Quote from: aminorex on January 22, 2014, 12:03:43 AM

Quote from: mrtg on January 21, 2014, 11:42:24 PM

Quote from: giantdragon on January 21, 2014, 01:35:28 AM

You are repeating standard argument of the Luddite fallacy's supporter. But its not the law of physics that guaranteed to last forever.

You haven't countered that argument with anything but a lack of imagination. Just because you can't imagine the ways the jobs will change to evolve and adapt to a changing society does not mean it won't happen.

Neither facts or logic have been brought to bear here. Your imagination that jobs will change in a way which provides something like full employment (if you even do so imagine) does not lend credence to that view. He countered the argument by observing that it was without foundation. You countered that argument with your imagination. If the foundation is your imagination, I wonder how much load it will bear. Will it withstand a storm of empirical evidence, or an earthquake of logic? If so, is it a monument or a blight?

The facts here are quite simple:
1. Historic fact
2. Current level of development in science and technology

Anything apart from this is conjecture since nobody can predict the future, of course. The "Luddite fallacy" argument is that we have encountered similar situations in the past and we've already documented the way society can move past them. Given the current state of events, we can already envision some of the solutions that will be used to go over the next step as well. The counter to that was that even though it worked in the past it will not work in the future any more, because a less labor intensive economy could not absorb the lost jobs. The idea that all labor intensive or not jobs that could ever exist have already been discovered and there is no way for some completely novel ones to appear in the future (despite evidence to the contrary in our historical data) is nothing but an argument from incredulity:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

Again, anything can happen in the future, we're all interpreting existing facts to come up with possible scenarios, some might pan out while others won't. However the argument that whatever problems we are facing will be solved by surrender to world-wide communism is anything but an earthquake of logic.

Quote from: aminorex

Amounts of money inadequate to alleviate abject poverty in almost all cases. Not relevant to the question "how will people survive". Relevant, perhaps to the question "how will wealthy people self-actualize".

But then you have all these armies of robots making tons of products with utmost efficiency. Prices would in such a case drop to levels where a small amount of money might well be enough for a simple existence.

Quote from: aminorex

Centralized solutions to wealth inequality are pretty terrible in their unintended (sometimes intended) consequences. Decentralized mechanisms have been offered; often in the alt-coin space, this goal is pursued, if never adequately. A (1) decentral structural change which creates enough incentives to gain viral opt-in, without (2) creating a new kleptocracy, and (3) facilitating enough dispersion of wealth to enable humanity to avoid dystopic outcomes, seems desirable to me. Bitcoin offers the first, but does nothing to address the remaining points.

Fully agreed on the above. I actually believe crypto-currency will not be enough to reach all the goals stated above, we will need other changes in society regarding education, politics and values. It's a great step and a way to influence things in that direction, but not the solution in itself.

Quote from: giantdragon

Quote from: mrtg on January 21, 2014, 11:42:24 PM

Tragically, even adding those numbers you'd run short of reaching communism's death toll -- yes it was that bad.

I very doubt you can provide proof about this statement.

Communism -- some say around 100 million, others go much higher to 150 million:
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4230/so_how_many_did_communism_kill
http://www.scottmanning.com/content/communist-body-count/

Great Depression in the US -- between 7.5 million and 10 million:
http://www.cherada.com/articulos/10-million-americans-disappeared-during-the-great-depression-time

European Colonialism -- difficult to find estimates; 10 million in Congo, a couple million elsewhere in Africa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

Slavery in the US -- huge variance in numbers, from 6 to 60 million:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#Human_toll

Can you see that even considering the lowest estimation on one side and the highest on the other you're still short about 18 million? That's the population of a medium-sized country...

However this should not in any way be construed as an attempt to downplay the seriousness of those events -- they are all, together with the wars that killed hundreds of millions more, a horrific tragedy and a wound in our collective consciousness. All I want to point out is that communism managed to outdo them all.

Quote from: giantdragon

Real situation is opposite and opportunities to make money with creativity will only diminish as market saturates.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/making-apps-pay-gets-harder/

That is an interesting link, thanks for sharing. I would note however that one of the points made in the article is that "freemium" apps which are free to download but offer in-app purchases are actually on the rise; a glance in the "top grossing" category in any app-store will reveal the same -- the most income is produced by otherwise "free" apps. It also talks about new advertising avenues -- via word-of-mouth, reviews and social media -- becoming more important. I would say that is the market adjusting and diversifying -- remember that it is still a very young market with a lot of potential for growth, and this will mean a large amount of volatility. Also, "less than $1250 per app per day" does not sound too shaby for a small developer; it might not entice a million-dollar 100 person development team, but for a single developer that's gold!