
Feudalism and the “Algorithmic Economy” - infodroid
https://medium.com/@ebonstorm/feudalism-and-the-algorithmic-economy-62d6c5d90646
======
Chardok
While I enjoyed the article, something about labeling a group of people by
their gender and race really irks me (White men, with a capital W).

I can't help but feel it betrays the original message, which is a small
proportion of super wealthy are getting even wealthier at the expense of
everyone else, but why feel the need to bring race and gender to it? It almost
begs people to spring into action against "White men", which can be
disparaging for those white men who are not on the wealthy side of the
spectrum.

~~~
maxxxxx
Agreed. This article has some good thoughts but the "White" thing is annoying.
There are plenty of white people whose life is not golden. In the end it comes
down to wealthy vs not wealthy. Race or gender doesn't matter.

~~~
bllguo
Seems to me you're all irked by facts? Sure, plenty of white men aren't
prospering. Irrelevant. A disproportionate amount of them are succeeding in
the "algorithmic economy." I don't see why this is so taboo to point out.

If race or gender doesn't matter, why do 75% of investment dollars go to white
men? I personally doubt 75% of people in the "algorithmic economy" are white
men. But I'd love to be corrected about this.

~~~
programmernews3
Lets try this in a different context - is this truthful change still
acceptable?

Seems to me you're all irked by facts? Sure, plenty of Jewish people aren't
prospering. Irrelevant. A disproportionate amount of them are succeeding in
the "algorithmic economy." I don't see why this is so taboo to point out.

If race or gender doesn't matter, why do 25% of Harvard places go to Jews? [1]
I personally doubt 25% of people in the "algorithmic economy" are Jewish. But
I'd love to be corrected about this.

[1] [http://www.hillel.org/about/news-views/news-views---
blog/new...](http://www.hillel.org/about/news-views/news-views---blog/news-
and-views/2013/08/21/2013-top-schools-jews-choose)

~~~
bllguo
You know, I honestly don't see it. From what I understand, you're implying
that this is something that we can't/shouldn't talk about either?

------
627467
to this story I add the rent-seeking everything-aaS business-model concept.

All I'm waiting for is Google (or Facebook, or Amazon) to just algorithmic-
ally assign my monthly income into different services and I never have to see
a paycheck in my life or make any spending decisions.

------
cryoshon
>Their goal is to create a workforce bound by their economic debt to the
system, forced to take whatever work they can find, while being paid as little
for that work as possible, understanding ultimately, the creation of an
indentured workforce is not only the result but an expected one, keeping
society enfeebled and unable to create opportunities for further development.

mmhmm. that's called capitalism. this mode of capitalism is all that many
people of the millenial generation have ever known, which makes it ripe for
some "disruption."

the good news is that because of burgeoning rage, our broken system probably
can't continue much longer. my estimate is maybe 20 years, although i wouldn't
be too shocked if it's more like 5 years or more like 30 years. hard to
predict these things.

middle class people are no longer secure, and they're the most likely source
of revolutions if we look at history. there have already been rumblings; first
in 2011-2012, then later with the race riots, and more recently with
acceptance of socialism edging into the mainstream-- not your grandma's
mainstream, the mainstream of the young and healthy.

i'd expect this country to have a more violent and perhaps more productive
repeat of the 1960s reformation before we settle on democratic socialism or
some other equitable politicoeconomic system. or perhaps we'll flub it somehow
and accelerate our meteoric descent into third-world poverty, corruption, and
squalor.

i'm sure people will take issue with that statement for a lot of reasons, but
realistically that's our near future. the current system is a house of cards
waiting for a breeze.

~~~
snarf21
I think it can't go on forever but these things need leaders in order to
evolve. How quickly did Occupy last? What is the agenda? What is the solution?
The women's march was great but... just a one time thing to say we don't like
what's happening. Until you have these things everywhere and everyday, you
don't have enough momentum.

Was everyone back on their couch watching Netflix the day after? The problem
is that life could be better and it could be worse. I would argue that things
would have to _significantly_ worse for people to stand up.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>I would argue that things would have to significantly worse for people to
stand up.

I was watching an interesting lecture the other day where a professor
contended this idea. (I _really_ wish I could find it again) Basically his
point was that revolutions do not emerge from conditions of total despair but
rather from an imaginative vision of what could be better. As an example he
compared North Korea in the present and America in colonial times. North Korea
has terrible suffering but no real uprisings because the people there don't
believe they could win against their government and they're not sure what
society would look like even if they did. In colonial America conditions were
relatively good, a fair amount of colonists were actually wealthy. But these
people were seperated from Britain and so had time to conjure up imaginations
of what their country could be. Once that imagination had been set, they were
willing to fight and die against the large English empire. I'm not so sure
that we need a great man but we do need a coherent vision that people can
coalesce behind.

~~~
snarf21
It is an interesting point but I would say look at the civil rights movement.
Lots of people thought it couldn't really change and didn't do anything, but
eventually leaders appeared to be a focal point of the energy and thoughts.

