221–230 of 291 posts
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Global inequality has sort of fallen, insofar as China has reportedly lifted 800 or 900 million people out of extreme poverty. I suspect that's not what their were referring to though..!
Not just China. All over the world once dirt poor people have started closing the gap. Most of South East Asia, India, even Sub-Saharan Africa, etc.
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God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…
> that ticket has an expiration date tied to the 19th century. Eventually those free spaces will run out. They're already starting to in the western world I'm sorry but I genuinely don't understand what you're saying here. What will expire? Which "free spaces" are running out where?
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God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…
> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…
It's not exactly news that the market throws off price signals, the question is whether those signals are the correct signals.
After all, the market also decided it wanted opioids, slaves, and a betting shop on every high street in the UK. Are we wrong to question whether Mr Market is right?
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> Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy Market economy got us into the situation where the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be. Very cool innovation, indeed. Ever read The Space Merchants?
> the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be. They're doing a great job, ads are so addictive I've even turned off my Ad blocker so I can get more of them! Won't someone save me!
Ads would always exist, but think about how many great (even lifesaving) solutions we're missing out on because market decided they aren't worthy of pursuit.
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> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…
Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. We don't really though. There are companies, and individuals, with enough wealth and influence to compete with entire markets. A well-funded startup can undermine whole industries by spending VC money to run at a loss long enough that the rest of the market fails (Uber, AirBNB) or they can become so massive that there's absolutely no possibility of…
Scale has no value unless it offers something to your customer base. What you're ignoring is that Uber, Amazon et al are so huge and dominant because customers flock to them. I can summon a taxi to my location in most cities in the world with a single app. I can have pretty much any item delivered to my door within one or two days. These were unfathomable 10-15 years ago.
Amazon has huge amounts of competition, as does Uber. I have absolutely no idea where you get this idea they are not influenced by pricing. Uber hasn't made any money in its entire existence. That is not characteristic of a monopoly.
I definitely don't think the big schools like Harvard/Yale/etc. need any more money, but I will play devil's advocate here. > "he donated $300 million in such as a way as to do as close as possible to zero good with it." Oh there are a lot worse ways to spend it with the best of intentions. The Turkana frozen-fish plant is a classic example, a charitable project where back in around 1975 around $150 million (in today…
God I just don't buy the "these people will go on to benefit humanity" argument anymore. We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. We don't need to feed our genuinely brightest minds into the wealth consolidation machine. Occasioanlly one of these people will find some one-off bit of brilliance that lifts an entire class of people out of poverty, but that ticket has an expiration date tied to…
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> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not perfectly efficient (especially in the short term), but pretty damn efficient. By throwing off price signals, the market allows us to allocate efforts to things society wants more of. Unfortunately,…
> Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy Market economy got us into the situation where the most brilliant minds in the world are researching best ways to make internet advertisements as addictive as they can be. Very cool innovation, indeed. Ever read The Space Merchants?
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What do you mean by ‘Global Inequality’? Because income and wealth inequality has been steadily increasing in (almost)all developed countries
Why do you worry about borders? Just because eg inequality in the US might have increased, and inequality in China might have increased, doesn't mean that the inequality in their combined population has increased. I'm talking about the combined population of all humanity. See eg https://archive.is/7xWtr
Because our local society is the society against which we, as humans, tend to measure ourselves, and inequality within our in-group is the strongest predictor of crime, perhaps?
Who cares what some rich guy's vanity spend is. You might argue it's not impactful, but it certainly doesn't hurt anyone.