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Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

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Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#61

Post by jeffdavis »

kyleschiller wrote: post #35
jeffdavis wrote: post #20

Just like when people are trying to sell you something, they call it an "investment"; people trying to implement government spending programs call it "spreading opportunity". Some government programs really do spread opportunity, but that requires close examination and criticism; I don't just buy into it because a politician calls it opportunity. Is college an opportunity? It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in…

Yeah, probably one of the strongest arguments for both Progressive Tax and Basic Income is that the current system is deeply broken, and despite doing a lot of good, carries a solid amount of waste along the way. I do think it's important to remember that a lot of mess of social spending programs happened, at some point, for good reason. You can give everyone $12k/year, but it won't take long for people in SF to ask…

It's not just that it creates financial waste. Phony opportunities are dead ends that take other opportunities off the table.

If you have only a few plausible opportunities, you are likely to make them count. If you have a hundred but 50 are phony, you will waste your time, feel entitled to results (hey, I went to college, I deserve a good job!), and become discouraged.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#62

Post by AndrewKemendo »

ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others.

Why can't you both be right? In my experience I've seen a lot of lucky failures because they had no work ethic. I've also seen a lot of hard working amazing people fail because they weren't lucky.

"Luck favors the prepared [mind]" is the perfect middle ground on your positions.

I'm willing to tolerate an amount of "unfairness" in people getting help they "don't deserve", while he finds this very offensive.

To be fair, you both are willing to tolerate unfairness, the difference is likely from where that unfairness originates.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#63

Post by bryanlarsen »

phkahler wrote: post #10

Progressive consumption tax is ridiculous. It requires your tax rate at the point of sale to be dependent on all your purchases to that point in time. That's just not practical. Or it may require every purchase you make to be recorded for tax-time when you then pay the taxes. Either way it requires the government to know every purchase you make, or at least the price. This is not something anyone should want.

There are three mechanisms for implementing a progressive consumption tax outlined here[1] and none of them involve keeping track of all purchases. I would imagine that Robert Frank also has a sane proposal.

1: https://www.cato.org/publications/cato-online-forum/move-pro...

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#64

Post by drawkbox »

jeffdavis wrote: post #20

Just like when people are trying to sell you something, they call it an "investment"; people trying to implement government spending programs call it "spreading opportunity". Some government programs really do spread opportunity, but that requires close examination and criticism; I don't just buy into it because a politician calls it opportunity. Is college an opportunity? It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in…

>> It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the college, the student, and the structure of the opportunity.

Agreed but that really is like an investment. Typical returns investors are looking for are 10x their investment. Investing in 10 companies 9 might lose money while one makes money and covers the rest. VC use this to spread risk and accept failure as part of some investment, so should spreading the opportunity and subsequent results of any plan. There are lessons in success and more lessons in failure which make them better, same with people in many cases.

With allowing people an opportunity to go to college who want to, you probably get 1 in 10 or even 1 in 100 that might end up bring more opportunity and economic benefits than all the others combined, just like investment in companies. If some part of their success was luck, luck is spread around more.

The problem is people focus on the failures and not the successes or the dim spots and not the bright ones, same thing happens when you talk about welfare, healthcare and others, we focus on the failures not the successes.

I guess it is a glass half full or glass half open sort of thing. I tend to think that people that get an opportunity that they might not have otherwise had, do very well or try to and have some responsibility to make good on that help. On the flipside, a bunch of entitled kids get the benefits and may not have the same drive to do good in life as they haven't seen the bad enough.

There might be 9 out of 10 opportunities squandered but just one has to be successful that can pay for the others and make the others worthwhile. It is good to criticize but also may not be something that is obvious in the short term regarding success rates.

Luck plays a factor into the outcomes quite heavily but lack of opportunity usually ends how we expect it, better to have some chance of improvement than none.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#65

Post by kahnpro »

phkahler wrote: post #21
matthewmacleod wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other approaches though – you could charge a sales tax for all purchases and institute a universal rebate, which would have the same effect with the addition that people underneath the spending threshold would have an effective negative sales tax rate.

That still requires keeping track of all purchases.

Why? You could just provide an scaling rebate based on income and average spending. Or a flat rebate for anyone under an income threshold.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#66

Post by lisper »

crdoconnor wrote: post #38
kyleschiller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding too Paul Graham, how much of what you're talking about is due to poverty more than inequality?

Poverty and inequality are two sides of the same coin. Massive inequality is driven not by productivity but by compounding debt and other forms of rent-seeking. This always spirals out of control eventually leading to poverty, default or both.

Absolutely right, but it's important to be aware of why it always spirals out of control: it's because part of people's decision making is based on their expectations about the future, and part of those expectations are the result of the societal rules that are in place at the time. So people get used to planning, for example, on the basis that they can expect an annualized 8% return from the market. It has been that way for decades, so why should it not continue to be that way? Well, the reason is that it cannot continue to be that way. An 8% return is not sustainable. Exponential growth is never sustainable in the long run. Even if we colonize the stars at the speed of light with 100% efficiency, that only allows quadratic growth in the long run.

So when we start to hit the limits of growth, one of two things can happen. Either everyone accepts that things are slowing down and agrees to accept less than they were expecting based on the exponential projections, or some people don't accept this and use their political power to change the rules so that they can continue to live according to their expectations, which necessarily comes at the expense of everyone else at that point.

To transition smoothly from a period of exponential growth back to a steady state, or even just sub-exponential growth, -- heck, even to exponential growth with a smaller exponent! -- requires a degree of cooperation that is very difficult to achieve in human societies.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#67

Post by kyleschiller »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #52
dv_dt wrote: post #23

I think this touches upon one of the biggest weaknesses of the current economic system. We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. Meritocracy somewhat exists but mostly to the extent that people can maximize the opportunity they've drawn as their lot in life. I like the idea of Basic Income, but it's a…

We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. We don't do anything. The nature of reality is that there is not equal distribution of [anything]. The universe is a dynamical system - portions of the system will through probability always get stuck at local/global minima.

Ok sure, it could be rephrased as

  we systematically fail to develop the full human capacity of millions of people
and make the same point.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#68

Post by chrishacken »

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think any one denies the role luck plays in one's success or not. However, to completely discard effort and determination is selling everyone short. I'm running a successful company partially because of "luck", I happened to start it at the perfect time, but also because I pour every ounce of money and time I have into it. My nights and weekends don't exist. Some people aren't willing to put in the time to turn luck into success.

Telling people that success is just a matter of luck will only reinforce the thoughts of unsuccessful people to believe they're "unlucky". You are able to make your own luck to an extent.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#69

Post by kyleschiller »

supremus_58 wrote: post #40
kyleschiller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding too Paul Graham, how much of what you're talking about is due to poverty more than inequality?

wouldn't poverty largely be a product of inequality?

In the current system, yes, properly implemented, UBI would end poverty in America while still allowing for massive inequality. It sets a floor, not a ceiling.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#70

Post by hx87 »

willholloway wrote: post #53
ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

The liberal view of this issue may have the virtue of being correct, but it's very counterproductive from the individual's standpoint. I know that the ideology espoused on sites such as dailykos.com were very detrimental to personal drive and success in my college years of 18-22. That ideology kept pounding home the idea of the unfairness of the economy, of the lower share of the pie allocated to labor vs capital and…

You're right if you assume that people don't work as hard when they're pessimistic. People (like me) who work harder when they are pessimistic, however, certainly benefitted from the liberal view.
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