RoboVM Is No Longer Open-Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/10/robovm <comment><USER2> Copy pasting what I think to be the most important part of the article:

      RoboVM is a complicated piece of technology that we have worked hard for years to
      create. Over the past few months, we have seen competitors actively exploiting
      our good faith by using our open source code to compete with us directly in
      commercial products. On the flip side, we have received almost no meaningful
      contributions to our open source code.
      You can imagine how disappointing this has been to us; we had hoped our initial
      business model of OSS with proprietary extensions (like our debugger and
      interface builder integration) would work.
      But in light of the low contributions and behavior of competitors, we decided
     to stop automatically releasing changes to the core of RoboVM as open source.

-Zechner

I'm not sure what to think about the competitors-stealing-our-code angle, but the OSS-is-being-used-as-freeware argument is certainly one point in favor of closing/controlling their code (as a business).

<comment><USER3> They should have used a viral license like GPLv3, and sold commercial license exceptions.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the GPLv3 is a powerful tool, but it doesn't completely eliminate the need to control when and how source code becomes open.

In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation. VMWare and Tivo are examples.

Consider Google Android, which releases sources with binaries when the release occurs, not before. Balancing the how and when is just as important as the license.

Gnu Ghostscript was an example for many years. They used a dual license and released source to the public six months after binaries.

<comment><USER3> > In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent > violations after the time and expense of litigation

That's overly pessimistic. People abusing your GPLv3 licensed code would be almost the same as people pirating your proprietary software. It would still be copyright infringement and with prices already set for commerical license exceptions it would be relatively easy to sue for damages plus legal fees.

It's funny in this case that the Free Software approach may actually be a more viable business model for RoboVM than the OSS approach. Many people consider Open Source to be better for business and Free Software to be a bunch of hippies. But had RoboVM used a viral license and sold commercial exceptions (a model that the FSF considers acceptable) they could be defending user's freedoms while also building a viable business.

<comment><USER5> A successful open-source project is also about building a community of third- party contributors. Or at least the possibility of one such community happening. Dual licensing basically kills off that discussion, because in order for dual licensing to work, then contributors need to sign a contributors agreement that licenses their work for whatever purpose the parent company sees fit.

And this is where I've always disagreed with FSF's stance. Many people claim that GPL is inadequate because of the "ASP loophole". But a much bigger loophole is dual licensing. This is because dual licensing happens (and is useful) only when the product is unusable as open-source. For example Gitorious is AGPL licensed and does not need dual licensing because you know, it's meant for people to have an on-premise solution for Git hosting and it's a take it or leave it thing. A Javascript library on the other hand is totally useless as AGPL. Dual licensing is also what made Qt and consequently KDE to be less popular than Gtk+ and Gnome in distributions such as Red Hat's or Ubuntu, or why popular project such as Firefox or LibreOffice are better integrated with Gtk+/Gnome, even though Qt has always been technically superior. Heck, Qt's licensing is why Gtk+/Gnome happened in the first place.

You see, the biggest advantage of open-source, its raison d'être if you will, is the possibility to fork. But if a fork cannot survive because of licensing reasons, maybe because it cannot be applied to the same projects as the original, then that's not really open-source.

Personally I prefer the open core. For example I currently work with Scala and the JVM and I use IntelliJ IDEA as my IDE. It has a community edition with everything I need. Yet I pay for the Ultimate edition anyway. If the community edition gets discontinued, I'll switch in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER6> > You see, the biggest advantage of open-source, its raison d'être if you > will, is the possibility to fork

It might be the _raison d 'être_ of _open source_ , but the goal of _free software_ is preserving _users '_ freedom, not ensuring usefulness of software in some commercial proprietary context. That seems to be at the root of your disagreement with FSF. You simply care about different things and therefore prioritize differently; everything else is secondary. FSF does not aim for popularity, convenience, or playing well with one's commercial interests as its primary goal.

<comment><USER5> The right to fork is a prerequisite for users' freedom and without it the software is not free. The right to fork is about having complete control over the software that you're using. And it's usually a fact - either you have that right, or you don't, instead of being a warm and fuzzy social ideal, like the issue of " _users freedom_ " tends to be.

Because the second you said " _users freedom_ ", you're in danger, because what constitutes a "user" is unclear. Is a user a person that pushes buttons providing input for your program to produce its destined output? Or can a user be a programmer as well? Because depending on its needs, different users want different freedoms. And for example I do not consider AGPL to be open-source (or free software for that matter) because modifying code without redistributing the binaries is simple usage for a developer, which means AGPL imposes restrictions on usage, being a freaking EULA.

But going back to our subject, dual licensing, take a look at projects that are dual licensed and usually you'll notice that the choice of the license had nothing to do with users freedom, quite the contrary, after all, without serious constraints dual licensing wouldn't work.

<comment><USER3> What constitues a user is not unclear.

A user is both someone who uses the compiled software (pushes the button in your example) or a developer capable of modifying the software.

A developer doesn't need the freedom to redistribute the software to other users without also respecting their freedoms.

Dual licensing does nothing to hurt freedom, as a user of the GPL licensed software your freedom is protect, both to use the software, and to modify it for your usage.

Needing to assign copyright to make upstream contributions may hurt the rate at which the upstream project develops, but in no way hurts your freedom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> RoboVM was basically the competition of Xamarin and Xamarin killed it. RoboVM was cheaper and had a bigger market, since it targeted JVM developers. With RoboVM you aren't even tied to Java the language, being entirely possible to use a language like Scala. And contrary to Xamarin, in order to use IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse, or in other words the state of the art in IDEs, you didn't need to pay $999 per year, like you need for using Visual Studio with Xamarin. And RoboVM has been open-source, which brings with it benefits, like trust, trust because should things go wrong, you can always fork it.

Well, now is the time for a fork and I hope it will happen.

<comment><USER7> I think putting more effort into Avian would probably be time better spent. Their static code-gen is lacking (it currently just runs the JIT ahead of time, instead of taking more time with something like LLVM), but they've got a lot of things going for them including a superior GC.

<comment><USER8> I wrote most of the Avian VM, and I agree that the code generation is quite primitive compared to LLVM's. We've considered using LLVM as an alternative code generator, but hesitated partly because LLVM used to require a shadow stack to support accurate GC. I just checked they're latest docs[1], though, and it seems that there are other options now.

All in all, adding LLVM support to Avian would be challenging but doable. However, Avian's generated code is already fast enough for most purposes, and it's not too hard to fall back to a bit of native code when you need maximum performance. My impression is that Java-on-iOS developers are less concerned about performance and more concerned with ease-of-use (e.g. tool integration) and convenient access to native APIs (e.g. Bro[2]). The RoboVM devs have apparently done a great job on both of those things.

I sympathize with Zechner and the other RoboVM devs. Development on Avian was originally funded by the company I was working at since it neatly addressed a problem we had: extending the lifetime of a large body of client-side Java code in a world that was/is increasingly unfriendly to client-side Java. Once it was good enough for that purpose, there was no business reason to continue investing in it besides bug fixes and maintenance, so we had to move on to other things.

I'd love to keep working on Avian full time and do cool stuff like an LLVM port or trace-based JIT compilation, but it's hard to justify when there are bills to pay. In my case, that means focusing primarily on other, income- producing projects. In RoboVM's case, it means trying a new approach to licensing to make development sustainable. I wish them luck with it.

[1] [http://llvm.org/docs/GarbageCollection.html](http://llvm.org/docs/GarbageCollection.html) [2] [http://docs.robovm.com/advanced- topics/bro.html](http://docs.robovm.com/advanced-topics/bro.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no such thing as "no longer open source". The story here is in fact "the copyright holders of RoboVM have made a proprietary derivative".

<comment><USER7> Well, one complication here is that the only reason they were allowed to do so was that their CLA gave RoboVM AB an unrestricted license to the contributions, not merely the license the code was released under. If that were not the case, the compiler could not have gone simply gone proprietary because it was GPL licensed.

In practice, I suspect they would have been able to do this anyway because the biggest independent contributors joined RoboVM prior to this move.

edit: typo

<comment><USER10> And this is the _exact_ reason I will not contribute code under a CLA that gives a project the right to re-license my code as commercial.

<comment><USER11> All the CLAs I've seen so far give the project the right to license the code under a proprietary license, as long as it (and derivates of it) remains available under a free license as defined in the CLA.

