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Is Inequality Inevitable?

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Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#181

Post by james_s_tayler »

Zyst wrote: post #132
jodrellblank wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Just World" fallacy written into a single comment. It starts with "effort leads to results", and then mixes that with "effort is virtue" and concludes "people who have results, must be virtuous". Then turns it around and says "people who don't have results must not be virtuous, and therefore deserve their lack of results". "Effort leads to results" is based on the Just World idea that if you do what the winners…

Sometimes I run into comments which make me realize how differently people can think about the world. It's always a bit of a shock. It does make me feel a bit of despair at the prospect of humanity ever reaching an agreement that would make everyone satisfied. I guess having most satisfied will have to do, but regardless, it's rough.

Try get a group of 8 or more people who are right in the middle of the city center decide on where to go for dinner.

Getting people to agree on anything is a massive effort. Getting the entirety of humanity to agree on something that will satisfy everyone will take until everyone is dead and there are few enough people it can be done.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#182

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

eberkund wrote: post #134
eej71 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core point remains which is - wealth is not static. It is _created_.

I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Economic output is not entirely static, but it is not completely accurate to say a creative hard-working person who comes along and amasses a lot of wealth has created all of that wealth either. This should not be a controversial statement. Imagine a simple scenario where Walmart alone, represents the economy and they sell 100 units per year. Then Amazon comes along…

I don't think that's what's being argued here at all.

The point is primarily one about productivity growth and that causes the economy to grow. Consider agriculture.

When we were all out in the fields plowing them with oxen the whole time, and grinding flour by hand with stones, we didn't have much time to be doing anything else.

The invention of water- and wind-powered mills reduced the amount of time spent milling. Add (in no particular order) the seed drill, the horse-drawn reaper, pesticides, crop rotation, scientific theories of plant breeding, combine harvesters, nitrogen-based fertilizers, insect-resistant bio-engineered crops etc.

Productivity in agriculture in the developed world has DOUBLED since the 1960s.

John Deere invented the self-scouring steel plow and became famous and wealthy as a result. Some of that wealth came as a result of people buying his plow instead of buying someone else's; but the economic growth that resulted from his innovation was in terms of improved efficiency in farming in the plains of the Mid-West.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#183

Post by eej71 »

threatofrain wrote: post #135
eej71 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core point remains which is - wealth is not static. It is _created_.

From where? Jeff Bezos space mining ventures? Eventually the question about the size of the economy and endless growth must be answered.

The creation of wealth extends far beyond the mere sum of natural resources. It's about the knowledge required to make use of it. Finding it, understanding it, combining it. Knowledge expands the range of our reach and of our ability to re-arrange - to create. In my view, wealth creation has its foundation in the expansion of knowledge.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#184

Post by harimau777 »

bhupy wrote: post #109
harimau777 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because for the foreseeable future there will be resources that are important to people and are limited. If inequality gets so severe that some people are unable to get the resources that are important to them then they tend to get upset. One of the most obvious examples in America right now is a house in a desirable part of the country. Buying a house has always been a major investment; however, housing prices are n…

Is “a house in a modern city” a basic right? Or just “a house”?

I would say that being able to own a house somewhere that is compatible with your overall goals in life[1] is a feature of a functioning society/economic system.

Whether that makes it a "right" depends on your stance on things like positive versus negative rights. I'm arguing that a system that doesn't provide that to regular people is broken regardless of whether it is a right or not.

[1] By goals in life I do not mean things like "I want to own my own island" or "I want a penthouse in Manhattan". Rather I mean something along the lines of "I want to live somewhere that I can go hiking everyday" or "I want to live in a cosmopolitan city".

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#185

Post by bryanrasmussen »

eberkund wrote: post #154
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the less than 100X growth from? And if it is less than that, what is the exact amount of growth - since if you know it is less than 100x it seems reasonable to assume that you know exactly what amount it is?

I am not claiming to know any exact value. But previous comparisons I've seen do it by looking at some good or asset which has remained relatively unchanged since ancient time and then using the modern day price of that good to extrapolate the growth of the economy since then.

