141–150 of 368 posts
Top 1% worldwide is not a great statistic. In many US cities that is just above poverty due to CoL at ~32k.
It's the level at which, within your local market, essentials of life are not attainable.
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There's a difference between someone physically constraining you so that you can't eat and from not having enough money to eat, but that doesn't mean the one is free in the latter case. Indeed, presumably one does not want to be physically stopped from eating because one wants to eat - i.e. substantively we want to be free to do things, and can only do things if society grants us the means to. What are 'the laws of n…
The laws of nature are simply that life is inherently a struggle. Imagine being born on a planet with no-one else, if you don't gather food and build shelter you will die. You are constantly on a path of poverty and death unless you fight against it. Since humans are social creatures that love each other we don't like letting that happen to others even if they can't create enough value to sustain themselves. But once…
All forms of social organisation require force. Capitalism is based on a particular configuration of property and contract relations established and upheld through coercion. It is not 'neutral' or 'natural'.
Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, has a pretty compelling section on wealth/income inequality. The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Furthermore, wealth isn't a static I win/you lose proposition - much of that wealth has been created in recent history. People spen…
I think the biggest mistake people make when counting this wealth is that if it is hoarded and never spent then it might as well not exist and should be viewed as anti-inflationary. What if all the billionaires in the world decided 'let me just hit delete on all of the zeroes in my bank account' what affect would that have on the rest of the world?
If the wealthiest 1% had their assets wiped out tomorrow, most of us wouldn’t have a job the next day.
Steven Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, has a pretty compelling section on wealth/income inequality. The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions. Furthermore, wealth isn't a static I win/you lose proposition - much of that wealth has been created in recent history. People spen…
I haven't read Pinker's book and he is certainly more knowledgeable than I am on the topic. What does he say about attitudes like "keeping up with the Joneses", jealousy, and similar emotions? It seems to me that most people tend toward jealousy and compare themselves to those who are better off rather than those who are worse off. I've been under the impression that disparity, inequality in and of itself is a proble…
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Its profoundly unclear how merely throwing the word blockchain does anything useful for equality. Having a different way to record ownership doesn't change how ownership is distributed. Logically the blockchain would be a good way to record ownership in a more equal society in same fashion as forks and bricks would be useful tools in a new and more equal society.
Imagine you and I cannot afford each others services because all of the money is owned by those greedy 1%. So like slaves, we sweat away for them. Day in. Day out. But if we agree on a new currency where you and I own 100000 coins each, we can happily start working for each other.
This doesn't appear any more revolutionary or likely. Why would any of the people who own real resources like deeds, stocks, stores, things agree to give them to you?
Top 1% worldwide is not a great statistic. In many US cities that is just above poverty due to CoL at ~32k.
Is there a better one instead? Or is it useless to measure global inequality and weatlh accumulation? Is there a local/national/global threshold that would make you concerned?
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There's a subreddit for what you're looking for: https://reddit.com/r/changemyview Lots of interesting debate happens there.
I might do, though I find the discussion generally of a higher quality here than on reddit.
Hacker News fosters higher quality discussion than most subreddits because it's smaller and has a much higher floor for the scope successful moderation. But look at this thread: people are throwing around uninformed opinions about basic economics left and right. Outside of technical disussion, Hacker News discussions often fracture into arguments where people talk past each other and reinvent entire fields from first principles.
I think HN is nearly as good as you can expect a general discussion forum to be, but the focused, well-moderated subreddits for specific topics are clearly better for useful discussion.
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I don't see that as a counterargument, more of a strawman. Eugenics is based on the gene pool not on relative levels of wealth (as I understand it). Honestly, if you live in desperate poverty, why would you want to bring a child into the world knowing the amount of suffering that its is likely to live through? Yet the poorest people seem to be the most likely to have the most children. Maybe another way of phrasing t…
Most people who are that poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth due to lack of sexual contraceptives or information about safe-sex. They are born to absolute poverty and know little outside of their little town or country. Sex to them might just be seen as something you do with little to no consequence or something that just comes easily. What you see as suffering might be seen as norma…
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Does limiting government limit the powers of the wealthy? It would limit one channel for them to exercise their power, but other channels like corporate control would exist.
I believe we are going to find it increasingly essential to view corporations as a second government that has a particular relationship with the nominal one.
At least they tend to lock horns. To the extent that the two collaborate, we should be suspicious.
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We’re at the point now where labels such as “capitalist” and “communist” is meaningless. China is a purported communist country but is minting more billionaires per year than any other country.
You have it wrong. China is a dictatorship that its billionaires are trying to escape, less they get struck down by Xi jingping’s anti corruption drive