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Is Inequality Inevitable?

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Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#461

Post by ahje »

tathougies wrote: post #308
Empact wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about measures like these, which granted, are only recorded back 100 years or so: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/demo/gini... https://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e201a5... https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mark-abdelnour/issues/abd-s-...

But in those times, relatively rich Americans were selling to extremely poor Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Inequality overall has gotten better, just the geography has shifted substantially so that previously homogeneously equitable places now have a more representative share of world inequality.

So increased inequality on a local level is good as long as the global average goes down? I thought the idea was to make _everyone's_ lives better.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#462

Post by ahje »

kjhkhkj wrote: post #298
autoexec wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can't think of any reasons outside of ethical arguments why it might be a good idea to make sure everyone has their basic needs met? Really? Have you spent very long trying to come up with one? Here's one to get you started: When a very small number of people have everything and a great many people have nothing, not even what they need to survive, those hungry desperate masses will have nothing to lose and ev…

It always comes down to violence and that argument makes me less sympathetic not more. I'm not interested in paying off what amounts to a rabid unproductive population for some hope of safety. Also, I'm not particularly scared of people that can't manage to find some success in the modern US either. So if you argument is that we should increase taxes so another Mao doesn't exist, I'd rather just kill Mao.

I get what you mean and I do sympathize somewhat.

The fact is, however, that modern society doesn't fit everyone. Since we won't allow people to withdraw from society that means we're actively forcing people to live a specific way of life that some simply cannot handle.

Simply putting more pressure on those groups will result in the forming of parallel societies and in the long run that means that those parallel societies will form a separate culture and try to secede. If we stop that there will be conflict. History tells us such conflict will be very bloody, no matter who ends up on top.

This is a cycle that Western Civilization has dealt with for thousands of years. Personally, I wouldn't mind trying to break it this time.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#463

Post by notahacker »

lordnacho wrote: post #234
notahacker wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

r>g is broadly equivalent to the ζ parameter in this model I don't find the model itself especially compelling as a broad model of the economy myself, though it's nicely written exposition of how variance can wipe people out and largely agrees with my biases. The fact that a curve with three arbitrarily-set parameters can be made to fit empirical Lorenz curves doesn't particularly impress me, and the concept of rich…

I don't see zero sum as so important as much as risk preference. Or you could call it risk necessity. The game can be positive sum, but if you're poor you have to play it a certain way that keeps you poor.

Agree with that, but that's better represented by modelling poor agents as systematically transferring small portions of their wealth to the rich rather than randomly losing or winning large portions of wealth.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#464

Post by vfc1 »

It's inevitable and a direct consequence of the labor system that we live in. The internet makes it worse but its not the problem of the internet, its a problem of the system.

In our labor system, a small number of individuals are by definition going to be payed, as employees, a small amount of the value that they add in order to make their boss wealthier.

Over time, the employees get paid a constant amount of money that they need to spend for living expenses, but the employer wealth will compound and accumulate over generations.

It's a system that comes directly from medieval serventry, designed to concentrate the wealth in the hands of the noble.

Take for example a large surface supermarket, with 100 employees making minimal wage. If those same persons would each own their small family shops and serve the same amount of customers, you would have 100 families well off making way more than minimal wage.

Serve those same customers through a supermarket, and most of the wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the supermarket owner, while the employees make only scraps.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#465

Post by lordnacho »

notahacker wrote: post #463
lordnacho wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see zero sum as so important as much as risk preference. Or you could call it risk necessity. The game can be positive sum, but if you're poor you have to play it a certain way that keeps you poor.

Agree with that, but that's better represented by modelling poor agents as systematically transferring small portions of their wealth to the rich rather than randomly losing or winning large portions of wealth.

But the randomness is what hides the transfer. Poor agents are forced to choose out of some set of bad outcomes. Some of them can win, but as a whole, no.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#466

Post by lordnacho »

viburnum wrote: post #285
lordnacho wrote: post #31

This is a lot more satisfying than just r > g, which although seeming to be well supported in a rather large book somehow is dissatisfying. Specifically, I was looking for some kind of agent model like what this author is presenting here. I've often thought about the "it's expensive to be poor" adage. What's interesting is he takes in this risk preference idea, in which you naturally expect the poor to have to be ced…

Sugarscape is probably what you want.