I would also have concerns signing a CLA that doesn't ensure the code will stay available under a free license, but I don't think that's a very common case.

<comment><USER10> Early in my career I signed CLAs like this and contributed code under them. Later down the road I wizened up and realized it was free work for a commercial entity that was then relicensing my work under a closed source commercial license and making a profit. They are welcome to a profit, sure, but not if it is via closed source licensing of work that I contributed to the OSS community.

So, no more CLAs for me. If they require a CLA (that lets them relicense my work) then I'll just never contribute to them.

<comment><USER12> CLAs on their own aren't bad. All Apache projects use a CLA to ensure that the contributer has he right to contribute the code under the Apache license.

<comment><USER10> You are correct, not all CLAs are bad. That is why I said "that lets them relicense my work" to clarify that it's a specific type of CLA that I take issue with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Several months ago, after consulting with HN community ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757243)) what we can do with our startup, we open sourced our platform and now our team feels pretty well. But after months, we see that powerful companies just silently use our software to solve there's needs and making no contributions. We accept small contributions, but we can't count on them as platform is much bigger than contributions. We tried to write Wikipedia-like letter to ask for donations - doesn't work. Tried to make consulting - eats too much time. Now we releasing enterprise version ([https://corp.actor.im](https://corp.actor.im)) and we decided not to open sources of it as it is almost impossible to earn money without pushing people to pay. And pushing can be performed only with limitations that is, actually, harming people in some cases. Does anyone know any other solution for this?

<comment><USER14> the problem is your product.

there are way too many messaging platforms like actor. many of them are older. it's hard to compete in this market since you would need to be better than all the others.

I mean the others are costing money at least some of them still they have mostly a bigger integration in the products the companies made. and thats why its impossible to earn money for you, you won't get enough users to stay rentable.

<comment><USER13> Yes, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been using libgdx and was meaning to explore the whole iOS/RoboVM angle, I finally got around to it this weekend, ironically just in time to catch the kerfuffle around this.

Presumably there is an open-source version of RoboVM still around. Perhaps here: [https://github.com/robovm/robovm](https://github.com/robovm/robovm) ... though I gather the problem with that is that it does not include any of the latest iOS 9 work, which was done in a closed repository somewhere.

Looks like the Libgdx guy (Mario?) fought hard to keep a free version of RobobVM for Libgdx users. Not sure how long that can last; its currently based on self-identifying yourself as a Libgdx user and hence easily abused.

The other irony is that Libgdx used to use Xamarin to target iOS, but they switched to RoboVM because it was free/open.

<comment><USER16> Mario here, libGDX author and part of the RoboVM team. We switched from Xamarin to RoboVM for libGDX because it worked better for our purposes and was free. It being OSS was a plus, but that wasn't really a factor in the decision. We've been happily using Xamarin for a year, even though it was closed. I constantly evaluated other options, including Avian and XMLVM, neither of which came close to either Xamarin or RoboVM in terms of functionality and performance. That is still true today.

The free indie licenses for libGDX and PlayN users will last. It's very easy on our end to prevent abuse automatically. We never considered not making it free for indie game devs. From RoboVM's standpoint, it makes zero sense to 1) try monetizing a community that can't be monetized and 2) alienate the community that helped RoboVM a lot over the past two years. If RoboVM stopped the free indie licenses, it would only hurt RoboVM's bottom line.

The close sourcing was badly communicated, no question about that. But contrary to popular believe, it was not the longest bait and switch in the history of evil plans (RoboVM's been out there for almost 4 years), it was a business decision. A direct competitor exploited the free OSS version, hurting our bottom line.

<comment><USER17> > A direct competitor exploited the free OSS version, hurting our bottom line.

It's not "exploiting" to use the license as offered.

Why not use a FOSS license that prevents this? For instance, why not use GPL, at which point you could sell licenses for use in proprietary apps? With the right licensing structure, you wouldn't even need a CLA.

<comment><USER18> I just made that comment with some specifics here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500298)

I'm curious what you and Mario think about my scheme of paid, perpetually- licensed, OSS software. It's in alpha stage obviously with potential for improvement.

<comment><USER17> If by "commercial use" you meant "proprietary use": requiring payment for proprietary use seems like a well-established business model that works reasonably well, and I don't see any problem with contributing to such a project. In an ideal world, I'd suggest doing so in a way that doesn't require a CLA, such as a carefully written license exception referencing an updatable list of licensees.

If you actually meant "commercial use", such that the default version prohibited commercial use, that's a non-starter, as it's incompatible with the standards for either Free Software or Open Source Software; you would massively curtail both contribution and usage of the project by doing so. You'd also, in the process, likely prevent anyone from contributing to that project in the course of their job, which doesn't seem like your intent.

(Requiring submission of contributions back to the original project rather than only to those you distribute a binary to is also slightly questionable, though some will accept it. Prohibiting commercial use is the dealbreaker.)

<comment><USER18> "In an ideal world, I'd suggest doing so in a way that doesn't require a CLA, such as a carefully written license exception referencing an updatable list of licensees."

That's worth remembering if possible.

"If you actually meant "commercial use", such that the default version prohibited commercial use"

The idea is it's just like open-source software except you pay for it. People can fix it, modify it, contribute to it, whatever. Might force the mods to be shared with everyone if using free license or let them not be shared if people are paying for it. The money coming in creates active development. The license keeps them from closing things back up or pulling it off the market. Trying to figure out what terms maintain the major benefits of FOSS while preventing the worst parts of proprietary model and keeping money in for development/maintenance.

The philosophy is basically "you get what you pay for or contribute to," with source and benefits that brings. Sort of a middle ground between proprietary and FOSS. Gotta be one that could work but devil is in the details.

Note: Burroughs' 1960's OS, MCP, was delivered as source to paying customers. They could modify it as they saw fit and optionally submit modifications back. Burroughs would try to integrate good submissions into later releases. It was the first or one of the earliest proprietary and OSS combinations.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that FOSS already exists, and anything incompatible with FOSS isn't likely to gain traction among existing FOSS developers. It isn't a question of "which terms would maintain the major benefits of FOSS"; to get any traction, you need to actually be compatible with the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition ([https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)) and the Free Software Foundation's Free Software Definition ([https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)). And neither of those allow a prohibition on commercial use.

Now, on the other hand, you _could_ build a community around a GPLed project, or an AGPLed project, funded by selling licenses to use that project in _proprietary_ software. In practice, that will have a very similar effect, while remaining FOSS. And your comments and ideas about using that licensing revenue to directly support the community rather than just a company sound quite appealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I originally thought this was a bad idea, then changed my mind. I was going to contribute to the fork but decided not to. What sealed it was several competitors to RoboVM emailed me directly after seeing my posts in the RoboVM fork message boards begging me to help them. No one wants to pay for anything anymore. RoboVM made the right decision.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like you're in a good position to get paid to write open source software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Have we just become too selfish for OSS? We're going to end up punishing ourselves by having to use proprietary, closed systems for everything. I don't want to compute in that world. That would be awful.

</comment><comment><USER22> So let me get this straight... RoboVM is acquired by Xamarin, the company behind Mono (the open source c# implementation)... and they therefore go closed source?

I don't get it.

<comment><USER7> Xamarin's .NET mobile/mac offerings are closed source. Mono itself fills the role of the OpenJDK does for Java, but it alone is not suitable for running on mobile. Also, Mono is licensed under the LGPL and Xamarin's interpretation of that license precludes using the runtime in a closed-source program without a alternative license from them (which they provide with their paid plans).

<comment><USER23> > Also, Mono is licensed under the LGPL and Xamarin's interpretation of that > license precludes using the runtime in a closed-source program without a > alternative license from them

Citation? I've never heard anyone interpret the GPL and LGPL as the same.

Embedding mono is different than using mono. [https://xamarin.com/licensing](https://xamarin.com/licensing)

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I meant on mobile (like RoboVM). There is no way to comply with the LGPL on iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Once again Open Source demonstrate its danger in front Free Software. Stop to waste your time, bring progress to fsf.org

<comment><USER25> Structurally, the FSF works the same as this project and works to unilaterally control the copyright of projects (by only accepting contributions under a license agreement: [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why- assign.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html) ).

I agree it would be a departure from their core philosophy to act against their contributors, but if evil goblins took control of the FSF, there would be no way to stop them from using whatever license they wanted, and the community would be left with the last release under the old license, just as in this case.

edit: oops, there are FSF projects where the FSF does not hold the copyright. Anyway, what I said works for the projects that FSF holds copyright for.

