The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education.

1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching

By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy.

2) The current goals for education do not align with current & future needs

Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs.

We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed.

I hear teachers, on the other hand, complain that after decades of trying everything they can, they've realized that they cannot help students unless those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives.

It's easy to say we should introduce children to programming early, even easy to do. It is easy to complain about critical thinking skills and kids these days. It is easy to see that overtesting schools and overreacting to those test scores wastes resources and the time of children and teachers.

It's hard to find a way to ensure one in six children in the US subject to food insecurity always get three good meals a day. It is hard to figure out how to provide stability in a single family, let alone all families. It is hard to say a child shouldn't drop out of school and work whatever job they can when their parents have been unable or unwilling to provide for them.

We have been talking about and trying to fix "education" my entire life; maybe we should try fixing some of the underlying problems first, even if they are hard.

As someone from a teaching family, this is absolutely true.

That said, the underlying problems can only be fixed by a combination of economic improvement and education. Education empowers in the future, but economic status empowers educational opportunities in the present.

And when it comes down to it, the government can't afford to replace the future wealth created by an educated citizenry.

But the education issues also apply to the other five in six children who do have food security. The education problem is one that affects anyone who does not have access to the best private schools.

When I say fix education, I don't mean teach people programming or whatever skills or knowledge that might give them a marginal leg up. Those things are becoming increasingly less valuable.

I mean teach people how to be well adjusted people, teach them soft skills of empathy and understanding others, teach them why and how to continuously improve themselves, teach them how to identify areas where they can contribute to society without waiting for a teacher or boss to tell them exactly what to do.

Without these abilities, more and more will fall into the poverty trap as the need for worker bees diminishes.

So focus on the parts that happen once you're an adult. MOOCs aren't a panacea but you don't have to miss a class because your shift moved. If the objection is they aren't taken seriously by employers, my objection is that's still playing the old prestige and rank game, and there is always going to be someone at the bottom of that anyway. So make them useful to themselves if employers don't want them.

(I believe fixing childhood poverty involves the US Government doing things it's not going to do soon, and that private business isn't going to do it. We must cultivate our garden.)

Someone else said that the goal of education is to produce factory workers. I disagree. I think the goal of education is to allow one teacher to effectively babysit up to 30 children at once. With both parents working, it simply isn't possible for them to give kids the attention they need to keep them healty and sane, let alone educate them on how to be part of society. Schools are supposed to do this instead, but the primary goal is training the children to be manageable at a ratio of 30 to 1.

Before we can do anything else, we have to acknowledge that the first goal is getting the kids out of their parents hair. This is the fundamental truth that everyone knows but refuses to acknowledge when they're debating policy. After that, we can make other decisions that make more sense. The lecture-hall format really only makes sense when the number of students is unmanageable for a single adult. If was only 10 kids per teacher, they would actually have time for more useful activities, applying knowledge, giving guidance to students who are ready to strike out on their own.

Tripling the number of teachers is going to cost some money, and application-type lessons costs more than lecture-type lessons. Some ways to deal with this - as a society, acknowledge that creating educated, well informed citizens is not a fuzzy, feel-good liberal goal, but a necessary factor for everyone's safety, including the permanently child-free. I think most people agree with that already, but since many people voting are full grown adults who still aren't properly educated, not everyone will come to the same conclusion, and therefore a massive infusion of public money for this idea isn't likely to happen. So I think a successful, disruptive idea will be one that gets around the cost problem of a much lower student-to-teacher ratio. I don't think remote teaching is going to be the answer here.

My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky.

So from my perspective, having both parents working is the root issue. It's an economic necessity for probably 80+% of the country, which I suppose is really the root issue.

Ultimately it all boils down to resources, time and money, and there is never enough to go around. I don't have an answer for that :(

Being a stay at higher parent is an incredibly difficult, stressful and under appreciated job so to many well educated couples, it's not appealing at all.

True, not all jobs can be offered as part-time, and working part-time limits your career growth if you work for a big corporation, but still, it is a viable option.

> a massive shift toward automation... in the next five years, 5 million jobs in 15 economies will be lost. (from YC post)

We don't have enough workers. We have too many workers. When will we realize that our current economic system is doing a lousy job of allocating human resources?

We can't get enough teachers, but we have tens of millions of people and hundreds of billions of dollars allocated toward things that add, to be generous, questionable value to the world.

There is TONS of work that needs to be done though. Teachers like you said, health care workers, psychologists to help us deal with the inevitable mental problems, mountain bike trail maintainers, pickers of plastic trash out of the ocean, people to design apis for distributing government transparency data, designers of infographics to help the rest of us make sense of that data, and on and on and on. There's so much to do, when you stop thinking of a "job" as something provided for you by the government or a company, and rather as value that you can contribute to the world. Another disruptive business is going to figure out how to make it possible to pay people for contributing that kind of value.

I think it goes back to what you said first. We need to agree on some core values.

I don't want any more of my money going to people who mocked the MSNBC host[0] when she said "children belong to the collective". It seems pretty obvious to me. If we are all paying for your children, I better have a say in how we raise OUR children.

Clearly, a lot of people do not see it that way. Why should we have tax deductions for people to have children? Why should we have tax breaks for people to put money away for their children to go to college? I for one support an end to these tax breaks. Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison.

[0] https://youtu.be/sjczwQOnMqg

I grew up in post-communist Europe. In the past, we had state propaganda that told children to turn in their parents[1], among other wonderful products of that line of thinking. So I'd be very careful with ideas like this one. (I still support mandatory vaccinations and/or sane defaults.)

>Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison.

This would undo a lot of progress that has been made on the human rights front in the past century.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov

One possible model may be to enlarge the "nuclear family" to groups of friends. Get five couples who enjoy each other's company together, and everyone can work 80% (4 days) while two people are home each weekday for childcare/housework etc.

Many other models are possible and it would be best to make it as easy as possible to experiment. Relevant factors may be:

- a universal right to flexible work schedules, at least for larger companies (10+) where changes balance out

- Mixed-zoning housing allowing the creative use of space. Which also helps with:

- Neighbourhoods designed for street life, where you can actually meet neighbours and build these (real) social networks, and where children can explore. When I was 6 or so, I became friends with two families in my neighbourhood. One owned a bookshop which became my personal library. The other was a graphics designer and a racing car driver where I learnt computers and mechanics (and got to drive in a Formula 1 car). I was often invited for dinner at these families, or just hung out when they had guests, and I learned more from listening to adults debating the topics of the day than anywhere else.

Especially for parents with multiple children, it is economically rational to have a parent at home to provide that customized 1-on-1 care with the child. The benefit is improved learning and opportunity for experiences (daily trips to museums, sports activities, classes) at the expense of less structured socialization with a peer group and a loss in net household profit.

Though the tax break afforded for day care should not be disregarded, there are plenty of situations where it makes sense to have a parent stay at home with children.

Most parents choose to have children so they can spend time with them. Maximizing this at the expense of some net household profit can be rational, given certain living situations. One could argue it is a luxury, and they would likely be right. Having children at all in advanced industrial societies is, in the individual case, usually a luxury.

If it were a productive investment it would be common because those that do it would easily outclass the rest.

Of craouse we would all like to have the option to take as much time as we want to take care of our own, its akin to wanting to amass enough wealth to never have to work again.

Children of school age DO NOT need babysitting. When I was a kid, everyone's mom worked and we kids just stayed at home or played together and were perfectly fine. There were zero kids who had a babysitter when they were 7 years old. Zero. Never heard of it. This was the late 80s / early 90s during the breakup of socialism. There was even a war going on for a few of those years.

I can't even imagine the level of ridicule a child would have endured if their friends had found out they had a babysitter.

Children don't just randomly burst into flames if they're left alone.

And I seriously doubt 30:1 is a significant part of the problem. Look at countries with successful school systems. Ours also used to be, but slowly got worse with time as we adopted western attitudes towards children and parenting. The schools themselves didn't change significantly, yet the outcomes became worse.

