[kubb]

Modern "economy".

There are a bunch of thousands of guys with a couple to a couple hundred billion each. There are millions of people desperate to own a house and afford life. The rich guys want to be more rich. They're hiring some of the poor suckers to check how others got richer in the past. The answer is tech!

New tech is created every couple of years. People hype it up as much as they can. The rich guys give a fraction of their billions each to finance whatever seems remotely reasonable while squinting in that space, just for a chance to hit the jackpot and get more billions, maybe even a trillion, and their face onto Forbes and on TV.

The poor suckers gotta scramble. They invent all kinds of bullshit, and they sell it to the other poor suckers who advise the rich guys. Teams of specialists are created. Whole organizations. There's HR, somebody to organize team building events. Every layer spawns another layer. Lawyers, somebody to give sexual harassment trainings, someone to run the cafeteria.

Buildings are rented from the rich guys via managment companies run by the poor suckers. Every day a handful of people make it and can even buy a house! Codes of conduct are written, company values and mission statements. People pivot, jump from place to place, try to sign the best contract. Every once in a while an exec jumps ship with several hundred mil in the bank.

It's a great life. What could be better?

[robertlagrant]

This isn't exactly untrue, although the numbers are off, I think, but no one seems to invented a better alternative. If you have money because you stole it from your citizens, or because you sent your serfs to die in a war, that's infinitely worse than because you did something someone else thought was valuable and they paid you for it.

[mihaic]

Only very few people are asking for a completely different system, they usually demand fine-tuning the system so that it improves median life quality.

It used to be that the philosophy before was to have the least amount of intervention on the free market, and it's now that there should be no interventions whatsoever. Isn't that an extreme position?

[trashtester]

There is probably no country in the world with no intervention, or even close. In fact, there are massive intervention in pretty much every country.

Actual lassez-faire economies was mostly a thing in the 19th century.

Since then, regulatations have been accumulating constantly, and total government spending increased to GDP increased from about 10% to 35-75% in most if not all western countries.

[mihaic]

Yes, but many of these have one form or another of "take from the middle class and give to everyone else".

I wasn't arguing that governments don't do anything, it's that they don't do enough to limit the size if the parasitic rich class, while the original post was saying that this is the best system we've got.

[trashtester]

> limit the size if the parasitic rich class

Do you consider it ok to dehumanize your fellow humans by comparing them to parasites?

Also, how can you be so sure that the metaphor even works? Do you truely believe that everyone else would be better off if the top 0.1% richest people in the world had never been born, and never started all those big companies they own?

Because that's what it means to be a "parasite". To consume resources you have no part in creating.

Or is the word "parasictic" ONLY used as a means to dehumanize a group you detest, without even being meant to be seen as a metaphor?

I don't mind having a discussion about how to best distribute the economic output of the economy, but calling one group or another parasites is not a good start.

[bambax]

> no one seems to invented a better alternative

There has been myriads of alternatives experimented in the 200,000+ years humans have been a thing. Many ancient societies didn't have the concept of property. Others did, but burned everything someone possessed when they died, ensuring a level playing field at each generation. Most ancient societies didn't have any hierarchy at all. The concept of anyone being the boss of anyone else is extremely recent.

We marvel at our modern world but what does it give us? Does it make us happy?

[croo]

> The concept of anyone being the boss of anyone else is extremely recent.

My guts tell me it's as old as humankind. Citation?

[bambax]

> The freedom to abandon one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence – all appear to have been simply assumed among our distant ancestors, even if most people find them barely conceivable today. Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do. (...) the real puzzle is not when chiefs, or even kings and queens, first appeared, but rather when it was no longer possible simply to laugh them out of court.

The Dawn of Everything, 2020

[croo]

Thanks for the citation, interesting, especially as this book is on my to-read-list.

On the other hand eeh... nice words but I don't buy this. Even animal groups has leaders and leaving/abandoning community probably meant death, not freedom. There is a reason why we think so much about what others think about us. One of the greatest survivor skill is to be able to fit into your community.

[robertlagrant]

Is there any evidence of this? How do we know they felt self-conscious?

[hnhg]

Even if you did invent a better alternative, do you think you would get a fair hearing, given how mainstream/corporate media is organised and operated?