------
Jabanga
Truly cringeworthy. At a global scale, wages are increasing at their fastest
rate in history [1]. Wage growth for the middle class _has_ stagnated in the
US, but not nearly as much as some people (myself included, until recently)
believe [2]. The primary cause of this slowdown in wage growth is slowing
productivity growth [3], while the major secondary cause is growing income
disparity. Growing income disparity can be traced [4] directly to _growth_ in
exactly the type of regulatory restrictions that the author thinks are needed
to prevent some dystopian neo-feudalistic future.

While the author is fixated on Uber and the rest of the sharing economy, he
misses the bigger picture, which is that an increasing number of occupations
and business activities are being placed behind regulatory barriers to entry
[5], to protect incumbents from competition, so that they may better extract
economic rent.

Even the sharing economy is under threat from these incumbents, who are
funding a sophisticated PR campaign [6] (which I suspect involves a
significant dose of astroturfing) to make ordinary people advocate for
policies that go against their own interests, and support prohibitions on
their right to compete.

In the author's world, anticompetitive organizations like unions are good for
wages. This is no different than the ideology created to justify the medieval
guild system, which created a set of haves and have nots, while massively
inhibiting economic/wage growth. The more things change, the more ideologies
to justify coercive control remain the same.

Another thing that strikes me about these kinds of missives for prohibition of
services like Uber is what a paternalistic attitude it has toward the drivers,
who are choosing to drive for Uber because they perceive it as being the best
option available to them.

The author wants people who currently drive for Uber to no longer have that
option, for their own good.

The author presumes he has more perfect knowledge of a potential Uber driver's
best interests than they do. The author and their judgements are just as
imperfect as the drivers', and more so on the matter of the drivers' own best
interest, as the author doesn't have the benefit of knowing the driver's
personal circumstances and options like the driver does.

[1] [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-
glo...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-
on-poverty)

[2] [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-
region/where...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-
has-all-the-income-gone)

[3] [https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-
stag...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stagnation/)

[4] [https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-
why-t...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why-
the-1-earn-so-much-and-what-to-do-about-it/)

[5] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2015/01/27/nearly-30...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2015/01/27/nearly-30-percent-of-workers-in-the-u-s-need-a-license-to-
perform-their-job-it-is-time-to-examine-occupational-licensing-practices/)

[6] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-
hot...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-
industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html)

~~~
Caveman_Coder
Nah, I think the author is simply just not a fan of exploitation, voluntary or
involuntary.

~~~
Jabanga
As I made an effort to demonstrate, you and the author's assumptions about
these voluntary interactions being exploitive, and the cause of income
disparity, are incorrect. What you and the author are advocating, which is
prohibitions on voluntary interactions that you've concluded are exploitive,
will in fact exacerbate income inequality, by artificially reducing
competition, which allows incumbents to exploit the public by extracting
economic rent.

~~~
uoaei
More ideological "free-market fanboyism."

In a world where everyone has the money they want to (or must) spend, this is
certainly true. But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only
granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means
to engage in them.

The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently
able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more
money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little.
Any form of investment, monetary or otherwise, requires some upfront value to
be presented. Usually this is capital. If you don't have this you are left in
the dust by those who have the luxury to put that money up now.

The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage
in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die
from being crowded out. This is, from my perspective, the driving force for
the libertarianism of modern SV: policies and actions which help people with
money make more money will be adopted because they have the upfront capital,
etc. to enact it. This will breed inequality as those policies in general are
not helpful or even directly hurt those with less money.

~~~
Jabanga
>More ideological "free-market fanboyism."

Comments like this are not at all constructive, and contribute to a poor
intellectual environment. I made significant effort to provide objective
evidence for my position, and provide arguments that don't rely on a person
accepting any ideological beliefs.

That my argument concludes that the free market is economically more efficient
doesn't automatically imply that it's blindly ideological. If anything, your
blind dismissal of my argument, and use of the term "free-market fanboyism",
is what demonstrates an overly ideological approach to a complex topic that
requires open-mindedness.

>But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who,
before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them.

You're using your own personal definition of "voluntary" which is not inline
with the conventional definition. Someone being poor is certainly capable of
engaging in voluntary economic interactions, and there's no evidence at all to
suggest otherwise.

>The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not
consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to
make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have
little.

How is this at all apparent? Where's the evidence that makes it apparent? Did
you read the analysis I linked on the cause of growing income disparity, and
how regulatory restrictions play into them? How is it apparent that the poor
are unable to engage in such interactions when wages for the poor are growing
at their fastest rate in history?

Did you actually bother reading the sources I provided?

>The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can
engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value
die from being crowded out.

Does the evidence bear this out? The evidence I collected suggests that the
current market institutions are leading to the fastest wage growth in human
history, and that the slowdown in wage growth in the US is due to exactly the
type of regulatory restrictions against voluntary interactions that you're
advocating.

Again, I suggest you look past the anecdotes, and look past what's in the
media focus, like Airbnb and Uber, and look at the bigger picture, in terms of
percentage of occupation and business activities requiring a license, and what
the statistical evidence suggests is the cause of growing income disparity.