To be fair, it did go a bit lord of the flies on occasion, in the sense that we engaged in "wars" with kids from different streets and so on, sometimes someone would get a thrown rock to their head or get a beating, but nothing too serious. Also we were constantly getting injured while playing from falling, stepping on sharp shit, etc but kids are incredibly resilient, they recover from anything and quickly. The important thing is to teach the kid not to fuck around in traffic, that's where the real danger is. And if there is a war not to pick shit up that might be explosive.

--

[1] I think schools teach much more than just what's on the national education plan. Making friends, making enemies, dealing with puberty etc are all valuable lessons that have less friction when the group of people you're around have similar amount of experience with those things. Thus being grouped with people with wildly different experience levels in these areas can be detrimental. While the primary grouping factor should be skill, there's probably a good case for secondary range limits by age, which is a decent estimative measurement of children's experience in these social areas.

[2] I understand that full isolation isn't possible, because physics requires math knowledge, which in turn requires writing & reading skills. Still, even with these dependencies we could do a lot more decoupling than what is being currently done.

The reason for public education is to have an informed citizenry able to participate fully in society. Using it as job training is just corporate welfare, that is using tax money to pay for something businesses should do themselves.

There is often overlap in the skills needed in an informed citizenry and employees (e.g. reading, computer skills, etc.), but not always.

Trying to chase what business or the marketplace wants is a fools journey that create citizens poorly prepared to be fully empowered citizens with a solid understanding of the world.

I suspect entrepreneurial skills would be well covered by this approach as it should emphasis skills of leadership, self-reliance, consensus, and creative thinking.

1) The Obama administration's college rankings (I don't know if they are still around) at one point were using the earnings of graduates as a basis.

2) Often you hear people evaluating college based on their first job. Not only are employment skills not the goal, as you point out, but consider the absurdity of valuing education based on what is probably the least important, worst paying job you'll ever get, with a payoff of probably 1-2 years.

3) Looking at the shocking political and environmental problems in 'advanced' countries right now, perhaps more education in the non-vocational fields of liberal arts, including history, political science, and literary criticism, and in the sciences, providing an understanding of nature and scientific method, is more important than ever.

4) A useful way of looking at it: [0]

"The Yale Report of 1828" -- an influential document written by Jeremiah Day (who was at the time president of Yale), one of his trustees, and a committee of faculty -- distinguished between "the discipline" and "the furniture" of the mind. Mastering a specific body of knowledge -- acquiring "the furniture" -- is of little permanent value in a rapidly changing world. Students who aspire to be leaders in business. medicine, law, government, or academia need "the discipline" of mind -- the ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances, confront new facts, and find creative ways to solve problems.

I'd add that it's not just leaders, but everyone who needs these skills.

----

[0] Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, in "Top of the Class: The Rise of Asia's Universities"

https://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/china/2010-05-01/top...

I guess you could start by opening a co-working space with a supervising adult (not teacher, this adult will be there to ensure that the kids aren't killing each other).

There would be teachers accessible via video calls but most of the time would be spent reading or doing work, not passively listening/watching. If you pool these teachers together, you will be able to teach even the most obscure subjects.

In this system, everyone is literally going at their pace.

I think that fundamentally the main objection to this system is that some people learn better in a classroom setting, to which I reply: 21st century education needs to make a transition to turn graduates into self-learners. This can only be achieved with a system that fosters self-learning from very early on.

It's not like you can create self-learners by making students go through a process that's fundamentally as anti-self-learning as possible.

This will also make switching schools extremely painless. You will transition to a new desk. It's like a gym membership, you can totally have two if that's convenient for you for whatever reason.

I think that fundamentally the main objection to this system is that some people learn better in a classroom setting, to which I reply: 21st century education needs to make a transition to turn graduates into self-learners. This can only be achieved with a system that fosters self-learning from very early on.

I grew up in a very traditional system that would remind most Americans of the 1950s, and it hasn't impacted my self-learning ability at all. I'm fortunate in that my parents liked books and I was able to read by age 3 and as long as I can remember I had firm opinions about what I wanted to read. I'm not altogether convinced by your vision of students as intellectual tabulae rasa that can be variously configured as drones, autodidacts, or innovators.

A student's home and socioeconomic life can have as much or more impact on their intellectual development as the kind of school they attend, and the idea that perfecting education will automatically nullify other factors is a rock on which many would-be reformers have come to grief.

Poor people's children self-teach. They definitely learn. They don't necessarily learn the culture and values that would allow them to function gracefully in the modern economy.

A student's home and socioeconomic life can have as much or more impact on their intellectual development as the kind of school they attend, and the idea that perfecting education will automatically nullify other factors is a rock on which many would-be reformers have come to grief.

People's subculture/tribe and actual community are a tremendous part of who people are and how well they can access resources and knowledge in the world. Religious and various civic organizations understand this. Often governments only understand this as a source of strength for their "opposition." Opposition movements and rebellions understand this.

Most significantly, school reform programs like Harlem Children's Zone understand this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Children's_Zone To fight poverty, you have to involve the whole community on your side. If your initiative is fighting the community, it cannot fight poverty.

Osmo - https://www.playosmo.com/en/ - seems pretty cool. Uses the iPad camera and packets of materials for interactive learning experiences. It could evolve into something like the Primer.

"One Laptop per Child" has/had similar goals while not being nearly as advanced/cohesive as the Primer.

Very good point. There are no feedback looks between the two subsystems which makes them both suck.

One point I'd like to raise though is that I'm not sure if it's really optimal have 'assessments'. I have some fundamental issues with assigning numerical values to things that are sometimes hard to judge numerically.

I think that a much better system would be that each student's work is stored in the cloud where it's accessible and everyone can judge for himself.

And I think that we should move away from test to projects that are largely designed by the student under the guidance of teachers.

Experience could even just be a boolean value, has or doesn't have, instead of anything numerical. Or there could emerge separate numerical systems for each area of knowledge. The important part is that the system is based on social consensus of people who actually possess the experience, so that its the most relevant and applicable system possible.

But I think its worth bringing up again as it is seemingly at the root of all the issues surfaced by the Trump presidency, which is the main driver of this new RFS

As you stated, I also believe that education it's the root of most problems. Today, almost everyone learns the same way as they did 100 years ago: A teacher going through a non-customized textbook that was written by a small number people. It's a linear learning path and highly ineffective. It's also inefficient, as teacher to student ratios are mostly around 1-to-20 (I am talking about K-12, not college or MOOCs).

I believe that we can overcome a lot of problems of education by applying technology. More concretely, we should be able to provide more customized, higher quality content for people at young and old age. This, while creating more genuine excitement for science and scientific thinking. This means, we have to rethink the current teacher/student paradigm. And I don't mean by merely providing tools to teachers or copy/pasting textbooks to online videos.

I mean by curating content that excites, using some ML to create an optimal and dynamic learning path per student and making it fit to the busy daily lives of people who don't have time to watch 1 hour lectures every week when they get home from work. This might seem like advertising, by I am working on exactly such a project and thought it would be ok to mention it here, because it is relevant for the discussion and other startups were mentioned in the comments, too. It's called Humbot (humbot.io) and I am happy to hear your comments and start a discussion on what the radical improvements in education must be over the next decade.

https://theconversation.com/ and http://www.worldcrunch.com/ make good starts, as do aggregators like http://www.aldaily.com/ and https://redef.com/

As far as pure education companies, we need more software platforms for building curriculums collaboratively, some combination of wikia, github, wirecutter, and khanacademy.org. You may be thrown by my inclusion of wirecutter, but concensus based consumer reports type information, leading to populations making better decisions, helps cut through the paradox of choice. It also teaches people HOW to make decisions, and how to evaluate choices. It should be easy for anyone to fork, remix, contribute, or request corrections. Even collaborative documentary editing software, or the ability to sift through ALL the worlds lectures on a topic, and assessable the best bits. As long as teams of strangers can collaborate and fork, the world will have more shoulder standing giants, and less reinventing of the wheel.

