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Inequality Without Class

dissentmagazine.org

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Re: Inequality Without Class

#101

Post by Jensson »

ProxCoques wrote: post #93
Manuel_D wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of zero-sum thinking - then notion that accumulation of wealth necessarily means it must have been taken from others - is extremely detrimental to society.

If "wealth" is the value of labour, then there is a limit to the value you yourself can generate with your own. After that, to become more wealthy you must work out a way of taking that value from other people, and making it your own. There is no other way capitalism can work.

Wealthy people make others more productive. Key example: By writing an engaging story, you make the people managing the printing presses more productive since it lets them print higher value stories than before and thus sell better.

The author writing the story didn't take millions of dollars from the persons manning the presses, without the author the work done by the presses wouldn't be as valuable and those millions of dollars of value wouldn't have materialized.

The same goes for most of the people who got rich on their own, they realized a way to create more value using the same number of workers, so they get rich and it didn't involve taking from anyone, just giving more value to customers.

Re: Inequality Without Class

#102

Post by llamaimperative »

roenxi wrote: post #96
llamaimperative wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve snuck in my own argument though. Correct, you’d be sad if you reverted to those conditions. That is because you will have a comparison point, i.e. you are acknowledging that the entire issue is one of relative wealth and standard of living as compared to some other comparator. In your just-provided example, the comparison is to your modern life. In a world without time travel, people can and do compare themsel…

If your argument is that we should aim to raise absolute living standards, then I agree with it. If your argument involves accepting 1100s living standards as acceptable, I disagree with it. The conditions in the 1100s are only acceptable as far as they led to the improvements found in the present. We don't need to compare to them to usefully make judgements about the present. It is a baseline that everyone should ha…

Neither of those is my argument and it's quite obvious you're arguing in bad faith.

Here's my argument restated: "inequality is a far stronger contributor to unhappiness than absolute wealth."

This is an empirical fact, not a belief or a wish about the way the world ought to work, and it overrides your belief/wish that people "should" just care about absolute living standards.

You said, "there is no reason to believe that one person being insanely well off makes someone else worse off." This is quite literally incorrect. This has been studied. There is plenty of reason -- i.e. empirical evidence -- to believe exactly that.

Here's a simple question: was every person in the 1100s woefully depressed/anxious/angry to a far greater degree than any modern first-worlder dissatisfied with their station in life?

If no, then your premise is disproven. People's happiness and satisfaction are not determined by their absolute standard of living (regardless of whether you think they should be).

Re: Inequality Without Class

#103

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #6
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather live in a world with a 10x Musk and no homeless people than a more equal world like the current one but with no billionaires. It would be nice if those were the only two options.

It isn’t very charitable if you to purposefully misread an obvious rhetorical device. It made perfect sense to me. One POV is you’re proving the point: people feel much more strongly about exacting vengeance against antagonist celebrities than helping people generally. They’ll of course say the opposite in worthless Internet comments.

> purposefully misread

You may want to follow your own advice in reading my first response. People feel strongly about inequality period. It's well established social fact that people's happiness and stress are tied to relative measure of success/status/access to resources etc. It also historically true that greater inequality leads to social instability. Partly because of the first point, but mostly because this top cadre of people are over-powered and will, human nature being what it is, use that power to exploit those with the least power until we're back to a point where there are a whole bunch of very poor people struggling to survive.

So it may be nice to think there could be an option of having supersized inequality (e.g. a bunch of 10x Elons) AND have everyone above the poverty line but the fundamentals of people and society mean that super-inequality is simply incapable with a state in which all of worlds poorest can thrive.

Re: Inequality Without Class

#104

Post by slothtrop »

dventimi wrote: post #100
Manuel_D wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire world lived in those conditions a couple hundred years ago, now it's a handful of countries experiencing that level of deprivation. That's huge progress!

Not for the people living in those conditions, it isn't.

I'm sure evaporating Musk' wealth will fix that.

Re: Inequality Without Class

#106

Post by slothtrop »

dventimi wrote: post #72
Manuel_D wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, poverty does not create wealth. The wealthiest people tend to come from affluent countries with low poverty. This comment is prototypical of a zero-sum mindset.

> The wealthiest people tend to come from affluent countries with low poverty. How do you think the less-affluent countries became that way? By enriching the affluent countries, that's how.

The poorest countries trade the least with the rest of the world.

Re: Inequality Without Class

#107

Post by slothtrop »

dventimi wrote: post #80
knome wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less affluent is the default state of things. It doesn't require a conspiracy or domineering other to create it. You can argue the more affluent countries didn't help the less affluent ones enough. But there is literally billions in aid that goes from affluent to less affluent countries every year. Unfortunately, aid is a short term fix for problems. The only real way to help them is to properly invest in them, which…

> Less affluent is the default state of things. No it isn't. > It doesn't require a conspiracy or domineering other to create it. I never said anything about a conspiracy. > You can argue the more affluent countries didn't help the less affluent ones enough. But there is literally billions in aid that goes from affluent to less affluent countries every year. I suspect the less affluent countries wouldn't object to le…

> No it isn't.

What, you think these places are a shining beacon the moment they stop exporting a single resource?

Re: Inequality Without Class

#109

Post by dventimi »

refurb wrote: post #53
dventimi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it created homeless people in San Francisco.

Considering Tesla doesn’t have offices in SF you’re going to have to explain that one. Can you do it without absolving others, like the city, of their responsibility to make sure housing gets built?

> Can you do it without absolving others, like the city, of their responsibility to make sure housing gets built?

Why would I do that? I never said that tech is the only cause of homelessness. Outcomes can result from multiple causal factors, after all.

Re: Inequality Without Class

#110

Post by dventimi »

slothtrop wrote: post #104
dventimi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for the people living in those conditions, it isn't.

I'm sure evaporating Musk' wealth will fix that.

I'm not. It wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't help much, either. Evaporate the wealth of about 400 other people, then go after the next level of 4000 and then the next 40000 and then we'd be getting somewhere.
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