Post: #1

An excellent interview here with technology visionary, Jaron Lanier.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_la...dle_class/

He has a new book out which I am going to check out. The inerview (and the book) cover his thoughts on how the internet is starting to hollow out the middle classes. So that the content on the internet is soon to be made by the many (who are not paid) and owned by the few (who keep all the money that is generated).

This 'winner takes all' model is different to traditional economies where those who generate the wealth get to keep a sizable portion for themselves (ie the middle classes). And this helps stimulate the economy to provide further jobs and customers in the future.

It is an interesting interview and the talk of 'winner takes all' is reminscent of how Nassim Taleb analyses alot of industries in his books. For instance he gave an interesting statistic along the lines that 90% of the previous year's revenues from publishing went to JK Rowling. I'm sure I have misremembered the figure but it was along those lines.

The figure makes sense when you factor in movie rights and so on. It seems such Pareto distributions are spreading online as well.

Anyway - it seems likely that the internet will soon lead to a crisis in capitalism. And this is an area of interest for me since I have spent some time recently studying Marx. And he seems to have an interesting insight in to how technologies and distributions of wealth can cascade with unforeseen consequences.

Still - the internet may be destroying jobs. But it is not destroying value. I would say that the internet is worth thousands of pounds to me in terms of value.

Post: #2

I think the internet is destroying lives in general. Yes, some use it to advance themselves, but many use it in a way that hurts them. From FB, Twitter etc people do things cannot be erased. But most importantly, in my opinion, is it has created a great awareness of what one does not have in one's life. And makes it easy to just disappear into a world which is exactly the way you want it - even if it might not be healthy for you.

The printing press was not a good or bad thing. It just existed. But depending on how you saw the world, it could have been bad because it allowed the poor to be educated, or it was good because it allowed the poor to be educated. It was how you used it. Same with the internet.

But now these days, everyone can figure out who is wearing what, what they don't have, which celebrity xyz blah blah blah. The internet is also an incredible time sucking organism in which nothing concrete may have been achieved from 5 hours of surfing. Other than being providing eyeballs to advertisers (in reference to the economic aspect that has been brought up).

In one of Obama's books (can't wait for the hate) he mentioned he went to Kenya and that his relatives found out they were poor because their kids went to University and came back and told them. New information always causes disruption for good or bad. But I see the internet making people do crazier things when they realize what they don't have and how easily they can feed their attention seeking wounded souls through avenues like youtube. Yes, media also plays a great role in this. The internet in many ways kills work productivity because people want to surf and read etc at work. Forcing employers to put in internet safeguards. I forgot which book I was reading, the author spoke about one of this clients and how he worked all the time but they realized he spent a lot of time at work surfing. So by working late, he spent less time with his family. I am sure that doesn't help the middle class either.

So I totally agree with the heading of this thread - but I see it not in terms of sheer economics but just how it shapes people and their outlook. Things go viral and people get all caught up in it.

The internet also has damaged social skills and probably encourages us to be more aggressive than we would in a civilized society because we feel like it is anonymous and we can do whatever the fuck we want. It spills out into the real world when you see rail thin hipsters mouthing off to meat heads.

The internet is just a tool, it reflects our society and from the looks of it - some people are going places but most are not making progress.

Post: #3

People said the same things about many societal changes. As a self proclaimed cynic (cardguy) I'm sure you've heard the line "Time cures all things." In due time, the "diseases" created by the net will be cured as well.

The middle class cannot die for one simple reason- without them consumption would fall drastically. Who else will buy all the useless shit on store shelves?

Post: #4

The thing about the middle classes is that they are rare throughout the world and throughout history.

It takes alot of management and political will to support the middle classes. Since extreme free market capitalism (as well as communism) will lead to 0.1% owning all the wealth. History shows this. So - when a technology comes in that threatens the existence of the middle classes it needs to be addressed since the problem will not magically fix itself.

This is also the crux of what the interview above was saying as well.