Actually, do you think there is anyone with any substance and influence out there trying to even invent a better alternative? All I see is culture wars/left vs right nonsense, but maybe I am out of touch.

[kubb]

Sure, if this is the best possible of all worlds then we should be happy, but is it really? Seems defeatist to think so. Are there economies which function in a healthier way than this? Do you remember the early days of computing, before the big money got tipped off?

[Tenoke]

You need to be really blinded by cynism to not see how much better modern life is for average people or how many people benefit from advancements and scale which wouldn't be possible without billions of dollars worth of investments.

[willvarfar]

Is this accidental to the billionaires, or is this their intended outcome?

And could the investment come from alternative sources if the billionaires didn't exist?

[Tenoke]

>And could the investment come from alternative sources if the billionaires didn't exist?

In theory, sure. In practice, pretending that the current system has been making things worse or that we have a viable realistic and better alternative is flat-out wrong.

[kubb]

Is it OK to be content with how much better things are now than before we had modern dentistry and combustion engines, without questioning how entire macroeconomic phenomena contribute to our modern wellbeing? We improved, can we improve further?

[kortilla]

> What could be better?

Reality. Most of tech is not funded by existing billionaires.

[jokethrowaway]

This. If life were as op (beautifully) put it, the world would be much better. At least the rich guy would try to innovate.

Most billionaires get rich in ways that are worthless, when they're not damaging to society. We allow governments to send people to die in wars just so their friends producing weapons will make a profit.

Most of the money around gets stolen from the little guys and given to the big guys. Think about your taxes funding banks' bailouts or inflation.

Tech is not perfect, every large organisation eventually resemble the politics and stupid games of powers you see in every government or other criminal organisation. The waste, the inefficiency, the idiotic rules.

Stay in small companies, create value for real people, maybe even start one (with no VC) if you want your chance at making some cash without going insane.

[kubb]

So let's say you want to start a company that makes some stupid AI cookbook and you want money to payroll people. How do you do that without investor cash?

[kortilla]

Where did you get the impression that investor cash is tied to billionaires?

[trashtester]

How do you define "poor"? Net worth of less than $10M? Income less than $1M?

Unless you set very strict limits for "poor" like that, the people that the ultra rich hire tend to be rather well off, or at least comfortable, themselves ( by that I mean net worth of >$1M OR income of >$100k.

Actual poor people don't built state of the art tech. At best, they work as cleaning staff or in the cafeteria of those companies. Or maybe in the assembly plant in a foreign country. (And even those may feel wealthy when compared to their friends and family.)

Those who resent the ultra rich the most tend to be those who are themselves quite comfortable, often affluent even, but really hate it when other people are even more successful than themselves.

They often pretend to care for "the poor", but really all they want is to pull down anyone more successful than themselves.

[kubb]

It's common to project resentment towards individuals onto someone who expresses dissatisfaction with systemic issues. We want to think on our small human scale, but our societies got so big that we can't make sense of them in those terms anymore.

[trashtester]

> It's common to project resentment towards individuals onto someone who expresses dissatisfaction with systemic issues.

Perhaps, but it's also quite common for people who are really doing quite well to pretend to argue on behalf of actually marginalized groups when struggling for power with their opponents.

The way to tell the difference between those who genuinely want to help marginalized groups and those who just use them as pawns in a power struggle, is that they spend a similar amount of effort to help those groups with problems that do NOT in any way involve taking away power from their political opponents.

[kubb]

There's no struggle for power between an overworked corporate bee, and a billionaire. The latter is hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the former.

You're right though, a lot of the time folks with office jobs don't really care about the marginalized (and who could blame them with their entire energy drained by their jobs). Your heuristic to tell the difference is... dubious.

[trashtester]

> There's no struggle for power between an overworked corporate bee, and a billionaire.

Oh, but there is! Why do you think the "bees" try to create unions, and the billionaires try to prevent it? If the bees get their union, that means they can wrestle some amount of power away from the owner.

> and who could blame them with their entire energy drained by their jobs

Some people and some companies and in some countries, it's normal for the company to be able to drain most of the energy from the workers. In other places, there is much more work/life balance.

By heuristic, like the comment that I responded to directly above was not limited to only employer/employee relationships, but rather so called "systemic issues".

