5 ms·

>So there's a lie being told to the rest of us that life is supposed to be reasonably fair and that we're supposed to work toward keeping it that way. Keeping t

>So there's a lie being told to the rest of us that life is supposed to be reasonably fair and that we're supposed to work toward keeping it that way. Keeping that lie while many people are intentionally trying to subvert the concept by having kids start life at different points is an unnecessary cruelty. The goal is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Even that is loose, because of course no one has exactly the same advantage profile (and no one has exactly the same disadvantage profile either). As upsetting as tactless people can be, the fact that children from a family that is struggling to make ends meet freely mingle with children from families that have abundance, even excess, is a very positive and rare thing. We should treasure it. The belief that everyone has something important to contribute and that people from all backgrounds, creeds, and prosperity levels working and learning together will result in a better world is unique, and we absolutely should not be longing for its more conventional opposite: a world where everyone is divided up so that their feelings are protected from heterogeneity.

crdoconnor 10y ago
>The goal is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. If that truly were the goal, 100% inheritance tax would be the policy.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  You're conflating opportunity with outcome. Opportunity is abstract; it's a system that doesn't create artificial barriers to success, and in which your average person won't be actively disallowed from amassing resources. Opportunity basically means that everyone has the same rights of access to the marketplace. It doesn't make any guarantee about anyone's success once they enter that marketplace. While I'm sure we're not perfect here, we're pretty good overall. Outcome is bona fide; it's the resource access that allows people to do the things they wish to do, not the market access that allows one to generate those resources. Since we don't have a substantial, legally-enforced caste system or other artificial limitations on success in America, it doesn't look like opportunity has anything to do with money (unless you're referring to the excessive fees and qualifications which the government imposes to engage in some types of business (licensing bodies, etc.)), so I'm not sure why you say that confiscating a family's resources will ensure opportunity for anybody.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    >Opportunity basically means that everyone has the same rights of access to the marketplace. It doesn't make any guarantee about anyone's success once they enter that marketplace. Having money (derived from inheritance or anywhere else) gives you privileged access to the marketplace since it helps you get over natural as well as artificial barriers to entry. This is exactly why the unifying feature of entrepreneurs is not a greater appetite for risk (quite the opposite), but access to cash - often from parents: http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf >Since we don't have a substantial, legally-enforced caste system or other artificial limitations on success in America, Access to wealth is an artificial limitation on success and it's largely what the American caste system is geared around. >I'm not sure why you say that confiscating a family's resources will ensure opportunity for anybody. Opportunity flows from resources. You can act like you don't care about equality of opportunity or you can support a 100% inheritance tax (and no private education) but you can't really have it both ways.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      >Having money (derived from inheritance or anywhere else) gives you privileged access to the marketplace since it helps you get over natural as well as artificial barriers to entry. You're re-defining opportunity to mean the same thing as outcome. If all outcomes must be equal for opportunities to be equal, which is the argument you're making when you say that both artificial and natural barriers must be equally surmountable and that any potential benefit, direct or indirect, from one's access to and deployment of resources is inherently unfair, then you're in an argument that fundamentally opposes private property and the hard physical realities that dictate human behavior. If you have a specific complaint, like that the qualifications to be admitted to the bar in almost every state require graduation from a school accredited by the ABA and that this constitutes an unfair monopoly and presents an unduly burdensome artificial constraint which was installed only to limit competition in the law profession, then that's a totally valid example of opportunity gap that should be fixed. But saying "Someone with more resources could potentially derive more benefits, either direct or indirect, than someone without an equivalent quantity of resources, as long as they deploy them efficiently" is only stating the obvious. Suggesting that this is an inequity to be resolved is simply suggesting that individuals should not be trusted to participate in a real marketplace at all.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>The goal is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Opportunity is the probability distribution over outcomes. You can't equalize opportunity without reducing the variance of outcomes.
- mjolk 10y ago
  Is your assertion that we should seek to normalize outcomes in order to address differences in opportunity?
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    I'm just giving a quantitative way to think about the issue. If we said, "Anyone has the opportunity to win the lottery, and the actual outcome isn't relevant", everyone would acknowledge that we're talking about a probability problem. If we mean what we say about equal opportunity, then we're essentially talking about cutting the probabilistic link between one's background and one's distribution over outcomes. Ways to do this include: * Admitting students to university based on merely adequate grades and their citizenship in the community, rather than based on a "meritocratic" competition that actually just conditions outcomes on starting-points. * Supporting trade unions and other institutions that regularize wages/salaries/incomes. * Taxing inheritance heavily. * Enforcing anti-trust law. The point is to ensure that random events like which family you're born into can't strongly affect the course of your life. I'd love to hear other, less "bog standard" ways to compress the distribution over outcomes, thus equalizing opportunity. However, note that we're talking about cutting a link. By default, opportunities are only available to people with past actual successes. By default, outcomes build upon outcomes and compound exponentially. We're looking to defy that natural process, cut a natural link, and thus regularize certain statistical structures.
    - mjolk 10y ago
      > If we mean what we say about equal opportunity, then we're essentially talking about cutting the probabilistic link between one's background and one's distribution over outcomes. The intrinsic problem with this approach is that it "drags others down", reducing the purpose of working harder or unfairly affects those more naturally capable. > * Admitting students to university based on merely adequate grades and their citizenship in the community Assuming you mean "citizenship in the community" to be "I live in state X, that means I have a better chance of access to X State University", over a generation, this would just mean that for higher achieving state X, students from state Y would be locked out of better opportunities based on geographic residency. A real life example would be higher admittance for Californians to California State schools, which reduces the opportunities for a kid from Missouri or Alabama (because of realistic capacity constraints). The kid that went to University of Missouri is now at a significant disadvantage (based on education) and is not able to compete against her peers for jobs in regions with better long-term opportunities, even if she had a lot of potential. University of Missouri then has to accommodate the lackluster abilities of its enrolling body (as it ostensibly does with a 77% acceptance rate), which leads to dropping STEM requirements, which means an even less capable constituency. > rather than based on a "meritocratic" competition that actually just conditions outcomes on starting-points. Related to the last point, this would seek to normalize the achievement by "boosting up" those that haven't demonstrated aptitude, while limiting the opportunity of those that would benefit from a more rigorous program. > * Supporting trade unions and other institutions that regularize wages/salaries/incomes. For non-specialized labor, maybe. If the idea is that the base salary would need to increase, that would just increase the costs of goods "across the board", which doesn't do much except broaden the divide between the full-time employed and the unemployed. Would you be willing to give up a percentage of your salary to someone else in your department that earns less, even if he/she doesn't work as hard or isn't as skilled? If yes, why aren't you doing that now? > * Taxing inheritance heavily. Why are others more entitled to the results of my labor after I'm dead versus when I'm alive? It's not my job to posthumously give advantage to the kids of strangers against my own in a competitive world. Also, if you try to implement this, you'll end up getting the government involved in interpersonal gifting (as the logical workaround would be to give the maximum tax deductible gift per year or sell assets to family at well below their value, if not just creating new avenues to tax avoidance). > * Enforcing anti-trust law. Agreed. > We're looking to defy that natural process, cut a natural link, and thus regularize certain statistical structures. This suggestion makes my brain feel fuzzy. If the thought is that it's a natural process for the above-average to create advantages for themselves and their own, isn't this asking for more laws to compel them to act against their own interests?