<comment><USER26> FSF is still a 501(c)(3) with legal obligation to their stated mission, so it couldn't just be taken over and corrupted quite so simply.

<comment><USER25> I think if they stopped accepting donations and spent remaining funds carefully, there would be no penalty for losing that status (it's largely an exemption from income taxes).

<comment><USER26> I doubt it is that simple to change a 501(c)(3). I'm not a lawyer, but _getting_ the tax exemption under 501(c)(3) has all sorts of requirements including things in Articles and Bylaws about how dissolution / acquiring works. Even losing 501 status doesn't instantly eliminate the legal status of the Articles/Bylaws that founded the (c)(3)…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Several RoboVM components used to be made available under the Apache 2.0 > license while the compiler was open sourced under the GPL license

How can close source the compiler if it is on GPL license ?

<comment><USER7> I commented about this elsewhere in this thread, but the Contributor License Agreement for RoboVM gives RoboVM AB (the company) an unrestricted license to your contributions. As a result, the contributors cannot assert that they are violating the GPL since RoboVM is not actually on the receiving end of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> People don't respect those who give away their labor for free.

Consider doctors, dentists, lawyers, CPAs, or other higher-prestige professionals. They engage in protectionism to restrict competition and drive up their earnings and rarely if ever give away their services for free, and they are much, much more respected than we are. And on the rare occasion that they do perform some act of charity, such as working as a public defender or providing discounted dental care to the poor, they usually still get paid for it, just not as much, and they make a big show of it so everyone knows that they're taking a huge paycut for a good cause and thus deserve even more respect than they get already.

Programmers by contrast are rapidly conditioning the public to expect software to be cheap or free, regardless of how long and difficult it is to produce, to the point where iPhone devs complain they can't sell their apps for the price of a cup of coffee.

Programmers need to worry about their future and should probably spend their 20s and 30s making as much money as they can writing proprietary software before they hit 40 and become increasingly unhirable due to ageism instead of performing unappreciated acts of charity in the form of open source for an ungrateful public.

<comment><USER29> "The straightforward and easy path was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker.... I could have made money this way, and perhaps had fun programming (if I closed my eyes to how I was treating other people). But I knew that when my career was over, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had made the world ugly."

\-- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) [https://github.com/llimllib/personal_code/blob/master/python...](https://github.com/llimllib/personal_code/blob/master/python/wc/osfortune)

<comment><USER28> And when you're old, unemployable, and in need of expensive dental work, do you seriously think any dentist will offer you some massive discount because of your short-sighted history of altruism? Please. Proprietary software isn't even one tenth as immoral as the rent-seeking and profiteering that other more respected professions engage in. Make your money and look out for yourself, because no one else is going to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think that everything of RoboVM could be closed source, since you are doing the same things just for another platform, that google did and got sued by oracle.

</comment><comment><USER30> As a dev, a big thing for me is being able to see the source code for the full callstack in the debugger, and possibly making derivatives of that code in my app. As long as they provide that in some form, then closing the source isn't as big of a deal.</comment>


Are jobs obsolete? - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/ <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work>

_The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.[1]

In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He traced the devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees. While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the American middle class continues to shrink and the workplace becomes ever more stressful.

As the market economy and public sector decline, Rifkin predicted the growth of a third sector—voluntary and community-based service organizations—that will create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling down the military budget, enacting a value added tax on nonessential goods and services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a "social wage" in lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers._

He was mostly laughed at.

<comment><USER3> It's not so impossible to believe.

The objection I often hear (and I recall that this is PG's stance as well) is that as old jobs disappear new ones will take their place. For example, as the article mentioned, the former toll booth operator could now repair the automated toll booth system.

So far this general idea has been true. Before computers existed as we know them, "computers" were people who did lengthy computations for a living, often for scientists. Once electronic computers arrived these people seemingly found new jobs and survived.

I'm not sure if this will continue to be the case. We may be reaching a discontinuous point on the economic timeline. If robotic and computer systems are developed that can effectively do the jobs of most humans for less than minimum wage, there won't be enough work for people to make a good living.

The key difference is the following: in the past, technology has only disrupted specific segments of the economy, allowing humans to find work other places where they could still add value. Now, technology has the potential to disrupt the majority of the economy. There _won't be_ any work to do.

There will still be pockets where humans can add value, but there will be so much competition for this work by all the unemployed that the wages will be driven down to nil.

If this situation occurs, the Government will have to find a way to distribute resources directly to the masses lest every sitting politician be voted out of office. In fact, all the rhetoric right now about creating jobs is exactly that. Politicians are promising that they'll find a way to distribute resources to the unemployed.

<comment><USER2> I agree.

In the Star Trek economy (afaik), the inwention of the replicator was key to the end of money and the end of a scarcity based economy.

Well, we already have a replicator for much of the economy

        $ cp

And it looks as though soon we'll have some very advanced robots that will be able to automate most mundane jobs.

So maybe this is good and we can all become Platos, relaxing, philosophizing, self-actualizing at the top of Maslow's pyramid. If so, it should be reasonable to convince everyone to go the Star Trek way and jettison money.

What will be dangerous, is dangerous, is the transition periods like now, where jobs that are lost, never come back, not just because they have been automated away, but also because the owners would rather pay more for automation and less human involvement because they find humans to be a big pain. At that point (which is sort of like now) it is hard to convince others that it is reasonable to distribute resources to the masses.

I would certainly like to see a single payer, universal health care system implemented that separates health care from monolithic employers. That, and I'd love to see actual real encouragement and incentivization of small business entrepreneurship.

Remove the barriers that big companies have on us. Make it easy and rewarding for people to create their own jobs, form their own companies, on a semi- permanent or even ad-hoc way.

Oh well, pie in the sky.

<comment><USER3> You make a good point about the transition period.

I'm a fan of Kurzweil and am convinced that many of his predictions will come true. However, he paints a rosy picture of the future and glosses over any potential conflict in the transition between between now and when he predicts that humans will merge with machines, which he pegs at 2099.

There is definitely going to be conflict as we move to a post-scarcity world.

<comment> loup-vaillant Oh, but there already _is_ conflict. While information basically got out of scarcity, the copyright overlords are still clinging to their old ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The USPS may not be an ideal case study, since it is the only entity that is required to pre-fund 75 years worth of health benefits to employees.

[http://about.usps.com/news/national- releases/2011/pr11_102.h...](http://about.usps.com/news/national- releases/2011/pr11_102.htm)

"Without enactment of legislation by the end of this month, the Postal Service faces default, as funds will be insufficient to make a congressionally mandated $5.5 billion payment to pre-fund retiree health benefits, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told a Senate committee today."

This was a manufactured crisis, passed by a lame duck Republican congress in 2006. See Title VIII - Postal Service Retirement and Health Benefits Funding in the following link:

<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-6407>

Yes - E-mail has made an impact on the USPS' bottom line, but it's because of POLITICS that the USPS is in such bad shape.

<comment><USER5> Specially considering that the average volume/weight/cost by package must have increased tenfold because of e-commerce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jobs aren't obsolete. There are plenty of jobs. Part time, low wage, no benefits jobs. Careers? Full time, living wage that can support a family, full benefits packages? Those are becoming obsolete, and fast.

Screw any politician who crows about "creating jobs". I would support one who can create careers. Won't happen.

<comment><USER7> > Jobs aren't obsolete. There are plenty of jobs. Part time, low wage, no > benefits jobs.

The 600,000 the article mentioned were mostly of this type, I presume (not the part time maybe, but the other two).

E.g. Secretarial/bureaucracy type jobs which rarely pay more then $15/hour, and usually ~$10/hour, are quickly being replaced with computers.

> Careers? Full time, living wage that can support a family, full benefits > packages? Those are becoming obsolete, and fast.

I wouldn't say obsolete. I doubt they're growing at the same rate of the population, but there are still many fields where building a career is a reasonable venture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love how the media overreacts to everything. Here's a pretty obvious maxim: nothing is as good as it seems at its best, and nothing is as bad as it seems at its worst. To wit: the recession and slow recovery of the last couple of years are just that, a recession and slow recovery--they aren't a harbinger to the end of capitalism or conventional labor or employment. The jobs are already coming back.