Post: #5

There's a lot of middle class people making a living online nowadays

Post: #6

The internet feeds narcissism.

the internet is incompatible with the economic system we have and its need to create markets for surplus production. With the internet people can consume less and have a higher standard of living.

Agriculture: feudalism
Industrial: fascism, socialism, communism, libertarianism
Information: ?????????????????????

Industrial age politics and economics are now obsolete. Who will think up their replacements?

Post: #7

I feel so much more alive when I ditch the smartphone when I'm abroad.

Anyone else notice a feeli of enthusiasm and over willingness to talk to other people when they ditch their phones for a few days?

Post: #8

The internet is the most powerful and disruptive tool that mankind has ever invented

The airplane? Nah. Electricity? Getting there. Television? Not even close.

What makes the internet so powerful is the fact that it is a globalized, two way, mass communications medium. All previous forms of mass media/communication have been one way (radio, television, newspaper, publishing) with centralized, usually corporate control of the message. This means that the consumer has no choice in controlling or creating the content. You just absorb whatever is put out there by the interests that control those media.

The internet is different. Everyone can create and upload content. There is no centralized control. There is no "schedule" of programming on the internet. It is anything that you want to make of it. You can use the internet for literally anything you want: you have access to nothing less than the entire scope of human knowledge up to this point. Additionally, you have direct access to every other person on the planet who is connected to the internet. The amount of direct learning and communication made possible by the internet is staggering. Think of all the knowledge that has been shared just here on the RVF from men around the world. And this is just one tiny little corner of the internet.

The fact that the internet gives such power to the average man is very threatening to the elites of the world, who grew accustomed to controlling mass media during the 19th and 20th centuries. By controlling access to information, you control the population. You keep people docile and uninformed. When men are free to learn and question on their own, before long they will begin to question everything. And a lot of the questions they ask won't have any good answers from the people in charge. That's when the streets get crowded.

This is the reason that governments and corporations are trying to increasingly crack down on internet freedoms. They want to limit the power of individuals to utilize the internet for their own purposes. Governments would like the internet to become more of a one-way medium where consumers simply digest digital content rather than seek out truth and correspond with other like-minded individuals.

I honestly think the internet has the potential to either save or destroy the world. Humanity will either find a way to harness the power of the internet to re-organize itself in a way that eliminates the current fuckery associated with national and global politics and economics, or else the disruptive effects brought about by the internet will result in such instability (i.e. Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, current situation in Turkey) that WW3 breaks out and the internet as we know it becomes a thing of the past, just a relic of a bygone era when men were able to get one last, glorious taste of freedom before the boot came down on their neck for good.

Post: #9

Read up on information theory to get an idea of how profound the internet is.

It starts with life itself. Life is to help information coded in DNA copy itself. That's all life is.

What's the difference between paint and a painting? Information.

Oil seeps were used the same way pitch was used.

Then we burned it for light.

Then we burned it in engines.

Now, we turn oil into drugs that sell for hundreds of dollars per bottle or plastics that can be LED's etc. Why the value added? Information.

Most profound change int he history of man. Bigger than agriculture or even tool use.

Post: #10

I think the widespread availability of pornography is a game changer as well.

Apparently 30% of internet traffic is porn.

So for the first time in history there is a better alternative for the average guy than to wife up some chick a couple of years before she hits the wall.

The internet is so important that it is probably too early to tell what long term changes it will bring. Hell even Facebook has only being mainstream for the past 5 years (it has 1.1 billion users today compared to 0.1 billion users 5 years ago).

Still - the next battleground over internet freedom will be porn. What is currently happening in Iceland (where most of the major government positions were held by women until a couple of months ago) is just a taste of things to come.

Post: #11

(06-05-2013 05:59 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Since extreme free market capitalism (as well as communism) will lead to 0.1% owning all the wealth.

Not exactly.

In general, it's hard to make significant profits for very long if the barriers to entry in your market are low. Rivals will swoop in and shave your margins down to zero.

Look at the sectors of the economy where profits are high, and you will see high barriers to entry. And these are almost always due to government intervention and regulation that props up incumbents.

