I enjoy your talks. They are very thoughtful, they bring awareness. I'm sure they are helping of reducing this gap! It is not easy topic and very proud that you are helping so many people!
It’s a subject I had not spoken on before, and it begs more questions than answers. What if the nature of technology leads to an accelerating rich-poor gap that is not self-rectifying? What if technology raises the bottom of the pyramid for all, and democratizes upward mobility, yet at the same time, transforms it from a pyramid to a conical spike? What happens to peoples who opt out of the vector of progress? What is the nature of work? Can our culture co-evolve during the transition?
Steve, thank you for being such a clear thinker and explainer on this subject. I wonder if you can lend your support to help Andrew Yang tackle this problem head-on? He seems to be the best shot we've got at preempting the worst outcomes of accelerating technological change and automation. Would love to hear more of your thoughts. #HumanityFirst
Thanks for sharing this Steve. Great points made here. I knew you from the interesting stuff in your Flickr feed, which led me to this, but now you caused me to stumble upon Solve For X, there goes my Friday night!
Im optimistic too Steve! The rich poor gap hit in 1999 and it hit again in 2007, 2013 will create the giant sucking sound while money flows to improve the standard of living for all. The argument against Moore's Law by Peter Theil forgets that absolute Capitalism or Greed is only for the newly rich. Some of us don't mind paying for employees health care and welcome a stable economy where the middle class thrives. It's good for Business assuming you don't have a short turn exit strategy. .
Alan, whether you're American or not, I hope you get a chance to look into Andrew Yang's run for the US presidency that's going on right now. He seems to be the only one on the same page as Steve here. His ideas can help to put #HumanityFirst. Cheers
An unconditional guaranteed basic income, so that nobody has to be SO poor that they don't have food, water, plumbing, energy, shelter, healthcare, education, oh a dozen other things. Not enough to make everybody rich (YET!), but enough so that nobody is desperately poor.
Awesome talk. I ran out of characters with what I was originally going to say about how one could go about reaching the inverse conclusion - that technology is actually narrowing the rich-poor gap when you think along broader terms. Posted it up at PaulCapestany℃om
The need for idea space to correlate with humanity is key. Currently aggregated human behavior is consolidated under a "lucky" domain with a winner taking all wealth creation. If idea space was distributed with each human having their own bio-metric based domain, then aggregated human data could still occur - but wealth could become more distributed. Data aggregation can have consent and compensation tied back to each human contributing to the technical wealth creation.
Scale matters on the Internet. It's the ultimate scalable technology and that means businesses can build very powerful positions, unassailable positions because they are protected by their scale. Too large not to fail.
I make $51.50. Your income goes up by 50%, half, my income goes up 50 times, 5000% ! just to be "equal" by this standard. I sure love this standard! Keep talking it up...it'll be something entirely new in the history of economics if it works...Who should I start shooting to get it happening?
The wage hasn't grown much, but it isn't flat, and we've seen dramatic growth in benefits, which, if we include it as a part of overall worker compensation, you can only conclude that conditions for workers is getting better. It goes hand-in-hand with most good becoming cheaper, so the wealth you earn now goes further than it did 20 or 30 years ago. And while Moor's law might not be a lie, there is a good possibility (as you likely know) that it will be breaking down: /watch?v=bm6ScvNygUU
Great talk! Could you get some decent English subtitles on it, a la Khan Academy? (the automatic subtitles suck). There are some Spanish technological mavens I know who would benefit greatly from seeing it. Accompanied by English subtitles they would have no problem following it as your exposition is wonderfully clear, however... you talk so damn fast, even I have trouble catching up
American or not, I hope you get a chance to look into Andrew Yang's run for the US presidency that's going on right now. He seems to be the only one on the same page as Steve here. #HumanityFirst
Shares should be a standard and proportionate part of everyone's pay. The road from graduate recruit to executive should not have an exponential gradient
Basically to some it up, I am screwed! He used words that I don't even know. Therefore how am I ever going to understand. Can't fault a man that doesn't have dirt under fingernail and talks to animals everyday, but being a laymen is the true essence of who we are supposed to be as a society.