Psychologically, people seem to have a basic need to do something productive with at least a good chunk of their time, and jobs do fulfill this important need. The jobs might become more abstract and more indirectly removed from everyday necessities, and hours might even drop, but I don't think they'd go away.

<comment><USER9>
        To wit: the recession and slow recovery of the last
        couple of years are just that, a recession and slow
        recovery--they aren't a harbinger to the end of
        capitalism or conventional labor or employment.

The recession and slow recovery are what we make of them. The future is not already determined. There may or may not be the end of capitalism, but that doesn't say anything about whether that's a goal we should pursue.

Even though Rushkoff believes that automation is killing jobs, he doesn't believe that the alternative he proposes is inevitable. He just invites us to consider it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is more a problem of motivation. Since we have not yet stopped universal entropy to guarantee our unending existance forever, we still have progress to be made.

Too bad we have probably billions of human beings not contributing towards that progress.

We need people motivated to enter the sciences and engineering disciplines to make the future happen. We will probably see our means of survival fully automated in our lifetimes, and besides the imminent highly coupled crisis of global warming / overpopulation / resource depletion this century, we will probably emerge from it in a state where no person born will ever need to toil to survive to the next day.

We might even get to the point where people don't die, or aren't bound to biological form.

But we are too busy complaining about celebrities on TV and our neighbors to have a collective motivation towards progress. The greatest problem to solve in the 21st century is one of motivating people to tackle hard problems to progress the whole of humanity, en masse.

<comment><USER11> I accept that humanities continuation as a species depends on science/tech, there has to be more to it. Living longer and expanding further should be the how, not the why.

Unifying people into action is historically only possible by getting them to engage in shared values and beliefs. We need culture, politics, philosophy and, dare I say it, religion to motivate people into tackling these problems. Promoting science beyond these seems unlikely to result in the kind of Utopian vision you are talking about.

Also, is toiling always such a bad thing? Hard work can be rewarding too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In Europe, some people are thinking of replacing welfare by a certain ammount of money being payed to everyone, without condition, everymonth. Could be solution, even if you have to work out the details of such a scheme. What makes this different from any system we have today is, that people not working are most likely not stigmatised anymore. Currently you have condition attached to recieving money from the state, so as soon as you can get away from these conditions you will. Meaning you need a job , a.k.a. employment. The result is, that everybody without a job has nothing to offer to an emplyeer. Hence, the stigma that he's worthless. But he isn't, maybe he only has talents nobody is willing to pay enough to make a living these days. If this really is a solution or how we can get there, well no idea. But we should think about it. As soon as there's enough for everyone, why not letting everyone participate on it. And when you look at the conditions you have to get your money when you ARE employed, well I'm not sure you're better of than without a job, from a self-respect point of view I mean.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not many have mentioned policy here, just automation.

How are we to create sustainable jobs if we keep taxing, regulating, etc... such that we increase the requirement for marginal productivity of labor in order to turn a profit?

Basically, on-the-job training and low skills employment could be made more profitable by making it so that there is some room left for the free market. If they have lower non-employment costs, then they will be able to hire less productive people. This drives demand for employment, and thus, wages.

But I'm not suggesting that this will ever happen. ;) Some people in power pay lip service to the free market while attacking it, and others aren't shy about attacking it. We create "make work" jobs that come at the cost of companies and individuals. If it didn't come at the cost of companies and individuals their costs would be lower. If enough wiggle room was given, on-the-jobs training would be possible, and low-skills labor more profitable.

As of April, the US will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. This approach doesn't seem to be solving the inequality of wealth problem, and it doesn't look like it's giving people a way to earn their living.

<comment><USER14> I've never understood taxing of income, except that for the point of a taxing bureau it's a very convenient spot to impose taxes.

Namely, taxing reduces whatever that is taxed. Taxing work makes work less desirable, and sometimes not worth to be done at all. Taxes should target things that are unnecessary or harming.

Thus, income shouldn't be taxed at all. Conversely, consumption should be taxed with a VAT roughly equal to the lost income tax. Food could certainly be taxed less than cars but the general rule should be that you're taxed for consuming. Because income wouldn't be taxed, people's purchasing power would increase but taxing the consumption would make them think twice where they spend their money. Consider that this is the opposite of the current situation: people are all pre-taxed (=license to consume) and items and products are so cheap they can get spent money on and ultimately discarded without anyone blinking an eye.

<comment><USER15> we are taxed at consumption as well, I'm assuming you mean you want even higher sales tax than we currently have but no income tax? I have felt that the current sales tax of up to 10% in some places is already fairly high as is

<comment><USER16> 10%? Wow! Here in Ireland income tax is 20% on the first €32,000 and 40% above that. VAT (sales tax) is at 23%.

<comment><USER17> Ireland's quite weird in terms of tax policy internationally. We have supposedly low rates of income tax, high sales taxes and low corporate tax. Ireland also has more deductible than I've seen in the UK. I went looking for things I could use to reduce my tax bill (there's loads in Ireland), but there appeared to be no comparable tax reliefs available for me in the UK :(.

<comment><USER15> At those rates, income tax would also be higher than in the U.S., at least for most people

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whether a human being or a machine is doing a task, value is being created; the overall economy isn't worse off.

The issue is value capture -- who derives the benefit of this value creation, and how?

If a human being does a job, they're compensated through wages. Machines have owners, which earn income in exchange for the productive output of their machines.

There are a lot of ways to earn income besides having a job. The sooner people realize this, the sooner we'll get beyond this absurd "job creation" mentality around which so much of modern politics revolves.

</comment><comment><USER19> _Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products._

The article doesn't mention Lanier's extensive writing on what he calls Digital Maoism: the notion that collectives always solve problems better than individuals, who should give their digital content away for free. If there were some way of monetizing this digital content that did not benefit only a few well-positioned social networking hubs and that did not require draconian intellectual property legislation (which mainly benefits a few monopolists), then there might be some hope.

<comment><USER20> Yeah was getting into the article until near the end when it started to feel like a not-so-subtle defense of "intellectual property", i.e., "if only we could better monetize our digital creations Utopia would be within reach".

I honestly feel that the way our government is run by lawyers (who seem to actually believe in this silly idea of an IP-based economy) is the reason so much manufacturing has fled the country. Americans today just don't know the value of mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Germany and Switzerland didn't make this mistake. They love and value manufacturing and look where their economies are.

(And by the way kids, get off my lawn :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Captain Jean-Luc Picard states in the film Star Trek: First Contact that "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

Disclaimer: Copied from the comments on the original article.

<comment><USER22> Generally, one ought to start thinking about _this_ instead of the "End of jobs". Jobs are an industrial-era economic construction, work is something we always had and will probably always have, even as an evolutionary relic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somewhere out there there's a social model that makes a lot more sense and just works, but we can't fathom it right now because we are so busy worrying about competing over pieces on the ground.

<comment><USER24> As a software engineer, I would love to see all the tedious tasks people do all day replaced by technology. If having money is the only way to stay alive and I had a job, I would even pay higher taxes, just to let people do more of what they might love more (and what in the long run would benefit society in other ways). -- I guess, that this opinion is diametrical to current ideology.

<comment><USER25> The word you want in that last sentence is "diametrical", or perhaps "antipodal".

<comment><USER24> English is not my native tongue, so thanks for the suggestion. (Now that you mention it, I found both words in the dictionary.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Charlie Stross brought this idea up on his blog recently; what does a post work-for-pay world look like? What would you do if you had a home, food, and health care as a basic right?

Could we even get there with our current basic cultural value being that if you don't work, you have no value?

<comment><USER27> Yes we could: replace 'work' with 'contribute' and it makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't believe in the mid- and long-term viability of a society that supports its members without requiring them to participate in its existence, development and improvement. Without some form of obligation, it would stagnate into a world of (so to speak) couch potatoes too easily.

If I had a home, food and health care as a basic right, what I would do? Raise my child with undivided attention, care and love. Try to make his environment a happy, safe and stimulating place. The kind of stuff that modern society apparently considers optional, or not valuable at all.

<comment><USER28> The last paragraph suggests a new organisation for a company: one where people can job share high value jobs, in return for an average salary.

Here's an example. Let's say I am capable of earning $160,000 a year, if I work 5 days a week in a role that is optimally suited to my skills. The problem is that this role leaves me with little time for my family (or other projects) and an excess of money. What I really want is to work 2 days a week for a salary of $64,000.

