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Excellent! Thank you for clarifying. It sounds like the concern is that some people hold a monopoly on power, such that good ideas don't compete on their merits

by Pyxl101 11y ago

Excellent! Thank you for clarifying. It sounds like the concern is that some people hold a monopoly on power, such that good ideas don't compete on their merits. Is that a good way of saying it? I ask because that problem does not seem to me to be directly related to income equality. In communist societies everyone had very similar income, and yet a small group had all the power and functioned as kingmakers in business. Or even outside communism, simple corruption: for example, until the 90s you needed a very hard-to-get license in order to start a business or do business at all in India (known as "license raj"). This stifled their business environment and innovation for decades. This type of problem still affects many countries today, especially corrupt ones. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj It seems to me that good ideas are capable of flourishing in the US without any gatekeepers getting in the way. It's easier than ever before to start a company. Why do you believe that good ideas aren't already competing effectively on merit? (Examples?) Take Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Uber, etc. Did these not win on merit? Is there a legislative barrier to you starting your own competitor to one of these services?

danhak 11y ago
> In communist societies everyone had very similar income... Again we're reverting to the straw man of 100% (or nearly) equal society. Our society must be unequal to some extent because capital is a reasonable and effective reward for figuring out how to best allocate resources. But extreme inequality prevents a large % of the population from fully developing, exploring and disseminating their talents, shutting them out of this virtuous cycle altogether. You bring up Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Uber as examples of companies that succeeded on their merits. All four of those companies were started by straight white men with upper middle class upbringings. Do you believe that's a coincidence? Or are there some "lost Zuckerbergs" out there who never had a chance to fully explore computers when they were kids? Is a family's ability to afford the latest technology a material advantage for the next Zuckerberg / Gates / Brin / Page / Kalanick? In your original example, who is going to invent the next great space tech? Probably the kid whose family is buying a space station.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  It's not a straw man. I'm not saying that any argument for income equality is tantamount to communism. I'm simply saying that you can have income equality and still lack a healthy business environment where ideas compete on merit. So the problem is whether ideas compete on merit, not income equality. Income equality is neither necessary nor sufficient for those other things. Regarding Brin, I don't think he has as privileged a background as you seem to believe. He had a pretty humble beginning, beginning with his birth in Soviet Russia (where his parents were discriminated against for being Jewish), after which he immigrated to USA at age 6: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin
  - danhak 11y ago
    > I'm simply saying that you can have income equality and still lack a healthy business environment where ideas compete on merit. And I don't dispute that at all. What I am saying is that society's prosperity is optimized somewhere between total equality and extreme inequality, and that we seem to be drifting further away from that point.
- bobby_9x 11y ago
  What you really need to look at is how did they grow up?? A household that values education?? Plenty of immigrants from early 20th century that came to the US now have successful kids/grandkids because they valued education. Computers are now cheap and you can get lots of free knowledge on the Internet and at the library (MIT has free classes). There are no excuses. We need to stop with the victim mentality if we are ever going to progress.
wstrange 11y ago
"In communist societies everyone had very similar income" I really don't think that was the case. In a practical sense, communist regimes were the extreme endgame of inequality. Those at the very top of the chain lived like kings, while those at the bottom starved.
- js8 11y ago
  > Those at the very top of the chain lived like kings, while those at the bottom starved. I don't think that was always the case, in particular, I doubt it was the case in Czechoslovakia. Being a member of UV KSC (board of directors of the Communist party, the central organ) had special benefits such as better access to health care, goods imported from the West and having an american-sized house, but they were quite modest compared to benefits of today's top American CEOs. And in fact, the best paid people out there were probably some popular singers, who had maybe 50x the average salary. Typical director of state enterprise had maybe 5-10x the average salary. At the bottom, people didn't starve even if they made trouble (that meant a prison sentence and a menial job). There are people who disagree with this assessment, but I have never seen a good evidence for the claim they would "live as kings". I agree there was inequality, but it wasn't so much monetary as it was in power and status. It was probably one of the reasons why there wasn't a bloody revolution. Everybody, even the top officials wanted a "better" system.

by Pyxl101 11y ago

danhak 11y ago

> In communist societies everyone had very similar income... Again we're reverting to the straw man of 100% (or nearly) equal society. Our society must be unequal to some extent because capital is a reasonable and effective reward for figuring out how to best allocate resources. But extreme inequality prevents a large % of the population from fully developing, exploring and disseminating their talents, shutting them out of this virtuous cycle altogether. You bring up Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Uber as examples of companies that succeeded on their merits. All four of those companies were started by straight white men with upper middle class upbringings. Do you believe that's a coincidence? Or are there some "lost Zuckerbergs" out there who never had a chance to fully explore computers when they were kids? Is a family's ability to afford the latest technology a material advantage for the next Zuckerberg / Gates / Brin / Page / Kalanick? In your original example, who is going to invent the next great space tech? Probably the kid whose family is buying a space station.

Pyxl101 11y ago
It's not a straw man. I'm not saying that any argument for income equality is tantamount to communism. I'm simply saying that you can have income equality and still lack a healthy business environment where ideas compete on merit. So the problem is whether ideas compete on merit, not income equality. Income equality is neither necessary nor sufficient for those other things. Regarding Brin, I don't think he has as privileged a background as you seem to believe. He had a pretty humble beginning, beginning with his birth in Soviet Russia (where his parents were discriminated against for being Jewish), after which he immigrated to USA at age 6: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin
- danhak 11y ago
  > I'm simply saying that you can have income equality and still lack a healthy business environment where ideas compete on merit. And I don't dispute that at all. What I am saying is that society's prosperity is optimized somewhere between total equality and extreme inequality, and that we seem to be drifting further away from that point.
bobby_9x 11y ago
What you really need to look at is how did they grow up?? A household that values education?? Plenty of immigrants from early 20th century that came to the US now have successful kids/grandkids because they valued education. Computers are now cheap and you can get lots of free knowledge on the Internet and at the library (MIT has free classes). There are no excuses. We need to stop with the victim mentality if we are ever going to progress.

wstrange 11y ago

"In communist societies everyone had very similar income" I really don't think that was the case. In a practical sense, communist regimes were the extreme endgame of inequality. Those at the very top of the chain lived like kings, while those at the bottom starved.

js8 11y ago
> Those at the very top of the chain lived like kings, while those at the bottom starved. I don't think that was always the case, in particular, I doubt it was the case in Czechoslovakia. Being a member of UV KSC (board of directors of the Communist party, the central organ) had special benefits such as better access to health care, goods imported from the West and having an american-sized house, but they were quite modest compared to benefits of today's top American CEOs. And in fact, the best paid people out there were probably some popular singers, who had maybe 50x the average salary. Typical director of state enterprise had maybe 5-10x the average salary. At the bottom, people didn't starve even if they made trouble (that meant a prison sentence and a menial job). There are people who disagree with this assessment, but I have never seen a good evidence for the claim they would "live as kings". I agree there was inequality, but it wasn't so much monetary as it was in power and status. It was probably one of the reasons why there wasn't a bloody revolution. Everybody, even the top officials wanted a "better" system.