Pleasure is the ultimate product(service) Pleasure is always in demand. Love is a type of pleasure, but some will argue over the semantics. Let's just say that whatever one calls it, it feels good. Pleasure always costs something. Sometimes the price is being a baby so as to "buy" the pleasure of being loved by a mother. Sometimes the price is measured in monetary units. Those who help the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest costs, become wealthy. The people who became wealthy during the industrial revolution helped the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest costs. War was acceptable and common during the industrial revolution. Therefore one could acquire the product of pleasure by force. Therefore those who had weapons could experience the most pleasure at the lowest costs. During the industrial revolution, a person with a gun could force many people without weapons to please them or experience death. Those who controlled the most advanced technology could please the most people at the lowest cost. So being that people love pleasure, people did what they felt was necessary to acquire the most control of the most advanced technology that they could. The technologically elite became extremely wealthy. Rockefeller and others. The rich-poor gap increased dramatically with technology. Those who lacked the ability to compete at pleasing others suffered, died or had to receive help from organizations such as governments, religious institutions, family, etc. Some had no property to grow their own food or acquire their own water. Even if they did, they didn't have the technological know-how. So those who lack the technological know-how are at the beck and call of those who have what they need to survive. This is what really happened and is what is happening now. Don't fool yourselves. Nature only rewards those who survive. Nature also rewards those who reproduce. War is no longer acceptable. Not in the military sense. There are wars now. But they are not military wars. To answer your questions. The wealthy are not getting wealthier. Those who help the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest cost are becoming more wealthy. The wealthy are being created from various backgrounds. J.K. Rowling, the author of the best selling book series and the highest grossing film series in history based on a fictional character named Harry Potter. She went from being a "welfare mom", to one of the wealthiest people in the world in a short five years. So the wealthier are not getting wealthier, but rather, technology is making wealth more accessible to everyone. And hence. more people are becoming wealthy. In fact the wealthy are becoming less wealthy due to the newly introduced wealthy. The U.S.A. is relatively less wealthy due to the new competition for wealth from China and other places. So more people are becoming wealthy, but the currently wealthy are not becoming more wealthy relatively speaking. So the cold answer, is that people that cannot compete must rely on welfare, and unfortunately for them, their caregivers may ask for more than they are willing to give. But luckily acquiring pleasure by force is being gradually eliminated as people and governments unite to protect the less capable. As for the wealthy. They must compete to remain wealthy. They are not gaining wealth, but losing it in relation to the new competition. On record it may show that they are gaining wealth, but relatively speaking, they are most losing wealth. Will robots replace humans. That has already been answered. It's already happening. Technology is not the problem. Technology is inevitable. The problem is lack of capability. If one does not compete, one could die or be at the beck and call of a caregiver. That's happening and is the truth. Those who choose to compete and increase their skill at becoming engineers of pleasure, increase their chances of becoming wealthy. Those who compete can only become better for it. It's either compete or be at someones beck and call. Those who long for the time when the U.S.A. was a haven where one could simply show up to work and own a mansion while having the rest of the world at their beck and call will have to change their strategy a bit. There's a lot of hungry people in the world. Some are literally hungry. And they're not going away. Nature will reward only those of them that survive and even more so, those who sexually reproduce. Those that try and avoid sexual reproduction will not have their genes passed on. No offense to same-sex lovers. But nature has instantly eliminated the genes of all same-sex lovers with ease by choice of same-sex lovers. Unfortunate for them. Nothing has changed. Don't blame the wealthy. Your neighbor could be the next billionaire. Like society, the roster of the wealthy is constantly increasing and changing. Self-sufficiency is wise. Why buy a tomato from overseas when you could grow one for free, and then sell the rest? Why depend on the government when you are simply at their beck and call. The truth is there. Like J. K. Rowling, helping the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest cost, has made her wealthy. The wealthy didn't get wealthier. The wealthy got poorer because J. K. Rowling took some of their wealth. All these nonsense arguments will not increase your ability to please. Of course if you are complainer, some will be pleased to help you. So in that sense you are pleasing some by whining. There's a market for everything. If you want to please criminal reformers, simply commit some serious crimes, and you will be rewarded. Maybe even become famous. There's a market for everything. A good book might be entitled "How to Become a Professional Whiner and Profit Greatly." One might even sell more than J. K. Rowling with that book and ironically cause the current wealthy to become even less wealthy.
