Stanford: A grim correlation between violence and inequality

Stanford: A grim correlation between violence and inequality
news.stanford.edu

EDIT: I may have commented too quickly. Clearly this is a professor and not Stanford. It's hard to read "violence is necessary" as anything other than a call for violence though.

However, if the claim is that violence is necessary for redistribution of wealth which the article claims it seems disingenuous to choose “revolutionary” violence as the way you see it but not all of the other. It’s a rose colored glasses view that would say “this violence was okay but that violence over there was not.”

The ultimate issue is that people continue to use the metric of inequality where the poorest are compared to the wealthiest when it is a gamed metric from the start. It only exists for political reasons and is overall nonsensical. Comparing poor to middle class numbers is a much better indicator of overall inequality since it is a better reflection of general standard of living for the bulk of the population and not some idea that going from $10 to $15 an hour will suddenly make a person more comparable to Jeff Bezos. It’s a political statistic that should be outright ignored in favor of something more useful.

First, "violence has been necessary to ensure the redistribution of wealth" is generally the violence of revolutions and empire collapses, not wars and empire building;

Second, "A is neccessary to get B" does not imply "A is neccesary", you can't make that simplification. It can (and often does) mean "we won't or shouldn't get B, because these ends don't justify the neccessary means".

Third, this does not imply "justifying" anything, it's a factual observation about events in the past, not a value judgement. "is" vs "ought". Blaming the messenger is counterproductive; if you think that the statement is not true (I think it's not entirely solid, but need more review before asserting anything strongly), then it's appropriate to discuss why it's not true, but the fact that the conclusion is unpleasant and yucky does not discredit the argument in any way.

Fourth, a Stanford professor writing a book does not imply any endorsement by Stanford, making this attribution is not appropriate (the HN headline also makes this attribution, but the original article does not) - professors are supposed to have academic freedom and publish their individual opinions, no matter what the instutition in aggregate thinks.

Check out this short article for an idea how big that gap between poor and 'normal' and the 1% now is:

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...

Likely we will see a trillionaire within the next two decades or so. Do we actually need such a person? Do we actually need people with 10's of billions?