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Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

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201–210 of 262 posts

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#201

In the past few weeks the idea of 'legitimatizing violence' has been circulating heavily. On my Facebook feed most of it has centered on the idea that it is "okay" to punch neo-nazis now. The people saying this are people I'd never expect to. Twitter is similar. I wish I had stats on whether the legitimatization meme is really rising. To me, it looks like the fake news meme. Suddenly it's everywhere.

"On my Facebook feed most of it has centered on the idea that it is "okay" to punch neo-nazis now."

This is especially disturbing because the epithets "nazi" and "fascist" have increasingly become synonymous with "somebody I really don't agree with", rather than a description of somebody who admires the tenets of National Socialism.

That isn't progressive; it's Jacobin.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#202
post #159
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another reason for unions to become defunct over time, as explained by Steve Bruce in his book Sociology: A Very Short Introduction. "Any kind of group activity requires organization. But as soon as one starts to organize one creates a division within the movement between the organized and the organizers, between ordinary members and officials. The latter quickly acquire knowledge and expertise that set them a…

"But as soon as one starts to organize one creates a division within the movement between the organized and the organizers, between ordinary members and officials. The officials begin to derive personal satisfaction from their place in the organization and seek ways of consolidating it." There have always been unions that organized in a manner that avoids this situation. (The CNT, the IWW, the Zapatistas (1990s) and,…

How do you avoid this division between organiser and organised, at a large scale? (thousands, millions of people)

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have certainly had no shortage of wars in the past couple of centuries. Just in the past two hundred years, in order of largest death tolls[1], I see: * World War II * Taiping Rebellion * Second Sino-Japanese War * World War I/Great War * Dungan Revolt * Chinese Civil War * Russian Civil War and Foreign Intervention * Napoleonic Wars * Second Congo War/Great War of Africa * Shaka's conquests * Vietnam War/Second I…

But the trend is generally downward, not a bunch of sharp decreases that would indicate being caused by a specific short-term event. Also many of these wars were pretty localized, so we should see the drops and inequality in the immediate area and a reduced effect elsewhere.

> But the trend is generally downward, not a bunch of sharp decreases that would indicate being caused by a specific short-term event.

Many of these are not short term events. You have a several years-long war, with a rise in conflict before it and a gradual repair and rebuild afterwards.

There are enough of them that I wouldn't be surprised if the overall graph was smooth.

> Also many of these wars were pretty localized, so we should see the drops and inequality in the immediate area and a reduced effect elsewhere.

In the modern world, few things are truly localized.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the building company that will rebuild it.

Oh, so the rebuilding is done for free, funded by the value of the original building? No. The rebuilding requires additional work/money inputs to create the new building. The value of the original building is lost forever.

The resources and energy invested in creating the building are lost forever. The value of the building was never intrinsic to the arrangement of its bricks, but to the desires of its tenants.

If all of them died when the building was destroyed, most of the value of the building is indeed lost. The crater still inherits the unrealized potential value of an expansion or remodel of the old building, from those people who were not tenants of the original building, who possibly might have wanted to occupy building space in the place where it stood, yet were somehow unable to do so. Perhaps the old building was full, or didn't have enough contiguous floor space left, or the space available was too expensive, or installing network fiber was not economical.

Otherwise, if all the tenants survived and continue to have a desire to occupy building space, the value attributable to them is likely to pass mostly to other buildings in the area, as they seek to relocate. They can also impart potential value to the crater, if they wouldn't mind occupying a new building in the same spot where their old one blew up.

Once the potential value of rebuilding in the crater is estimated to exceed the market value of the construction inputs, someone will make the necessary investment and capture the difference by constructing a new building.

Value is only limited by the bounds of human desires. The economy only produces a finite quantity of resources and energy per unit of time, though. Whatever is spent on rebuilding in a crater cannot also be spent on new building in a fresh development site, or on building a luxury yacht, or on programming a machine to make a different kind of "ping" noise, or on making all new Taco Bell menu items from the same old ingredients.

The value per thing ratio is continuously recalculated, and market prices eventually follow. So when you blow up a building, and don't kill all the people who gave it its value (or at least diminish their desire to consume in relation to their willingness to produce), that excess unmet desire redistributes to everything else in the economy. You're making most things imperceptibly more expensive, and a few things noticeably more expensive, such as the cost of occupying the nearby vacant building space.

Flows of resources are easy to calculate, but change in value is nearly impossible to predict.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#205
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely what will happen, and I believe this is the case already in most businesses, that the cleaning functions will be outsourced to a separate company. Therefore the limit won't be the cleaner earning 10k/y, but some office admin person earning 30k/y (just guessing that one). Now then a CEO might want to outsource those jobs as well, so the company would officially only employ the highest income people. Either…

This is essentially a loophole and there must be a way to close it. Maybe it's naive to think its as simple as being slightly more verbose: "Salary tied to lowest paid employee or contractor"

Aggregate everyone involved (regardless of company) into one category and do the math that way.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#206

I love reading the comments on stories like this and consider these comments to be a bellwether as to the current state of inequality in our society. Unfortunately I tend to consider myself one who exists on the lower part of the wealth distribution logarithm within the western world, globally it's a different story. Just as anyone tweeting on their smart phone or tablet claiming to be part of the 99% might want to r…

Maybe not - globally, the 1% own just over half of everything. The 99% includes almost everybody everywhere. Even working-class Americans.