Homes are still low tech expensive cash sinks that contribute little. Robotic, hi tech, low cost construction (better and cheaper homes) and way more holidays would create richer lives without requiring higher salaries.
Steve, please read Sheila Bair's NYT op-ed "Grand Old Parity" -- she's the only progressive Republican left in the country, and her ideas deserve to be amplified in the conservative community as much as possible.
It's normal for the gap to increase. I make $1. You make $100. Over x time at the same compounded interest for everyone (like 5% GDP growth per yr) everyone doubles their income. Every one is twice as well off. I make $2 you make $200. But OMG ! The gap has doubled! And almost 99% of the new wealth has gone to the rich ! HORROR HORROR ! What would it take to have the new wealth equally distributed between rich and poor? $101 in new wealth would have to be split 50/50, you make $150.50-
Looking at relative poor/rich differences doesn't say anything about the value that technology has created that provide improvements in people's welfare. Why choose that metric? It could be argued that the "rich" have a big job on their hands, managing that capital. Their wealth has to be invested into market-sensible vehicles, which means it's trying to support the current status quo and ways of making money, it's not a disruptive position.
As for robots replacing workers. It's already happening. The real question, is when robots become smart enough to exhibit emotions, will they be a threat? And of course the answer is the same answer you would give for humans. Some will, some won't. The humans that utilize technology as much as they can shouldn't worry about robots. The humans that don't utilize technology will be easily crushed by a robot if the robot chooses to do so. Of course this will happen a bit further in the future. But it is already happening. Remember reading this. It sounds crazy now, but it will make more sense when you're talking to phone in the future, and holding a very nice conversation, or your phone is simply calling you a dumb ass. But here goes the crazy. All matter has feelings. Some people talk to their plants and swear it helps them. Some people talk to things that they are sure exist based on faith. Some people swear dogs don't have feelings. Some say all animals have feelings, but that fish and other sea creatures don't. Pleasure is like gravity. It's just there. It's the reason we all move, hence emotion. It's the reason everything moves. Dogs experience it. Mice experience. Plants experience it. There goes the crazy again. Even rocks experience it. A rock like a human has an input, processor, and output. How does rock survive. A rock has evolved special mechanisms to survive. It's basically tough and "immune" to most chemical "attacks." Crazy I know. But you will be asking yourselves in the near future, if your phone has feelings. And it does. The smarter your phone gets, the more complex the expressions of those emotions will be. Anything that is aware of itself has emotions. A dog has eyes and can see itself. It's that simple. A human has ears and can hear itself. It's that simple. A plant has senses and can sense itself. If it's wilted, it can sense that. It's self-conscious. Not to the degree of complexity of a dog or human. But that feedback loop is still there. Self consciousness is nothing mysterious. You simply look at your hand and you are self conscious. A phone has a speaker and a mic. A phone can hear itself. Therefore a phone is self-conscious. Give the phone some circuitry that is as complex as that of a mosquito's brain, and that phone may surprise you. But for just remember this crazy stuff. You will be ashamed of yourself for even asking yourself if your phone has feelings. You might think you're losing your mind. But when you ask why, at least you'll have one hypothesis here.
The issue that libertarians and Jurvetson miss is that what we're doing is entrepreneurial... But it's not capitalism (at least not as Adam Smith would recognize it). Competition is a non fungible component of working markets. When you have the network effects and power law distribution that Jurvetson recognizes...you no longer have competition, you (intentional or not) monopoly power.
![Elon Musk: Elon Musk's Vision for the Future [Entire Talk]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SVk1hb0ZOrE/mqdefault.jpg)
This guy fascinates me. Intellectual vitality.
I enjoy your talks. They are very thoughtful, they bring awareness. I'm sure they are helping of reducing this gap! It is not easy topic and very proud that you are helping so many people!
That was a very courageous and powerful talk!
Thank you very much for sharing.
It’s a subject I had not spoken on before, and it begs more questions than answers.
What if the nature of technology leads to an accelerating rich-poor gap that is not self-rectifying?
What if technology raises the bottom of the pyramid for all, and democratizes upward mobility, yet at the same time, transforms it from a pyramid to a conical spike?