Contrary to popular belief - even here on HN - teachers are chronically making known sub-optimal instructional tradeoffs because they lack the time to complete tasks as they should ideally be completed. Very little seems to be done to create tools to improve the instructional process (that doesn't involve removing the teacher from that very process - e.g. MOOCs, Khan Academy, Knewton, etc.). Those digital alternative absolutely have a place, but there's a lot of opportunity to fundamentally improve the instructional work being done by teachers in classrooms every day.

Your suggestions are a great place to start:

- network instructional materials and lessons so they can be accessed in their entirety by other teachers

- network assessment materials that are tied (on the question/answer level) to standards and common goals (e.g. comprehension quip above).

Email is in profile if anyone would like to continue this discussion in a more detailed manner outside the thread.

It's been an open question for me how to improve education in earlier years where there's probably less scope for self-learning, and more focus should be on how to improve the teachers' efficiency and effectiveness. Since my own kids are starting school now, these earlier years have taken on new significance, but since I don't have a background in education, I haven't known where to start. I'm more at the point of "How can I help?!", since I have very little visibility into the frustrations that teachers experience on a day-to-day basis, but I can build software, if software can be part of the solution.

Sent you an email, but I'm sure there are others who would love to be involved in the discussion...

[1] http://www.commoncurriculum.com/

this product looks like only people within the same team can work together. that means thousands of teachers all repeating the same steps.

I really believe forking is important. People might disagree with concensus and have a better way to do things that is looked down upon by the mass. One curriculum for all sounds like every egg in one basket.

(i decided i like optimul better than optimal)

I'm a bit jealous of the younger generations, as these methods were primitive/not available when I was younger. I could have learned so much when I had more time to learn it. The old school system I grew up with was quite ineffective, but thankfully we've improved the options well beyond those days.

Lack of "soft skills" is the problem. We are taught or force fed knowledge, but not taught how to be well adjusted people.

You were lucky, for some reason you came to understand the value of personal development and self education. This is something that needs to be taught to everyone. In the world.

The only lasting solution will be to allow true market competition for education to replace the centralized top-down system we have. Yes, it's a libertarian pipe dream. No, I don't want to hear about how "poor people will not be educated" by such a system. You cannot know what a free market in education would look like, because we've never tried.

Every implementation of a freer market for education that I've read about has had a significant amount of scamming and kids left behind.

We have a free market for food, we subsidize food for poor people, and the market for food is much 'thicker' and 'fluid' than the market for education -- but we still have food deserts. If the free market + subsidies can't make healthy food available to everyone, what chance do we have with education.

Also, many of the poor don't get a good education with the current system.

Imagine if the current school system was completely free-market, and we were seeing the same performance as the public schools. There would be complete outrage and calls for nationalization. But somehow government gets the benefit of the doubt, and the only comeback is "but, but the poor."

Government schools do not respond to consumers, since the process is political. Thus, we have our current mess. There must be a better way. We've given the government over 100 years to get things right. Why don't we try something different?

Why doesn't the time before public schools existed constitute a try? Seems to me humanity had centuries to millenia of a free market in education: anyone was free to offer or purchase as much education as they could afford.

It wasn't very nice.

> I don't see how this would work since schools are always expensive to run by nature and the working class is getting poorer (for those still having a revenue), I don't see this working very well.

That's why in my comment I said I don't want to hear this comeback. It's as predictable as sunset that every time someone mentions a free market in education, someone else can't imagine it working for educating the poor.

How well does the current system educate the poor?

It's already difficult for the working class with a free school so I can't imagine it would be better with a non-free one, the alternative to no public schools is simply no schooling at all for some people

> How well does the current system educate the poor?

You need to ask the US government for that, most public school systems are working well in western Europe so the US must be doing something wrong somewhere.

Yes, yes it is.

> No, I don't want to hear about how "poor people will not be educated" by such a system.

Libertarianism summarized: have you ever tried hating poor people... on weeeeeed?

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158

I have a platform that can be used to build it all but could use a good business partner and extra JS/Mobile developers can't hurt.

The business partner would help make pilots in schools and colleges. Just maybe a class here or there at first, then prove it out.

Please see http://qbix.com/blog for how we could partner together. If you are interested to talk, see my HN profile.

I agree with Bernie that college should be free but disagree that it should be free in its current state. It can b made much cheaper if you flip the classroom in the way I indicated above. That is what should be made free (ie paid for by the government).

In Primary School (everything up to High School) we need to reform the terrible top-down dynamics. I know about them secondhand because my mom is a teacher. School is a daycare center for parents who work. Kids are overdiagnosed with ADHD. Paul Graham wrote about school being a veritable prison back in 2003 (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) Things only got worse in the last 20 years.

As technological automation continues, there is demand for a system that is capable of retraining displaced workers, and doesn't create modern indentured servants in the process.

Education is a red herring, and the first thing people reach for.

But education is always misunderstood, and all research shows that there is vast amount of variability in things ranging from understanding to retention.

For example

1) Level of nutrition impacts grade outcomes

2) Level of food consumed on that particular day impacts retention/learning

3) Level of reading of parents impacts student scores

4) Level of grand parent nutrition impacts student health and nutrtion

5) Race and discrimination impacts educational outcomes

Leave aside things like bullying, student interest, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, learning style and so on.

And this may or MAY not impact job and future outcomes either.

Education is NOT an easy fix, and a tool which magically does fix this is a tool too powerful to create because if it were misused it would be an indoctrination tool beyond any other ever developed.

Education must be solved with other efforts

Does it? Many people with a college degree hold political beliefs one would consider unwieldy; Bannon went to Harvard.

It seems startups themselves are part of the problem, so one can doubt they will bring the solution. "Disruption" is another word for tearing society apart, ignoring legal norms designed to protect citizens from corporations.

The shift to online shopping -- actually, to online everything -- let people do most things from the comfort of their homes without ever meeting anyone.

"Fake news" were never a problem before Facebook and the bubble economy, where money is made by keeping people in a safe environment.

A better request would be: how to make people quit Facebook and stop using smartphones.

Bannon is the leader, not the follower. He takes advantage of those who are less informed and less likely to accurately judge fact from fiction.

If they were effectively educated, they would 1) be less susceptible to propaganda, 2) have better economic prospects and not be so pissed off.

Much like healthcare, education's goals dont fit capitalisms mold.

None of those subjects are particularly relevant for factory work. Even at the height of manufacturing, high schools were geared towards universities – because 10 is not the age where you want to make the decision that someone has or doesn't have the potential to be a judge/chemist/artist.

Calls to more closely align education with the perceived needs of the future economy seems misguided:

- You don't actually know what will be needed 15 to 20 years in advance (including the time it takes to develop a curriculum and teach teachers)

- It reduces citizens to their role in the economy

- It doesn't work. History is at least somewhat exciting. Teaching the filing of tax returns (a staple of such discussions) is completely removed from a 16-years reality. When it becomes relevant after college, it will be completely forgotten and possibly obsolete.

The current system is very much geared towards teaching modes of thinking, learning and similar meta-skills. History and philosophy, for example, are possibly the most important to understand current affair (but have often been decimated by a drive towards the sciences). Throw in a bit of statistics and you'll also have a good foundation for entrepreneurs.

The last thing we need is a bunch of people who have learned the same things, references the same books and inspirations. (yes there are obvious exceptions but even within those the landscape is normally so vast.

The first thing we need is people to start taking education on by themselves in todays world there is no excuse.

The current model doesn't need to be destroyed and rebuilt, just remodeled as you said for a different future

> They're the ones who care the most about kids' learning

Sad that some parents care less than their teachers, but that's probably the root of 75% of education problems.

- Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top

- A lot of VC companies are killing a lot of previously relatively stable jobs. Uber is giving its drivers a job for a while but it's pretty clear this will not be sustainable and they will soon be out of a job again

- The biggest companies like Facebook and Google are pretty much aiding "fake news" because in the end the only thing they care about is impressions and fake news sells better

Don't want to be too negative but technology is not only a force for good but also causes problems for a lot of people. Maybe these people are looking at the wrong guy for solutions but their concerns are valid.

