It's not that simple. If a poor person makes zero dollars how much of the reduced cost item could they now afford?
We have a massively distorted economy driven by debt financialization and legalised banking cartels. It leads to weird inversions. For example as long as housing gets increasingly expensive at a predictable rate the housing becomes more affordable instead of less as banks are more able to lend money. The inverse is also true, if housing were to drop at a predictable rate fewer people would be able to get a mortgage on the house so fewer people could afford to buy one. Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor (ignoring people dumping housing to get rid of tax debts as I would include such obligations in the cost of acquisition). Long term it's not sustainable but long term is multi-generational.
Fwiw in places like parts of the midwest housing is below cost of labor and materials. An existing house might be $70k and several bedrooms at that. You just can’t get anything built for that even if you build it all yourself.
I intended to make a weaker claim of ‘in general long run / maintainable’ circumstances and should have done so.
Many low cost areas have bad crime problems, there is another little phenomenon where the wealthy by doing a poor job in governance can increase the price of their assets by making alternative assets (lower cost housing) less desirable due to the increase in crime.
Not really the case for much of the midwest. These are low crime areas generally. Working class population is not nearly so rent burdened so less pressure towards making ends meet in other ways. Gang activity is effectively nill unlike placed where you find ms13 written on walls. Homeless people amount to probably a small few dozen visibly homeless if that, and you really need to look to find them.
I gather that such places do exist it would help if you gave an example. When I did travel
to middle america there seemed to be a general drug problem and associated thefts. Perhaps there could be a copper theft map which could be used as a proxy for crime.
Three Cs. Wisconsin. Minnesota. Pittsburg. Not gary IN.
The thing is with these sorts of midwestern cities. The nicest neighborhood in the area, you know the one with the 5 bed ornate 100 year old mansions with the nicest school district, you can get one of those for barely half mill maybe even less.
> Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor
Only if every person born needs to have a brand new house constructed for them.
Not if - you know - people die and don't need a house to live in anymore.
But considering how it's been the past 20 years, I'm starting to expect that a lot of the current elder generation will opt to have their houses burnt down to the ground when they die. Or maybe the banker owned politicians will make that decision for them with a new policy to burn all property at death to "combat injustice". Who knows what great ideas they have?
Cool concept, but this isn't 1980. We've been sold these sorts of concepts for 40+ years now and things have only gotten worse.
We have a K shaped economy. Top earners take the majority. The top 20% make up 63% of all spending, and the top 10% accounted for more than 49%. The highest on record. Businesses adapt to reality and target the best market, in this case the top 10 to 20%, and the rest just get ignored, like in many countries around the world.
All that unlocked money? In a K shaped economy it mostly goes to those at the top, who look to new places to park/invest it, raising housing prices, moving the squeeze of excess capital looking for gains to places like nursing homes and veterinary offices. That doesn't result in prices going down, but in them going up.
The benefit to the average American will be more capital in the top earners' hands looking for more ways to do VC style squeezes in markets previously not as ruthless but worth moving to now as there are less and less 'untapped' areas to squeeze (because the top 10-20% need more places to park more capital). The US now has more VC funds than McDonalds.
Irrelevant aside: But I hold grudge against the economists who picked the letter K to represent increased inequality. They missed the perfect opportunity to use the less-then inequality symbol (<) and call it a “less-then economy”.
The only solution here is to stop tying people's value to their productivity. That makes a lot of sense in the 1900s but it makes a lot less sense when the primary faucet of productivity is automation. If you insist on tying a person's fundamental right to a decent and secure life to their productivity and then take away their ability to be productive you're left with a permenant and growing underclass of undesirables and an increasingly slim pantheon of demigods at the top.
We have written like, an ocean of scifi about this very subject and somehow we still fail to properly consider this as a likely outcome.
Who ever said you have the right to a decent a secure life? People don’t universally agree about this. Some of us posit that we will never escape a state of competition for fundamentally scarce resources. And that the organizing principle of a free society should be peaceful coexistence, not mandatory cooperation.
You figure out your own economic security, I’ll manage mine.