What happens to peoples who opt out of the vector of progress?
What is the nature of work?
Can our culture co-evolve during the transition?
Steve, thank you for being such a clear thinker and explainer on this subject. I wonder if you can lend your support to help Andrew Yang tackle this problem head-on? He seems to be the best shot we've got at preempting the worst outcomes of accelerating technological change and automation. Would love to hear more of your thoughts.
#HumanityFirst
Thanks for sharing this Steve. Great points made here. I knew you from the interesting stuff in your Flickr feed, which led me to this, but now you caused me to stumble upon Solve For X, there goes my Friday night!
As I understand, several EU nations have successfully addressed the gap simply by introducing job-share &
Very intelligent talk. Great !
Im optimistic too Steve! The rich poor gap hit in 1999 and it hit again in 2007, 2013 will create the giant sucking sound while money flows to improve the standard of living for all. The argument against Moore's Law by Peter Theil forgets that absolute Capitalism or Greed is only for the newly rich. Some of us don't mind paying for employees health care and welcome a stable economy where the middle class thrives. It's good for Business assuming you don't have a short turn exit strategy.
.
Alan, whether you're American or not, I hope you get a chance to look into Andrew Yang's run for the US presidency that's going on right now. He seems to be the only one on the same page as Steve here. His ideas can help to put #HumanityFirst. Cheers
This was an excellent talk for 2013. However, these ideas are likely to be obsolete in a few more years.
An unconditional guaranteed basic income, so that nobody has to be SO poor that they don't have food, water, plumbing, energy, shelter, healthcare, education, oh a dozen other things. Not enough to make everybody rich (YET!), but enough so that nobody is desperately poor.
Awesome
Awesome talk. I ran out of characters with what I was originally going to say about how one could go about reaching the inverse conclusion - that technology is actually narrowing the rich-poor gap when you think along broader terms. Posted it up at PaulCapestany℃om
The need for idea space to correlate with humanity is key. Currently aggregated human behavior is consolidated under a "lucky" domain with a winner taking all wealth creation. If idea space was distributed with each human having their own bio-metric based domain, then aggregated human data could still occur - but wealth could become more distributed. Data aggregation can have consent and compensation tied back to each human contributing to the technical wealth creation.
King Hubbert's "Two Intellectual Systems: Matter-energy and the Monetary Culture" could help you answer some of the paradoxical views of the future.
Scale matters on the Internet. It's the ultimate scalable technology and that means businesses can build very powerful positions, unassailable positions because they are protected by their scale. Too large not to fail.
I make $51.50. Your income goes up by 50%, half, my income goes up 50 times, 5000% ! just to be "equal" by this standard. I sure love this standard! Keep talking it up...it'll be something entirely new in the history of economics if it works...Who should I start shooting to get it happening?
The wage hasn't grown much, but it isn't flat, and we've seen dramatic growth in benefits, which, if we include it as a part of overall worker compensation, you can only conclude that conditions for workers is getting better.
It goes hand-in-hand with most good becoming cheaper, so the wealth you earn now goes further than it did 20 or 30 years ago.
And while Moor's law might not be a lie, there is a good possibility (as you likely know) that it will be breaking down:
/watch?v=bm6ScvNygUU
Great talk! Could you get some decent English subtitles on it, a la Khan Academy? (the automatic subtitles suck). There are some Spanish technological mavens I know who would benefit greatly from seeing it. Accompanied by English subtitles they would have no problem following it as your exposition is wonderfully clear, however... you talk so damn fast, even I have trouble catching up
American or not, I hope you get a chance to look into Andrew Yang's run for the US presidency that's going on right now. He seems to be the only one on the same page as Steve here. #HumanityFirst
Shares should be a standard and proportionate part of everyone's pay. The road from graduate recruit to executive should not have an exponential gradient
Basically to some it up, I am screwed! He used words that I don't even know. Therefore how am I ever going to understand. Can't fault a man that doesn't have dirt under fingernail and talks to animals everyday, but being a laymen is the true essence of who we are supposed to be as a society.
Pleasure is the ultimate product(service)
Pleasure is always in demand. Love is a type of pleasure, but some will argue over the semantics. Let's just say that whatever one calls it, it feels good.