What if we need less money and lower wages are actually fine?

Edit: Do the people down-voting this actually think technology doesn't provide consumer surplus and deflation? Or do you have a problem with my question?

Technology and globalization have impacted food a lot. Education, and housing? Not nearly as much. Healthcare is more complicated, and I'm not an expert, so I'll refrain from speculating there.

One might argue globalization has hurt people, but so far, technology seems to be making just about everything it touches cheaper for everyone.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

In the future, if you could provide a source for your argument, it could give more substantive discussion.

I just wanted to expose something commonly left out of these discussions, which is that technology is generally deflationary. More technology in the areas of healthcare, education, and housing might be the solution, not the problem.

> so far, technology seems to be making just about everything it touches cheaper for everyone.

You say this, but only provide a source for 1 out of 4 key indicators of cost of living. Can you provide the same evidence towards housing, healthcare and education becoming significantly cheaper as a % of a budget of an average household?

Otherwise that statement is just incorrect.

Bullshit. Technology brings down the cost of living by making the supply side more efficient. What goes up is the cost of the way you'd like to live as you have more options to choose from.

Obviously there's disruptions along the way (ex: automobiles lessen demand for horse breeders) but when capitalism closes a door it opens a window (ex: mechanics).

The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs. It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

I suggest you go do some basic math on the cost of producing consumer staples like rice, beans, milk, and meat. Technology has brought down the cost of all of them.

Similarly, efficiency gains in MPG and durability improvements have lowered the price of owning and maintaining a vehicle. Uber, Lyft, and other ride sharing apps have lowered the price of it even further to remove the capital outlay.

> The "efficiency" increases in recent years have more often than not been various ways of cutting labor costs.

Which is bad because why exactly? Is the purpose of the corporate sector to produce goods and services or to provide a place for people to go?

> It doesn't matter if things are cheaper in a nominal sense if your ability to earn a living is eroded.

Sure it is. That's the definition of makes things more efficient: being able to be produced more cheaply

I specifically cite transportation costs in my prior comment. Housing is also cheap if you don't live in (expensive) cities. There's an abundance of housing in the suburbs and if you're willing to share a place with others (like everybody seems to take for granted in the city) it's insanely cheap.

Education and health are interesting beasts. On the one hand technology has brought the cost of education to near zero through remote learning and internet courses. There's more knowledge available at a person's fingertips than at any point in history and the cost is cheaper than ever. The cost of a formal higher education has gone up but I don't think that's driven by technology. It's from the availability of "easy money" for student loans. Healthcare (in the USA) is uniformly fucked and needs to be scrapped and rebuilt though government programs like Medicaid do cover the people your describe (poverty line).

The increasing polarization of the economy is also spatial: the remaining good jobs are congregating in fewer and fewer metropolises where the cost of living is skyrocketing.

For example: Apple sells an iPhone for about $750. This phone contains the equivalent of (roughly) $3,000 of disparate technology from the 1990s, including a cell phone, camera, tape recorder, etc. Not only does it contain all of that for less money, all of that is better quality than what was available for that $3,000 back in the 1990s.

That is deflation and consumer surplus in action. The consumer can spend a fraction of what they would've in 1990 for a better product.

Another example: Apps on the App Store. Everyone expects everything for free because there is so much competition enabled by technology. The marginal cost is roughly zero, so most apps are free. If most of the gains were being kept by the producer, apps would cost a lot of money.

Down vote for trolls and other destructive posts, not just because you have a problem or disagreement with what's expressed. OP is legitimately trying to contribute to the conversation.

Just to play devil's advocate: what if you define progress as "that stuff" that will increase the general well-being of the greatest number of people over the next 20 years? With that definition, does technology-powered automation still count as progress?

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/05/hackernews-calls-for-polit...

From what I've seen, contrary opinions that are well expressed are rewarded (even if controversial - I've got a few that ultimately got more up votes than down, but it was a ride). Contrary opinions that, well, presume a fight? Not so much.

Instead of claiming that we can't have that discussion, why not try to have that discussion?

Your question is loaded because it assumes that ownership of such machines is the best solution for those made unemployed by them - I think this is probably flawed, because management is a different skill set than direct contribution.

The problem is that the worker's skills have lost value. They need new skills - management skills for owning the machines, or different skills that haven't been automated yet.

Or maybe a refinement on their existing skills. My understanding of Japanese factories is that it's commonplace to have one of the fabrication lines done by people - the thinking goes: "If you do not know how to do it better, how can you make machines do it better?". I also remember a story of, I think it was GE, getting their designers, engineers, and assemblers (the people literally putting the pieces together) all together to improve the design. The assemblers noted a particularly difficult step, and in making that step easier, the engineers removed a number of parts. Everything got better.

Let's look at the other part of your question - incentives for building the automation. It seems like the R&D incentive comes from the end-user value, so let's skip to that - I want an automated machine for a number of reasons: Quality consistency, up time, wage cost reduction, safety. Eventually, all of these do boil down to "profit", but the routes taken are important. QC means you can sell more and/or charge more; but you could make more and charge less in ways that make more or less profit.

I don't think I can answer your question, because I don't know why you think that the incentives for building them would be removed; and in my head, the first blocker for the recently unemployed to own such machines is wanting to run a business. I don't think most people want that.

I don't think it can even be answered with that assumption included. Let's say you have a cobbler, who makes shoes. He recently lost his job to the burgomeister's new Elfbot 4000, that can make the same quality of shoe, but turns out 2 dozen pairs in a single night.

The Elfbot 4k runs all week on a single saucer of milk, without sleeping. The cobbler has to eat 2000 kcal every day, and sleep 8h every night. It is completely obvious that the cobbler can no longer compete in the shoe market with the Elfbot. The value of the cobbler's one marketable skill has been devastated by automation. So the cobbler cannot raise enough money from selling shoes to buy the Elfbot. No matter how hard the cobbler works, his productive output cannot reach a level high enough to equal the value of the Elfbot.

So the cobbler would have to get the money from somewhere else. But the burgomeister is the richest man in town, and the only one with enough money to lend out. Why would he give a loan to the cobbler, to buy the robot, whose production would be used to pay off the loan, when he could just sell the production and get the money without that source of default risk?

So the cobbler could also just steal the Elfbot. But if Elfbots could just be stolen willy-nilly, no one would bother keeping one. The burgomeister would obviously have to defend his property against one-man robberies.

That leaves a torch-and-pitchfork rebellion. After that happens, no one bothers bringing new machines to the village, because they don't want to lose their property.

Or the cobbler could study the machine, and build his own, if it can be done cheaply enough. Unfortunately for him, the burgomeister has a patent, which equates copying with theft.

The only way for the cobbler to own an Elfbot is if he is the first to build one. And that just puts all the other cobblers in his shoes for the above scenarios.

The displaced workers just can't get the capital in a capitalist society through the use of their obsoleted skill, and the capital is not created as quickly or as easily in a non-capitalist society. They would have to acquire a different marketable skill to be able to afford one, but once they have that skill, they no longer have any specific connection to or need for that particular machine. If the cobbler becomes an expert in specialty candle marketing, and makes a pile of cash, he no longer has any need to own the Elfbot. He could buy the Dribbler Deluxe instead.

I really like your summation that "can't get the capital in a capitalist society through the use of their obsoleted skill".

Arguably, the benefit of the cobbler could be a) highly custom small batch work, b) expertise to maintain the Elfbot, and c) a thinking mind behind the task. Elfbot will not improve by itself, the cobbler would.

The human labor requirement has been slashed and burned for shoe-making, and the 99% of ex-cobblers that can't find work reprogramming and servicing Elfbots are busted back down to the pool of unskilled laborers.

The modern economy is increasingly asking unskilled laborers to retrain themselves to a different category of skilled labor at their own expense. Those categories of skilled labor may not even stay viable long enough to pay off the (re-)education loans, so those people may even be in exactly the same situation ten years later, except instead of just being broke, they will be broke, still in debt, and unable to borrow more for additional retraining.

In the IP space, we have an example working perfectly with the communist maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need": Open Source Software.

