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Is Inequality Inevitable?

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Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#401

Post by vannevar »

headsoup wrote: post #272
wuliwong wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the poorer a person is the larger a percentage they are willing to risk As a percentage, sure, but in real terms the poorer person doesn't have 'much' to lose (to be regained) over someone extremely rich risking the same percentage. The potential rewards are also likely to be immensely larger in percentage for the poor person too. But this is also relative risk against wealth in context. Comparing poor against poor…

As a percentage, sure, but in real terms the poorer person doesn't have 'much' to lose (to be regained) over someone extremely rich risking the same percentage.

This is questionable. The assumption that a poor person can more easily regain their stake is shaky---a poor person who loses their money may become homeless, which could in turn make it harder for them to be employed, or if they are a trades person maybe they lose their tools or can no longer afford to rent them. By contrast, a rich person has access to credit lines and investors in their social network. For the poor who aren't wiped out below a critical threshold, then, it may be true, but you're not taking into account the significant number who drop below that threshold and may never recover.

I would rephrase the original statement, "the poorer a person the larger percentage they are willing to risk" as "the poorer the person, the larger percentage they are forced to risk if they want to achieve comparable returns on a percentage basis."

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#402

Post by shanhaiguan »

reilly3000 wrote: post #395
akiselev wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...by extracting more and more of those resources until they're gone.

more like until they are no longer profitable to exploit, which of course is a function of global state. That is what underlies the fallacy of peak oil, which I was personally susceptible to. Resources don't vanish, they become incrementally more expensive to extract until the marginal benefit of doing so becomes negative.

I was under the impression that this is exactly what peak oil is: the end of our current levels of oil production, not (necessarily) the disappearance of the oil itself.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#404

Post by wang_li »

fzeroracer wrote: post #286
wang_li wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why you think I'm not educated on the topic. I, at least, can discern what's relevant to the question of which way wealth is transferred. I am aware of the complaints about how banks process transactions in and out of customer accounts. It's a moot point for two reasons. First, the complaint boils down to whether a bank making a checking account available is also an agreement to extend small value, short…

First, I can tell that you've never experienced poverty in your life because saying it's 'as simple as that' ignores the times when poor people need to purchase something right away. They deposit a check into their account, then go shopping because that money SHOULD BE IN THEIR ACCOUNT and they desperately need things like food or basic amenities. Then they get pinged with overdraft fees because the bank decided not…

I grew up in the seventies and lived through the Carter presidency. And having had a period of my life where I was using check cashing services to pay off the previous check cashing service, I can say with relative surety that unless you were born during the depression, my poverty is as big as your poverty.

That's not how banks work. You go in and deposit a check they give you a receipt which tells you what day the deposit will post and when the full amount of the funds will be available. You are, again, functionally complaining that a checking account can't be used to force a bank to give you an interest free loan and justifying it by saying "desperately need [...] food or basic amenities."

Your economic model is simplistic. People with no marketable skill or knowledge are not having the value they create stolen from them. The value that comes from the businesses they work at comes from the founders, the investors, the people who had the idea, who developed the product and so on.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#405

Post by [deleted] »

solveit wrote: post #349
hector_vasquez wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you defining a "calorie"? The number printed on the package? Because that number is basically meaningless.

That number happens to be remarkably accurate. More accurate than required by law in fact. It also happens to accurately predict changes in a person's weight if you know everything they're eating.

[deleted]

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#406

Post by friendlybus »

kjhkhkj wrote: post #297
WilliamEdward wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Australia has clean streets as is reasonably christian.

If you want the poor to live in hell, move to the UK, the bottom end of the class system is exactly that even with free healthcare.

Where do you draw the line on unproductive? Hitler was a bum until he got into politics after trying and failing to 'be productive' in art. Your metric does not protect you from poverty, you can become ill and unproductive yourself, nor does it protect you from Mao/Hitler. They all became "productive" at some point.

The poor will always be with us, it's not actually possible to draw the line such that they leave.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#407

Post by nomel »

vannevar wrote: post #397
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…

It's not part of the model because, if you're studying how wealth gets distributed rather than how it is produced, it doesn't matter. I'm guessing that your disquiet at this notion comes from the possibility that everyone is creating their own wealth, and to some extent that is no doubt true. But if you start with the simplifying assumption that everyone's wealth creation ability is equal, and you just look at distri…

> if you're studying how wealth gets distributed rather than how it is produced, it doesn't matter.

I know nothing of this, but how can distribution be understood without the forces that drive it?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#408

Post by chongli »

reilly3000 wrote: post #395
akiselev wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...by extracting more and more of those resources until they're gone.

more like until they are no longer profitable to exploit, which of course is a function of global state. That is what underlies the fallacy of peak oil, which I was personally susceptible to. Resources don't vanish, they become incrementally more expensive to extract until the marginal benefit of doing so becomes negative.

Peak oil is not about cash profits, it's about EROEI [1]. At some point all of the oil still in the ground will become useless because it'll take more energy to extract than you get out of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#409

Post by friendlybus »

vannevar wrote: post #397
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…

It's not part of the model because, if you're studying how wealth gets distributed rather than how it is produced, it doesn't matter. I'm guessing that your disquiet at this notion comes from the possibility that everyone is creating their own wealth, and to some extent that is no doubt true. But if you start with the simplifying assumption that everyone's wealth creation ability is equal, and you just look at distri…

The power law you are describing happens in nature too. Size of trees in forest, mass of stars, ect. You can't go deep enough to dig up it's source, so you get carte blanch freedom to make the distribution arguments however you want. But until you dig up the cause for why the system produces a power law output for wealth distribution that has happened pretty much throughout history, under monarchies or capitalism or whatever, then you're just shuffling deck chairs on a titanic argument.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#410

Post by tw04 »

taneq wrote: post #250
tw04 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely IS fixed. We may not have reached its peak, but until we managed to start settling other planets we have a finite amount of: Clean Water Land Natural resources You can take your pick about which one runs out first/be consumed by a small group of ultra-wealthy, but one of them WILL run out first.

Many countries are creating clean water through desalination or reprocessing. Some countries have created land by building islands or reclaiming coastal shelf area. Natural resources available are increased by better tech making more available. So yeah, they’re less fixed than you think.

They really aren’t. We have no way to meaningfully increase the surface area of the earth, it’s fixed. Even if we were to drain the oceans entirely, you’re just kicking the can down the road (ignoring the fact we’d likely all die).

Increasing our effectiveness removing natural resources doesn’t increase the amount on earth, so again, fixed. We will eventually run out.

Desalination assumes that the ocean is clean water. Micro plastics would like to have a word with you.

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