7 ms·

Finally someone who talks about the consequences of economic inequality. PG seemed to think all that mattered is the causes.

luckydata 11y ago
I don't think PG had to face any of this, is aware or even cares about it. That article he wrote was pretty indicative of his mentality.
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  Exactly. What people need to understand here is that pg isn't an actual prophet. He is insightful in many ways sure, particularly about entrepreneurship and SV culture but that's about it.
haberman 11y ago
It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. This essay supports PG's point, it doesn't contradict it. PG's essay calls out "kids with no chance of reaching their potential" as "very bad" aspect of inequality in the fourth paragraph! What essay did you read?
- jeremynixon 11y ago
  I completely agree with this frustration - the bulk of my review of the responses revealed that people reacted to what they felt like PG said (or what others felt like he said), not what he actually said. My other frustration was that some of what PG actually did saw was indeed flawed, and there's only one response [1] that I could find that spoke to it. Regardless, writing about political domains riles the most base, tribal instincts in all of us. I expect him to be more careful about how he frames his arguments so that they're not overcome by readers' emotion, but can actually have a positive impact. [1] https://medium.com/@sethbannon/how-paul-graham-gets-it-wrong-in-economic-inequality-6cdb71c45136#.ac90x7i9v https://medium.com/@sethbannon/how-paul-graham-gets-it-wrong...
- carc 11y ago
  Glad I'm not the only person who felt this frustration..
- mikestew 11y ago
  It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. It's time to start considering that either PG made his point poorly, or that maybe you're the one that didn't understand it. I don't know what other reasonable options there are.
  - haberman 11y ago
    If by "PG made his point poorly" you mean "PG didn't communicate in a way that was misunderstanding-proof", I can agree with you. Inequality is an emotionally-charged subject that is prone to misunderstanding. I think PG underestimated how thoroughly the intellectual basis of his argument would be missed once he uttered the words "I've been helping to increase economic inequality." Most of the critiques of PG accuse him of not caring about poor people. And yet his essay specifically attacks poverty and lack of social mobility: > Let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process. That's much more likely to work than attacking wealth in the hope that you will thereby fix poverty.
    - pavornyoh 11y ago
      I think PG underestimated how thoroughly the intellectual basis of his argument would be missed once he uttered the words "I've been helping to increase economic inequality." Most of the critiques of PG accuse him of not caring about poor people. And yet his essay specifically attacks poverty and lack of social mobility: I have to agree with you. I am actually surprised PG tried to even write a second essay to explain the first one and some people still didn't understand it and it led me to this conclusion and points me to Dale Carnegie's " You can't win an argument".. Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right. You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos mentis. Then what? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And - "A man convinced against his will "Is of the same opinion still."
- spangry 11y ago
  I just read the PG essay and have to agree with the parent post. From what I can see, his argument boils down to this: increasing wealth concentration is caused by many things. Some of these things are 'bad' (e.g. rent-seeking, bribing politicians) in and of themselves, and should be addressed. Some of these things are 'good' (e.g. economic productivity varies from person to person, all other things equal), and it would be ill-advised to do away with these things by blindly optimising towards 'less wealth inequality' (as it would make everyone worse off, in an absolute sense). Obviously an oversimplification, as the essay also hints at a 'undetermined' category. On this, the essay touches on two issues I've been thinking about for the past 5 years: 1) As capital (i.e. the means of production) becomes increasingly digital, it becomes cheaper to acquire and production can occur at a marginal cost of near 0 (e.g. it costs facebook virtually nothing when a person makes a new account). Cheaper to acquire means fewer people needed to pool money to attain capital. And marginal cost near 0 means more 'winner-takes-all' markets (e.g. natural monopolies, network monopolies etc.). All this will result in more wealth concentrated in fewer hands. 2) Digital capital is highly mobile. AWS instances can be moved to another country almost instantaneously and without cost. This makes it hard for governments to tax returns to digital capital, barring some global tax agreement. So governments have very little scope for redistributing this increasingly concentrated wealth. We badly need to have a public (and probably global) conversation along similar lines as PG's essay: do we consider these good or bad things? are we ok with the resulting society? what should we do (if anything) about this? Instead the conversation seems to be dominated by people who are fixated on remedying the symptoms, rather than the underlying disease(s). Supremely frustrating, and will eventually result in more extreme policy outcomes (i.e. expropriation vs. free-for-all).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

luckydata 11y ago

I don't think PG had to face any of this, is aware or even cares about it. That article he wrote was pretty indicative of his mentality.

