[bko]

> they were protesting the fact that capital owners were extracting the wealth from their labour with this new technology and weren’t reinvesting it to protect the labourers displaced by it.

This capital versus labor dynamic is very common and an interesting way to frame things. But suppose you do take the view that all the wealth accrues to capital. What are the implications?

One implication would be to skip college, take that money and invest it in the stock market. Why invest in labor when capital grows faster? Although I don't think anyone with this mindset would offer that advice, but rather dwell in the fact that they are laborers by design with no hope of ever breaking that. Sure enough:

> I’m a labourer. A well-compensated one with plenty of bargaining power, for now. I don’t make my living profiting from capital. I have to sell my time, body, and expertise like everyone else in order to make the profits needed to support me and my family with life’s necessities.

Another point, in regards to productivity

> Did you know there’s no conclusive evidence that static type checking has any effect on developer productivity?

We don't need "conclusive evidence" for everything. You see this a lot with a lot of ridiculous claims. I don't need some laboratory controlled environment to prove that static type checking is more productive. How do I know? Because I've used statically typed and non-statically typed language and I'm more productive in statically typed. I remember the first time I introduced Flow, a static type checker to my javascript project and the amount of errors I had was really mind-boggling.

A lot of people agree with me and statically typed languages are popular and dynamically typed languages like Python are constantly adding typing tooling. It's a test of the market. People like these tools, presumably because they're making them more productive. Even if they're not, people like using them for whatever reason and that translates to something, right?

This scientism around everything is exhausting.

[JohnFen]

> I don't need some laboratory controlled environment to prove that static type checking is more productive. How do I know? Because I've used statically typed and non-statically typed language and I'm more productive in statically typed.

So you don't know. There are a couple of devs where I work that started using llms heavily to support their work. They earnestly claim that they are more productive, however their other team member disagree with their self-assessment and say that they are no more or less productive than before using llms.

How to know whose assessment is more accurate? You need some sort of test that eliminates, as far as possible, subjectivity.

[samrus]

> Why invest in labor when capital grows faster?

Because capital (in the sense that your referring to, which is money) isnt "real". The economy isnt based on money, its based on goods and services, which require labour and natural resources. Money is just the lubricant to make sure these two things can be optimally distributed.

In simpler terms, if everyone skipped college and just invested in the stock market, then the market will collapse because no one is producing the goods and services the market is trading kn. and thats the rub (tragedy) of economics, its a cooperative system, you are a part of it, not the temporarily embarrassed billionaire you might fancy yourself as. so if you have a strategy, you have to account for everyone using it, and see if its sustainable

This applies to cost reduction through wage supression or tax avoidance. If onky you do it, then it works great for you, but if all the companies in the economy do it, there suddenly consumers have no money to buy your products and the public infrastructure you need.

This is why im kinda on the side of the luddites, as presented in the post. They've been portrayed as neadrathals, backwards and scared of technological progress. But if they are people who understand that capitalists (not fans of capitalism but people who own and deploy capital for a living) will ruin the whole economy with their greed and must be brought back in line, then i support that. The original luddite movement might have failed but the industrial revolution did neccesitate revolts later on where people had to get violent to ensure basic rights like child labour laws, minimum wage, the weekend, paid leave. I think the information revolution will have that as well. Probably something like the 19th- early 20th century labour rights protests, with a butlerian twist

[bko]

> In simpler terms, if everyone skipped college and just invested in the stock market, then the market will collapse because no one is producing the goods and services the market is trading kn... you have to account for everyone using it, and see if its sustainable

This is just silly. I can give advice to my son "you should go to college" and on the margin, I could think more people should go to college, and then somebody like you comes in "If everyone went to college who would pick up garbage??" as though its some profound statement.

If you think capital grows faster than labor (conditional not 100% of the population), on the margin you should invest more in capital.

You're tilting at windmills here.

[samrus]

It doesnt stay at the margin though. We are having a shortage of trades because of exactly the inflation of college that you inadvertantly pointed out.

Now, the economy has homeostatic systems to correct for these disturbances but if it keeps trying to maintain these unstable equilibrium of keeping greedy shortsighted people from destroying society through imbalance, then it wont actually have meaningful growth

In the past decades of the startup bubble, we have outsourced more and more real value, like manufacturing, steel, chips etc, and increased things theranos, crypto, and wework. We need to focus on real value rather than have everyone chase capital and we need to make it so people without capital can live in dignity just by contributing to society, rather than feeling they should chase a bag to get their peice of the pie while the rest of society degrades around them

[qjack]

> One implication would be to skip college, take that money and invest it in the stock market. Why invest in labor when capital grows faster? Although I don't think anyone with this mindset would offer that advice, but rather dwell in the fact that they are laborers by design with no hope of ever breaking that.

As a student, I could easily get a loan to cover my tuition, but the bank would not let me barrow money to gamble in the stock market. Even if they would, I of course would have also not taken that route. There were experiences I was interested in having and things I was interested in learning.

Now I have the capital to invest and those experiences I sought, but I still don't wish to become a capitalist or a landlord or a day trader. I take great pride in being a labourer.