The above is hard to do in the current employment system. The closest options seem to be:

1) Take part time work. Typically part time work pays a much lower hourly rate, so to get my $64,000, I'm having to work 5 days/week. No gain, only pain.

2) Go into contracting. Fine for a single person, but too unstable with dependents.

3) Work for some number of years, then quit for a number of years. Demolishes the CV, making it hard to return to work, and leads to an unbalanced all or nothing relationship with the family.

4) Doesn't seem to exist.

Option 4) might be a company that specialises in allowing high value people to work limited hours, at what they do best. It would require a new way of organising things.

a) Systems to eliminate the "fixed cost" of employing someone, allowing many people to be employed in place of one, at the same cost.

b) Systems to allow multiple people to efficiently time share on a task.

c) Systems to allow people to rapidly pick up where they left off on a task.

d) Systems to allow a person to remain up to speed on a discipline, even with restricted working hours (ie. reducing the fixed cost to the employee).

It would be interesting to see how such a company would go competing against traditional a company of full-time employees. Assuming the negatives a)-d), above, could be solved, the benefits would be:

i) A fresh, productive, low stress, "burn out free" workforce.

ii) With some flexability of hours by healthy workers, the elimination of holes in the workforce, due sickness or unexpected events.

iii) The ability to very rapidly bring extra resources to bear (eg. some people work 4 days/week) under special circumstances.

iv) A larger employment pool, by including people who would would normally be precluded from full-time work. (How to make the model work well while not eliminating those who want a full-time job.)

Points a)-d) would seem to be fodder for a start-up, which would dog food its own system. The selling point could a competitive advantage, delivered by points i)-iv).

EDIT: formatting + spelling

<comment><USER29> The problem with your proposal is that employee time does not scale down linearly. There is a certain fixed amount of time needed for each employee to do training and administration, whether that employee works part time or full time. Let's say that takes 2 hours per week. If you drop from 40 hours per week to 16 then your actual productive time is only 37% as much. Plus there is additional fixed overhead for HR, computing resources, software licenses, personal equipment, etc.

Also consider that adding more people to a team increases communication overhead, regardless of whether they are part time or full time: n*(n-1)/2. So there's a further loss of efficiency with replacing a small number of full time workers with a larger number of part time workers.

<comment><USER15> I agree, its simply not possible to do this effectively in many situations, you can't just plug in a bunch of people for 2 days a week and expect to get the same output as the equivalent number of hours worked from a team of full- timers. I think companies could potentially adjust to this long-term, but projects and tasks have to become much more modular. With most companies I've worked with, their code base simply isn't set up for this sort of thing, theres often a lot of wasted time because of lack of documentation, refactoring that never was done, etc to where its often very hard to feel like you're working at maximum efficiency so IMO it would be hard to work in this sort of environment just 2 days a week, however on smaller scale projects, where its just one dev working on a new project, I think it would be more possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In 1900s, with Nietzsche, we killed God but at least people had distractions of "work".

But in 2000s, we are slowly killing work itself and replacing it with automaton.

Without a world with religion or necessary work, I wonder, what is there for (majority of) humans to "cling to"? Without distractions, won't their "freedom" drive them insane? Without God and profession, what would give meaning to their life?

<comment><USER31> The State and war. Then once we abolish those we will have reached communist nirvana.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I get into friendly arguments with family and friends on the conservative and liberal side of things over this. While I believe that paying taxes partially to support people who can't work or can't get jobs is simply part of the cost of living in a (reasonable) civil society, I also believe that there has to be a strong incentive built into the system.

I believe that able bodied people and their families who don't have means of earning money should be supported in clean and safe tent cities and incentivized to put effort into accepting and working with training programs and education. Incentives might be things like cable TV, etc. in their housing.

No one should starve to death or go hungry in our country. People who simply don't want to work or accept training and education should get fewer perks in life, but should still have enough to be happy if that is the lifestyle they want.

All children should have good educational opportunities, including free meals at school if they need them.

</comment><comment><USER33> The idea of this has been around for a LONG time and is not a new one. I think the term for this type of society is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism> or a socialist utopia.

New jobs always pop up though. The problem with this logic is that because all of today's jobs will likely be automated in the future you think everyone will be unemployed, but in reality you just can't fathom what the jobs of the future will look like. Can you imagine trying to describe to someone that lives in 1900 your job description? You write code for a living? You're a computer scientist? Wtf is that? They pay you to just sit there all day and press buttons?

</comment><comment><USER34> Let us put it this way. As automation increases and there are cheaper and greener ways to harness and use energy. What we are likely to see is change of goals in life.

We may no longer strive for food, clothing and shelter. Many things may come automatically. But we will have to still work to make a living for many things like medicine, travel, vacations etc but the basic stuff may all come at cheaper prices.

There will still be 'rich' and 'poor' people. People will pay for greater things. The poor will no longer strive for basic survival, but they will have to strive for luxury.

The whole point is the definition of poverty and luxury will change. And we are likely to have better standards of living at the lowest levels.

<comment><USER35> Funny that you include medicine in the list of luxury things you have to work for. In a large part of the world that's the one thing you _don't_ have to work for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think this is just hysterical nonsense. Remember, it used to be not that long ago that 95% of the labor force worked on farms, and still famine was a regular occurrence. Now only 1 or 2 percent work on the farms.

I can't imagine people running out of productive things to do. After all, can making movies be automated? How about becoming a professional dancer or athlete? Writing books? Building a custom car? Making art of any sort? Elder care (a booming business as baby boomers age)? Research? Tutoring?

There have never been greater opportunities for productive work than now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Largely due to globalization, nearly half of Americans are poor or low income.

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/census- shows-1-2-people-103940...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/census- shows-1-2-people-103940568.html)

There is, of course, no shortage of productive work, but getting paid for that productive work is another matter.

<comment><USER37> This is just based on changing definitions of "poor" and "low-income". Wages are still around all-time highs for every quintile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm talking about real wages: the ability to buy food, transportation, and shelter. A few decades ago a lot more people could do this without requiring both spouses work and take on significant debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The abstraction of "jobs" from "the things we do to survive" is interesting. The only things we "need" to do are reproduce, and find food and shelter towards that end. It's crazy that we have blown past the struggle for survival so far it's almost been forgotten, like the binary code under our lovely Ruby scripts.

But we still feel the flutter of our primal fears for survival, even in the abstraction, and fight to the death over increasingly excessive piles of wealth, as if we might not "survive". And because we do that, in the global picture not everyone DOES survive. If you are convinced you do not have enough to survive, it's very hard to share.

Even worse, as our personal bar of "survival" continues to rise in this abstract world, our frantic and instinctual struggle to "survive" is apparently driving us towards an incredibly sad and ironic demise - if you believe the headlines about nuclear war and global warming.

I agree with the article's idea that as technology takes care of more and more basic needs we should move to "information-based products" to keep ourselves busy and satisfied. We have to. All the world's billions can't have two cars in the garage, but they can all have giant digital art and music collections. (I guess we could do more recreation/sporting too, that's not a finite resource.)

But it's another level of abstraction. How far can we get from our concrete instincts for food and babies and still find sufficient meaning and purpose?

<comment><USER39> _But we still feel the flutter of our primal fears for survival, even in the abstraction, and fight to the death over increasingly excessive piles of wealth, as if we might not "survive". And because we do that, in the global picture not everyone DOES survive. If you are convinced you do not have enough to survive, it's very hard to share._

Are you familiar with the 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness? Sounds like you're describing a negatively imprinted first circuit (or "bio-survival anxiety").

<http://theuniverseas.com/bio-survival>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves."

I feel kinda stupid for saying this but I always thought people stopped producing their own "stuff" when we really got the hang of money. In other words, thanks to money, I can do one thing all day (and maybe get really good at it!) instead of doing all the little separate things I need to do to survive. And then I can exchange the fruits of that one thing for all the other stuff I might need or want.

I appreciate this more now since I started learning how to write code. By my second or third go at a script, I figure out how to factor out common functions and reuse them. Good thing these lines of code aren't _laborers_ because what I'm essentially doing is firing all of them and replacing them with a workhorse (a function or a subroutine) which will do all the work for me, multiple times.

I guess I'm sort of brainwashed into thinking the efficiency gained by factoring my code is more important than the livelihood of all those little redundant lines I figured out a way to delete. But what this guy's saying sounds too politically charged for me to be _fully persuaded_ by it. I'm like 88% persuaded by it but there's the nagging 12% saying, "He's got an agenda, Jimmy. Don't listen to him!"