Theories that are light on evidence and heavy on speculation about ideological
conspiracies by the wealthy are not conducive to coming to accurate
conclusions about economics:

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html)

~~~
uoaei
>the free market is economically more efficient

You never specified your definition of "efficient." I can only assume that
"value-generating at a high rate" is your working definition. If so, there is
no connection between a high efficiency and a lack of exploitation.
Exploitation of people via coercion, exploitation of a lack of regulations
leading to concentration of wealth, etc.

> You're using your own personal definition of "voluntary" which is not inline
> with the conventional definition.

My definition of "voluntary" is equivalent to that of "non-coercive." I'm not
sure that yours is the same. You speak about people choosing to use Uber as if
they have a choice, and not as if they are coerced by the circumstances (lack
of jobs in their field, outstanding debt, mouths to feed...). Your choice is
to ignore these different scenarios and focus only on those who voluntarily
take part in driving for Uber. This is a dishonest practice and does not
reflect reality.

> Someone being poor is certainly capable of engaging in voluntary economic
> interactions, and there's no evidence at all to suggest otherwise.

If you have no money, then you cannot spend money. You have no value to
contribute to an economy, and can only participate by receiving value at no
cost, which never happens. The evidence is not needed, and is in fact
impossible to provide, because this is a clear-cut deduction. If you think
differently, you need to clarify your standing.

> How is it apparent that the poor are unable to engage in such interactions
> when wages for the poor are growing at their fastest rate in history?

Because poor people are poor... Having more than a tiny bit of something is
still not very much. They can participate in _more_ , sure, but is that
_enough_? Depends entirely on the context: where they live, what services are
available there, etc. To put things a bit bluntly, most of the places in the
world aren't very fun to live in for the reason that there's not a lot
available and not a lot of earning potential to pay for what is there.
Globalization still fails at the "last mile," with the exception of some
supply chains such as Coca-Cola's.

I don't disagree that some regulatory restrictions are making things hard for
your everyday Jane, but the solution would be instead to regulate those at the
top more, rather than regulate those at the bottom less. Using your hedge fund
example from Brookings, the problem is not that other types of funds are not
allowed to do the same things as hedge funds, but instead that hedge funds are
allowed to do things that others aren't, leading to a massive concentration of
wealth that wouldn't be possible otherwise. This is an uneven playing field
but deregulating it only gives power to those who use force, physical or
otherwise, to get what they want while leaving those at the bottom with little
more than crumbs.

I'm not sure why you are linking to those biases as I don't believe to have
expressed any of them. Again, you will need to be clearer if your message is
to be understood accurately.

~~~
Jabanga
>You never specified your definition of "efficient.

Being effective at using economic resources to generate more economic
resources. Being efficient at utilizing economic resources at meeting people's
material needs.

Unions, and industries walled off by licensing regimes, are not efficient, and
contribute to growing income disparity. That's what decades of economic theory
and raw statistical evidence suggests.

>Exploitation of people via coercion, exploitation of a lack of regulations
leading to concentration of wealth, etc.

This is not an accurate definition for exploitation. It amounts to anything
one doesn't like that conforms to some precept of social justice ideology.

'Exploitation' is nothing more than a buzzword in this context.

And like I said, there is no evidence that the free market leads to growing
income disparity. The links I provided provide evidence for the opposite: that
restrictions on the free market are the cause of growing income disparity.

>You speak about people choosing to use Uber as if they have a choice, and not
as if they are coerced by the circumstances (lack of jobs in their field,
outstanding debt, mouths to feed...).

That's not what "coercion" means. Needing to do something to avoid starvation
is not the same thing as being coerced into doing something.

Both are terrible situations, but in one situation, a person is taking the
best option available to them, while in the other, someone is threatening to
rob them of their life or property in order to force them to do something that
they otherwise would not choose to do.

>If you have no money, then you cannot spend money.

But almost everyone has money, especially in the developed world, and the vast
majority have the capability to generate more money, especially in the
developed world.

The victim theme is not justified by the facts.

>To put things a bit bluntly, most of the places in the world aren't very fun
to live in for the reason that there's not a lot available and not a lot of
earning potential to pay for what is there.

Wages are increasing in the developed world faster than ever before in
history.

>but the solution would be instead to regulate those at the top more, rather
than regulate those at the bottom less.

So those at the top just pay accountants more to hide their income and split
it among their family members.

Why treat the successful as the enemy? Why treat them like villains that
should be punished?

The statistical evidence suggests those with less money can indeed compete
with the very rich when there is a free market, without regulatory barriers
and corporate welfare helping the very rich.

Why abandon the idea of a society where everyone is free to engage in any
mutually voluntary interaction they wish, and resort to strong-arming
government interventions against people whose only crime is receiving too much
currency in mutually voluntary trade?

What you're proposing is not conducive to justice and the principle of
noninterference/nonviolence.

It also reduces the space for economic activity, leading to a less efficient
economy where wages/prosperity increase more slowly.

------
Jabanga
It should be noted that the author will delete your response if you are
critical of his article.

------
abakker
Self-promotion, but I recently wrote a blog post that deals with at least some
of these issues: [https://insights.isg-one.com/lens360/from-each-according-
to-...](https://insights.isg-one.com/lens360/from-each-according-to-their-
ability---automating-worker-improvement)