There are already enough resources that nobody should live in abject insecurity and poverty. Your position is fundamentally morally abhorrent to me. You're saying that your ability to take a little bit more for yourself is more important than a child not having polio, a mother feeding her child, a village having clean water.
You are, in short, a tiny little microcosm of why humanity is doomed as a species.
We don't need to have every human care about every single other human to thrive as a species. If anything, if we did, we wouldn't be able to thrive at all.
The issues you mentioned are, in the vast majority of cases, caused by the lack of peaceful coexistence to begin with, because as long as me and everyone else is coexisting peacefully, getting more for myself isn't taking anything away from those in the situations you mentioned. Resources might be scarce, but that doesn't mean they're zero sum.
I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that my right to choose which children I help is more legitimate than your right to dictate to me. That the voluntary nature of our cooperation is more important than equality of resource distribution.
Oh my, please rant on. I'd love to hear more about people not having the right to a decent and secure life. (After all, I've often thought that having my life tracked and used my a corporation or government would be a wonderful utopia!)
They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally, not by laws and control, because then you end up in a oppressive nanny state at the very best.
> They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally
This is extremely hand-wavy.
Can you be more concrete in what you think this looks like?
The way I see it, we're only 5-10 years away from having general purpose robots and AI that can basically do anything. If the prices for that automation is low enough, there will be massive layoffs as workers are replaced.
There's no way to "naturally" solve the problem of skyrocketing unemployment without government involvement.
Speaking of fairytales, you're living in your own.
Disconnecting value from productivity sounds good if you don't examine any of the consequences.
Can you build a society from scratch using that principle? If you can't then why would it work on an already built society?
Like if we're in an airplane flying, what you're saying is the equivalent getting rid of the wings because they're blocking your view. We're so high in the sky we'd have a lot of altitude to work with, right?
Imagine a society where one person produces all the value. Their job is to do highly technical maintenance on a single machine that is basically the Star Trek replicator: it produces all the food, clothing, housing, energy, etc. that is enough for every human in this society and the surplus is stored away in case the machine is down for maintenance, which happens occasionally. Maintaining the machine takes very specialized knowledge but adding more people to the process in no way makes it more productive. This person, let’s call them The Engineer, has several apprentices who can take over but again, no more than 5 because you just don’t need more.
In this society there is literally nothing for anyone else to do. Do you think they deserve to be cut out of sharing the value generated by The Engineer and the machine, leaving them to starve? Do you think starving people tend to obey rules or are desperate people likely to smash the evil machine and kill The Engineer if The Engineer cuts them off? Or do you think in a society where work hours mean nothing for an average person a different economic system is required?
For something to be deserved, it must be earned. What do these people do to distinguish themselves from The Engineer’s pets? If they are wholly dependant on him for their subsistence, what distinguishes him from their god?
To derive an alternate system you need alternate axioms. The axioms of our liberal society are moral equality and peaceful coexistence. Among such equals, no one person, group, or majority has the right to dictate to another. What axioms do you propose that would constrain The Engineer? How would you prevent enslaving him?
Hey, dude. How does someone earn value once automation does all the work? Earning the right to a share of the resources when resources are derived from automated labor is such a thoroughly pathological concept that I'm not sure we're communicating on the same planet.
Same way everyone has earned value from the beginning of time: negotiate with others. We are all born naked and without possessions. Everything we get, from the first day of our birth, is given to us by someone else. Our very first negotiations are simple, we are in turns endearing and annoying. As we grow older they become more complex. All I’m saying is that these interactions should be maximally voluntary and nonviolent.
> For something to be deserved, it must be earned.
Eeeeeerrrr, wrong! This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology.
Did you earn your public school education? Did you earn your use of the sidewalk or the public parks and playgrounds? Did you earn your library card? Did you earn your citizenship or right to vote? Did you earn the state benefits you get when you are born disabled? Did you earn your mother’s love?
No, these are what we call public services, unalienable rights, and/or unconditional humanity. We don’t revolve the entire world and our entire selves solely around profit because it’s not practical and it’s empty at its core.
