My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
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My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
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Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#2Site appears to be down. Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NoON38K...
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#3The only thing I'd disagree with is the statement 'we're nowhere near there' with regard to oligarchy and societal collapse. I think we're quite close. We have an entire generation where a tiny proportion have great prospects and the rest have steadily diminishing prospects and increasing stress, and we have educated people who grew up in the west going to join an expressly suicidal terrorist organization. We have a significant proportion of the population willing to vote for a demagogue whose positions are clearly nonsensical because he represents their (legitimate) anger at their lack of prospects the status quo affords them.
The descent from here isn't going to be linear.
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#4Karl Marx would argue that his ideas might have worked if someone else implemented them.
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#5Ron's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong. :-)
Re: His last line about extreme positions -- Any position with "all" in it is extreme.
Extreme positions aren't wrong. It's just that they're most often appropriate only in extreme positions.
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#6The only thing I'd disagree with is the statement 'we're nowhere near there' with regard to oligarchy and societal collapse. I think we're quite close. We have an entire generation where a tiny proportion have great prospects and the rest have steadily diminishing prospects and increasing stress, and we have educated people who grew up in the west going to join an expressly suicidal terrorist organization. We have a…
>I think we're quite close.
USA: 5% unemployment, GDP per capita of $55,000, 78.74 years life expectancy, Human Development Index: 8, etc.
EU: 9% unemployment, GDP per capita $38,000, 78.82 years life expectancy, Human Development Index: 6 average, etc.
Yeah, we're not "close."
Meanwhile countries like the BRIC nations, especially authoritarian autocracies like China or Russia, with terrible inequality and 100x the problems the West has strangely get a free pass from these discussions. HN your bias is showing.
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#7The preface to all further discussion: wealth is power, and nothing else. In our highly capitalist society, monetary wealth is perhaps the only useful form of power, from which all other power (violence, social influence) ultimately flows.
The Soviet Union attempted to produce equality of income, but not power: power was highly centralized. The equality I want is one that is diffusive.
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#8The only thing I'd disagree with is the statement 'we're nowhere near there' with regard to oligarchy and societal collapse. I think we're quite close. We have an entire generation where a tiny proportion have great prospects and the rest have steadily diminishing prospects and increasing stress, and we have educated people who grew up in the west going to join an expressly suicidal terrorist organization. We have a…
>I think we're quite close. USA: 5% unemployment, GDP per capita of $55,000, 78.74 years life expectancy, Human Development Index: 8, etc. EU: 9% unemployment, GDP per capita $38,000, 78.82 years life expectancy, Human Development Index: 6 average, etc. Yeah, we're not "close." Meanwhile countries like the BRIC nations, especially authoritarian autocracies like China or Russia, with terrible inequality and 100x the p…
I said it isn't going to be linear.
{seriously - downvotes? This is HN - surely people can conceptualize non-linear processes such as dams being punctured by small holes that lead to a collapse, or the rapid collapse of an animal population when a new predator is introduced, or the disruption of incumbents when a new technology is introduced e.g. Nokia with the iPhone}
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#9[deleted]
Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay
#10PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that.
The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is increasing inequality - not locally increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but globally increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying political influence, monopolistic behaviour, corruption, nepotism, inheritance...
Personally, I'm mostly concerned about the last one - inheritance. I don't have a problem with resourceful people being rich. But I see a danger of the wealth being concentrated over generations unless we introduce proper (non-avoidable) inheritance taxes.