<comment><USER37> This isn't true at all. Working "for" someone else goes back to the earliest governments and religions. Corporations only took off much later, after the end of mercantilism.

<comment><USER40> Oh, alright. So, he's talking about "being employed by some organization", rather than just "having a job" in general. The article definitely makes more sense now.

I guess, maybe naively, I don't care as much about the arrangement between employer and employee as I do about the apparent dark side of rapid efficiency gains through specialization. I wanted him to say, "Hey, look, specialization is awesome until we're so efficient we don't need all the humans we're giving birth to!" But I'm slightly disappointed because I think I just read something about how evil and oppressive corporations are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm sure someone else picked up on this...

 _"New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete."_

I wasn't aware that _"Google-controlled self-driving automobiles"_ was rendering taxicab drivers obsolete any time in the near future... call me a luddite, but we've probably got several decades of legal and social hurdles before that even approaches being a reality.

<comment><USER42> Or that toll booth collectors were a vast segment of our economy... These sort of articles by this sort of author indicate, if anything, that our economy is robust enough to produce such inane nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "That's because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need."

Really? We found a way to cure cancer and power our economy with clean energy?

<comment><USER44> We have enough to live as well as we've ever lived, which is pretty well.

There'll always be something more. Some day, when a sizable portion of humanity lives to 115, we'll consider the genetic limit of 115 year life spans to be as important as cancer is today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If we assume that old jobs lost to automation and efficiency are simply replaced with new jobs, then how can we measure we are actually producing something of relevance and actual utility with the new jobs?

For example, farming is pretty vital as work per se and it used to cover the majority of people. But these days, if a percentage of people can do the farming for everyone then what would constitute equally meaningful jobs for the rest of the 99%? We basically need food, clothes, housing, and heating. Then there are things that we "need" (but can do without) such as electricity, plumbing, running water, etc. Some people would become artisans to produce specialized goods or merchants to trade those goods. These are pretty quickly and efficiently implemented with the current efficiency and if that was all, we'd probably have employed few percent of the work force. What's there left to do that would genuinely cover the rest 90% of the work force?

</comment><comment><USER45> This was discussed before at

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2970007>

</comment><comment><USER46> Yes, we are using less USPS for sending payments and letters. That is only one aspect of USPS. People are shipping way more stuff than they do using USPS. A lot of stuff that is bought in websites like eBay and amazon goes through USPS. eCommerce is growing year over year, which means growth for USPS.

IMHO, USPS is more important now than ever.

</comment><comment><USER47> "There is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day"…except that's not how ecology works. When a species is given a food surplus, its _population_ grows, not the quality of life of its individuals. If you give your surplus food to an area that supports 5,000 starving people, then you have only ensured that 6,000 of them will be around in the next generation to starve even more severely.

"Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with 'career' be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?" I'd like to think so. We are just as much competitive creatures as collaborative ones, though, so in a world where needs are fulfilled regardless of whether you _do_ anything, I fear people will have little incentive or inspiration to create.

<comment><USER9>
       If you give your surplus food to an area that supports 5,000
       starving people, then you have only ensured that 6,000 of
       them will be around in the next generation to starve even
       more severely.

Not sure how well that applies to human societies. Poorer countries tend to have a higher population growth because poor people have children so that they can put them into labor. In developed societies, the general quality of life is increasing while population growth is decreasing, something that contradicts your assumption.

       so in a world where needs are fulfilled regardless of
       whether you do anything, I fear people will have little
       incentive or inspiration to create

That's a typical libertarian argument that borders on sadism (is producing great creations more important than living comfortably?). It can also be easily dismissed: Money is not the only incentive for producing art or science. In fact it's far from the most important incentive. Are you saying that important scientists or artists have produced their works merely in order to fulfill material needs?

I wish I didn't have to care about making enough money to survive so that I would have time to pursue my lofty research ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can the same argument not be used for the industrial revolution? The job of the specialists was replaced by technology. The job of the orchestra in theaters was replaced by audio recording/playback technology. And the list goes on. Now it is no different, more automation.

The real problem is that we keep reproducing uncontrolably. The religiously crazed keep pushing having tons of kids with NO WAY TO SUPPORT THEM. Furthermore, better medicine means more kids are surviving, so that means population keeps growing. However with a growing population there is less and less opportunity for each member to contribute to society. It's a cycle. We need controlled population growth globally and an incredible education system. There is simply no other way to go.

<comment><USER9>
       The real problem is that we keep reproducing
       uncontrolably. The religiously crazed keep pushing having
       tons of kids with NO WAY TO SUPPORT THEM.

That's only the main issue if you're wearing Reddit atheist goggles. Population growth is steadily decreasing in developed countries. On the other hand, automation _is_ becoming increasingly a problem and is partly responsible for the increasing economic inequality we are facing - people with access to the means of production have a lesser need for human labor, resulting in the disempowerment of the middle class.

<comment><USER49> Perhaps I also have Reddit atheist goggles on, but if the religiously crazed have more children on average than the secular, at some point the number of the former will outnumber the number of the latter.

And then, presumably, every near-democracy travels back in time one hundred years.

<comment><USER50> Not really because many atheists grew up in religious families.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Its getting harder to imagine us _not_ eventually splitting into Eloi and Morlock.

</comment><comment><USER52> >> What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

Sounds like a campaign speech writer for Obama. Regardless any other analogies, everyone needs to pull their fair share unless they either already have (elderly or injured or medically incapable) or have enough wealth to hire those of us who are willing to pull our fair share.

In the latter case, workers don't need Union boss thugs to protect us from you; we just need your respect.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's funny how the recipe to fix the economy, that our current leaders are pushing, is by trying to raise productivity and competitiveness, by giving corporations the flexibility to increase working hours without extra compensation for employees. Then raise the retirement age at 67 while unemployment in under 30s is in a peak. Yeah, all those counter-intuitive measures they keep preaching for on the media all the time.

Scarcity of a resource is the most profitable opportunity for those who own it. Scarcity of jobs is an opportunity for profit to some people.

</comment><comment><USER54> A relevant short sci-fi novel about robotics, economic and societal change brought about from change in value of labor:

<http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

<comment><USER55> I love this novella. Also on Marshall Brain's site are a handful of essays/articles on this topic, e.g.: <http://marshallbrain.com/robotic- freedom.htm>

His suggestion is very simple: provide an annual stipend of about $25,000 to each citizen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > The opposite, libertarian answer (and the way we seem to be going right now)

The US government is arguably going in the opposite direction of libertarianism.

[http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/0...](http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/US-Government-Spending-vs-US-Government-Revenue.jpg)

> would be to let those who can't capitalize on the bounty simply suffer.

I think most people don't want to let the poor "simply suffer". Libertarians simply argue it shouldn't be government's role to help the poor.

</comment><comment><USER57> He fails to note that wealth decays. It cannot be redistributed indefinitely. Those who create wealth must have enough incentive to keep doing so to support (voluntary or not) those who don't. Take away too much wealth from those who created it and they'll stop creating more, and what wealth there is will be consumed and/or squandered out of existence.

Note that, in the USA at least, federal government revenue never exceeds 20% of GDP. Try taking more, and GDP declines - to wit, producers slow or stop.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, I like this part:

"The communist answer to this question was just to distribute everything evenly. But that sapped motivation and never quite worked as advertised."

Wow. Understatement? Volumes of economic thought have been written about why communism doesn't work and he just kinda brushes it off like, "minor bug, nbd".

<comment><USER57> Soon followed by _"We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights."_

Obviously he never grew a significant fraction of his own food, or built his own house. That I can do so by the proxy of writing software (to wit thinking real hard) does not devalue them to the point that those who don't/won't create food & shelter, or do something exchangeable therefor, can demand I provide them with such necessities. Advocates of this "jobs are optional" meme don't grasp, or won't admit, how little most people are willing to live on if they can get it for zero effort and can be entertained indefinitely ... funny, that sounds a lot like the "bread and circuses" stage of a civilization on the brink of collapse.

Make them "rights"? Obvious discussions of "you have no right to compel me to provide for you" aside... I've figured $10/day is a workable, albeit stark, minimum "living income" (see <http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com> for the mindset). Few indeed are incapable of earning $10/day and making that livable, save only for lack of will. There is no need to declare a "right to food & shelter" (manifested thru confiscation) when so little effort is needed.

