Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
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Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#2If the world actually equitably shared wealth, the western would have an absolutely astounding drop in our incomes and quality of life. Few would accept this. The average person in the first world has a massively higher quality of life than developing countries.
This is why the only long term answer is technological development, without which we would all still be subsistence farming (and all poor). It would be nice if we had more social advances coupled with this, but that is predicated on human nature taking a different turn than it has historically acted.
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#3That is an interesting study, but it isn't too surprising to me. I think most people recognize that a certain level of inequality is natural, and is often driven by legitimate differences in personal character and discipline. I think the aspect of inequality in America that irritates most people is the degree of inequality combined with the fact that it's only the rich that is experiencing an improving quality of life. This on top of the fact that inequality is being driven less by differences in personal character and more by differences in the return on capital vs return on labor. There are multimillionaires who aren't any better than the rest of us, but because they have significant stores of capital, they do much better than the rest of us.
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#4In my experience people want equality but only among their peers. For example even the poor living in the US are the 1% of the developing world, yet everyone would object to us taxing the poor here to send it to the Philippines.
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#5I mean, it's interesting but a bit flawed. When you've got 5 coins total and you're saying someone has to be a loser. Why not do the experiment with 4 coins? I don't think humans want equality "as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor" - that's a pretty poor summary of the findings.
What the findings DID discover, and shouldn't be surprising to anyone, is that 45% of people think it's unfair for you to take so much away from the person who "has money" that they end up with less than the person who you're supposedly helping.
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#6I mean, it's interesting but a bit flawed. When you've got 5 coins total and you're saying someone has to be a loser. Why not do the experiment with 4 coins? I don't think humans want equality "as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor" - that's a pretty poor summary of the findings. What the findings DID discover, and shouldn't be surprising to anyone, is that 45% of people think it's unfair for you to ta…
I'm surprised that only 45% of people think this is unfair. That's a disappointingly low number.
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#7In other words, what humans want and what they actually do, are rather different. When made public the wanting is called virtue signalling and often provides benefits at no or minimal cost and thus it's popular. Example: https://life.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/corbynistas-believe-in-... ('corbynistas-believe-in-socialism-until-the-bill-arrives').
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#8I think this article misses a key point about fairness that seems to be ignored (I have not read the underlying paper, so perhaps its bad journalism)
In this scenario:
"In the first scenario, participants had to decide if they wanted to transfer two coins from person A (who already had four coins) to person B (who had one). Researchers note the “transfer would reduce inequality,” (as there’s less of a gap between them), but person B would end up one coin richer than person A, reversing their status."
"Just 45% accepted the redistribution when it changed the hierarchy."
They have focused on changing the hierarchy, and this is where fairness comes in.
Should people who have "wealth" be forced to a redistribution mechanism, where that person ends up poorer than everyone else? - Its one thing to redistribute for to reduce or eliminate inequality, its another to make them poorer than everyone else (even if the overall equality is reduced)
So I don't think its about maintaining the hierarchy, but a sense of fairness in the redistribution
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#9I mean, it's interesting but a bit flawed. When you've got 5 coins total and you're saying someone has to be a loser. Why not do the experiment with 4 coins? I don't think humans want equality "as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor" - that's a pretty poor summary of the findings. What the findings DID discover, and shouldn't be surprising to anyone, is that 45% of people think it's unfair for you to ta…
I'm surprised that only 45% of people think this is unfair. That's a disappointingly low number.
Well, I think that's because the premise of how they first acquired the money is that it was "completely random".
So ya, if Bill Gates randomly started pulling names out of a hat and handing out money, I think people would tend to feel less bad about that money being redistributed than something that was actually earned.
Re: Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
#10I mean, it's interesting but a bit flawed. When you've got 5 coins total and you're saying someone has to be a loser. Why not do the experiment with 4 coins? I don't think humans want equality "as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor" - that's a pretty poor summary of the findings. What the findings DID discover, and shouldn't be surprising to anyone, is that 45% of people think it's unfair for you to ta…
I'm surprised that only 45% of people think this is unfair. That's a disappointingly low number.
Why do you think more people should think it's unfair? The participants are explicitly told that the initial positions were assigned randomly. It doesn't seem like the reversed hierarchy is any more unfair than the original.