I guess it seems clever, but also it seems like it wouldn't make any sense. I mean an obvious comparison would be some of the things on this list http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

but how does it even work - what things on that list have actually remained unchanged? Is a chicken in medieval times really the same as chicken today, and that's just in the last 800 years, not in the last 5000.

And in what direction do you compare? I suppose the price going up shows the growth of the economy, but what does the price going down show. Let's take aluminum, that price would have gone down a lot since medieval times, because it has been very much changed by increase of technical abilities. So we must not look at that because it is no longer like the aluminum of medieval times, but if you can not look at and measure stuff like that how can you actually measure the growth of the economy where value creation takes place.

I would need to see some arguments on how this works to even begin to get past the sounds clever but also sounds wrong stage of thinking.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#186

Post by harimau777 »

whatshisface wrote: post #146
Qwertystop wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"modern city", maybe not, but there's a world of difference between, say, a shack in the woods and an apartment with aircon/heating/insulation (as appropriate) and easy access to groceries. I don't know where the line is, but if you say the basic right is just "house", and that gets enforced, someone's going to try to draw that line as low as they can. Probably a few developers try to argue that if everyone gets a ho…

Evicting Jeff Bezos from wherever he lives wouldn't help a shack-dweller unless you gave Bezos' old house to the woodsman. So, I would say that the woodsman doesn't care about inequality, instead any benefit he could get would come from an improvement in his own fortunes (irrespective of what happens to anyone else). If inequality was the problem, then bad things happening to someone would help everyone who was worse…

The issue with inequality comes when someone uses it to consume a sufficiently disproportionate amount of the resources that there is not enough for everyone else.

For example, if a group of billionaires bought up all of the property in New York City that would then mean that there wouldn't be any left for anyone else.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#187

Post by threatofrain »

eej71 wrote: post #183
threatofrain wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where? Jeff Bezos space mining ventures? Eventually the question about the size of the economy and endless growth must be answered.

The creation of wealth extends far beyond the mere sum of natural resources. It's about the knowledge required to make use of it. Finding it, understanding it, combining it. Knowledge expands the range of our reach and of our ability to re-arrange - to create. In my view, wealth creation has its foundation in the expansion of knowledge.

In other words, materials and how to use materials. How has the worldview of scarcity been updated?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#188

Post by malandrew »

lmilcin wrote: post #66

A lot of it misses the point. Equality is unavoidable as long as people are allowed to compete for stuff. If people are allowed to compete for property then those that are better at competing will have more property. It might be possible to have property equality when people have access to same things but compete for different things, for example status, choice of partners, etc. And the most important point people se…

> and at the same time ensure those that don't want or can't compete have their basic needs like food, shelter and medical care satisfied.

What you call competition, others call being useful to your fellow human beings by providing a good or service others find valuable.

I understand why we should provide basic needs for those that can't "compete", but why should we provide for those that simply don't want to? Why should someone have the right to not provide something of value to their fellow humans while still enjoying things of value (food, shelter, medical care) provided by their fellow humans?

If you can contribute and don't contribute, then you shouldn't get any contributions from others.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#189

Post by dre54673 »

Empact wrote: post #144

It should be self-evident that the accelerating inequality we’re witnessing is not the natural inequality of competition and the power law, easily explained by simple arithmetic. An accelerating and historically high broad societal effect is naturally a product of broad and unique properties of the current regime, rather than fundamentally consistent properties, which would naturally be seen across all time. What is…

I've noticed an increasing trend in people using phrases such as "it is trivial", "it is obvious", "it is self evident" to defend their arguments. I have yet to encounter a case where it made their argument better.

This might be off topic but it has become a pet peeve because I've even started to encounter it in real life. It is similar to starting a discussion with "if you disagree with me, you are stupid".

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#190

Post by tkyjonathan »

danhak wrote: post #5

Of course it is...it's a natural consequence of compound interest. One's ability to accumulate additional wealth scales exponentially with their level of existing wealth.

And what exactly gives your money compound interest?

Its not like everyone has access to something that offers that..

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