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Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

blog.rongarret.info

111–120 of 242 posts

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you post your address? I'll bet you have a lot of stuff that other people could use, and since you don't believe in property, you surely won't have any objections to them taking it.

Wow, you sure did destroy that straw man over there. Now, do you want to try engaging with the actual argument (property is a useful legal fiction, not an inherent moral right)?

Hobbes's thesis is ridiculous, and has been refuted at great length by many over the centuries. I see no need to go over well-trodden ground yet again, but here are a couple of points:

If you accept his arguments, you're basically advocating a dictatorship (or his era's equivalent, a king ruling by "divine right").

For another, his notion that humans are motivated purely by ego and self-aggrandizement is demonstrably wrong.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#112

If I could give away all my hn points and apply them as up-votes to this, I would. The op explains very succinctly the problem in this quote: > what is happening is that the ultra-wealthy are using their disposable income to buy political influence, then using that influence to get laws passed that allow them to collect rents. My primary beef with American politics is the "solutions" are always in the form of bandaid…

Interesting perspective. I wonder how much "cronyism" costs. It is a problem, but how big? Sort of the issue is that their is a systemic change taking place globally and it moves at a compounding rate. Most governments on a micro scale, are inefficient snd comprised of largely unaccountable people. They make (benevolent/naive view) decisions but are ill equipped with the skills to make the proper ones or (cynical) in…

>Cable is being challenged.

cable tv is being replaced by internet service through the same provider, with the fiber optic deployments being limited by legislation lobbied for by the original cable tv providers.

>The monetary system is being challenged.

Total BTC is about 4 billion usd, much smaller than most nations currency circulation.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#113
I think one of the biggest problems that we have today is that intelligent, hard-working people are the poorest they've ever been.

In the past, if you studied and worked really hard, you would usually achieve something. Today you can study and work very hard for a very long time and still end up with nothing.

Being smart or trying hard has very little value, it's all about who you know and what assets you own. Today, most people are just living off of their assets. Assets which they received as a result of a lot of luck and perhaps a bit of hard work.

Instead of the government stepping in to protect the people - The government is facilitating this inequality by allowing corporations to carry-out mutually-beneficial deals with one another at the expense of regular people.

People are being enslaved; not just less-educated people, but also highly educated people (who can actually see/understand what is happening).

I think we have a new economic class in our society, the 'highly educated lower class'.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#114
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the hate against Walmart. It only has a profit margin of 3.12% [1] and return on assets of 7.69%. Now I suppose you could argue that all the profits are hidden away somewhere, but that sounds like an unfalsifiable statement. It certainly would be illegal to hide assets from shareholders. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT

You're talking to someone who has spent most of his life in the Fortune 50 - working with executives who routinely hide the bulk of their wealth from any accounting. These techniques have been widely discussed in the press (if you look). So I must assume that you have, for philosophical reasons, chosen to disbelieve that the rich hide their wealth. Edit: Not sure why I was downvoted. But I was in the room as we reass…

There is IRS accounting and GAAP accounting. You try to reduce profit for the former and maximize for the former.

Off shoring subsidiary profit shaving is a fairly common practice for IRS accounting. But all the profit stays on the corporate parents books in one way or another (they own the subsidiary). The point isn't to make the executives rich, but to make the shareholders richer by avoiding taxes.

Paying people in undervalued stock is common, but "off the books" sounds illegal. I don't know what that means.

Also most companies would never sell shares of it's subsidiaries. They like having total control of the subsidiary.

Big 4 firms wouldn't fuck over shareholders to get executives rich. Executives are small fish compared to the sorts of institutional investors who own F50 companies.

It's the Big 4 instead of the Big 5 because Arther Anderson got caught cooking Enron's books. It destroyed the firm. They aren't going to risk their entire business for some Walmart execs worth a couple million dollars.

F50 executives aren't the people who actually own the world. They are people who work for the people who own the world. If the executives are stealing, it's not something that is accepted. If found they'd be totally fucked.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you sure did destroy that straw man over there. Now, do you want to try engaging with the actual argument (property is a useful legal fiction, not an inherent moral right)?

Hobbes's thesis is ridiculous, and has been refuted at great length by many over the centuries. I see no need to go over well-trodden ground yet again, but here are a couple of points: If you accept his arguments, you're basically advocating a dictatorship (or his era's equivalent, a king ruling by "divine right"). For another, his notion that humans are motivated purely by ego and self-aggrandizement is demonstrably…

Let's unpack that just a little bit more.

Posit a "desert island" scenario in which an adult is marooned with a small child. Assume that rescue is impossible (or at least wildly unlikely). No legal repercussions to worry about.

The child has collected some fruit, clams, or whatnot.

The adult is hungry.

In this situation, a Hobbes person would simply take the food from the child.

While there certainly are some real people who would do that, most of us would not. They would prefer to collect their own fruit and clams rather than take them from the child by force.

Even if there weren't enough food to go around, many would give the food to the child and choose to go without themselves.

As with many political theories, the Hobbes model says rather more about its originator than it does about people in general.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#116
post #10

Mr. Garret quotes Sanders: > The reality is that for the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class has rigged the rules to redistribute wealth and income to the wealthiest and most powerful people of this country. I am rather puzzled that this idea gets so much traction. Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart a…

> Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart and Amazon?

