Is Inequality Inevitable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#531

Post by tw04 » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #434

tw04 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wate…

You're moving the goalposts on land area. We can increase available land area (in your extreme scenario) by 200% without leaving the planet, and we're a lot closer to colonizing Mars than doing this. We're so far off using anywhere near all of even the easily available natural resources on Earth that considering it as a limited quantity is fatuous. By the time we legitimately run out of materials on Earth we'll be ab…

>You're moving the goalposts on land area.

How am I moving the goal posts? I literally started out saying it's a fixed resource and the only way to increase is to colonize space. Your response is "but we can use more of it than we're using today" - sure, but it's STILL a fixed resource. We can move portions of it from one place to another. We can come up with creative solutions to utilize more of it than we are today. NONE of that changes the fact it's a fixed resource, and if/when we happen to use or destroy it all, it isn't magically going to create more on its own.

>We're so far off using anywhere near all of even the easily available natural resources on Earth that considering it as a limited quantity is fatuous.

*In your lifetime. If you look at the rate of development and destruction caused by humans, to claim we'll NEVER do it is RIDICULOUS. We'll never destroy the rainforest. We'll never take down all of the california redwoods. We'll never kill all of the bison roaming the plains of the midwest. We'll never... Sorry that I'm concerned for my great grandkids (if I happen to have any) and the generations beyond those, not to mention the entire human race. My purview of the world doesn't begin and end with me.

>Desalination for potable water includes filtration which removes microplastics along with everything else.

Uhh, no. The current method of removing microplastics from seawater includes using chemicals that are deadly to humans. Potable desalinated drinking water includes our tiny friends.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#532

Post by speleding » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

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…

>it seems like whatever the wealth-building factor is, it would also follow a Gaussian distribution... >You never encounter anyone 1000 times taller than average

If I compare myself to Shakespeare / Einstein / Elon Musk I do feel that their abilities outstrip mine by an order of magnitude more than one would expect with a Gaussian distribution.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#533

Post by chongli » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #455

chongli wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

Looks like you didn’t read the link. Quote:

When the EROEI of a source of energy is less than or equal to one, that energy source becomes a net "energy sink", and can no longer be used as a source of energy, but depending on the system might be useful for energy storage (for example a battery).

If oil is made to compete against batteries then it will lose. It may have higher energy density but it’s also non-rechargeable, requires a heavy and complicated and high maintenance (compared to a very simple electric motor) internal combustion engine, and produces large amounts of greenhouse gases.

About the only thing it would still be cost effective for with a negative EROEI is aviation fuel, but even that application is facing competition from batteries [1].

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/electric-aircraft/index.h...

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#534

Post by imtringued » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #368

jlawson wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval and previous people were always at the limits of the resources they had the technology to access. The past was a Malthusian world. No economic growth and no population growth for thousands of years, in a world without birth control. The difference was paid by death. This is life when you're at ecological carrying capacity. We managed to find new ways to tap resources better, more efficiently, deeper, and so…

However, spreading past Earth or transcending to entirely new ways of existing (e.g. computational life) are also possible The leap to another planet is far, far greater than to a new continent. It is an open question whether or not we could achieve it at all before a crisis destroys our civilization to an extent we may never recover from. There can be no second fossil fuel revolution, that was a onetime event in Ear…

Space travel requires energy. On earth we obtain most of our energy from the sun. During interstellar travel there is no sun that we can depend on. Therefore space travel is impossible without creating our own sun with fusion power.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#535

Post by tremon » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #95

cryptonector wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound as though the economic pie is fixed and economics zero-sum. But that's clearly not the case, otherwise we'd still be living with stone age per-capita GDP (i.e., ~0). And it's not just that "those that are better at competing will have more property". Every person is free to make a variety of choices for themselves, including how much they prioritize wealth creation. Since each one of us has only one…

I never said inequality is bad (by itself). Inequality is driving progress. Historically, people made little progress in circumstances where they could not amass and defend wealth. Property rights and working public institutions is what allows people to stop spending their entire time defending what little they have and instead figure out how to improve what they amassed (in other words progress).

Precisely. Inequality only drives progress when people people believe it can be overcome. That's the basis for the American Dream. When people no longer believe that, as is the case in large parts of the US and EU, it only breeds resentment and drives down productivity and societal progress.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#536

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

La1n wrote: post #495

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's terribly, terribly naïve. Most wealth was skimmed from other's work through manipulation of stock, bonuses, grants and other executive-suite routines. There's no longer any amount of skimming that's considered egregious. Its ramping up and up without limit.

>Most wealth was skimmed from other's work Or you know, just by taking the surplus value of someones labor.

Again, naïve. The executive suite takes huge bonuses, while there's been no raise for the rank-and-file for a decade. Bonuses even when there's little profit. All rationality has left the equation.

Lets stop living in the 1960's. Don't take our impression of American business from history. Today its very, very different and very, very predatory.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#537

Post by duxut_staglatz » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

chewz wrote: post #525

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that it is?

Pretty common assumption. [1] The need for money saturates slowly. Think about winning 1000 dollars (nice dinner pehaps), 10 000 (better car), 100 000 (larger appartment), .... , 10 000 000. At some point it doesn't matter if its 200 000 000 or 300 000 000. On the other hand a lotter ticket is 1$. What is the utility of 1$ - a can of coke pehaps. But the perspective of winning $1 000 000 - thats a nice idea to hold f…

That's evidence for a concave utility function wrt income, not logarithmic per se.

But your first link does cite evidence that _if_ utility is CRRA, we are not far from the case where utility is logarithmic

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#538

Post by imtringued » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #447

taneq wrote: post #379

Earlier 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?

If I make a coffee why should I be entitled to drink it? Well it's obvious. I bought the ingredients, heated water, etc... I consumed my own resources to make the coffee. If I don't own the end result then by making coffee I am just harming myself.

>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.

So would the rich daughter. A chip fab requires external funding. This means the rich daughter has to obtain credit from a bank. In an ideal world the bank is itself funded by the depositors which have agreed to let their bank lend the money out. (in reality the central bank offers low % credit to encourage this)

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#539

Post by rozularen » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

Glosster wrote: post #503

Reading through the comments, I was hoping that someone actually pasted the article itself... because it's behind a paywall. But it seems that most comments can be TLDR'ed as the title of the post.

I was hoping the same.... Why tf people post these articles?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#540

Post by imtringued » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #513

kortilla wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

My proposal is that no one person is entitled to own vastly expensive items that required the work of countless people to create. Those items should generally be collectively owned by the people who designed and built them. The profits from operating them should go to the people operating them (which includes marketing and sales people and whatever else is needed), in some democratically chosen percentage. I said not…

>The profits from operating them should go to the people operating them

Well, economic theory says that the profits should approach zero as more and more competitors join the market and the provided goods or services become commodities. This effectively is a redistribution mechanism. The reality is a bit uglier.

By the way, prevention of wealth accumulation doesn't require repossession of existing property. A simple redistribution policy could dictate that a single person is not allowed to inherit more than 50% of the wealth of their parents. This forces parents to have two children and split the wealth. After a few generations the children will have 25%, 12%, 6% of the original wealth and so on.

There are still ways to exploit this if the siblings are colluding but let's be serious. If your family is rich and owns 50 billion dollars. Would you prefer $25 billion or $0 billion for the sake of higher generational wealth?

My point is that you need to create policies that even rich people would agree with.