It also happens in both directions. For instance, when conservatives argue against a minimum wage, they tend to argue that a minimum wage can lead to increased unemployment. Do you think most conservatives REALLY carethat much about that part, or do they just want to avoid the minimum wage regulations?

[CapstanRoller]

>income of >$100k

This is barely "middle class" now, unless you live in the middle of nowhere or like a college student.

$100k/yr stopped being impressive long ago. Even the FAANG rich boys are closer to the janitor than to the CEO.

[trashtester]

$100k/yr probably still puts you in the top 1% by personal salary per year, globaly. And about 3x above the median in the US.

I'm not arguing that it makes you rich, but you're definitely NOT "poor" if you have such an income.

Anyway, comparing to the CEO on a linear scale is kind of absurd. Anyone making less than half of what the CEO does is closer to the janitor than the CEO. Still, if you make exactly half as much as the CEO of these companies, you're still objectively rich.

And why do you think you should be closer to the CEO than the janitor in the first place? Do you think your job is that much more important than making sure the power is on and the toilets are not stuck?

If someone is gunuine about protecting the "poor", they should first ensure that the janitors and cafeteria workers are not poor, before they demand raises that would take them even further away from those that really ARE poor.

It appears to be quite typical for those claiming to be poor (while having an above-median income and wealth) to have just the attitude towards those below them that they blame the "rich" for.

[CapstanRoller]

>I'm not arguing that it makes you rich, but you're definitely NOT "poor" if you have such an income.

It depends on where you live. In the Bay Area, you can earn $100k/yr and qualify for food assistance. Housing is the biggest expense, and it's only getting worse.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/100k-a-year-is-low-incom...

[moandcompany]

"The stock is the product." Jack Barker

[dang]

You started a hell of a flamewar with this. Could you please not do that on HN, regardless of how bad things are or you feel they are? We're trying for something different here, such as not burning to a crisp.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[gsatic]

Things are always changing.

The US and its mindless dynamics definately could use a kick in the teeth to speed up the change. But its happening with interest rates rising, dedollarization etc. Some rich folk who think nothing is changing and their behavior doesnt need to change, their story wont end well.

They dont have as much control over anything as they think. In fact I think rich people are going to take the biggest hit mentally, financially, socially cause its very precarious having wealth without control over what happens tomorrow morning.

[MichaelZuo]

It's a bit weird to label millions of people, including presumably yourself, as 'poor suckers', is this a joke?

[kubb]

It's an oxymoron, that highlights elite's dismissive attitudes towards the working class. You might stumble upon oxymorons in all kinds of non-technical literature in various languages.

[MichaelZuo]

Can you explain how that is an 'oxymoron'? because I'm having trouble squaring the intended meaning with the dictionary definition.

[kubb]

Poor is an expression of compassion, and sucker is dismissive. They're contradictory.

[MichaelZuo]

'Poor' is not usually considered an expression of 'compassion' in most contexts, certainly not on HN.

Are you learning English? If so, it's best to follow the dictionary meaning and examples.

For example, when HN users write 'poor engineer', 'poor dev', 'poor software', 'poor working environment', 'poor commute', etc... they most likely don't intend to attach any connotation of compassion.

I think most readers will interpret 'poor suckers' literally as in 'suckers' who are lacking wealth/income/means/etc...

[mschuster91]

> It's a bit weird to label millions of people, including presumably yourself, as 'poor suckers', is this a joke?

Your average millionaire is closer in wealth to the average homeless person than he is to the average billionaire.

A single catastrophic event - be it some kid getting paralyzed on your backyard trampoline, an investment gone wrong, a company going under because it can't compete with Chinese government-backed price dumping, disaster that rips apart one's home that has gotten uninsurable, cancer, or early-onset dementia - can wipe out their wealth in the blink of an eye, whereas the billionaire can afford to sink half a billion into a yacht and still have not made a dent in his wealth.

[otabdeveloper4]

Money is not wealth. Once you have more of it than is necessary for basic needs, you have to figure out a way to get rid of it and exchange it for real wealth. Investing it in "tech" is an easy and dumb solution to the problem.

[Ekaros]

Also wealth is not money... Owning million of unliquid asset is not money.

