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> We could evolve our economic systems to redistribute obscene wealth and build a more egalitarian society. There is not enough of what everyone wants. There's

> We could evolve our economic systems to redistribute obscene wealth and build a more egalitarian society. There is not enough of what everyone wants. There's no way to get it. Let's take a trivial example. There are a number of companies out there making smartphones. What if everyone wanted iPhones? There may be enough iPhones out there to give one to everyone in, say, New York City. There is not enough, and there will never be enough iPhones to give to everyone in the entire world. If you're just talking about money, then that's even worse. If you redistributed all the wealth in the entire world among 7 billion people, every person in the whole world would get a check for the princely sum of $8.57. (Obtained by dividing the entire world's money supply, found on Google, by 7 billion, roughly how many people there are in the world right now) Meanwhile every single organization, every single company doing anything useful for the world has been completely decapitalized. There simply isn't enough wealth in the world. And making everyone equal is the best way I can think of to ensure that no one will ever have the ability to make more wealth. Like it or not, we're stuck with inequality for the foreseeable future. Either people are going to be unequal in purchasing power terms, or in the fact that production capacities for all possible luxuries people might want are not and will never be world-scale. You can't give everyone on the planet a NYC penthouse. And until you do, people will complain about inequality. We need another way of thinking about the problems of the world than that some people have lots and lots of things that other people don't.

evanpw 11y ago
> every person in the whole world would get a check for the princely sum of $8.57 This number is way off. That would mean there are only $60B in the entire world, whereas the Fed was until recently creating $85B per month to buy bonds. Total worldwide wealth is around $241 trillion, which is $34k / person (which I don't think necessarily contradicts your actual point).
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  The number I found was $60T, I used the money supply as I don't think that the rest of the wealth will actually be worth anything once all the cash is distributed. You're right though, I missed a few zeros, my figure comes out to $8571.42. Either way, nobody's really better off. Sure, we'd all have enough to build a mud hut, but the damage done to the world order would far outweigh any improvements.
  - jljljl 11y ago
    USD 16,100 once you account for PPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
    - evanpw 11y ago
      GDP (or GWP) is a flow: how much stuff we produce each year. Wealth is a stock: how much total stuff we've already produced and not consumed.
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        Yes, you can't redistribute flows politically in any kind of a meaningful fashion. When you do that it's called a planned economy, and is generally inferior at raising living standards to market economies.
        evanpw 11y ago
        I'm sympathetic to your ideas, but you're really overstating your case here. Redistributing income is probably the primary activity of governments in rich countries today. Even in the US, transfer payments are about 14% of GDP: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2Qi3 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2Qi3
      - jljljl 11y ago
        Oops, misread the original post.
  - jljljl 11y ago
    USD 16,100 once you account for PPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
dandare 11y ago
There is a mistake in your calculation - the nominal DGP of the world is around $77.609 trillion which is $10,857 per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy. Rich people really own the majority of wealth and the rest really is the 99% (Please note I am not saying that communism or idiocracy is a solution)
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I don't think GDP is the right number to use here. If you redistribute wealth, then you're greatly affecting the ability of individuals and businesses to produce and sell more things, meaning you're destroying GDP by redistributing liquid capital. You can't redistribute non-liquid capital. What are you going to do, cut train cars into redistributable pieces? Rich people owning the majority of the wealth is a tautology. If they didn't, then they wouldn't be rich.
  - dandare 11y ago
    I disagree with calling the statement tautology. On the contrary. Imagine a scenario where 99 people own 1$ each and 1 person own 10$. The richest person does not own nowhere near majority of the wealth. This is how OP understood the situation, while the current situation is more like 99 people owning 1$each while 1 person owns 110$. Do you see my point?
marcosdumay 11y ago
> There is not enough of what everyone wants. Well, that's right... > What if everyone wanted iPhones? There may be enough iPhones out there to give one to everyone in, say, New York City. But that's not. Bad example. iPhone production can increase as much as demand asks for. If we let anybody build one, there'll easily be an iPhone for everybody that wants one. Yet, there are few islands, beachfront properties, waterfalls... The things not available for everybody fall mainly on the non-renewable natural resources, with some slowly renewable ones at the borderline. We can't make capitalism go away. At least not until humanity changes completely into something that craves what's available at space (mostly energy), instead of what's available at Earth.
- clord 11y ago
  > iPhone production can increase as much as demand asks for. If we let anybody build one, there'll easily be an iPhone for everybody that wants one. What? This statement makes no sense. Here, let me demonstrate by quoting an ancient islander who likes to build statues: > Tree production can increase as much as demand asks for. If we let anybody grow one, there'll easily be a Tree for everybody that wants to cut one down. It's absurd! and exactly the thinking that will lead to people cutting down the last tree. iPhones depend on resources just as much as those trees, if not more.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    But replicators are just around the corner!
rorykoehler 11y ago
I never said make everyone equal. I said redistribute obscene wealth. There is a whole greyscale between black and white.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Where does that get us? Some small number of people get more wealth. Redistribution is not a solution for anything, all it does is destroy stuff. I'm all for the expansion of classes that aren't ultra-rich and ultra-poor. But that process is already happening as fast as it really can happen, it's what globalization is if you can look at it with a rational eye. Through capitalism and markets. Big political solutions are sledgehammers that tend to only wreck things.
  - rorykoehler 11y ago
    Globalization is a big political solution that favours only the ultra-wealthy. Ensuring people have purchasing power is the only way to ensure the economy doesn't become a zero-sum game. The way things are going, companies with only a handful of employees can be worth billions. Where does that leave the rest of us?
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      > Ensuring people have purchasing power is the only way to ensure the economy doesn't become a zero-sum game. How are you going to do this? You can't just print money and give it to them. If you do that, then you're either just creating another, tiny, class of people, or if you do it for everyone, then you're just devaluing your currency through mass inflation. If you take it from people that do have it, then you either have a huge management problem, how are you going to decide which wealth is worth redistributing and which is worth leaving alone, or you'll have mass chaos. > The way things are going, companies with only a handful of employees can be worth billions. That's just, like, your opinion man. Mine is that the living standards of the poor have markedly improved in the last 50 years and continue to improve. Purchasing power is only one thing. There's access to food, political stability, access to a social ladder. All of these things are more important than how many dollars are in their pocket. Even the most autocratic nations have in the past few years had to open up.