Arguably we still do too much profit-based society stuff in the US where things like healthcare and higher education should be guaranteed entitlements that have no need to be earned. Many other countries see these aspects of society as non-negotiable communal benefits that all should enjoy.
In this hypothetical society with The Engineer, it’s likely that The Engineer would want or need to win over the minds of their society in some way to prevent their own demise and ensure they weren’t overthrown, enslaved, or even just thought of as an evil person.
Many of my examples above like public libraries came about because gilded age titans didn’t want to die with the reputation of robber barons. Instead, they did something anti-profit and created institutions like libraries and museums to boost the reputation of their name.
It’s the same reason why your local university has family names on its buildings. The wealthiest people in society often want to leave a positive legacy where the alternative without philanthropy and, essentially, wealth redistribution, is that they are seen as horrible people or not remembered at all.
> This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology.
Go on then, how do you decide what people deserve? How do you negotiate with others who disagree with you?
> examples above like public libraries
I agree! The nice part about all these mechanisms is that they’re voluntary.
If you’re suggesting that The Engineer’s actions should be constrained entirely by his own conscience and social pressure, then we agree. No laws or compulsion required.
These examples aren’t generally voluntary once implemented. I can’t get a refund from my public library or parks department if I decide not to use it.
The social pressure placed on The Engineer is the manifestation of law. That’s all law is: a set of agreed-upon social contracts, enforced by various means.
Obviously, many dictators and governments get away with badly mistreating their subjects, and that’s unfortunate, shouldn’t happen, and shouldn’t be praised as a good system.
I think you may be splitting hairs a little bit here and trying really hard to manufacture…something.
Slavery was (is) also an agreed upon social contract, enforced by various means. What makes it wrong? You clearly have morally prescriptive beliefs. Why are you so sure that your moral prescriptions are the right ones? And that being in the majority gives you the right to impose your beliefs on others?
What if you are in the minority? Do you just accept the hypercapitalist dictates of the majority? Why not?
Law is more than convention. What distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate law?
The only way for people who disagree axiomatically to get along is to impose on each other minimally.
You sure seem to know a lot about what people 'deserve' so I'm not sure I can hope to crack the rind of that particular coconut but I will leave you with this: Humans, by virtue of being living, thinking beings deserve lives of fulfillment, dignity, and security. The fact that we have, up until present, been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to achieve this does not mean it's not possible or desirable, only that we have failed in that goal.
Everything else, all the 'isims' and ideologies are abstractions.
> Humans, by virtue of being living, thinking beings deserve lives of fulfillment, dignity, and security.
You wanting people to have that doesn't mean that people deserve to have that. Fundamentally, no one deserves anything. We, as a species, lived for a hundred thousand years with absolutely nothing except what we could carve off the world by ourselves or with the help of small groups that chose to work with us. Everything else since then is a bonus (or sometimes a malus, but on average a bonus).
Also, as much as it sounds nice to declare such things as goals, deserved or not, it is indeed impossible, and probably not desirable, since, for starters, you can't even define what those things would be like. Those aren't actionable, they're at most occasional consequences of a system that is working to alleviate scarcity of resources.
Unfortunately, we're nowhere near that replicator.
It's already completely disconnected, don't worry about it. Most people who own any real estate earn more in price appreciation per year than they earn in take-home salary from their real full-time jobs.
"will" being the operative word here. High school level Econ makes no promises about WHEN prices adjust. Price setting is a whole science highly susceptible to collusion pressure. Prices generally drop only when the main competition point is price (commodities). In this case the main issue is that AI is commoditizing many if not all types of labor AND product. In a world where nothing has value how does anything get done?
to the point of where the cost of bringing the goods to market or its opportunity cost exceed the price the market will bear. Its why people living in areas of material poverty don't just get everything on discount.
Maybe, but the group of people they are/were working with are Extremely Serious, and Not Goofs.
This person was in communications of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the group that just flew helicopters into Venezuela. ... And it looks like a very unusual connection to Delta Force.