Is it really necessary that the means of production be owned by the labor put out of work? Or is the real problem not inequality (which has some very nice incentivizing benefits) but desperation at the lower end of the economic scale which lead to extortion like transactions? And if that is the case, is a full scale distribution of wealth necessary or can we have the best of both worlds by redistributing just enough wealth to guarantee that everyone has their survival needs taken care of?

Technology is a tool. Effects depend on who handles it / with which incentives. It can naturally facilitate wrongdoing (intended or not) but it also can – and it would be irresponsible not to use it – to counter said wrongdoings.

No, the technology label is not sufficient. It isn't an immunity necklace. It doesn't mean inevitability. I say this as an engineer.

Civilisation is at a crossroad: continue building a high-tech society which makes humans irrelevant according to the current social/philosophical/moral norms (1) OR go back to the Dark Ages and let the powerful run the show (2).

If we want to continue with (1), we also have to quickly redefine the whole meaning of society, citizen, work, job, leadership, democracy, etc. This has to be done fast and it has to be done globally.

This will be very hard to do.

Note: The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions.

Note 2: The FRBoSF analysis isn't perfect for answering this question, but at least it's a good start, unlike the pure logic approach (despite the easy availability of good longitudinal Census data on the subject) that Graham published.

Note 3: The Graham essay is an essay on income inequality that came out before the atomic bomb that Picketty dropped on the subject. It really shouldn't be dragged out now because the research landscape on the field has been completely changed since it was written.

Final Note: I know that every time the word startup is used on HN, it spurs a 'No True Scotsman' debate about what qualities invalidate a new business from the label startup. Not remotely important. The FRBoSF article notes that new businesses have faster job growth than older businesses and that's the larger subject in question. Trying to throw companies out only serves to move the conversation from fact based to conjecture based by throwing out a perfectly good source of facts relevant to the matter.

[1] http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/

First, you should stop quoting pg's essays as though they were infallible sources of truth. It's not helping your argument. I like some of his essays; others are misleading or dead wrong (for example: http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm). Empirical evidence always beats philosophical pondering; shawn-furyan provided data that pg was wrong, and you did nothing but post another data-free essay.

Second, you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts like growth of wealth. We do; of course it is possible to "grow the pie". But since the 1970's, the majority of GDP growth has translated to income gains only for the top decile. And in such a regime, why should everyone else bother to grow the pie? What income inequality has done is create people who make a rational, and perfectly valid, calculation that "growth" is pointless and not worth fighting for, since they won't see any of it.

you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts

This is a personal attack, though. Please don't do that.

He doesn't, and it's not a line of logic, it's an interpretation of the evidence. Graham didn't even look at the evidence, and came to a conclusion that becomes very hard to support once you've had a glance at a chart of the available evidence (i.e. deep analysis isn't required to recognize that his proposed mechanism is flawed).

Also, you should really heed my 3rd note. You cannot speak effectively on income inequality without having read Picketty. It is by far the most significant treatment on the subject. It goes far beyond my simple counterpuntal analysis here to bat down a poorly thought out and completely unresearched pure logical argument. At least read a couple informed reviews of Picketty. I seem to recall FT, the Economists, Mankiew and Krugman having worthwhile, messy and conflicting thoughts after it was published. Graham just is not a useful resource on income inequality.

To address your point: Yes, Macro 101 makes it clear that trade multiplies wealth, thus wealth is non-static. The Graham argument you cite is incredibly elementary, and he is not the source to be citing on the topic. That particular question is miles more elementary than any discussion of the impacts of income inequality on macroeconomic factors. Bringing it up when talking about Income Inequality is kind of like citing a clunky explanation of Newton's 2nd law of motion in a discussion about time dilation effects of supersonic flight (which relies on non-Newtonian physics). To wit, analysis of Income inequality requires going beyond the overly simplistic macroeconomic models that have led Economists to mispredict the effects of income inequality for so long. Macro 101 is not useful here. The current evidence in the field is conter-intuitive and difficult to reconcile for expert economists.

Also, again, Graham's essay is very outdated and has, to be charitable, been surpassed by more careful and thorough resources on the topic.

Who decides that?

Also see my other reply.

No; that essay might argue that inequality is a necessary side-effect or condition of startups, but that is not the same as arguing it is a "good thing".

For comparison: pollution might be a necessary result of the industrial revolution, and perhaps a cost we pay gladly; but that doesn't mean pollution is good. If we could get industry without pollution, we would.

(Of course, Facebook has had such a ridiculously large effect on the world that argument is probably hard to win, but it illustrates what I'm trying to say)

More broadly, when a society won't let people become as rich as the market will let them, founders will tend to move elsewhere.

* Leveraging social networking to generate social permission for people to stand for office, which I think is the most important obstacle facing people who might consider running --- far more so than money.

* Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with.

* Informing constituencies and potential candidates about the local offices available to run for.

* Crowdfunding campaigns with Kickstarter-like dynamics to make it safer to commit funds to speculative candidates.

* Capturing the stories of people who have or are standing for election, so that we can all compare notes and see what the challenges (or lack thereof) are.

* Building informal parties and coalitions of officeholders in states and major metro areas, to build tickets and slates of candidates around common ideals.

* Building common platforms for constituent services, so that fresh new officeholders can outcompete incumbents both in responsiveness and in making their newfound influence available to their constituencies to pressure other parts of government.

I've been calling my Senators about the Sessions nomination nonstop for the past 2 weeks and I've gotten calls through just 3 times. I haven't the slightest clue how to reach officeholders in my Chicago suburb. Clearly there's room for major innovation here.

Incidentally, if you're building things like this, I'd love to help in any way I can. I'm easy to contact. I've set a goal for myself to get a specific number of friends and acquaintances to run, and I'm happy with the progress I've been able to make and pretty excited about the concept.

If you can take away the need for millions of dollars to run a campaign then policy makers aren't beholden to the few wealthy supporters that helped get them elected.

Many of your points are already being worked on and the projects would love more support and input.

[0]http://progcode.co

This is a huge frustration of mine. It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone, because they don't pay attention to email, social media, etc.

It would be awesome to have a social media platform that is dedicated to political communication. And with ample features related to communicating about policy. Like for example:

1) The ability to search for a pending bill based on the text of the bill, highlight text, and comment directly on it.

2) The ability to +1 someone else's comments in a meaningful way.

3) The ability to publicly challenge a politician's claims through research, data citations, or other types of analysis.

4) The ability to find the appropriate politicians/appointees for a specific concern.

5) The ability to facilitate directional communication from politicians on specific issues. It would be great if a politician had a common platform to explain in detail why they voted yay/nay or abstained from voting for something, with quick crossreferences, data visualization, etc.

I almost hate to reveal this "secret" since I thought it was pretty well-known, but if you contribute to your Representative's campaign, there's a pretty good chance you can get a one-on-one or at least attendance to a dinner event. This is much easier with state politicians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory

So I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think it's "just" removing the "costly signal".

For a long time, in fact, this mindset meant that a really effective way to "hack" the Congressional contact system was to send your message in a telegram -- because if you were willing to pay to have a messenger run your message across town and deliver it by hand, you were assumed to be very motivated indeed!

(I doubt that's true anymore, of course; not least because I'm not sure you can send telegrams anymore. But now I'm wondering if you could get the same effect these days by sending your message via FedEx's most expensive service...)

That being said, once the sums you contribute get large enough you will almost certainly get to be known around the office -- either explicitly (e.g. the Chief of Staff tells all the people who handle correspondence "Bob Smith is a good friend of the Congressman's, if you find any messages from him bring those straight to me") or implicitly (e.g. the staff of the Congressional office notices that when Bob Smith comes in to meet with the boss he's ushered right in and stays for a long time). So large contributors' messages can easily get special attention, even without that kind of direct connection to their contributions ever being made.

Mail them a letter. Yes, a letter, on paper. They take those very seriously -- especially when so many of them come in that their office is filled to the rafters with them.

