Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Inequality Inevitable?

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 628 posts

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#291

Post by big_chungus »

SI_Rob wrote: post #268
dre54673 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

This is the one tic that makes it grating for me to listen to anything spoken by Noam Chomsky (interviews, discussions, monologues etc. - his written material not so much), regardless of how persuasive I may find his arguments. Add "you can look it up" to the list, a frequent Chomskyism which sounds like a casual declaration of confidence in his sources but in effect functions as a rhetorical control device, in that…

"You can look it up" is doubly annoying because it shifts the burden of defending a source from he who references it to he who questions it. If one wants to use evidence to support his argument, he alone is responsible for keeping a copy of the source for reference.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#292

Post by kortilla »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #277
taneq wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition to redistributing it. Not part of the model. That’s because the people making the models don’t create wealth and don’t really understand where it comes from. It’s like the way you see Marxists saying “seize the means of production” but never “build the means of production”.

Not so sure you understand what means of production are. You cannot build more means of production without having access to means of production in the first place, hence the 'seizing' part.

Yet all of the modern means of production stemmed from no means of production... hmmm.

People create all of the time with extremely limited resources. Especially ones that haven’t been seized.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#293

Post by ndarwincorn »

amelius wrote: post #208
lmilcin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is excellent point. If it is too easy to gather wealth so you can gather wealth without actually having to create any value (through corruption, extortion, monopoly, theft, deception, enslavement, etc.) then you will have the bad kind of inequality where most people are not compelled to put hard work to create value for others in order to create wealth for themselves. Again, GINI does not differentiate between t…

> (through corruption, extortion, monopoly, theft, deception, enslavement, etc.) rent-seeking should be there too

In the financialized world we live in rent seeking should be the top of the list.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#294

Post by [deleted] »

wuliwong wrote: post #230
SiVal wrote: post #193

There is a popular political perspective that rules on campus these days that treats wealth as something that just magically exists and is simply "redistributed" by one means or another like, say, a phase change in physics where no magnetism/charge/energy/etc. is ever created or consumed. I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition t…

I received a Ph.D. in physics in 2010, throughout my training, my anecdotal experience was that of an echo chamber. I didn't fully realize it until I left academia. Although, it was slowly becoming apparent as the years passed. My experience was of a relatively small and closed group of physicists who reaffirmed each other's assumption that they were at the absolute peak of intellectual thought. Most of the professor…

[deleted]

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#295

Post by pasquinelli »

WalterBright wrote: post #195
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…

Note that the effect of steeply progressive income taxes is making it much more difficult for people to move up the economic ladder.

How's that?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#296

Post by zepto »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #241
zepto wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your alphabet / google analogy has zero connection to what we are talking. There doesn’t need to be anyone with the cash available to pay the entire price of Amazon. If Jeff Bezos wants to purchase something, he can trade Amazon stock for it. The corporation doesn’t have any control over whether he does that or not. It is exactly equivalent to money.

> It is exactly equivalent to money. By this logic Google has an infinite amount of money because it has the ability to issue new shares. It can create a zillion dollars of new shares and sell them in the market and now it has a zillion dollars higher market cap because it has an extra zillion dollars in cash. But it's not actually infinite, for two reasons. First, the money (or whatever you're exchanging the shares…

The statement you made about google issuing more shares has nothing to do with my logic and is completely irrelevant.

You are right that Bezos selling shares does not change the amount of capital Amazon has.

The fact that nobody has enough money to buy all of Amazon from Bezos is also completely irrelevant.

You are right that Bezos exchanging stock for real estate doesn’t reduce his wealth unless the real estate is overpriced.

When you buy something with money, the same thing happens - the amount of wealth held by both parties doesn’t change unless the goods are overpriced or are consumed.

You haven’t refuted anything I said in the previous comment.

Bezos can use Amazon stock to buy whatever he wants, the same way you and I can use money, and the corporation has no control over this.

Bezos’s wealth is exactly what it looks like. He can indeed use it just like money.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#297

Post by kjhkhkj »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #278
kjhkhkj wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm advocating for not providing it to them.

With organisation and efficiency, providing basic needs to people is way easier than you think. With the wealth of a single rich country, food water and shelter (which are already in excess in rich areas) can be distributed to them. So given how possible it is without any real downside to you, your argument for not helping people essentially boils down to "i don't care about them".

> So given how possible it is without any real downside to you

I would lose money.

> boils down to "i don't care about them".

Exactly, I don't care about the poor. The only reason we fetishize them is because of Christian influence on society. You go to Japan and Singapore and we always praise them for clean streets. They don't treat the poor well.

If we raise taxes I don't think the people I would be giving money to have similar beliefs or values as I do, I don't think we would ever be friends and given the age we live in, I don't think they are part of my community, even if we live in the same country. Given we have so little in common I'm more sympathetic to people living in abject poverty (that don't live in the US) who truly have no chance of succeeding in this world without help.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#298

Post by kjhkhkj »

autoexec wrote: post #267
kjhkhkj wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm advocating for not providing it to them.

And you can't think of any reasons outside of ethical arguments why it might be a good idea to make sure everyone has their basic needs met? Really? Have you spent very long trying to come up with one? Here's one to get you started: When a very small number of people have everything and a great many people have nothing, not even what they need to survive, those hungry desperate masses will have nothing to lose and ev…

It always comes down to violence and that argument makes me less sympathetic not more. I'm not interested in paying off what amounts to a rabid unproductive population for some hope of safety. Also, I'm not particularly scared of people that can't manage to find some success in the modern US either.

So if you argument is that we should increase taxes so another Mao doesn't exist, I'd rather just kill Mao.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#299

Post by trentnix »

wuliwong wrote: post #230
SiVal wrote: post #193

There is a popular political perspective that rules on campus these days that treats wealth as something that just magically exists and is simply "redistributed" by one means or another like, say, a phase change in physics where no magnetism/charge/energy/etc. is ever created or consumed. I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition t…

I received a Ph.D. in physics in 2010, throughout my training, my anecdotal experience was that of an echo chamber. I didn't fully realize it until I left academia. Although, it was slowly becoming apparent as the years passed. My experience was of a relatively small and closed group of physicists who reaffirmed each other's assumption that they were at the absolute peak of intellectual thought. Most of the professor…

Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.

- GK Chesterton

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#300

Post by michelinman »

anm89 wrote: post #264
michelinman wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes? At least explain.

This is totally incoherent. What are you trying to say?

Apologies, I'll try again. At both ends of the human spectrum you have people who are so basic human life means nothing to them. In both respects these people want power over others. I suggest the least intelligent are the serial killer types but the most dangerous are the rich and powerful. Wiki commodities brokers.
Post reply on HN