Is Inequality Inevitable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#601

Post by tsimionescu » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #595

tsimionescu wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, they should have more of a say than 'take it or leave it'. And in fact, for most of human history, people who produced things did have more say than that. I was also talking about democratic governance among the worker-owners: this is how cooperatives work in general. The strict top-to-bottom autocracy of regular corporations is not the only possible system of governance for a successful market act…

It is an ideal world. People may negotiate for whatever they see fit. It takes two to come to an agreement. It only one agrees to terms offered, how is it fair to compel the other?

A 'negotiated agreement' between a company or state and a person that would starve if they don't accept the agreement is nothing more than coercion with a nice layer of paint.

Remember that we actually depend on some people literally not having a chance to eat unless they agree to collect our garbage, clean our floors etc.

Do you think that a cleaning person in a contract with Google or with the city of LA had any kind of real negotiation power?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#602

Post by vannevar » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #450

vannevar wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>someone with 1 million dollars is astronomically more likely to make another million dollars than someone with 100 dollars, even if the two people are otherwise identical, and it seems pretty unlikely that wealth creation has much to do with the distribution we see. Someone who scores 85 marks in an exam is more likely to score 95 with a little more effort than some one who scores 35 is likely to score 85 with a lo…

Note that the statement is that the two people are identical other than their wealth, so that in this case the difference in probability is independent of how the original million was acquired. That's the point.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#603

Post by tsimionescu » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #594

tsimionescu wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, they should have more of a say than 'take it or leave it'. And in fact, for most of human history, people who produced things did have more say than that. I was also talking about democratic governance among the worker-owners: this is how cooperatives work in general. The strict top-to-bottom autocracy of regular corporations is not the only possible system of governance for a successful market act…

You would refuse a starving person your food? You have enough, why the compulsion to steal from others to “redistribute”?

I didn't talk about redistribution. I'm describing how a system could work from the ground up with a market economy but without any capitalists. How to get there is another discussion that is far more thorny.

I wouldn't deny a starving person my food, though the reality is that I rarely come into contact with someone who is starving.

On the other hand, a lot of restaurants and super markets do regularly deny starving people food - they ask for money in place of common human decency.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#604

Post by dang » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 5:30 AM UTC

kofejnik wrote: post #249

ihm wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your comment is a good faith engagement with leftist understandings of value. This is the starting point of Marx's whole theory of capitalism (it's in the first few chapters of Capital) which is the labor theory of value. Namely, his starting point is that labor is identified with value. Wealth is created when raw materials and the means of production are combined with labor. In the capitalist theory of…

[flagged]

Please don't use HN for ideological battle, regardless of which ideology you favor or disfavor.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#605

Post by dang » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

wang_li wrote: post #157

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of that? Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place.

>Most of the poor have no wealth in the first place. Plenty of the poor actively destroy value, see the sanitation nightmares that are homeless encampments in the Seattle area. And the rest of the poor don't produce life sustaining value. Wealth transfers in the US are exclusively from the middle class and wealthy to the poor. To say otherwise is simple demagoguery.

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#606

Post by dang » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

billions wrote: post #104

mikepurvis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, but the point is that most of that is stuff he had no control over. The Econ 101 fantasy of "work hard, get ahead" doesn't apply if being a straight white male born into a middle class western family means you're starting 80% of the way to the finish line.

Please keep your prejudices out of this. How did hunter-gatherers get ahead?

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN, and stop using HN for ideological battle? Those are things we're trying to avoid here and you've unfortunately been doing them repeatedly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#607

Post by diminoten » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 6:41 AM UTC

loco5niner wrote: post #584

diminoten wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it help you to replace those phrases with, "Let's assume" because that's basically what they're saying, in a way.

I disagree. "Let's assume" leaves room for doubt, where "it is obvious" allows for none. I think most people who use these phrases are going for the latter.

An assumption is a prior, which necessarily means it can't be challenged, as in there is zero doubt about it, in the given/specific conversation.

Also, as a smell, when you say "I think most people" you're often just trying to mask your own biases.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#608

Post by restalis » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 6:44 AM UTC

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #490

WalterBright wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone is always going to be stronger, faster, taller, younger, better looking, have more things, etc., than you do. If you use the envy to improve your life, then it's good. If you use the envy to tear down others to your level, that's not so good.

I am not sure how your point implies that the current level of inequality is either optimal or too low

You are implying that there should be "optimal" levels in wealth inequality, but do we really have relative limits/levels for any other unequality aspect (strength, speed, height, age, or beauty) to say there should be one on wealth?

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#609

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 6:46 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #597

WalterBright wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're also making some weird assumptions that transferring money away from billionaires would just destroy that money, and that the current billionaires are using their resources in the most productive way possible There's nothing weird about that. You don't get to be a billionaire by being bad at managing your money, nor do you get to be a billionaire by investing in less productive investments. By taxing the 1%,…

>You don't get to be a billionaire by being bad at managing your money, nor do you get to be a billionaire by investing in less productive investments. Since close to half of America's billionaires inherited their fortunes, that's not really something you can prove. And that fact that it makes money doesn't necessarily mean it's beneficial to society, nor does it even mean it's the most economically productive possib…

You're going to have a tough row to hoe convincing anyone that the people who make the most money from their investments aren't the best at productively investing money.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#610

Post by zygimantasdev » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 7:10 AM UTC

pietrovismara wrote: post #553

zygimantasdev wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are taxed involuntary - isn't that stealing? Well technically by law it is legal and enforced for everyone, but it still is stealing. For example: if everybody is under the immoral law and some people are better than others at avoiding the immoral law - is it morally okay for those people to avoid that law? Edit: by involuntary I mean if person can't choose. Not talking about businesses

No it is not, for a very obvious reason: you get all the advantages of living in a society. Even just for infrastructure alone. Roads, sewages, electricity, internet. Last but not least, safety and order. Any income you might have developed is built upon this foundations. It is the very minimum that you pay back for it, especially if you have more than most others. The only thing I don't like is that we don't have a…

I think your point about a choice of taxes is very close to my argument of involuntary taxes. While I agree there are some things that you must contribute to have law and order - there are other things I don't want to subsidize. If my town lacks sidewalks, cars drive too fast and etc. - why should you pay for other towns problems first? Because somebody needs more votes from that other town they get to take my money against my will?

Also, for example, I don't like some study programs and I really like some of them. Problem is - I can't choose which ones to subsidize for students. If that's the case - I wouldn't subsidize any of them, but I am forced to do so. Even if I think its harmful.

I think this problem arise/will arise in many different places: North vs South Italy, Catalonia vs Spain, young people to carry aging population and etc.