Pleasure always costs something. Sometimes the price is being a baby so as to "buy" the pleasure of being loved by a mother. Sometimes the price is measured in monetary units.
Those who help the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest costs, become wealthy.
The people who became wealthy during the industrial revolution helped the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest costs.
War was acceptable and common during the industrial revolution. Therefore one could acquire the product of pleasure by force. Therefore those who had weapons could experience the most pleasure at the lowest costs.
During the industrial revolution, a person with a gun could force many people without weapons to please them or experience death.
Those who controlled the most advanced technology could please the most people at the lowest cost. So being that people love pleasure, people did what they felt was necessary to acquire the most control of the most advanced technology that they could. The technologically elite became extremely wealthy. Rockefeller and others. The rich-poor gap increased dramatically with technology. Those who lacked the ability to compete at pleasing others suffered, died or had to receive help from organizations such as governments, religious institutions, family, etc. Some had no property to grow their own food or acquire their own water. Even if they did, they didn't have the technological know-how.
So those who lack the technological know-how are at the beck and call of those who have what they need to survive.
This is what really happened and is what is happening now. Don't fool yourselves. Nature only rewards those who survive. Nature also rewards those who reproduce.
War is no longer acceptable. Not in the military sense. There are wars now. But they are not military wars.
To answer your questions. The wealthy are not getting wealthier. Those who help the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest cost are becoming more wealthy. The wealthy are being created from various backgrounds. J.K. Rowling, the author of the best selling book series and the highest grossing film series in history based on a fictional character named Harry Potter. She went from being a "welfare mom", to one of the wealthiest people in the world in a short five years.
So the wealthier are not getting wealthier, but rather, technology is making wealth more accessible to everyone. And hence. more people are becoming wealthy. In fact the wealthy are becoming less wealthy due to the newly introduced wealthy. The U.S.A. is relatively less wealthy due to the new competition for wealth from China and other places. So more people are becoming wealthy, but the currently wealthy are not becoming more wealthy relatively speaking.
So the cold answer, is that people that cannot compete must rely on welfare, and unfortunately for them, their caregivers may ask for more than they are willing to give. But luckily acquiring pleasure by force is being gradually eliminated as people and governments unite to protect the less capable.
As for the wealthy. They must compete to remain wealthy. They are not gaining wealth, but losing it in relation to the new competition. On record it may show that they are gaining wealth, but relatively speaking, they are most losing wealth.
Will robots replace humans. That has already been answered. It's already happening. Technology is not the problem. Technology is inevitable. The problem is lack of capability. If one does not compete, one could die or be at the beck and call of a caregiver. That's happening and is the truth.
Those who choose to compete and increase their skill at becoming engineers of pleasure, increase their chances of becoming wealthy. Those who compete can only become better for it. It's either compete or be at someones beck and call.
Those who long for the time when the U.S.A. was a haven where one could simply show up to work and own a mansion while having the rest of the world at their beck and call will have to change their strategy a bit. There's a lot of hungry people in the world. Some are literally hungry. And they're not going away. Nature will reward only those of them that survive and even more so, those who sexually reproduce.
Those that try and avoid sexual reproduction will not have their genes passed on. No offense to same-sex lovers. But nature has instantly eliminated the genes of all same-sex lovers with ease by choice of same-sex lovers. Unfortunate for them.
Nothing has changed. Don't blame the wealthy. Your neighbor could be the next billionaire. Like society, the roster of the wealthy is constantly increasing and changing.
Self-sufficiency is wise. Why buy a tomato from overseas when you could grow one for free, and then sell the rest? Why depend on the government when you are simply at their beck and call. The truth is there.
Like J. K. Rowling, helping the most people experience the most pleasure at the lowest cost, has made her wealthy. The wealthy didn't get wealthier. The wealthy got poorer because J. K. Rowling took some of their wealth.
All these nonsense arguments will not increase your ability to please. Of course if you are complainer, some will be pleased to help you. So in that sense you are pleasing some by whining. There's a market for everything. If you want to please criminal reformers, simply commit some serious crimes, and you will be rewarded. Maybe even become famous. There's a market for everything. A good book might be entitled "How to Become a Professional Whiner and Profit Greatly." One might even sell more than J. K. Rowling with that book and ironically cause the current wealthy to become even less wealthy.