But, as you note, he just tosses out the "human rights" premise as "nbd". Never mind the 100,000,000 dead from prior attempts at the memes he proposes as new.

When he grows half his own food, and builds his own home, and gives 90% of his income to the state (just write a check to the treasury, nobody's stopping him), then maybe he'll have standing. Methinks he won't hold those views if he lived them a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> "And that's even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high."

is this true ? is it legal..

<comment><USER31> I can't find a quick source for the disposal of crops but the US does heavily subsidize farmers to the tune of tens of billions per year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> No.</comment>


Ant–fungus mutualism - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%E2%80%93fungus_mutualism <comment><USER2> I've been thinking of making an ant colony roguelike for a while now. And this article has given me great ideas for content.

Thanks OP</comment>


Ask HN: Is Git as the only SCM ecosystem healthy? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> As far as healthy, it's actually surprising so many have pulled everyone into a travesty that is git.

Yes, it's fast, but it sucks at everything else ("suck" is a bit too hard, it's more that other tools are more pleasant to use).

Still,the question you pose is an interesting one. I am curious to hear from others who have ported their projects to use git? I.e. there are hundreds of programming languages, but git it is for SCM.

Is it because the investment in learning it is so high? Is it because there are multitude of hosting solutions where others are rare and few? I really wonder!

<comment><USER3> IMO it's a mistake to think of Git as a version control system. Git is a toolkit of parts that you can mix and match to build a version control system.

Using the toolkit directly is awkward and comes with a steep learning curve; many of the parts have sharp edges that can result in permanent loss of your work, others have deeply unintuitive purpose (e.g. the various ways to edit history).

Any productive scaled use of git requires wrapping it, whether with scripting or process or social norms or some combination of those. Only after this work is done do you end up with something it is meaningful to compare with another VCS.

Whether the ability to customize flow to your needs justifies the effort involved compared to other VCS is really something each organisation should decide for itself.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is fossil the only living comparable?

[https://www.fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v- git.w...](https://www.fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/fossil-v-git.wiki)

<comment><USER4> Mercurial is still alive

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed: [https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/](https://www.mercurial- scm.org/repo/hg/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So I guess the masses are OK with this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And what happened to the other DVCS contenders?

<comment><USER2> They largely became unmaintained. I'd still prefer to use bzr over git, and I do with Launchpad.net for code hosting, but for any work, git has "won".

<comment><AUTHOR> I have fond memories of Hg/mercurial, and remember Bitbucket dropping support. Just seems strange in today's technolandscape to have anything as a single- sourced option. But clearly git did "win". Now wondering if that will generate a demand for those who don't like the monopoly to push something else. Guess the question is, what does a better version of "git" look like and does it have to be compatible to have a change to get off the ground?

<comment><USER2> I can't imagine anyone wanting a "better git". To be honest, I can't imagine anyone _wanting_ git, but here we are.

I do not understand why so many people feel it's imperative to use one SCM tool for all projects, since learning the basics is very simple for all of them (except maybe for git itself).

I get it why commercial hosting platforms standardize on one tool (everyone will ask for git, so why double the work?), so I suppose the desire not to run your own code hosting is the main driver.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A PyTorch Implementation of Cluster-GCN (KDD 19) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benedekrozemberczki/ClusterGCN <comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.07953](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.07953)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nice thing: The results are reproducible regarding accuracy and performance.</comment>


How to get work done in a startup - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/efCqy.png

<comment><USER2> a little thin. google "how to draw an owl" for the visual-arts version of this flowchart.</comment>


If you search "Super Mario Bros" in Google, this is what happens - <AUTHOR> http://www.gfycat.com/DizzyHandmadeCleanerwrasse <comment><AUTHOR> Hit it a 100x, see what happens</comment>


Ever young? - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/ever-young.html <comment><USER3> I feel like a complete failure at "adulting" too. Then again, I don't _want_ to succeed at it. I'm not done having fun. Same goes for nearly all of my friends. I've lost both parents, and had kids, and I get on with the kids in a way I doubt my parents could have conceived of. I want to feel they're friends until I drop.

By my age my parents were fully paid up members of middle age and led _dull_ lives, as all their generation seemed to. They were very different people to how they described their 20s. I still recognise the me of my 20s. I'm not even becoming more conservative, I've got more liberal except in clothes!

What possible reason is there to grow up? I see no benefit to it, for anyone.

<comment><USER4> I've become more conservative because, to put it bluntly, I'm closer to death now. I've done my experimentation, I know myself pretty well now, I know what I like and what I don't. So my life is dull in the sense that I'll likely do the same things every weekend, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same places on holiday (likely on my home continent, perhaps even my home country) and so on.

<comment> T-A Sounds like the epsilon-decreasing solution to the classic exploration-vs- exploitation problem: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- armed_bandit#Approximate...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- armed_bandit#Approximate_solutions)

I would be surprised if there weren't papers arguing that youthful recklessness morphing into adult conservatism is a learning strategy favored by natural selection.

<comment><USER5> Given that this heuristic would have evolved when humans had a much shorter expected lifespan, I expect there would be a very large market for neuroplasticity enhancing drugs that also increase one's effective epsilon factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the US culture i grew up in, i feel like adulting meant:

\- finding a job to do until you retire/die

\- having kids, and having them be your primary purpose in life

\- rightfully abandoning any long term other than attempting to retire

All the other things seem to derive from the above. Honestly adulting literally seems like the first stages of an acceptance of death and aging the change of priorities as a consequence. I think, that given the same inputs (impending infirmities and death) you can come to very different conclusions. I don't have time for kids or retirement because i have a hell of a lot to get done before i die and i'll be working on it right up to the deadline.

<comment><USER7> I don't have time for working I need to raise my kids before I die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was a kid, adults were boring people that kept saying no and used all those formal clothes all the time.

Now that I'm in my 40s, I'm so cool, it's just a coincidence that I have to watch out my little girl and tell her to not do this out that every 15 minutes.

[/sarcasm]

<comment><USER9> _" When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."_ (generally attributed to Mark Twain)

<comment><USER10> He forgot to mention that after that, it's a long slow walk back to 14 again, as you realize how out of touch they had been all along.

<comment><USER11> Yes! Nobody talks about this part of the curve. It really sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I became an adult the day I started expecting being treated as one.

There are many more things that go about adulthood, and I guess the most defining would be to take responsibility for one's own action.

I had taken responsibility already, it just had not occurred to me that I did not need to defer to other people because of age and experience. (Not that it is bad to defer to more experienced people, but it should be a conscious decision.)

<comment><USER13> I think this is what used to be rites of passage. A symbolic timeline for young ones to forget immature behavior, and "believe" in adult behavior, a quick turnaround allowing both sides to adapt. Old respect you, and you respect the old. Instead most "modern" cultures just relies on some cultural market and institutions (like legally defined adult age) which allows drifting for years before finding the inner desire to be seen as an altruistic adult and behaving like one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are two short-cuts to growing up: losing both your parents or having children.

<comment><USER15> The second one in particular. Why bother with owning a house or a car if not with the end goal in mind of supporting kids? It's all for naught otherwise. If you don't have anyone you need to provide with stability, you're better off renting and ubering. You can always live within walking distance from your workplace for example.

Also, while you don't have to wear a suit, many, many adults would benefit greatly from dressing like adults. Sure, the times change, fashions come and go, models of behaviour change a little, but putting effort in your appearance is timeless. When I see a guy in his 40s wearing cargo shorts, I'm thinking "arrested development."

<comment><USER16> >>> Why bother with owning a house or a car if not with the end goal in mind of supporting kids?

That's an incredibly... urban...? [1] point of view. For me, the #1 argument for owning a car is _flexibility_ \-- knowing you've got the option to drop things at a moment's notice and head off to... wherever.

Owning a house is also an enabler for things which might be meaningful to those without children: building up and maintaining a garden, for one. Hobbies which need a decent-sized, stable, workshop tend to be easier in a house you own than in a rental, too.

(We do have a child now, but my wife and I owned both house and car for years before deciding we wanted children. And now have rather less time for hobbies that make houses and cars essential...)

[1] Not so much in the specifically "city" sense, but in the sense of preferring external infrastructure vs. building up and maintaining enough infrastructure of your own to feel somewhat self-sufficient.

