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

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

#161

Post by webXL » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

Today, the top 1% control fully half of the planet's wealth. That is awfully close to the second extreme.

I can't stand this malthusian, historically myopic, zero-sum thinking.

Using that same distribution, if I started a business, hired 99 others using half of the equity, then we sold it and I ended up with $500 million, should this inequality be a concern? No. the concern should be whether or not there's real suffering taking place with how that other $500 million is allocated, and the purchasing power it has relative to the past.

If you show me an economy that I can easily increase my real wealth by 5% per year, I don't really care what the guys on top are doing. What toys they are buying. I do care about them buying power, and they can only do that with a weak/corrupt political system. As PG reiterated: attack the causes, not the symptoms.

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

#162

Post by HSO » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #127

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…

> truth is not a single point, it's a range

Uh, that really depends on the domain. I agree that politics is the art of compromise but that does not mean there are no facts and logic.

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

#163

Post by ZenoArrow » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

HSO wrote: post #162

ZenoArrow wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> truth is not a single point, it's a range Uh, that really depends on the domain. I agree that politics is the art of compromise but that does not mean there are no facts and logic.

Tell me a fact.

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

#164

Post by cmdkeen » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:29 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…

The USSR becoming the world's first space faring nation is to a large extent the result of the Second World War and the knowledge gained from German scientists - because Stalin purged the nascent Soviet programme during the Red Terror.

Was the breaking of the kulaks - causing the Holodomor which killed an estimated 2.5m-7m Ukranians let alone deaths across the rest of the USSR - a necessary step in the industrialisation of Russia?

Capitalism industrialised - and indeed created industrialisation, with some pretty nasty consequences which led to unionisation and the growth of the middle classes. However none of those nasty consequences were anything close to what Communist regimes have brought us - that isn't bias, historical propaganda, it is just fact on whatever measure you choose to adopt.

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

#165

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

joshhart wrote: post #46

There's one thing PG seems to implicitly which is that the movement from small company to large, dominating company in a vertical is a good thing. Ultimately startups seem to be producing winner-take-all companies. I do not believe this is a healthy thing for the economy or even rights of the consumer in the long run. There are a lot of services where if you do not like their terms, there may not be a great practical…

The actual story of the Sherman Act isn't empirically defensible - J.D. Rockefeller became much richer overnight mainly because of the splits and prices don't seem to have changed much.

But J.D. Rockefeller was rather single minded, set on reducing cost to the end consumer for Yankee cultural reasons.

Higher price may or may not be worse price. With airlines, you live with Robert Crandall's "no airline ever returned its cost in capital" so it's difficult to make any of that make sense :)

Many economists warn "never reason from a price change."

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

#166

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

astazangasta wrote: post #7

The 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.

> The preface to all further discussion: wealth is power, and nothing else.

Okay, you made a dogmatic statement. That proves nothing, except that you are capable of making dogmatic statements.

Wealth is the promise (perhaps false) of satisfaction, it is (perhaps false) identity, it is security, and it is the freedom not to have to work. I suppose you can say that all those are forms of power, but... If you define everything to be power, then yes, wealth is power, but that tells us nothing interesting except what your definition was.

> 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.

Democracy is another form of power. It is influenced by money, but not totally. That is, the little people can in fact vote against the money, and will do so if the money pushes too far. Campaign ads won't be enough if the little people get fed up enough.

Social influence largely flows from money, I'll give you that. Violence? Money gives you a greater ability to use violence and still escape the law, but you can't go very far no matter how much money you have.

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

#167

Post by vasilipupkin » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #32

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…

Your statement here: "he's mainly arguing that inequality is good" is contradicted by the second paragraph of even his simplified version: But economic inequality per se is not bad. It has multiple causes. Many are bad, but some are good. His main point isn't that economic inequality is good, and he says as much.

the problem with PGs logic is that the serious argument is not about LEVEL of inequality being > 0, but rather that inequality has been INCREASING in the US. Ignoring this distinction is what makes PG's essay flawed.

Nobody is seriously and in good faith arguing that the right level of inequality == 0

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

#168

Post by progressive_dad » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #132

circlefavshape wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hm... can you find anyone who honestly disagrees with "inequality is good", and therefore claims that "inequality is bad" and so "equality is good" (and also proposes a reasonable and practical implemntation)? Even communists only preached, not practiced, this.

Slavoj Zizek?

http://keshek.tumblr.com/image/36898581401

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

#169

Post by HSO » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #163

HSO wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> truth is not a single point, it's a range Uh, that really depends on the domain. I agree that politics is the art of compromise but that does not mean there are no facts and logic.

Tell me a fact.

ZenoArrow just asked me to tell him or her a fact.

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

#170

Post by nimblegorilla » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

dgregd wrote: post #115

PG:"We will not do a good job of fixing the bad causes of economic inequality unless we attack them directly. But if we fix all the bad causes of economic inequality, we will still have increasing levels of it, due to the increasing power of technology" I still don't get what PG is trying to say. For example few years ago Google and Apple bosses made secret agreement to not hire employees of the competing company. Th…

It seems PG is thinking backwards on this. Instead of fixing the bad _causes_ of inequality we should try to fix the bad _consequences_ of inequality.