[boxed]

The problem is that the 0.1% don't seem to really understand this. If they did we would se massive investments in basic science and medicine from them. But we don't. Instead most of them seem to treat their wealth as internet points to compare to other super rich.

[bombolo]

They want investments with short term returns… and basic science isn't that.

[boxed]

But that's exactly because they're being stupid. Only basic science or medicine has any chance of making any significant impact on their lives. And most of the potential basic science impact will do so via medicine. Being a billionaire won't protect you from cancer and multi resistant bacteria.

They are missing an opportunity to increase their life span and life quality and do the same for their children. Only very few billionaires understand this, Bill Gates being maybe the most obvious example.

[bombolo]

Bill Gates is a lot of talk but I suspect he's using his funds to push microsoft onto poor countries that would otherwise default to linux.

[boxed]

You are very mistaken.

[c03]

This reads like Sin City. Please do more Noir style writing.

[baq]

This isn’t noir writing, I found it an accurate if a bit cynical description of reality

[mihaaly]

Nice summary.

[oneshtein]

So, we few have few variants to chose:

a) everybody are poor;

b) some are poor, some are in the middle; some are rich.

Variant (b) is bad because some are poor.

[borissk]

Actually compared to the economies of past societies, the modern economy in the West is amazing. If you work hard, have a little bit above the average intelligence and potentially a bit of luck you can make a lot of money. If not I guess you can make excuses.

The simplest way to organize a group of people, animals, organisms is to make one of them leader and have the rest follow him. This is the way our ancestors behaved for hundreds of millions of years and it's hardwired into our brains.

[mym1990]

The fact that you think our ancestors go back hundreds of millions of years…is wild.

[borissk]

How far do you think our ancestors go?

[mym1990]

Homo sapiens are about 300k, homo erectus about 2 million and if we are going back to chimpanzees and gorillas, 10 million max.

[bombolo]

I'm sure you're completely unaware of the fact that your world view comes from protestant religion, which equates richness with god's favour, thus ending up considering poor people as worse sinners who don't deserve a better life due to their moral failings.

People of other religions and cultures don't necessarily share your same faith (I realise you think you're being completely rational, but to an external observer you are not).

[trashtester]

I'm an atheist, but this is what I learned in school (by Protestant Christian Socialist teachers):

  Matthew 19:23-26 American Standard Version (ASV)
  And Jesus said unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, It is hard 
  for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say 
  unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than 
  for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

[bombolo]

In my experience that bit is more forgotten in protestant countries rather than catholic ones. As in, in catholic ones rich people aren't seen as model of virtue and everybody knows that "hard work" won't get you there.

[trashtester]

> In my experience that bit is more forgotten in protestant countries rather than catholic ones.

I think you're misunderstanding the "hard work" part. Unlike (perhaps) in the US, the work ethic part of northern/Germanic countries is not about working super hard to get rich, but rather to do the job with the integrity and effort that is reasonable, given your health and abilities.

The typical reward is not to get super rich quickly. But if you uphold the ideal, you deserve respect, even if you're cleaning staff or the janitor.

Similarly, NOT living up to the ethical standards will be damning regardless of social status. Cheating and corruption comes with harsh social punishment, especially for those near the top.

Remember that we're talking about the part of the world that pratically invented both Social Democracy and the Nordic Model.

Now, I also have family and contacts in various places in Southern Europe and South East Asia, some of which as very wealthy. What these ALL have in common is that various types of corruption and plutocracy are just facts of life that are taken for granted, and nobody cares.

Now my own hypothesis is that religion plays only a small role in this difference, and that this is mostly a consequence of the difficulty of surviving as a farmer in Northern Europe during the medieaval era, and especially in Scandinavia.

People used to live on isolated farms or in small villages, where the farms would barely produce enough food to sustain the family of the farmer. Those who did not work at least moderately hard usually would not survive, and there was little left over to give to either the poor or the nobility.

This led to an egalitarian outlook, where people who wanted to live off the produce of others were not tolerated easily, regardless of whether they were beggars, thieves or barons. And since production was low, there was little to tax or steal, anyway.

In warmer climates, farm yields were much greater, which caused success to be much more about social relationships than hard work at the farm.