It's the people who aren't contributing to the technical wealth creation who anchor the bottom end.
Am I the only one who is lost?
Hyper abundance liked this term. Too much data not channalized is challenge.
Homes are still low tech expensive cash sinks that contribute little. Robotic, hi tech, low cost construction (better and cheaper homes) and way more holidays would create richer lives without requiring higher salaries.
Steve, please read Sheila Bair's NYT op-ed "Grand Old Parity" -- she's the only progressive Republican left in the country, and her ideas deserve to be amplified in the conservative community as much as possible.
You can look words up.
Doesn't matter, since there should be no private property in the first place.
It's normal for the gap to increase. I make $1. You make $100. Over x time at the same compounded interest for everyone (like 5% GDP growth per yr) everyone doubles their income. Every one is twice as well off. I make $2 you make $200. But OMG ! The gap has doubled! And almost 99% of the new wealth has gone to the rich ! HORROR HORROR ! What would it take to have the new wealth equally distributed between rich and poor? $101 in new wealth would have to be split 50/50, you make $150.50-
Beginning a talk on poverty with a Moore's Law graph. This guy's obsessed.
I feel like there wasn't any claim in this talk.
Looking at relative poor/rich differences doesn't say anything about the value that technology has created that provide improvements in people's welfare. Why choose that metric?
It could be argued that the "rich" have a big job on their hands, managing that capital. Their wealth has to be invested into market-sensible vehicles, which means it's trying to support the current status quo and ways of making money, it's not a disruptive position.
As for robots replacing workers. It's already happening. The real question, is when robots become smart enough to exhibit emotions, will they be a threat?
And of course the answer is the same answer you would give for humans. Some will, some won't.
The humans that utilize technology as much as they can shouldn't worry about robots. The humans that don't utilize technology will be easily crushed by a robot if the robot chooses to do so.
Of course this will happen a bit further in the future. But it is already happening. Remember reading this. It sounds crazy now, but it will make more sense when you're talking to phone in the future, and holding a very nice conversation, or your phone is simply calling you a dumb ass.
But here goes the crazy. All matter has feelings. Some people talk to their plants and swear it helps them. Some people talk to things that they are sure exist based on faith. Some people swear dogs don't have feelings. Some say all animals have feelings, but that fish and other sea creatures don't.
Pleasure is like gravity. It's just there. It's the reason we all move, hence emotion. It's the reason everything moves. Dogs experience it. Mice experience. Plants experience it. There goes the crazy again. Even rocks experience it. A rock like a human has an input, processor, and output. How does rock survive. A rock has evolved special mechanisms to survive. It's basically tough and "immune" to most chemical "attacks." Crazy I know.
But you will be asking yourselves in the near future, if your phone has feelings. And it does. The smarter your phone gets, the more complex the expressions of those emotions will be.
Anything that is aware of itself has emotions. A dog has eyes and can see itself. It's that simple. A human has ears and can hear itself. It's that simple. A plant has senses and can sense itself. If it's wilted, it can sense that. It's self-conscious. Not to the degree of complexity of a dog or human. But that feedback loop is still there.
Self consciousness is nothing mysterious. You simply look at your hand and you are self conscious. A phone has a speaker and a mic. A phone can hear itself. Therefore a phone is self-conscious. Give the phone some circuitry that is as complex as that of a mosquito's brain, and that phone may surprise you.
But for just remember this crazy stuff. You will be ashamed of yourself for even asking yourself if your phone has feelings. You might think you're losing your mind. But when you ask why, at least you'll have one hypothesis here.
We can not escape the fact (excluding a handful of exceptions) that below the neck, a man isn't worth more than 5 bucks a day.
Find a way to get people interested in products not made by underage and slaves, they get all the "jobs"
The issue that libertarians and Jurvetson miss is that what we're doing is entrepreneurial... But it's not capitalism (at least not as Adam Smith would recognize it). Competition is a non fungible component of working markets. When you have the network effects and power law distribution that Jurvetson recognizes...you no longer have competition, you (intentional or not) monopoly power.
sad you didnt mention intelectual property and its dis/advantages in your thoughts.
Women, on the other hand...