acquire knowledge, create products, marketing strategies, how to protect Intellectual Property, business and entrepreneurship networks, even life hacks and DIY hydroponics, aquaculture and permaculture stuff.

Right now, good information is either too far apart or kept obscure by those who control it. People need simple explanations, complete information and easy to understand and modify examples to make the most of shared knowledge. Also, computer science papers need to be published with syntax-sugar-free code or relevant pseudocode, not obscure mathematical formulae that do nothing to inform people.

As for what can be done, platforms like So.cl or the more helpful parts of reddit are a start, as is Khan academy but knowledge sharing has to be free of obstacles like user registration if it's not absolutely necessary. Websites have to be optimized for low-bandwidth too, 4K, 60 FPS video is not absolutely necessary for people to be informed properly. Cut down on the megabytes of javascript that are transferred with every web page.

<In software engineering >

The computer programmers and "engineers/architecture astronauts" of today must remember that computers are supposed to simplify things for people. No more layers of abstractions piled on top of each other. No more half-baked tools. Documentation must be accessible at the pres of a button. Programming languages must be readable enough so that the person reading it can understand scoping at a glance and not have to hunt for closing curly brackets to understand how a program works.

Some may think that it's too hard to write closing statements like endif or endwhile but those can be written automatically at the press of a button in a good IDE. Again, programming languages must be readable enough so that the person reading it can understand scoping at a glance and not have to hunt for closing curly brackets to understand how a program works.

Semicolons and curly braces must be abandoned. Computer programming should be made more accessible, powerful and ubiquitous. Electronic devices should ship with programming languages again.

Not everything should be done in the browser or in Javascript or a derivative of C.

Computer programming must be made simple and powerful so that more people are empowered.

<end of software engineering section>

Knowledge is power and with great power comes great responsibility. The people with knowledge and power have a responsibility to make knowledge easily accessible and actionable for others who are less fortunate.