<comment><USER15> _That 's an incredibly... urban...?_

Yes. I was going to add car racing or some offroader as an exception but most people live in cities and don't have that kind of hobbies. And it's probably still more convenient to join a hacker space.

<comment><USER16> I don't think we're going to agree on this one. Hackerspace vs. "own workshop" are _completely_ different things. If objective convenience is your only metric, Hackerspace might well win, but living near one places a lot of constraints on other areas of your lifestyle, and it's never going to give a feeling of self-sufficiency.

( _Edit_ : this shouldn't be taken as a criticism of Hackerspaces -- they're a great compromise for people who otherwise like the tradeoffs that urban lifestyles bring, and can be fun to visit even if you don't need to borrow the tools).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think Heinlein wrote that no woman was ever older than 18 in her own mind. My corollary is that no man is ever older than 12.

<comment><USER18> The big difference may well be that women are allowed to act out their inner age, while men are expected to behave their age (whatever the F that means).

<comment><USER19> Do you think so? I think if anything it's been historically men that keep the toys (cars, golf, nights with the boys) . In the last generation or 2 women seem to have also been allowed a life outside of the home, and a role other than 'adult mother'

Or do you mean something else?

<comment><USER20> I am guessing he was referencing how they behave and express themselves to their friends, family, and significant others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perspective from a woman [1]:

> Men in their 30s are running around like children, sabotaging relationships > and their lives without obligation or thought of consequence. Why?

[1] [https://escapingpan.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/hello- world/](https://escapingpan.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/hello-world/)

<comment><USER22> Society expects that in order to "grow up" men must stop spending time on their hobbies and with their friends. Some might say "aha, that is how the patriarchy harms men too!" but I can guarantee you that no man has ever said to another "hey bro, you know what, we should like totally stop doing so much cool stuff"...

I avoided all of that by marrying someone into wreck diving, mountains, the gym etc too :-)

<comment><USER5> Excellent point; Blaming "The Patriarchy" (leaving aside the question of to what degree it might actually exist) for every social condition is absurdly reductionist to the point of being obviously incorrect; it pretends that women throughout history have had no social influence whatsoever. If men were really responsible for every social institution, we certainly wouldn't have the "settle down and give up all your personal interests so as to more effectively fund your wife and children" phase in the archetypal male life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find a lot of times grew-up means dedicate less time to learn/play/being creative, and more time to consum and work/produce (if you not call it slavery)

I will stay with that proverb:

 _I am getting older, thats mean i have been younger longer than you!_

</comment><comment><USER24> well, in my opinion: what we call "adulting" is what we see when we are kids and watch our parents. but what we see is an act they perform for us - as role models - and we perceive it without all required background knowledge (because, well, we're kids).

so when we grow up and the reality doesn't exactly match our expectations, the assumption is that we're not doing it right. usually, at least when we - <USER2> close friends - get kids, the acting is explained. and we might have aquired the background knowledge, but the settings have changed.

i don't think we refuse to grow up. it's just that being an adult is not what we thought it to be when we attached meaning to the word.

</comment><comment><USER25> A loose but accurate criterion for failure is use of the term "adulting".

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't really like living for the benefit of others. I've noticed in my life that the more I'm working to fulfill the expectations of others, or taking care of things that they either can't do or can't do well, the more miserable that makes me. I'd say that adulthood is in several respects the process of acclimating to living your life for others.

This article spends a lot of time talking about the trappings, like cars and stuff. For me at least, having or not having that stuff has never been the issue with adulthood.

<comment><USER26> >I don't really like living for the benefit of others.

It's much easier (satisfying, even) when the other people are friends, family, spouse, neighbors... people you care about. It is no sacrifice to expend time and energy helping these people.

<comment><USER11> Short term, I readily agree. Longer term... I start to get resentful, I get tired of doing the same thing I've done a hundred times before. A kindness extended for long enough becomes an obligation. I think people should basically be able to handle things on their own.

To be clear, I don't think it's good that I feel this way. I don't think more people should be like me. But this is how I am, and attempting to deny the fact has only led to resentment, depression, and a bad time for all involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky Just finished watching E.T. This is for the nth time. Came here, started reading all these comments with a heavy heart. As a child, I always hated _growing up_.

<comment><USER27> That's interesting. In _Escape From Childhood_ in particular, John Holt's point of view is something along the lines of: children, being stuck in ("the institution of) childhood ("), look at the world and are always thinking of growing up, and what they want to do when they grow up, and so on. Roslyn Ross, who actually has a son, observes the same thing.

If it happens that some children want to _remain_ in childhood, I suppose a possible explanation is that there could be an allegory-of-the-cave effect. I think most people _like_ making their own decisions until adult interference gets to the point of making them worse at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Then again i see supposed adults behave worse than kids given half an excuse.

</comment><comment><USER28> I will not be sharing my FB page on HN.</comment>


Our ears may have built-in passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227035.200-our-ears-may-have-builtin-passwords.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><USER2> _Stolen cellphones could also be rendered useless by programming them to disable themselves if they detect that the user of the phone is not the legitimate owner._

"911? I need help! A man has just collapsed at the bus stop! I'm calling from his ... hello? Hello? Well, shit."

<comment><USER3> But surely you would only be cut off after the owner of the phone explicitly tells the phone company that his phone has been stolen? I think this sounds like a pretty useful idea. Although it remains to be seen what the false positive/negative rates look like.

<comment><USER4> But then the phone company can just cut of the phone remotely, what would be the point of this technology?

<comment><USER5> What phone company can't "just cut off the phone remotely" today, without this feature?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One problem with biometric identification is that the device reading data (fingerprints, eye "prints", etc.) from the person has to be trusted by the entity deciding the legitimacy of the user. If I have a digital copy of your fingerprints and I "own" the fingerprint reader trusted by your bank/whatever, I can pretend to be you. Given that people generally own the phones they use, I wonder if this barrier to fraud is any less expensive or more effective than existing security schemes. For example, have something/know something methods (RSA random number generator keychain dongles coupled with a known passcode) that are much easier to implement and don't rely on network effects -- For people to buy earprint phones, they have to be commonly used as a form of auth, but enough people must own them for banks, etc. to consider such a scheme.

Business idea: A problem with the RSA dongle thingy is that a person would have to carry one for EVERY entity with which he authenticates himself. I'm sure some sysadmins already have a pocket full of this things. What if there was a 3rd party that would offer have something/known something authen services? Or, more generally, authen services with a variety of security levels? Then, a person would just carry around his "Windows Live" dongle and could authenticate with all his banks, etc. Not a good startup idea as it takes a powerful entity to surmount network effects, but it would solve a real problem for real people.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a few problems with this, people regularly hand their phones to people who aren't themselves and if the phone disables itself every time this happens, I don't think this technology would ever catch on. The solution to avoid this is that you'd have to report the phone stolen... at which point the phone company can just ask you for your IMEI, which is a 15 digit code (usually hidden under your battery, or enter *#06#) you're supposed to write down in your handset manual. With this code and a report that your phone is stolen, the phone company will ban the IMEI number and the phone is useless (unless the person wants to spend $50 getting your handset unlocked and then $10 to get a new sim card and then $10 to put time on a stolen phone, which when you're stealing phones, I doubt you'd go to that trouble).

On CDMA phones it's your MEID number, which if reported will ban the device, but as CDMA's are tied to one network it means the phone is permanently useless.

So honestly, I don't see how this technology is useful in protecting a cell phone from being stolen. My wife's taken my cell for days, I don't really want my phone getting locked because of it, and when I was younger (before I got a cell) my parents always handed me one of theirs if I was going to be out late, which I'm sure many parents still do today. And if you need to report the cell stolen, then it's pointless because there's already well established systems for getting cell phones banned from a network.

</comment><comment><USER8> Better than a password, I would venture to say that this would closer resemble a public/private key system. Suppose the bank could run several tests, and learn the tendency with which your ear reacts, rather than recording a single response. I am making some assumptions about how the ear works, but I'm going to guess that it doesn't send the same response to every stimulus.

For authenticating, the bank could then send a randomized sound every time, and listen for an expected response, which is in effect your ear's signature on the input sound. This way, a thief wouldn't be able to bypass the system by simply obtaining a recording of your ear; he would have to be able to mimic its responses.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't you have to use the same phone in order for the "return" sound to match the previous recording?</comment>