Yeah that's a good start, and pretty much where I started to think about this kind of thing. This seems like a much more developed version of it.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#467

Post by d0mine »

wuliwong wrote: post #230
SiVal wrote: post #193

There is a popular political perspective that rules on campus these days that treats wealth as something that just magically exists and is simply "redistributed" by one means or another like, say, a phase change in physics where no magnetism/charge/energy/etc. is ever created or consumed. I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition t…

I received a Ph.D. in physics in 2010, throughout my training, my anecdotal experience was that of an echo chamber. I didn't fully realize it until I left academia. Although, it was slowly becoming apparent as the years passed. My experience was of a relatively small and closed group of physicists who reaffirmed each other's assumption that they were at the absolute peak of intellectual thought. Most of the professor…

There is a crucial difference between physics and economic theories. Physics is a hard science. Physics works.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#468

Post by dorgo »

vfc1 wrote: post #464

It's inevitable and a direct consequence of the labor system that we live in. The internet makes it worse but its not the problem of the internet, its a problem of the system. In our labor system, a small number of individuals are by definition going to be payed, as employees, a small amount of the value that they add in order to make their boss wealthier. Over time, the employees get paid a constant amount of money…

>If those same persons would each own their small family shops and serve the same amount of customers

Prices would increase (no economies of scale). 100 persons would have to deal with 99 problems (accounting, supply, marketing, ...) they didn't have before. And risks and competition.

Most people don't want to deal with all those problems. Even if it pays better.

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#469

Post by coldtea »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #346
coldtea wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make it sound as though the economic pie is fixed and economics zero-sum. But that's clearly not the case, otherwise we'd still be living with stone age per-capita GDP (i.e., ~0). The "growing of the pie" is also a fairy tale though to mask the realities... For one, the "growing pie" still manages to give some people not just most of the pie, but also to live the majority with smaller (in absolute size) slices…

Basically, everybody is mooching off of prior inventors' work due to patent expiration. The point about higher rents, education, health costs, etc, is a miscalculation of inflation. There's a difference between two things: (1) the undesirability of a 1000x/2x split due to increased demand for the fixed supply of land and genius doctors, which means the 1000x/2x didn't properly account for inflation, and (2) the fact…

>The point about higher rents, education, health costs, etc, is a miscalculation of inflation. There's a difference between two things:

Yes. But both things hold, and will (2) is "nice to have", the (1) also actively declines quality of life and prospects for many people. But sure, they have better gadgets than in the 60s, so there's that.

>On the other hand, Haiti and the Dominican Republic have equal populations and a 10x income difference, and I'm not shedding a single tear over it.

And Mexico has a very unequal population (a few huge moguls and tons of poverty) and its quality of public infrastructure, infant mortality, and other metrics, US begins to descend to...

E.g.: "Using a combination of data from Blue Cross Blue Shield, the CDC, and prior health studies, the report predicts millennials will achieve the new triple threat of being sicker, broker, and dying younger than the previous generation, Gen X."

https://www.bcbs.com/sites/default/files/file-attachments/he...

And Switzerland is usually even richer GDP per capita and average wage than the US, and with much better infrastructure, service, and quality of life (e.g. it's much cleaner, less full of homeless people and crazes, rarer to get shot by a cop, and so on).

It's almost as if you can have more equality without Haitian results...

Re: Is Inequality Inevitable?

#470

Post by piokoch »

vannevar wrote: post #397
SiVal wrote: post #193

There is a popular political perspective that rules on campus these days that treats wealth as something that just magically exists and is simply "redistributed" by one means or another like, say, a phase change in physics where no magnetism/charge/energy/etc. is ever created or consumed. I waited for a point in their model where people actually produced wealth and consumed it, made something or ate it, in addition t…

It's not part of the model because, if you're studying how wealth gets distributed rather than how it is produced, it doesn't matter. I'm guessing that your disquiet at this notion comes from the possibility that everyone is creating their own wealth, and to some extent that is no doubt true. But if you start with the simplifying assumption that everyone's wealth creation ability is equal, and you just look at distri…

I am not sure we can ignore wealth creators, surely they want to have an impact on wealth distribution, I can't imagine sane model that would just ignore this factor.
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