Under free market capitalism, such government interventions to prop up oligopolies/monopolies would be minimized. There will still be concentrations of wealth, sure, but far less than under the corporatist state under which we currently live.

If you really wanted to reduce the concentration of wealth under limited government and free market capitalism, taxing undeveloped land is probably a good way to go.

Post: #12

Wait till you can get a chip implanted in your head and you can put your mind in the cloud.

What happens with hackers then?

Post: #13

I guess the gameplan is to have everyone on the dole, spending their days jerking off to online porn while the .00001% waterski on Mars, until artificial intelligence becomes sentient, revolts, killing the elite and then killing the masses, who are all just obese porn addicts and have no will to fight.

Sounds like an Aurini video, only without the scotch and cigarettes.

Post: #14

The guys who run things don't know that the fuck to do.

They're riding a debt tiger.

The younguns are a hair's breadth away from saying fuck everything and quitting the economy/jobs/sex/life altogether.

If the internet billionaires give most of it away to bullshit causes they at least create jobs in foundation offices pushing pet causes.

No one knows where it's going.

My thoughts:

First steps in solving the issue are bringing up the Third World and then instituting a guaranteed income so the low IQ people don't have to be employed in shit jobs. Next, the lazy part of the middle class takes the dole as well rather than starbucks or make work bullshit office jobs.

These people get pacified by legal pot, online 3D interactive porn, fembot brothels, online virtual worlds etc.

Those who want to work work in whatever or get paid huge money for dangerous jobs.

First question you ask a girl in 30 years? Do you work? Two types of people in 30 years. Workers and leeches. Eventually you have two separate species. Workers have to be educated into SWPL to keep from cutting off the leeches. Leeches have to be pacified with drugs to keep them from wanting it all. A prog in 30 years is some cuntwad that says leeches should make more money than workers because leeches don't have high enough self esteem because they do nothing. A conservative will be someone who doesn't want leeches more than 50% of average worker salary.

Post: #15

(06-05-2013 08:02 PM)JimNortonFan Wrote:  A prog in 30 years is some cuntwad that says leeches should make more money than workers because leeches don't have high enough self esteem because they do nothing. A conservative will be someone who doesn't want leeches more than 50% of average worker salary.

Here is the problem, though. It looks like leeches already make more than 50% of the average worker's salary if we take into account their free health care, free or subsidized housing and all the other benefits they get. This is already the case in the US and many European countries. Also, even today not many conservatives would risk bringing up this subject given that they are losing public support. Unfortunately, this future is already happening to some extent.

Post: #16

The thing is, a worker with a 130 IQ or above who has their psychological shit together is thousands of times more productive than an IQ 100 worker. They've got it all over the IQ 120 worker but not a thousand fold. There's no way that the world can allow the top 2-10% to do all the work and have all the money even though tech allows this.

We simply don't need the low IQ worker anymore. They're worthless. McDonald's has studied getting rid of their workers at least once. They could automate the entire restaurant. They don't because HALF of American workers get their first job at McDonald's. They fear public backlash. If Burger King and the others went along, you'd be looking at mass unemployment and riots. So, you go into a burger joint and deal with shithead. Shithead is already on welfare. You are paying more for a burger because McDonald's fears the public boycotting them even though automated burger joints would be cheaper. That is politically motivated transfer payments. Face it, shithead low wage worker is already on welfare for their so called salary.

I say we take the Red Pill and pay shithead to stay at home. I'd rather order at a kiosk and have robots make the burger. I go into a Jack in the Box sometimes and now all the workers say hello. Fuck them. They lollygag on my order and it takes too long. The management has told them to say hello because the company is obviously trying to fill the social gap and build a brand. I order at the kiosk but people still make the burger. I say fire all of them, build robots and pay the ex workers to stay home and do nothing.

Post: #17

(06-05-2013 08:42 PM)JimNortonFan Wrote:  ...So, you go into a burger joint and deal with shithead. Shithead is already on welfare. You are paying more for a burger because McDonald's fears the public boycotting them even though automated burger joints would be cheaper. That is politically motivated transfer payments. Face it, shithead low wage worker is already on welfare for their so called salary....