rpgmaker 11y ago
Exactly. What people need to understand here is that pg isn't an actual prophet. He is insightful in many ways sure, particularly about entrepreneurship and SV culture but that's about it.

haberman 11y ago

It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. This essay supports PG's point, it doesn't contradict it. PG's essay calls out "kids with no chance of reaching their potential" as "very bad" aspect of inequality in the fourth paragraph! What essay did you read?

jeremynixon 11y ago
I completely agree with this frustration - the bulk of my review of the responses revealed that people reacted to what they felt like PG said (or what others felt like he said), not what he actually said. My other frustration was that some of what PG actually did saw was indeed flawed, and there's only one response [1] that I could find that spoke to it. Regardless, writing about political domains riles the most base, tribal instincts in all of us. I expect him to be more careful about how he frames his arguments so that they're not overcome by readers' emotion, but can actually have a positive impact. [1] https://medium.com/@sethbannon/how-paul-graham-gets-it-wrong-in-economic-inequality-6cdb71c45136#.ac90x7i9v https://medium.com/@sethbannon/how-paul-graham-gets-it-wrong...
carc 11y ago
Glad I'm not the only person who felt this frustration..
mikestew 11y ago
It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. It's time to start considering that either PG made his point poorly, or that maybe you're the one that didn't understand it. I don't know what other reasonable options there are.
- haberman 11y ago
  If by "PG made his point poorly" you mean "PG didn't communicate in a way that was misunderstanding-proof", I can agree with you. Inequality is an emotionally-charged subject that is prone to misunderstanding. I think PG underestimated how thoroughly the intellectual basis of his argument would be missed once he uttered the words "I've been helping to increase economic inequality." Most of the critiques of PG accuse him of not caring about poor people. And yet his essay specifically attacks poverty and lack of social mobility: > Let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process. That's much more likely to work than attacking wealth in the hope that you will thereby fix poverty.
  - pavornyoh 11y ago
    I think PG underestimated how thoroughly the intellectual basis of his argument would be missed once he uttered the words "I've been helping to increase economic inequality." Most of the critiques of PG accuse him of not caring about poor people. And yet his essay specifically attacks poverty and lack of social mobility: I have to agree with you. I am actually surprised PG tried to even write a second essay to explain the first one and some people still didn't understand it and it led me to this conclusion and points me to Dale Carnegie's " You can't win an argument".. Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right. You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos mentis. Then what? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And - "A man convinced against his will "Is of the same opinion still."
spangry 11y ago
I just read the PG essay and have to agree with the parent post. From what I can see, his argument boils down to this: increasing wealth concentration is caused by many things. Some of these things are 'bad' (e.g. rent-seeking, bribing politicians) in and of themselves, and should be addressed. Some of these things are 'good' (e.g. economic productivity varies from person to person, all other things equal), and it would be ill-advised to do away with these things by blindly optimising towards 'less wealth inequality' (as it would make everyone worse off, in an absolute sense). Obviously an oversimplification, as the essay also hints at a 'undetermined' category. On this, the essay touches on two issues I've been thinking about for the past 5 years: 1) As capital (i.e. the means of production) becomes increasingly digital, it becomes cheaper to acquire and production can occur at a marginal cost of near 0 (e.g. it costs facebook virtually nothing when a person makes a new account). Cheaper to acquire means fewer people needed to pool money to attain capital. And marginal cost near 0 means more 'winner-takes-all' markets (e.g. natural monopolies, network monopolies etc.). All this will result in more wealth concentrated in fewer hands. 2) Digital capital is highly mobile. AWS instances can be moved to another country almost instantaneously and without cost. This makes it hard for governments to tax returns to digital capital, barring some global tax agreement. So governments have very little scope for redistributing this increasingly concentrated wealth. We badly need to have a public (and probably global) conversation along similar lines as PG's essay: do we consider these good or bad things? are we ok with the resulting society? what should we do (if anything) about this? Instead the conversation seems to be dominated by people who are fixated on remedying the symptoms, rather than the underlying disease(s). Supremely frustrating, and will eventually result in more extreme policy outcomes (i.e. expropriation vs. free-for-all).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]