Legislating is an information processing task. They're just doing triage. It's your job to get their attention. The only way I've ever gotten my way is when I show up with a crowd. Then whoever's sitting in the chair will do whatever it takes to make you go away.

Politics of Attention https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Attention-Government-Priorit...

TLDR: Replace current campaign managers, consultants, fund raisers, etc.

Which I totally support. But how?

Please ask candidates (past, present and future) about running for office. Better yet, run for office. See what it's like. I highly recommend the training from http://wellstone.org and http://democraticfuture.org. I'm sure there's others.

Also, join some local campaigns and do the grunt work. See how the game is played. Especially fund raising and endorsements.

---

This is not a technical problem.

Like the nerdtopian legislative information systems (https://www.govtrack.us) before, geeks making fascinating tools without deep knowledge won't make a dent.

Source: ran for office, activist/lobbyist.

Excellent link, thank you.

Redistricting is my #1 issue. I've been long

I'm slowly warming up to the idea of voter efficiency. It'd likely moot the geometric based techniques, like compactness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasted_vote

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/24/a-lower-court-win-o...

http://gerrymander.princeton.edu

Politically, I work on local issues. We recently formed a local working group. So far we're researching and networking.

My personal policy goal is to have an open, transparent redistricting process. Regardless of the heuristics used. Modeled loosely on Iowa's system. Though I'm super partisan, all gerrymandering (disenfranchisement) makes me sick. I want to prevent scenarios like Ohio and Maryland.

I do not yet know how voter efficiency standards will change my plans, goals.

My direct observation is that (most) successful politicians are careerists. They started as pages, legislative assistants, etc. Makes perfect sense.

At the same time, most of the lowest rung (entry level) offices have a ridiculous number of candidates. Most first time candidates are walk-ons, having no idea how to play the game (me, for example). Most aspirants wash out after their first loss.

You could also possibly allow constituents to place donations that would go through if the petition succeeds and a response is given.

Do you plan to run yourself?

e.g. https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ (Hansard prettified), https://www.writetothem.com/ (case study at https://www.mysociety.org/democracy/writetothem/ )

1) 8 week Training Program - an eight-week training program targeted at lawyers, entrepreneurs, and others who are interested in serving as state and federal legislatures. Candidates have their training and expenses paid for, and they learn all of the key things they need to know to win. It's an open process, where people all over the country can apply, and the program becomes prestigious over time, like Echoing Green or YC.

- Public Speaking Training - Social Media Growth Hacking - Fundraising and Donor Management - Policy Issue Training

2) Shared News: A hacker news type site for democratically minded people to share political articles. Builds inbound attention to the accelerator.

3) Blog: Articles about what it is like to become a politician. It features lots of examples and profiles. Shows everyday people they can do it as well. - What does the career path look like for someone who joins the House of Representatives? - How do state senators support themselves?

4) Funder Network: Candidates get introductions to top funders from the state who can help. Each candidate gets a certain amount of intros, and the accelerator manages the process.

5) Fundraising Tools: the candidate is trained in how to use tools, such as a CRM, to manage the process. I've seen a lot of startups struggle with setting up the right infrastructure, and I'm sure candidates have the same challenges.

6) Public Speaking Training: Politicians need to be electrifying. Have politicians train with TV media experts to become compelling in front of the crowd.

7) Digital Profile: Help candidates set up a website, volunteer management tools, and social media tools. Create a standard set of tools for candidates.

9) Growth Hacking Team: a small squad of growth hackers who devise strategies for growth hacking political candidates. This team builds software and strategies, and these tools are disseminated to candidates through the training program. Think of it like a consulting firm within the program.

9) Intern Pool: Many early-stage state legislatures rely on interns to provide the manpower needed for the procedural aspects of campaigning and running office. The accelerator can help recruit thousands of interns from different sources, and it can provide each candidate with a constant stream of interns to provide the manpower needed to win. Interns are given credit for being part of the fellowship program (like YC fellows) and are part of a cohort with shared events, message board, hr people they can talk to.

10) MOOC: make a public MOOC to let people view the training program. This makes people excited about the program and interested in applying. It also helps scale the program, similar to How to Start a Startup.

If you'd like to follow up, my email is in my username.

What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in actionable political terms.

We can do this. We have the majority of scientists, engineers, philosophers, and artists behind us. But we have to move quickly because returning to the kind of managed democracy we had before is no longer possible.

http://democracycollaborative.org/

http://geo.coop

http://fair.coop

Whether we like it or not, the country is shifting back towards the 19th century notions of "political economy." These existed in a diminished form under neoliberalism, but were largely swept beside by the triumphalist end of history that reigned. Appeals to fascism and authoritarian communism have already entered the Overton window, so the only option now is to outcompete those explicit political-economic fusions with something new.

We need a Star Trek: TNG for the (pun not intended) next generation...

If someone is willing to start a movement that wants to create United Fedration of Planets, count me in.

We also, as much as possible, must try evenly distribute the future. For example, if we want to defeat climate change, we have to rally manufacturing and technological solutions in places like the rural Midwest. In even the reddest of states, their are bastions of support for future-oriented ideas, and we should begin networking these places togehther as forward bases of operation.

One thing I always loved about Star Trek worldview is that characters in the show always believe people they meet are competent at what they do, instead of assuming that they're working with morons. Ditto for the bureaucracy of the UFP - it's assumed competent until proven otherwise; not like in our world, where the government is always assumed idiotic by default.

If instead, its framed as expanding the idea of American Federalism, diverse entities working towards vision of the future rooted in these ideals, I think it will be more successful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

"democracy" makes the sentence an oxymoron.

Modern corporations are run like totalitarian, authoritarian regimes with top-down orders being barked down. If you disobey, you're out.

People in Western democracies are no longer putting up with non-democratic control of their political institutions, but are completely oblivious to non-democratic control of their economic institutions and are perfectly willing to take orders where and when it matters most -- every day, 9 to 5.

When employees can directly vote and democratically elect the CEO/CFO and other executive and managerial positions, across the wide range of industries and in majority of organizations, it will be a huge win for democracy, and that will spill into a much more engaged population politically as well. Also, at that point, employees are no longer employees.

We can tolerate authoritarian regimes in companies, because they're small (relative to countries) and compete in a heavily regulated space. If you want to leave or they fire you, you can generally find a new workplace. Companies play thier game by selling stuff (and doing accounting magic).

On the other hand, when two countries enter fierce competition, it's called "war". People on both sides end up dying. Even a less fierce competition ends up being miserable for everyone. The game has no bounds. And you can't easily quit it and move elsewhere.

That's why we prefer countries to be run with inefficient democratic process - because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable.

That already happens anyway. You don't need to have a democratically governed workplace for constant political shifting and backstabbing to occur.

> If you want to leave or they fire you, you can generally find a new workplace.

Which will also be non-democratically governed, so that doesn't work.

> because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable.

Can't you make the same argument at organization level? I'm sure many Amazon warehouse workers would agree.

> Can't you make the same argument at organization level? I'm sure many Amazon warehouse workers would agree.

Honestly, I think you could. Actually, this is something I was thinking about a lot in context of employee rights. Making workers happy - good office conditions, paid leaves, healthcare benefits, regular schedule, etc. - is a cost for a company, and creates inefficiencies that, if eliminated, would let the company do more while spending less[0]. So many companies are indeed happy to make employees as miserable as they can get away with[1]. Enforcing worker rights is purposefully introducing inefficiency, in order to avoid the market optimizing away all human values.

So let me rephrase my original point: you can get away with much more efficiency in companies than in countries without making a lot of people miserable.

--

[0] - subject to dynamics of market competition, in which all the gains you earn by introducing a change are quickly cancelled out when competitors follow suit.

[1] - not a problem for companies that don't need specialized workers for which there's more demand that supply - i.e. not a problem for most companies and a huge problem for most people.

One benefit that I feel may happen, is to generate better buy-in for management decisions if the workers feel they have a hand in making said decisions. They might also care more about the health of their company, rather than maximizing the value they reap.