I found Branko Milanovic's "The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality" to be an eye-opener. Roughly paraphrased, if you're in the top half of the US, your equivalent in India would be the top 1%.

I don't remember if it was that book or something similar I read around the same time, but I have a faint memory of membership in the Indian middle class essentially being "owns a household appliance".

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is a good example of how the 99% vs 1% meme falls short. It's a description of wealth inequality, which is a symptom of the larger conflict between workers and business owners (proletariat vs. bourgeoisie). The central issue isn't that we have wealth inequality, it's about power. Capitalists get to control our economic planning, have a closer ear of our governments, and have an advantageous negotiating positi…

"Often times it is in the interest of certain capitalists to get our government to engage in imperialism, or destabilize certain regions, which helps lead to the awful conditions for some people in the Middle East, and I think this helps pave the way to religious extremism." This is patently false. The US - and 'capitalists' do not want 'destabilization' - over and above all they want 'stability'. Case and point: Sau…

I think that instability is surprisingly good for capitalists, however, I don't know if they "want" that instability. I live in Prague, and the instability and corruption following the fall of the iron curtain made many people very rich. It also allowed many western capitalists to buy assets in this country for very cheep prices. Right next to my house there used to be a park. Now there is an office building there. The city never built that office building, nor did it officially sell the land. Some corrupt official simply changed the title. Who can build a building like that and bribe an official? Not just anyone. You need money to build a building and bribe officials, so this chaos was very good for people with money. The same with the post office. Our post office has been privatized and is very profitably held by a Czech Billionair. How did that man buy the post office? Of course it was cheep at the time, and there was corrpution, but the main answer, is that he was able to buy it because he had money to buy it.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#208
post #193
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of interest: sometimes technical people forget that the law doesn't work the way that computers do. If you close all reasonable loopholes and make your intent clear when you write the law, a judge (at least here in the US, I know the UK has a slightly different system) is not going to say "Oh, that's undefined behavior, you get a free pass." He or she is going to say "That's undefined behavior, but you're tryin…

Well I don't actually consider the options I've presented to be that far fetched. For all the places that I've worked, the cleaners have always been part of another company, one that was contracted to provide cleaning services. There's also firms and contractors that provide bookkeeping services for small businesses. I'm sure a lot of other administrative tasks could be outsourced as well. Having these services provi…

>The other thing companies do is set up plenty of shell/thin corporations around the world, assign the IP rights to those in minimal tax countries, and then charge massive internal fees so that all the rest of the organisation barely makes a profit. This sort of thing seems to be the same level of loop-hole as setting up multiple companies so that the CxO's can get paid more.

All it takes to end this practice is for the tax authorities to take a dim view of it.

Starbucks and Google were both caught by this and although they didn't pay a fine as large as they should have done, with a nod and a wink, they did end up paying more.

The economic system is nowhere near as immutable to change as certain people would like you to believe.

The swift reaction by BlackRock to the government simply making noises in particular was noteworthy:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/15/blackrock-d...

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#209
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

". The perception by many is that immigration was causing a drag down on wages, but all the data suggests in fact immigration is net benefit to a population". That statement is the old switcheroo. In summary, the perception of many is correct and they care less about the fact that immigrants tend to, e.g., raise GDP, than the fact that they are depressing wages for people like them.

So in summary, people would rather vote to make their country poorer, than vote for their fair share of its wealth.

If the vast majority of that wealth coalesced at the top why would I vote for it?

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#210
post #85

I love reading the comments on stories like this and consider these comments to be a bellwether as to the current state of inequality in our society. Unfortunately I tend to consider myself one who exists on the lower part of the wealth distribution logarithm within the western world, globally it's a different story. Just as anyone tweeting on their smart phone or tablet claiming to be part of the 99% might want to r…

I agree and am pretty sure that at least some of the islamists are people that feel left behind by the west, maybe would like to have a similar live but grow to hate them because they just can't have it and use the religion find likeminded people. And i say that without any elitism. It is similar to trying to understand where all the Trump votes come from when you are more liberal.

The original Al-Qaida (every major member is now dead) which planned 9/11 actually didn't feel left behind at all. They were trying to fight change and westernization. I think that most of the current batch of terrorists, however, are just a bunch of primitive drug addicted machos who want to blow things up (and I'm serious about that, go read the Wikipedia articles on the people who have made attacks in Europe lately).
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