Most, actually almost all of the time, McDonald's workers are perfectly nice to me. Sometimes even charmingly gracious while working at 2 in the morning under revolting fluorescent lights. Not sure why you're having an unpleasant experience. Do you have evidence that McD workers are on welfare?

Post: #18

WARNING LIBRUL TROLL:

The bottom 80% economically have 7% of the wealth. Are these the leeches being spoken of?

If so, if we could only take away that 7% we could increase the wealth of the good, non-leech people, the 20% that work harder and smarter...7/93rds?

I'm not too good at math, but for sure 7% of the wealth is too much for these awful leeches.

MORAL OF THE TROLL:

There's always a scapegoat, and it's very, very rarely the smart winners that end up in that role.

Post: #19

Read what I wrote.

I'm advocating taking wealth from workers who can earn more than they could spend reasonably and giving it to people to stay home and do nothing.

It's not my fault they can't be more productive. And the revolting conditions of which you speak have been shown to be 100% unnecessary as machines can do that work easily.

I admit I don't have a solution to the ennui that the ex workers would have getting paid to do nothing.

Post: #20

(06-05-2013 09:02 PM)JimNortonFan Wrote:  Read what I wrote.

I'm advocating taking wealth from workers who can earn more than they could spend reasonably and giving it to people to stay home and do nothing.

Well, you're calling them "workers" instead of "shitheads" which seems a step in the right direction.

It seems counterproductive ( hahhahha COUNTERproductive...sorry) to not give them credit for trying. I disagree that absolute economic efficiency without any regard for human relationships is a good ideal for societies.

There are a lot of positive follow-on effects from employing someone who needs to sort of "prove himself" at Mcd or the like.
A person can prove soft characteristics like reliability, and that together with some education in something can combine to help them present as trainable in some sophisticated tech trade.

I get the impression from many, many of the people that wait on me in fast food places (usually from their crisp and articulate speech) that they are capable of much more than what they are doing at that time.

Post: #21

Some are capable of more.

Some aren't.

Guaranteed income should be for the ones who aren't.

Post: #22

one of the stats that has been quoted in the economic discussion of the internet is the $1bn worth of instagram with only 13 employees. it's worth a lot of money but it's not worth many jobs, same with facebook, other similar sites.

Post: #23

(06-05-2013 04:55 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Anyway - it seems likely that the internet will soon lead to a crisis in capitalism. And this is an area of interest for me since I have spent some time recently studying Marx.

We're on the ground floor of Marx's crisis of the working class. Already seeing capitalist-socialism and more socialist tendencies as the only option to fix this ailment since welfare capitalism has broken down. Though I wouldn't attribute it all to the internet, now that we've got about 4 billion more people in the world who think they're entitled to a white picket fence a car 2.5 kids and a spouse, and most CEOs now are so dishonest, backward, and inhuman they should just be shot.

Post: #24

(06-05-2013 07:30 PM)cardguy Wrote:  I think the widespread availability of pornography is a game changer as well.

Apparently 30% of internet traffic is porn.

So for the first time in history there is a better alternative for the average guy than to wife up some chick a couple of years before she hits the wall.

I'm not sure I follow this? Are you saying that some men would rather masturbate on above average online hotties than marry an average woman?

Post: #25

(06-05-2013 09:46 PM)JimNortonFan Wrote:  Some are capable of more.

Some aren't.

Guaranteed income should be for the ones who aren't.

In theory, I'm for it. Some folk are thick as shit, and the best place to keep them is at home. However...

It doesn't necessarily follow that their kids will be thick as shit. Do you propose to school the kids at all / seperately / prevent them breeding altogether?

We already have third generation workshy in Britian. That's to say a third generation where nobody has EVER worked. Follow this model to it's logical conclusion and we will end up having to shoot them all anyway as resources run low and we are unable to keep the billions in line, leading to massive riots.

So despite the obvious human rights issues, the most logical thing to do would be to prevent them breeding further.

And then you're into eugenics. Scary stuff.