Your assertion that value, wealth, and prosperity are created through the hard work and sacrifice by business owners is of course disputed by socialists. You're begging the question here. If you stipulate that value in society is created by the very process that socialists want to dismantle, then of course being a socialist is irrational. No real conversation can be had when you define socialism to be irrational from the outset.

Further evidence that no real conversation can be had follows from your dismissive "sorry pal, surface-level idealism" remark. Why are you so snide and dismissive? Do you think it helps your credibility? (It doesn't.)

Socialists argue that value is created by all working people, most of whom are not in it for the profit incentive. Value in society is created by teachers, whom get paid poorly. By PhD students, who get paid poorly. By parents who raise their children well for no compensation at all. By all the millions of people who get to work every day and don't get compensated handsomely for the effort. If there are so many people willing to work hard and sacrifice for the good of society without any chance of striking it rich, why should business owners be the exception? That's the fundamental question socialists ask. And there are no snide answers to this question that are remotely satisfying.

> Value in society is created by teachers, whom get paid poorly.

Many teachers (pre-college) are essentially babysitters who recite state-certified textbooks. This not value in itself, but it does free the parents to work to create value. Value is also created by the students who go on to create exceptional things. Some are inspired by good teachers, yes, but this seems to be the exception than the norm.

> By PhD students, who get paid poorly.

Apprentices in older times got paid poorly too, but many went on to create value who wouldn't have otherwise without the extensive training. It's an investment. You don't get paid well while in training because you're still an unknown quantity for the most part.

> By parents who raise their children well for no compensation at all.

The purpose of capturing value is to be able to start a family and pass on your genetics (for most people). And those who raise their children well often do get compensated later in life, if not with direct support, than with higher probabilities that their children will be successful and continue passing on their shared genes.

> By all the millions of people who get to work every day and don't get compensated handsomely for the effort.

You don't get compensted for effort, you get compensated for value. You can dig a ditch with a spoon for a lot of effort, guess what, it's not valuable.

> If there are so many people willing to work hard and sacrifice for the good of society without any chance of striking it rich, why should business owners be the exception? That's the fundamental question socialists ask.

As I showed above, hard work a.k.a effort is not, and should not, be a determining factor of one's wealth. Many people work hard but are using "spoons" so to speak. This doesn't create value. Planning the logistics of a digging operation (tool equipment rental, worker recruiting and scheduling, end customer sales, planning real estate builds, etc) creates value, even if it means I only plan these things for a few months then sit back while other people do the digging.

Now not everyone can do that simultaneously. For one, not everyone is smart enough to do higher-level planning. Intelligence is rewarded economically, and we see this with IQ-income correlations. Secondly, even if everyone were the same intelligence level, we can't have everyone be a planner/developer and nobody be a digger (or excavator operator). But then guess what happens, the worker class becomes rare and so the free market will start paying it much better as demand increases. If physical labour becomes scarce, that's what gets paid more.

Because we can fight neither the reality of scarcity driving value, nor the reality of greedy human nature, we ought to design systems whereby these forces can be put towards good. That's what capitalism does, and there's many examples of everyone being better off as a result (e.g. 600M+ Chinese people eating a lot better in the last few decades).

Finally, to emphasize human nature again, none of the examples you listed are exclusively for the "good of society". Being a teacher is a job with decent pay and good vacation, being a PhD student is an investment towards your future (earnings), being a parent and raising children well is how you pass on and secure your genetic lineage, and work is for economic survival, and eventually gives one the power to pass on their genes.

> If I'm dismissive it's because we've had a lot of field tests of socialism throughout history, as well as in economic studies, and the results are always poor.

While this may sound like a no-true-Scotsman argument, the most prominent example of a failure, USSR, has quickly (within a few years) moved off course from socialism to totalitarianism and state capitalism [1]. There were never democratically governed workplaces in the Soviet Union. This happened for a variety of reasons, including constant military threats from capitalist countries that naturally pushed the population to rally around autocratic leaders. Same is true for many others. There were successful-looking democratic attempts as well, but those were crushed by capitalists pretty quickly.

North Korea's full official name, for example, is Democratic People's Republic of Korea. However, nobody is seriously arguing that democracy doesn't work because North Korea is democratic. However, the same logic somehow fails to apply to communism.

> It's a dangerous mindset to not examine critically because it is a slippery slope towards communism, the most inhumane type of society responsible for the most deaths in human history (much more than religion).

Citations needed here. Putting aside the fact that no countries in history have actually been communist yet, most claims of "millions deaths under communism" are pretty dubious, counting many deaths without establishing causal effect. For example, Chinese famine deaths are counted as directly caused by communism. If the same methodology were applied to capitalism, you can count many more deaths throughout the world until today -- famines, starvation, easily preventable diseases in capitalist Third World, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

Note that people describe themselves as communist since that is their end goal and states describe themselves as socialist since they have not ceased to exist yet.

For one, I'm sure a 12th century monarch or a lord would have a host of reasons why you're damn right it's my regime. Or a modern-day King Saud for that matter I guess. After all, it's his father who built his kingdom, and he has all the risks and responsibilities of a monarch. But for most Western observers, that is no longer defensible and most would elect to live somewhere with a democratic government.

Same goes to modern day dictatorships like North Korea. If not for international borders and internal controls, most North Koreans would probably prefer to leave their country. So, to continue the analogy, one could imagine a day in the future where as a small business owner, you are no longer able to attract any employees on the terms you're used to now -- not unless they are not employees, but co-workers with all equal rights and votes. And just as it's unimaginable and laughable in modern America for someone to start claiming that he's now a lord of XYZ county, and all those living within it are his peasants, it's not too hard to imagine a similar reaction to your proposal of employment for wages.

You can also look at it from another angle.

Why exactly is it that you want to have your own totalitarian regime within the organization you started? Is it just because you enjoy the power over people? Most people wouldn't say so. Besides, if you are the founder and know the business better than anyone, and have good leadership qualities, why wouldn't you be constantly re-elected as CEO?

And if your coworkers indeed approve of you as CEO, you would still get your greater earnings potential, although without being able to exploit your workers as much.

Again, I welcome whatever reality the free market thrusts upon me, and will react and adapt accordingly.

However this is incredibly far from reality because people actually like being employees. You don't have nearly as much risk. You don't have to make tough executive decisions with far-reaching consequences. Your levels of stress are lower. Etc. Those things are worth $$$, and we price them by CEO/founder compensation. It's not going to be perfect pricing, but it's the best we've got.

> Why exactly is it that you want to have your own totalitarian regime within the organization you started?

Because I believe that my decision making and skills with regards to a particular type of business in a particular type of market will yield me big returns, and so I want to put my money where my mouth is. Hence I saved up and founded my business.

> Besides, if you are the founder and know the business better than anyone, and have good leadership qualities, why wouldn't you be constantly re-elected as CEO?

Injecting this type of politics into a company is a fantastic way of slowing it to a crawl. Even if it's possible that one of my employees could be "better" than me at my job, we're not practically going to find out ("let's all try each other's job for a month!"). Or rather, it's not my responsibility to ask them -- if they think so they're free to go start their own company/competitor (subject to whatever non-compete clauses they may have signed, which you could argue is burdensome regulation, and I might be inclined to agree).

Besides, who says elections give us the best candidate? ;)

Unlike the North Korea example, the employees really do have options here. At least ideally they have as much choice as possible for who to work for, remember it's not like I put a gun to anyone's head when I asked them to join (or stay). A counterexample might be the H1-B's that are tied to their employer, but I don't have that particular relationship with any of my employees.

> And if your coworkers indeed approve of you as CEO, you would still get your greater earnings potential, although without being able to exploit your workers as much.

Just to wrap up, as I said above it's not worth the time for me to "poll" everyone. There are serious business consequences to injecting such a high level of politics into a company. What keeps me from exploiting my workers primarily are competitors, with competing potential offers, and the flow of information on the internet, e.g. 'this type of engineer makes X a year'.

Really? Why don't you offer your employees equal partnership with no strings attached and see if they'd just rather stay employees. I call bullshit on this.