Because it's unacceptable to replace a perfectly good driver in control of their vehicle with a vehicle that might just randomly kill them.
Traffic accidents don't happen randomly at all. If you are not too tired, drunk or using any substances, and not speeding, your chances of causing a serious traffic accident are miniscule.
These are all things you can control (one way or another). You can also adjust your driving to how you are feeling (eg take extra looks around you when you are a bit tired).
This feels like the trolley problem applied at scale. Will you deploy a self driving system that is perfect and stops all fatal accidents but kills one randomly selected person everyday?
Nope: there is no moral justification to potentially kill a person not participating in the risky activity of driving just so we could have other people be driven around.
Would you sign up for such a system if you can volunteer to participate in it, with now those random killings being restricted to those who've signed up for it, including you?
In all traffic accidents, there is some irresponsibility that led to one event or the other, other than natural disasters that couldn't be predicted. A human or ten is always to blame.
Not to mention that the problems are hardly equivalent. For instance, a perfect system designed to stop all accidents would likely have crawled to a stop: stationary vehicles have pretty low chances of accidents. I can't think of anyone who would vote to increase their chances of dying without any say in it, and especially not as some computer-generated lottery.
> Would you sign up for such a system if you can volunteer to participate in it, with now those random killings being restricted to those who've signed up for it, including you?
I mean, we already have. You volunteer to participate in a system where ~40k people die in the US every year by engaging in travel on public roadways. If self-driving reduces that to 10k, that's a win. You're not really making any sense.
USA-wide rate is 1 in 7,800 people dying in traffic accidents yearly, whereas NYC has a rate of 1 in 30,000. I am sure it's even lower for subway riders vs drivers. Even drivers, somebody doing 4k miles a year has different chances than somebody doing 40k. People usually adapt their driving style after having kids which also reduces the chances of them being in a collision.
Basically, your life choices and circumstances influence your chances of dying in a traffic accident.
At the extreme, you can go live on a mountaintop, produce your own food and not have to get in contact with a vehicle at all (and some cultures even do).
FWIW, I responded to a rethorical question about killings being random: they are not random today, even if there is a random element to them!
If you want to sign up to a completely random and expected chance of death that you can't influence at all, good luck! I don't.
In traffic incidents, humans drivers are rarely held accountable. It is notoriously difficult to get a conviction for vehicular manslaughter. It is almost always ruled an accident, and insurance pays rather than the human at fault.
Traffic fatalities often kill others, not just the car occupants. Thus, if a self-driving system causes half as many fatalities as a human, shouldn't the moral imperative be to increase self-driving and eventually ban human driving?
For people to die in a traffic accident, there needs to be a traffic accident. They are usually caused by impaired humans, which means that they are very often involved in traffic accidents (basically, almost all of them have at least one party of the sort), whereas non-impaired people mostly do not participate in traffic accidents as often.
This is a discussion of chances and probabilities: not being impaired significantly reduces your chance of being in a traffic accident since being impaired significantly increases it. I am not sure what's unclear about that?
> A fairly reliable determinant for how the Court will rule is found using a materialist analysis. That is, the Court will generally side with corporations and capital owners when given the choice.
This is a big claim. Do you have any evidence to support it?
In the wake of someone trying to prove the same for Congress, it was conclusively shown that the opposite was true:
Rocky and CentOS are both based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
CentOS used to be a free and open source downstream version of RHEL. Keeping the history short: Red Hat effectively acquired CentOS and discontinued it as a downstream version of RHEL. They turned it into 'CentOS Stream', which is, more or less, a continuously delivered upstream version of RHEL. This isn't acceptable for a large number of the CentOS user base.
One of the original founders of CentOS, Gregory Kurtzer, started Rocky as an alternative. It's basically what CentOS used to be: a free and open source downstream version of RHEL.
Fedora's more playground / cutting edge technology demonstrator for Redhat developers. Anything showing up in Fedora won't be included in RHEL for several years, assuming everything goes well.
CENTOS Stream slots in between Fedora and RHEL, keeping a bit ahead of the RHEL stable release.
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