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I think the question we should ask ourselves is not how to eliminate inequality, but what baseline level of services and opportunities we want to give people at

by jpetso 11y ago

I think the question we should ask ourselves is not how to eliminate inequality, but what baseline level of services and opportunities we want to give people at any stage in their life, regardless of their competitiveness and productivity, including when they're otherwise poor and a net drain on society. In other words, is stable housing a basic right or is it a luxury? If it's a basic right (and/or a net positive if it gives people the chance to bootstrap themselves into higher earnings), then we should strive to increase the reach and quality of tax-funded government housing programs - together with other baseline programs, such as public education, social services, etc. Or if you're a small-government person, substitute "tax-funded" with "charitable" and make it dependent on individuals' goodwills. If it's a luxury then the status quo seems acceptable - markets need to be able to pick their customers, and baseline services are losing products unless the "exploitative" pricing makes up for it. Abolishing inequality isn't desirable at all, but the range of inequality doesn't have to go from 0 to billionaire. We can provide a baseline that still leaves enough incentive for people to work their way up but is decent enough to live with dignity, greater than 0. Soviety provides some of that today. Discuss where to draw that line and who, taxpayer or otherwise, can provide it. A functioning society is never completely equal or completely without minimum support, always somewhere in between.

sokoloff 11y ago
If the top end is short of "billionaire", I think you get a world without Tesla, Space-X, Blue Origin, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and several other things that I believe are valuable and worthwhile. You may argue that the cost is too high and that we'd be better off without those things.
- jahaja 11y ago
  Maybe in a more equal world were people would not be whipped, I mean "incentivized", into working all the time, a larger portion of the population would be able to contribute their passions to society than just the elites of today? Hence maybe surpassing the results of the current aristocratic version of this.
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- jpetso 11y ago
  I wasn't arguing for lowering the top end, I think it's fine as is. A broader bottom end may mean that it gets a bit harder to make it to that point, but in practice that's not where most of the resources for providing more/better housing would come from anyway. Ambitious people will find a way to make it to the top, while putting their wealth into self-directed charities and moonshot companies instead of government-controlled tax revenue. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it can and will continue either way. In the end it's the decision of the broad public, the "middle class" if you will, to determine how much we want to collectively spend on housing security, and how to create mixed-income communities to facilitate upward mobility and avoid creating poor-people slums or monocultural wealth enclaves. The main ingredient for that is (valuable city) land, so I don't believe technology can do much about improving things too much. Nonetheless we always have the option to contribute to affordable housing, universal basic income, yadda yadda. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with high-profile billionaire projects.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    > I wasn't arguing for lowering the top end, I think it's fine as is. Sorry. I was reading my own bias/worldview into it and taking as a given that there will always be people with negative net worth (debts in excessive of assets). You were clear enough in speaking to that as unnecessary, but I read right through that without really internalizing your point of view. (I still believe in any system where credit exists that there will always be some net debtors, but that doesn't give me the right to argue against a point of view you weren't espousing.)

by jpetso 11y ago

sokoloff 11y ago

If the top end is short of "billionaire", I think you get a world without Tesla, Space-X, Blue Origin, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and several other things that I believe are valuable and worthwhile. You may argue that the cost is too high and that we'd be better off without those things.

jahaja 11y ago
Maybe in a more equal world were people would not be whipped, I mean "incentivized", into working all the time, a larger portion of the population would be able to contribute their passions to society than just the elites of today? Hence maybe surpassing the results of the current aristocratic version of this.
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jpetso 11y ago
I wasn't arguing for lowering the top end, I think it's fine as is. A broader bottom end may mean that it gets a bit harder to make it to that point, but in practice that's not where most of the resources for providing more/better housing would come from anyway. Ambitious people will find a way to make it to the top, while putting their wealth into self-directed charities and moonshot companies instead of government-controlled tax revenue. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it can and will continue either way. In the end it's the decision of the broad public, the "middle class" if you will, to determine how much we want to collectively spend on housing security, and how to create mixed-income communities to facilitate upward mobility and avoid creating poor-people slums or monocultural wealth enclaves. The main ingredient for that is (valuable city) land, so I don't believe technology can do much about improving things too much. Nonetheless we always have the option to contribute to affordable housing, universal basic income, yadda yadda. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with high-profile billionaire projects.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  > I wasn't arguing for lowering the top end, I think it's fine as is. Sorry. I was reading my own bias/worldview into it and taking as a given that there will always be people with negative net worth (debts in excessive of assets). You were clear enough in speaking to that as unnecessary, but I read right through that without really internalizing your point of view. (I still believe in any system where credit exists that there will always be some net debtors, but that doesn't give me the right to argue against a point of view you weren't espousing.)