evanpw 11y ago

> every person in the whole world would get a check for the princely sum of $8.57 This number is way off. That would mean there are only $60B in the entire world, whereas the Fed was until recently creating $85B per month to buy bonds. Total worldwide wealth is around $241 trillion, which is $34k / person (which I don't think necessarily contradicts your actual point).

vinceguidry 11y ago
The number I found was $60T, I used the money supply as I don't think that the rest of the wealth will actually be worth anything once all the cash is distributed. You're right though, I missed a few zeros, my figure comes out to $8571.42. Either way, nobody's really better off. Sure, we'd all have enough to build a mud hut, but the damage done to the world order would far outweigh any improvements.
- jljljl 11y ago
  USD 16,100 once you account for PPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
  - evanpw 11y ago
    GDP (or GWP) is a flow: how much stuff we produce each year. Wealth is a stock: how much total stuff we've already produced and not consumed.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      Yes, you can't redistribute flows politically in any kind of a meaningful fashion. When you do that it's called a planned economy, and is generally inferior at raising living standards to market economies.
      - evanpw 11y ago
        I'm sympathetic to your ideas, but you're really overstating your case here. Redistributing income is probably the primary activity of governments in rich countries today. Even in the US, transfer payments are about 14% of GDP: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2Qi3 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=2Qi3
    - jljljl 11y ago
      Oops, misread the original post.
- jljljl 11y ago
  USD 16,100 once you account for PPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

dandare 11y ago

There is a mistake in your calculation - the nominal DGP of the world is around $77.609 trillion which is $10,857 per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy. Rich people really own the majority of wealth and the rest really is the 99% (Please note I am not saying that communism or idiocracy is a solution)

vinceguidry 11y ago
I don't think GDP is the right number to use here. If you redistribute wealth, then you're greatly affecting the ability of individuals and businesses to produce and sell more things, meaning you're destroying GDP by redistributing liquid capital. You can't redistribute non-liquid capital. What are you going to do, cut train cars into redistributable pieces? Rich people owning the majority of the wealth is a tautology. If they didn't, then they wouldn't be rich.
- dandare 11y ago
  I disagree with calling the statement tautology. On the contrary. Imagine a scenario where 99 people own 1$ each and 1 person own 10$. The richest person does not own nowhere near majority of the wealth. This is how OP understood the situation, while the current situation is more like 99 people owning 1$each while 1 person owns 110$. Do you see my point?

marcosdumay 11y ago

> There is not enough of what everyone wants. Well, that's right... > What if everyone wanted iPhones? There may be enough iPhones out there to give one to everyone in, say, New York City. But that's not. Bad example. iPhone production can increase as much as demand asks for. If we let anybody build one, there'll easily be an iPhone for everybody that wants one. Yet, there are few islands, beachfront properties, waterfalls... The things not available for everybody fall mainly on the non-renewable natural resources, with some slowly renewable ones at the borderline. We can't make capitalism go away. At least not until humanity changes completely into something that craves what's available at space (mostly energy), instead of what's available at Earth.

clord 11y ago
> iPhone production can increase as much as demand asks for. If we let anybody build one, there'll easily be an iPhone for everybody that wants one. What? This statement makes no sense. Here, let me demonstrate by quoting an ancient islander who likes to build statues: > Tree production can increase as much as demand asks for. If we let anybody grow one, there'll easily be a Tree for everybody that wants to cut one down. It's absurd! and exactly the thinking that will lead to people cutting down the last tree. iPhones depend on resources just as much as those trees, if not more.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  But replicators are just around the corner!

rorykoehler 11y ago

I never said make everyone equal. I said redistribute obscene wealth. There is a whole greyscale between black and white.

vinceguidry 11y ago
Where does that get us? Some small number of people get more wealth. Redistribution is not a solution for anything, all it does is destroy stuff. I'm all for the expansion of classes that aren't ultra-rich and ultra-poor. But that process is already happening as fast as it really can happen, it's what globalization is if you can look at it with a rational eye. Through capitalism and markets. Big political solutions are sledgehammers that tend to only wreck things.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  Globalization is a big political solution that favours only the ultra-wealthy. Ensuring people have purchasing power is the only way to ensure the economy doesn't become a zero-sum game. The way things are going, companies with only a handful of employees can be worth billions. Where does that leave the rest of us?
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    > Ensuring people have purchasing power is the only way to ensure the economy doesn't become a zero-sum game. How are you going to do this? You can't just print money and give it to them. If you do that, then you're either just creating another, tiny, class of people, or if you do it for everyone, then you're just devaluing your currency through mass inflation. If you take it from people that do have it, then you either have a huge management problem, how are you going to decide which wealth is worth redistributing and which is worth leaving alone, or you'll have mass chaos. > The way things are going, companies with only a handful of employees can be worth billions. That's just, like, your opinion man. Mine is that the living standards of the poor have markedly improved in the last 50 years and continue to improve. Purchasing power is only one thing. There's access to food, political stability, access to a social ladder. All of these things are more important than how many dollars are in their pocket. Even the most autocratic nations have in the past few years had to open up.