41–50 of 223 posts
I would note that there are centuries of political theory written on this topic with a famous document written in 1848. Unfortunately, most of this theory concludes that class war is required to create an equal society.
The study sounds like a crock of horseshit: "In this model, we assume that a large population of individuals comprises two distinct identity groups. These identities are assumed fixed, and thus correspond to a fixed feature of identity such as race, religious heritage, or socioeconomic background. Although such identities are fixed in the model, the salience of the identity, and therefore its impact on behavior, vari…
I think you're coming at the paper from a very particular angle. This is fundamentally a mathematical simulation, so it's bound to be simplified. Assuming fixed identities is not completely unreasonable, given that affective and ideological polarization in the US has been increasing over decades. Yes some people switch, but not as many as you may think.
Worth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages ), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's…
It sounds nice, these people have too much and these have too little, let’s optimise.
But redistribution via taxes imho leads to politicians having larger budgets for scoring political goals. And anyway how is it meant to work?
If you equalise assets, you’ll find wealth drifting away from it again, as some eat through their assets and some invest/save. It’s a known effect that lottery winners often end up in poverty, having quit their jobs and spent all the money rather quickly.
If you do a Robin Hood tax, how do you distinguish between good/poor standing in life due to starting point vs work input? I’d argue someone who had an unlucky start to life has a different entitlement to support than someone who didn’t but can’t be asked. It’s ok if people don’t want to work harder and earn more, but why should I fund it? I feel very different about the opposite case, people who through bad luck can’t make way forward in life.
My personal answer, and seemingly not so popular, is education, at all stages. Poor people send their kids to poor schools that don’t give their kids enough skills to make it in life. Fund these schools, through taxes, so that every child gets a stab at a good education. Provide professional courses for adults, financial support to those who want to upskill. Maybe do state sponsored grants so that lower/middle class people can try becoming entrepreneurs: a high risk & high reward move otherwise.
Im not against redistribution per se, i just havent seen that as an actual equaliser, just an article of faith.
There are some very egalitarian countries (Nordics come to mind) where tax redistribution is part of the picture, but it seems to me it is just a part of a much bigger picture.
As a counterpoint, Poland is on a massive redistribution spending spree right now and it’s never been as polarised as it is now. Because, guess what, the redistribution is a hugely polarising matter (among other things).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe it. I think it's woo. There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. I'm open to being proven wrong, but I think this is another social science fad, another victim of academia's ideological blinkers and confirmation bias avalanche. It'll be in and out, just like how eggs and wine and chocolate are good for you on Tuesday and bad for you again by Thursday. EDIT: Yes…
> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. You would think so, but I've read several articles that suggest this isn't the case. One example that comes to mind is that in some communities kids experience social stress/bullying if their SMS bubbles aren't blue (because it implies you are too poor to afford an iPhone and can only afford a "lesser" Android): https://www.wsj.com/…
Yes can confirm, in the USSR we had no political polarization. Everyone was always satisfied with the ruling party all the time. It was great joy.
Also, at least for East Germany - no idea how it was in Russia - when they showed the houses of the powerful (Wandlitz - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldsiedlung - You can google for some images of the houses and facilities) even back then in 1990 when I saw it on TV I thought it wasn't really much. Even a middle-middle class American or West German lived better.
The differences were not as big as with billionaires in the mix. It wasn't like in some African dictatorships where the top really had so much more. The GDR elite lived better, but far from extreme luxury as far as I could see after the reunification. I felt zero envy after I saw it even retroactively, I had already seen much better in average West German houses that I had visited by then.
This is how the last head of state of the GDR before the events of fall 1989, Erich Honecker, lived from 1960-1989: https://bmg-images.imgix.net/2021/12/04/58cb9e33-390f-4bf5-a... (the back of the house - the front is even more boring)
Also, again speaking for East Germany (I was 17 when the wall came down and participated in some of the events), I don't think the term "polarized" applies. I mean, we even had am entirely peaceful transition even though one party had all the weapons and the courts and the ability to use them. Still, they were not crazy and/or angry enough. and actually opened the wall instead without much fanfare.
Not sure what would happen with an actually polarized situation, like between some of the camps in the US, if one side had both the means and the legality (full control of police and courts to do as they wanted) in a situation where they would have to give all of that up.
In East Germany We didn't even have anyone drive a car into protesters or anything. That kind of hate between the people just wasn't there.
Was it in the USSR?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're coming at the paper from a very particular angle. This is fundamentally a mathematical simulation, so it's bound to be simplified. Assuming fixed identities is not completely unreasonable, given that affective and ideological polarization in the US has been increasing over decades. Yes some people switch, but not as many as you may think.
Complex human thought processes cannot be modeled by a simplified mathematical model
But simple human behavior can often be modeled by a simplified mathematical model :)
My two favorite quotes on the subject are of course George Box:
> all models are wrong, but some are useful
And Avery Pennarun:
> almost everything produced by ML could have been produced, more cheaply, using a very dumb heuristic you coded up by hand, because mostly the ML is trained by feeding it examples of what humans did while following a very dumb heuristic.
Yes can confirm, in the USSR we had no political polarization. Everyone was always satisfied with the ruling party all the time. It was great joy.
In practice the USSR was an extremely unequal society in terms of wealth distribution. Growing awareness of the enormous gulf in the standard of living and political power between the nomenklatura and the quasi-enslaved contributed substantially to its collapse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say "wanted to do for over a century" yet "the left" has been reducing inequality for several centuries now, abolishing monarchy, aristocrary, slavery and such, introducing voting and democracy and human rights and all that kind of thing. People seem to generally like it.
Some of the earliest efforts to abolish slavery came from Catholicism, especially Catholic Spain and Portugal. Not really sure how the left can take credit for that, but whatever floats your boat
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe it. I think it's woo. There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. I'm open to being proven wrong, but I think this is another social science fad, another victim of academia's ideological blinkers and confirmation bias avalanche. It'll be in and out, just like how eggs and wine and chocolate are good for you on Tuesday and bad for you again by Thursday. EDIT: Yes…
> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. You would think so, but I've read several articles that suggest this isn't the case. One example that comes to mind is that in some communities kids experience social stress/bullying if their SMS bubbles aren't blue (because it implies you are too poor to afford an iPhone and can only afford a "lesser" Android): https://www.wsj.com/…
I don't think it's a hard question.