We're talking about corruption and you're listing companies best known for getting where they are through aggressive free market competition. Can't we come up with some better examples than that?

AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG, Monsanto, Elsevier, Microsoft, Sony, Pfizer, Halliburton, Exxon, Lockheed Martin.

And it isn't that some startup would otherwise show up and dethrone Exxon as the largest oil company in America, it's that Exxon lobbies to make sure it gets a fat stack of cash from Uncle Sam for oil exploration while fighting against tax credits for electric cars. It's that Elsevier lobbies to have taxpayer-funded research behind a paywall.

These things put money in the pockets of the companies doing the lobbying at the expense of all the rest of us.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#117
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me years to realize that economics isn't physics - and it isn't ruled by physics-like laws. Instead, economics is governed by laws created by our society. And what we think of as "free market" is really just norms of trade which are created by our society. There is no reason why the bulk of the billions taken-in by WalMart should go to the Walton family while their employees live on food-stamps - that is just…

Zizek phrased it kind of nicely once, in a way that stuck with me. He probably borrowed from somewhere, and I'll continue to lossily reproduce whatever the sentiment was, but it goes something like this. How is it possible that we are completely and utterly optimistic about breaking all sorts of physical barriers, like landing on Mars, and reusing rockets, and communicating worldwide via little handheld microcomputer…

Here's the explanation for this phenomenon: the former is an example of man versus nature, whereas the latter is man versus man. We're rational animals, so we can try to use our intellect to overcome the insurmountable physical odds of living in an otherwise uncaring universe. However, when we're pitted against each other, we have no such luck.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#118
post #10

Mr. Garret quotes Sanders: > The reality is that for the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class has rigged the rules to redistribute wealth and income to the wealthiest and most powerful people of this country. I am rather puzzled that this idea gets so much traction. Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart a…

>Do people really believe that it's only because of "rigged" rules that big employers are downsizing and shipping production overseas? Well yes, of course. If the rules weren't rigged, companies would be downsizing to replace humans with machine-labor.

What rules prevent you from replacing humans with machine labor?

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#119
post #10

Mr. Garret quotes Sanders: > The reality is that for the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class has rigged the rules to redistribute wealth and income to the wealthiest and most powerful people of this country. I am rather puzzled that this idea gets so much traction. Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart a…

> Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart and Amazon?

There's at least one.

Mom and pop can easily compete with Wal-Mart and Amazon if there was a level playing field. You just don't understand how twisted the playing field is because you have zero experience with retail and logistics.

The big boys get tax subsidies when they move in, they get concessions from local governments, they get favorable treatment at the border with customs, etc. and that's just on the surface. They get huge discounts from UPS for infrastructure build-outs, but then UPS again gets subsidized through the roof in the same ways Amazon is directly. So on and so forth.

Mom and pop can get the same prices out of China, it has nothing to do with scale. After you're ordering a container worth of stuff, you're not going to reduce the price of whatever you're selling by buying more. That's why Amazon doesn't manufacture much and relies on the Mom and Pop to do that sort of thing, while still kicking Wal-Mart's ass.

As far as Mom and Pop vs Amazon ... Amazon wouldn't allow them to sell on their platform if they weren't a threat. But they do and they are. There's a reason eBay is a multi-billion dollar company and has been for a while.

Re: Income inequality is not the problem, it's a symptom

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hobbes's thesis is ridiculous, and has been refuted at great length by many over the centuries. I see no need to go over well-trodden ground yet again, but here are a couple of points: If you accept his arguments, you're basically advocating a dictatorship (or his era's equivalent, a king ruling by "divine right"). For another, his notion that humans are motivated purely by ego and self-aggrandizement is demonstrably…

Let's unpack that just a little bit more. Posit a "desert island" scenario in which an adult is marooned with a small child. Assume that rescue is impossible (or at least wildly unlikely). No legal repercussions to worry about. The child has collected some fruit, clams, or whatnot. The adult is hungry. In this situation, a Hobbes person would simply take the food from the child. While there certainly are some real pe…

Remember that Hobbes was writing at a time when philosophers liked to consider a "state of nature" -- the behavior of people before organized society, government, etc., come into being.

Many of these philosophers, including John Locke (who Jefferson cribbed heavily from when writing the US Declaration of Independence), wrote as if the morals of Enlightenment-era westerners would magically naturally exist in people living in such a "state of nature", and simply took them for granted.

Hobbes pointed out that this was balderdash. Our entire conception of propriety, of right and wrong, of what is or isn't acceptable, comes not from some natural moral law engraved into our hearts or deduced in an ideal pre-society state of pure reason, but rather is inculcated into us by the culture in which we live. So Hobbes dismissed the idea that people would be respectful and helpful in the "state of nature" and pointed out that, since that stuff only comes into being later with organized society, none of it would exist at that point. Hence the war of all against all.

Which is where your desert-island analogy, and most other attempts to tear down Hobbes' state of nature, fall apart: your stranded people come in with experience of an organized culture which taught a particular set of morals and norms. One of those norms is that the adult should go hungry to let the child eat, but there is no guarantee that some natural moral law written in the adult's heart would have produced the same outcome absent years of indoctrination in a particular culture's moral system (and in fact, in actual nature we can find examples of animal species where adults will kill and even eat young of their own species).

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