Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. - GK Chesterton
Albert Einstein did much of his greatest work in isolation, and he was quite proud, too.
Exceptions only prove the rule.
Is Inequality Inevitable?
451–460 of 628 posts
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#452There 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…
Why would you assume something as silly as everyone having similar wealth production capabilities? Wealth is not an oil secreted by a wealth gland.
It’s a really complex process of getting the right market fit for your product (i.e. your time in the laborer case). Someone who can produce a lot of wealth in one society can completely fail in another. Or they can just fail in a different market environment. Wealth production comes from giving the market what it wants at a higher price than it costs you.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 the…
Rich people do not have access to credit lines if they don’t have assets to back the loans. And their rich friends certainly aren’t going to invest in someone who just lost a ton of money.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#454I don't get why lately the trend it to focus in inequality instead of focusing in poverty. I mean, if the % of poverty decreases, then economy is moving in a good direction, in spite of inequality, right? Suppose you had one million, and somebody else has one thousand millions, there would be a large gap, but I wouldn't consider it as negative. If there are arguments against what I wrote I would gladly read them and…
Inequality is bad because political power is correlated to wealth. As soon as we switch to a political system where Charles Koch has the same political power as the minimum wage janitor working in his office, I will stop fighting economic inequality.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
That stupidly assumes all energy sources are equal. Oil has an extremely high energy density that makes it useful for travel where battery isn’t even close (heavy industry, air travel, long distance trucking/travel).
There is an article on the front page about solar companies in Australia shutting down every other day because of negative energy prices. Burning 100MW for 10MW of oil makes perfect sense under these conditions.
Here’s a thought experiment for you: why do you think we have batteries given they take more energy to create than they will produce?
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
It took a large part of modern industry working cooperatively for decades to build the tooling to make ICs. If your commune wants to make a similar effort then there’s nothing stopping you. If you don’t then you’re not entitled to own a chip fab.
Why is anyone entitled to own a chip fab? Why is some rich daughter entitled to own a chip fab? Because she is in the current system, while anyone else would have to work their whole lives, and convince hundreds of others to work with them, to create a chip fab, if they wanted to own one.
> Why is anyone entitled to own a chip fab?
Why is anyone entitled to own food? If someone invests their resources to have something built (or help make it themselves), why wouldn’t they be entitled to own it?
The rich daughter gets to own it because that’s what the owner wanted and the thing about owning something generally is deciding its fate.
If someone builds themselves a house out of wood they chop from trees they grew, do they get to keep it? What if they exchanged goods and services for the wood instead? What if they also exchanged goods and services to have someone else build it who needs the goods and services.
> have to work their whole lives, and convince hundreds of others to work with them, to create a chip fab, if they wanted to own one.
So? That’s how many of the successful chip fabs existed.
What’s your proposed alternative when 10,000 people want chip fabs and there are only 200 for you to steal? The government seizing them certainly doesn’t make more and it completely discouraged anybody from wanting to invest their time/labor/money into building new ones.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#457There 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…
[deleted]
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GDP would be 10 times higher. It wouldn't be a lie. If the government wasn't completely blatant about it maybe store owners would only raise their prices by 9.95x and there might be a real GDP boost as well. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it a straw man? Not so much compared to what is done in practice. When people seriously say that the policy is to "stimulate the economy" they mean incentivising people to consume rather…
>The GDP would be 10 times higher. It wouldn't be a lie. That would mean Venezuela, top in the world for printing money, has the highest GDP growth. Zimbawe and Argentina would be next.[1] In the event one might claim they are, here[2] is the actuall GDP growth rate by country. >As for GDP it is generally accepted that setting up a free market and leaving it alone maximises the GDP. The highest per-capita GDPs are in…
Why do you assume that inequality somehow is responsible for a decline in quality of life?
The existence of the top 0.1% essentially has zero impact on grocery prices, healthcare, housing, etc.
> One could call gasoline tax "confiscation" bridges toll "redistribution" and, on the other side, call rent "theft".
Rent is voluntary, taxation is not. A bridge toll charges for use, so it’s actually fair. You don’t get charged $3000 to cross the Golden Gate Bridge because you do it in a Porsche.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
One counter-example would be the cost of health-care.
That's a terrible example in the context of economic growth over millenia for the simple reason that anything resembling modern healthcare basically didn't exist as recently as a hundred years ago.
Yes that is the point.
Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?
#460There 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…
> the poorer a person is the larger a percentage they are willing to risk
Utility function is logaritmic.