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The non-zero-sum aspect you describe is commonly described as return-on-investment in a capitalist society. The redistribution is taxes and government spending.

The non-zero-sum aspect you describe is commonly described as return-on-investment in a capitalist society. The redistribution is taxes and government spending. The power law is created by the preferential attachment of capital to existing capital. Even a weak preference creates an extreme inequality. I'm not sure if it'll help you to think about it this way, but you can always model the system as zero-sum if you normalize the total amount of wealth in the system to 1 after every transaction. Or track participants' share of total wealth instead of absolute wealth.

dnautics 11y ago
Honestly it's the self-redistributiveness that's more important than the non-zero-sumness but being non-zero-sum in utility will taper the steepness of the power law
- msellout 11y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "self-redistribution". I at first assumed you meant economic "market forces" as opposed to government intervention. If that's true, then those market forces are almost entirely rich-get-richer. Sure, there's the "creative destruction" as some fortunes are lost, but that's actually part of the driving force for inequality -- that's what forces capital-owners to seek growth as opposed to allowing them to stay static.
mseebach 11y ago
> but you can always model the system as zero-sum if you normalize the total amount of wealth in the system to 1 after every transaction Yes, if you "normalize" the world to fit your conclusion, you'll generally find that your conclusion is true. If we just normalize everybody's wealth to 1, then all wealth inequality disappears. Problem solved. The fact that you need to normalize the total amount of wealth suggests that you recognize that the total amount of wealth changes, which means the system isn't zero sum. > The power law is created by the preferential attachment of capital to existing capital. Even a weak preference creates an extreme inequality. The evidence doesn't really bear this one out. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/family-education-sources-wealth-among-richest-americans-1982-2012 https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/f...
- msellout 11y ago
  > If we just normalize everybody's wealth to 1, then all wealth inequality disappears. Problem solved. You misunderstood the use of the word "normalize". The point of normalization is to change the absolute magnitude but keep the relative magnitudes the same. Perhaps I should be more specific: if you have two values, 6 and 4, which sum to 10, and you'd like to normalize the total to 1, then you multiply each by 1/10 so that you end up with 0.6 and 0.4. > The evidence doesn't really bear this one out. Write some code to simulate this. I think you'll find that preferential attachment does in fact create a rich-get-richer phenomenon. For example, take a look at this simulation coded in NetLogo (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/PreferentialAttachment http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/PreferentialAttac...).

dnautics 11y ago

Honestly it's the self-redistributiveness that's more important than the non-zero-sumness but being non-zero-sum in utility will taper the steepness of the power law

msellout 11y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "self-redistribution". I at first assumed you meant economic "market forces" as opposed to government intervention. If that's true, then those market forces are almost entirely rich-get-richer. Sure, there's the "creative destruction" as some fortunes are lost, but that's actually part of the driving force for inequality -- that's what forces capital-owners to seek growth as opposed to allowing them to stay static.

mseebach 11y ago

> but you can always model the system as zero-sum if you normalize the total amount of wealth in the system to 1 after every transaction Yes, if you "normalize" the world to fit your conclusion, you'll generally find that your conclusion is true. If we just normalize everybody's wealth to 1, then all wealth inequality disappears. Problem solved. The fact that you need to normalize the total amount of wealth suggests that you recognize that the total amount of wealth changes, which means the system isn't zero sum. > The power law is created by the preferential attachment of capital to existing capital. Even a weak preference creates an extreme inequality. The evidence doesn't really bear this one out. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/family-education-sources-wealth-among-richest-americans-1982-2012 https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/f...

msellout 11y ago
> If we just normalize everybody's wealth to 1, then all wealth inequality disappears. Problem solved. You misunderstood the use of the word "normalize". The point of normalization is to change the absolute magnitude but keep the relative magnitudes the same. Perhaps I should be more specific: if you have two values, 6 and 4, which sum to 10, and you'd like to normalize the total to 1, then you multiply each by 1/10 so that you end up with 0.6 and 0.4. > The evidence doesn't really bear this one out. Write some code to simulate this. I think you'll find that preferential attachment does in fact create a rich-get-richer phenomenon. For example, take a look at this simulation coded in NetLogo (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/PreferentialAttachment http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/PreferentialAttac...).