My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay • Hacker News Board

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#121

Post by malmsteen » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

More simplified summary of the debate :

PG: "Startups create economic inequality. But it looks like they drive the economy and create value. I'll defend Startups so let's say that economic inequality is not a core problem"

Crowd 1: - "OMG ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IS BAD !" - "OMG you defend concentration of power in rich people !" - "OMG your pinterest wall is more important that educating you children, that's what you call value ?!" - "OMG !"

Crowd 2: - "Startups don't create that much economic inequality anyway" - "They don't actually drive the economy either" - "We're not sure they create value" - "Everyone know economic inequality is fine, we should adress poverty"

Elon Musk: - When do we go to Mars guys ??!!!!????

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#122

Post by jdmichal » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #106

jdmichal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's the "official" unemployment number. Here's how it's calculated, cribbed directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics [0]: * People with jobs are employed. * People who are jobless, looking for a job, and available for work are unemployed. * The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. * People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. Think about those points…

This is the way unemployment is calculated all over the world, so it does not affect the parent's point, which is comparative.

Country A has 5% "official" unemployment. But 20% of the population has simply given up seeking employment, lives at home with their parents, and plays video games all day. Another 30% of the population is employed part-time and barely covers their bills, even though they would like full-time work.

Country B has 5% "official" unemployment. Everyone who would like to work is either employed or seeking employment. And everyone who is employed is employed to their desired level.

You argue that A and B are equatable for the purposes of this discussion, because the 5% "official" unemployment is calculated the same way. I argue that they are not, because things excluded from that calculation have a very real impact on the economic stability of the population.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#123

Post by jazzyk » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

Most people agree that inequality is not a bad thing in itself. But we have two problems with inequality right now:

1. The sheer amplitude of it.

Having people whose net worth is equal to the GDP of a small country poses interesting questions (separate topic). This is caused by the winner-takes-it-all nature of globalized economy. Example: Ads featuring Gisele Bundchen sell to potentially billions of women all over the world, and she gets a cut. A generous one, because the market is global, not local as it was 30 years ago.

2. The fairness.

Again, nobody has a problem with Steve Jobs making a lot money, because he produced. But there are people out there who got rich, just because of connections, etc. Al Gore has sat on (among many others) Apple's board of directors. Which part of iPad did he design?

Even if you ARE qualified, there almost always is the luck factor. There are many other genetically blessed young women who look at least as good as Gisele Bundchen, but who, for whatever reason, never became the "it" girls. The are not starving (though they look like they do), but they are not raking in millions either. The same applies to more serious industries as well.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#124

Post by chimeracoder » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #119

chimeracoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> global inequality has been increasing despite convergence of inter-national mean incomes. This is a misuse of terminology. Generally when people talk about "global inequality" they are speaking either of median (not mean) incomes or median standard of living, (which is most accurately tracked by median PPP-adjusted incomes). The latter is more common in political and non-academic circles, because standard-of-living…

Meadian doesn't make sense when talking about inequality. 3 people having $1, $2 and $3 have the same "median inequality" as 3 people having $1, $2 and $300000000000. You need either mean, range or quantiles.

> Meadian doesn't make sense when talking about inequality. You need either mean, range or quantiles.

Uh... what? The median is the 2-quantile.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#125

Post by lackbeard » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

This, and Ron's original version, and most of the "my response to Paul Graham's essay" esssays I've seen aren't actually responses to Paul Graham's essay.

Here's what I see happened: pg said, "Income inequality is a consequence of freedom and technology. If you want to reduce income inequality, be careful you don't wind up just making everyone less free and more poor."

And then a lot of people said: "Paul, you asshole! Rich people can buy political power!" which is totally unrelated, and pg agrees is a bad thing...

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#126

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

xbejdjched wrote: post #97

cmdkeen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We never had several deliberately inflicted famines killing millions of people. In every single example you listed Communist countries were demonstrably worse. Humanity is capable of some pretty awful things under any system of government - Communism, or perhaps the way it comes about, has consistently demonstrated that itself better at enabling our worst impulses compared to democratic capitalism. That people, inclu…

But you're missing the point of what I'm saying: I suggest taking the notion that communism is always bad with a grain of salt, given that our nation has been propagandized to despise communism much as the Soviets were propagandized to hate capitalism. The Soviet Union went from a third world country of farmer peasants to becoming the world's first spacefaring civilization in only 40 years. Considering where they sta…

Regardless of past propaganda, anyone can go straight to former USSR countries now, to learn what happened there, as millions of regular folks and scholars have. And of course there is the undisputed fact that the USSR failed as a nation, despite its earlier successes.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#127

Post by ZenoArrow » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #56

Paul Graham, like nearly everyone in today's politics, fails to appreciate the near-universal validity, at least when it comes to social and economic policy, of Ron's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong. I realize this is tongue-in-cheek, but never forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation One could say that the modern world is largely a result of continuous middle-ground reforms that have b…

> "I realize this is tongue-in-cheek, but never forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation "

"Vladimir Bukovsky points out that the middle ground between the Big Lie of Soviet propaganda and the truth is a lie, and one should not be looking for a middle ground between disinformation and information.[2] According to him, people from the Western pluralistic civilization are more prone to this fallacy because they are used to resolving problems by making compromises and accepting alternative interpretations, unlike Russians who are looking for the absolute truth."

Seeking absolute truth is a fool's errand. To use a physical analogy, truth is not a single point, it's a range. If you seek absolute truth you'll blind yourself to the range of possibilities.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#128

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

adevine wrote: post #120

zepto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inheritance taxes on their own will do nothing to change the situation because then you'll simply concentrate all the wealth in corporate structures that transcend the death of their owners. Even if you make it impossible to 'pass down' these structures as property, you will have de-facto inheritance through nepotism and clan structures.

This doesn't make sense to me. At the end of the day, all stock must be owned by actual people, even if it is through a network of other corporate entities and trusts. A corporation may transcend the death of its owners, but if I own 50% of a corporation, and I gift my shares to an heir (or even let them purchase it at a discount), the government will still take their cut.

You have them owned by a trust and you replace trustees when they die.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#129

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

adevine wrote: post #120

zepto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inheritance taxes on their own will do nothing to change the situation because then you'll simply concentrate all the wealth in corporate structures that transcend the death of their owners. Even if you make it impossible to 'pass down' these structures as property, you will have de-facto inheritance through nepotism and clan structures.

This doesn't make sense to me. At the end of the day, all stock must be owned by actual people, even if it is through a network of other corporate entities and trusts. A corporation may transcend the death of its owners, but if I own 50% of a corporation, and I gift my shares to an heir (or even let them purchase it at a discount), the government will still take their cut.

You have them owned by a trust and you replace trustees when they die.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#130

Post by habosa » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

circlefavshape wrote: post #48

tomp wrote: post #10

PG'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 po…

> mostly everybody agrees with that What??? /me suddenly understands what's meant by "privilege"

I think tomp is saying that most everyone agrees that society should have some inequality. It could be as little as "the employee of the month gets a dollar raise!", but most people would agree that a perfectly equal society is very hard to ensure and likely not desirable.