> Injecting this type of politics into a company is a fantastic way of slowing it to a crawl.

Not true. Taking one day a year to nominate candidates and vote is hardly a burden. It's less of a burden than any normal employee turnover process in non-democratic companies. And I'm not even talking about large bureaucratic corporations with layers of management and their constant "re-orgs".

> Besides, who says elections give us the best candidate? ;)

Elections where most people are apathetic and don't even bother to vote because they think the entire system is corrupt are a bit different from elections in a 50-people organization, where everyone knows everybody else.

> Unlike the North Korea example, the employees really do have options here.

You missed my point. If all other organizations out there were democratically governed, then you'd probably have had to put a gun to someone's head to stay.

> There are serious business consequences to injecting such a high level of politics into a company.

Again, this is untrue. You might be projecting American election process onto this and may not be aware that everywhere else election cycles don't actually last 2 years. Most normal countries don't spend more than a month on an election cycle. A small business wouldn't spend more than a day.

> What keeps me from exploiting my workers primarily are competitors, with competing potential offers, and the flow of information on the internet, e.g. 'this type of engineer makes X a year'.

I think again you're projecting your own bubble here. Fast food industry is fiercely competitive, correct? Do you think a Burger King employee would get a vastly superior competing offer from McDonald's?

I didn't know it was this possible to be so non self aware.

> The parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the system, such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to starting competitors.

Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does, the socialister it is!

No matter how ignorant you may think another poster is, it's never okay on HN to be uncivil. Particularly with contentious topics, it's even more important to raise to level of civility to ensure constructive discussion.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I live and work in North America where GDP per capita is something like $54K USD or more. This context makes a difference for your "99%" comment.

Or leave and work for a competitor. I don't put a gun to anybody's head, unlike various socialist governments.

Feel free to expand on this thought though. Note that I work in North America and so my expectation of an employee being able to 1) leave and work for someone else, or 2) leave and start their own company, stem from this.

> Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does, the socialister it is!

So what do you call it when the government props up certain businesses (that they prefer) by redistributing my tax dollars thereby shielding them from market forces? I can't think of a libertarian government doing this.

And yes, socialism must imply a bigger and more intrusive central management body (aka government) because that's how you "democratize the means of production". You have to enforce such actions with the gun.

Only socialist governments put guns to people's heads?

> Note that I work in North America and so my expectation of an employee being able to 1) leave and work for someone else, or 2) leave and start their own company, stem from this.

Yeah, it's not so easy for most of the world's population. Since you seem to be aware this, note that a less obvious element of this fact is that the reason things seem largely not so bad in the US/Europe is due to the large scale extraction of economic value from less developed countries. That power law is now coming around to bite the US/Europe middle class, and Trump/Brexit is the result.

> So what do you call it when the government props up certain businesses (that they prefer) by redistributing my tax dollars thereby shielding them from market forces? I can't think of a libertarian government doing this.

Cronyism? Corruption? This really has little to do with economics but is a political problem. The same thing happens in capitalist and socialist countries.

> And yes, socialism must imply a bigger and more intrusive central management body (aka government) because that's how you "democratize the means of production". You have to enforce such actions with the gun.

Yes because of people like you fighting it... grumble grumble

There are actually a lot of "libertarian socialist" theories out there. It's like a blend of anarchism and Marxism.

Watch Ricardo Semler's TedTalk.

People need a (fun) way to increase the number of real social interactions they have with other people. What's really dangerous right now is that many (including Liberals) are socially shunning those who don't share their political beliefs (or are not pure enough in their beliefs). Pushing people to the fringes of society will just force them to find a home in the most extreme among us.

For a long time, Americans relied on social clubs that allowed people to engage in diverse political discussions but also build friendly relationships with others. I would like to see startups try to revive long lived, persistent social organizations that are aimed first at building a friendly community among its members and second at making people listen to different points of view.

What I was thinking is that some policies regarding responsibilities incurred by posting a comment in an asynchronous discussion forum are needed. For example, one should not be able to simply post a comment then leave the discussion. The persistence of their comment should be tied to whether they continue to participate, and respond to refutations and the like. Similarly, I see a lot of specious reasoning and appealing lies get posted, rapidly upvoted, but only eventually debunked: the people who upvoted should be notified of the refutation.

It would be nice if karma could actually be useful, and this always reminds me of PageRank [2]. Surely there must be some way to normalize the weights of highly-voted comments in less populated but serious subforums (like subreddits) so they are not overwhelmed by the karma granted to silly jokes in unserious but hugely populated frivolous subforums (again, I'm thinking of reddit here).

I think all of these things would do something to counter the fake news and echo chambers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Hear, hear, I think this is the key. Happy people tend toward stability for the societies they're in. I'm all for education, for anyone who wants it, as much as they want it (price and payer to be negotiated). That said, I suspect that education by itself will not fill the job supply-demand gap, nor that those educated jobs will be well-matched to the places where people live. And, if there's more to life than jobs, then maybe the jobs need to move to where people are, rather than making people move to where the jobs are. I think answers that will work will have to work for, say, everybody in the 'Rust Belt' as they are today, not as they might be if they jump through all the right hoops. For an example some people will dislike, a government run single payer health care system would take the financial burden off of employers as well as being cheaper for employees, supporting small business growth and entrepreneurship. Don't like that example? Fine. Bring on your favorites.

Groklaw became the source of authoritative reporting about the SCO cases. It had analysis from lawyers, paralegals, and technologists. It had (voluntary, amateur) reporters attending hearings and giving in-depth reports, and then thorough analysis from a wide variety of people. People cared enough to voluntarily take vacation days to go to the courthouse and attend hearings, and then spend the next 2+ hours writing it all up and posting it. People voluntarily gave money to keep it all going. It was amazing.

It also was subject to significant attack, both from SCO and from trolls. It consumed the life of the paralegal running it for a decade. It was probably not sustainable.

I think that moderation is essential for any online community that isn't going to fall to the lowest common denominator, but sustainability is an issue. (HN at least has multiple moderators, so hopefully they won't burn out.) For news, multiple reporters are needed (Groklaw didn't report on a hearing until multiple reports came in, because sometimes trolls sent in false reports.)

I think the answer may be multiple small sites that each care about a focused area, and attract enough of a following that there are multiple reporters available when needed. (This probably won't work for something like foreign policy. I can attend a court hearing in my town and write up a report, but I can't get an interview with the Secretary of State and start asking uncomfortable questions.)

This isn't really a firm idea, just some thoughts and observations...

Dear YC: I wholeheartedly support this and strongly recommend these books as required reading for anyone seeking to change how media works in our society.

1. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky & Ed Herman[1]

2. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty by Alex Carey[2]

I realize these have an "anti-corporate" bent to them but they are truly good analyses and well worth reading with at the very least a critical eye. As Carey documents, it is the corporate sector that has developed much of the modern tools of manipulating mass opinion.

More than mere fact checking, I think you will find that the chief challenge to achieving sustainable independent media is the business model. Advertising necessarily biases media towards at least the class interests of advertisers (if not any particular one), or else it would go out of business. Meanwhile it has trained readers to not pay the full price of quality content. This is a fundamental problem.

Another challenge is that companies have business models that support their own PR and lobbying while ordinary citizens do not. That is unless they are organized and combined resources, but with the dissipation of unions there is no strong popular economic counterpoint to corporate PR. This is part of our news system as well.

I very much hope some good work can be done here, with a sober and clear understanding of the fundamental challenges.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy-Communicati...

This is insanely difficult as interpersonal trust is expensive and getting first-hand information/data is extremely non-trivial. I agree that "mainstream media" (quotes because that phrase makes my mouth taste like ash) has happily devolved into BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but another parrot of AP isn't progress.

Paul Graham suggests that the best way to come into a good startup idea is to become the sort of person that has them, which I think applies to informing the public at large -- I don't think it's realistic to expect to build a revenue model off of people that will only give you their eyeballs for 20 minutes a day in the hopes of finding something to have an opinion on. I think this is a much larger, nearly intractable, problem of making societies into the types that are interested in nuance and dry detail.