crdoconnor 10y ago

>The goal is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. If that truly were the goal, 100% inheritance tax would be the policy.

cookiecaper 10y ago
You're conflating opportunity with outcome. Opportunity is abstract; it's a system that doesn't create artificial barriers to success, and in which your average person won't be actively disallowed from amassing resources. Opportunity basically means that everyone has the same rights of access to the marketplace. It doesn't make any guarantee about anyone's success once they enter that marketplace. While I'm sure we're not perfect here, we're pretty good overall. Outcome is bona fide; it's the resource access that allows people to do the things they wish to do, not the market access that allows one to generate those resources. Since we don't have a substantial, legally-enforced caste system or other artificial limitations on success in America, it doesn't look like opportunity has anything to do with money (unless you're referring to the excessive fees and qualifications which the government imposes to engage in some types of business (licensing bodies, etc.)), so I'm not sure why you say that confiscating a family's resources will ensure opportunity for anybody.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >Opportunity basically means that everyone has the same rights of access to the marketplace. It doesn't make any guarantee about anyone's success once they enter that marketplace. Having money (derived from inheritance or anywhere else) gives you privileged access to the marketplace since it helps you get over natural as well as artificial barriers to entry. This is exactly why the unifying feature of entrepreneurs is not a greater appetite for risk (quite the opposite), but access to cash - often from parents: http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf >Since we don't have a substantial, legally-enforced caste system or other artificial limitations on success in America, Access to wealth is an artificial limitation on success and it's largely what the American caste system is geared around. >I'm not sure why you say that confiscating a family's resources will ensure opportunity for anybody. Opportunity flows from resources. You can act like you don't care about equality of opportunity or you can support a 100% inheritance tax (and no private education) but you can't really have it both ways.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    >Having money (derived from inheritance or anywhere else) gives you privileged access to the marketplace since it helps you get over natural as well as artificial barriers to entry. You're re-defining opportunity to mean the same thing as outcome. If all outcomes must be equal for opportunities to be equal, which is the argument you're making when you say that both artificial and natural barriers must be equally surmountable and that any potential benefit, direct or indirect, from one's access to and deployment of resources is inherently unfair, then you're in an argument that fundamentally opposes private property and the hard physical realities that dictate human behavior. If you have a specific complaint, like that the qualifications to be admitted to the bar in almost every state require graduation from a school accredited by the ABA and that this constitutes an unfair monopoly and presents an unduly burdensome artificial constraint which was installed only to limit competition in the law profession, then that's a totally valid example of opportunity gap that should be fixed. But saying "Someone with more resources could potentially derive more benefits, either direct or indirect, than someone without an equivalent quantity of resources, as long as they deploy them efficiently" is only stating the obvious. Suggesting that this is an inequity to be resolved is simply suggesting that individuals should not be trusted to participate in a real marketplace at all.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>The goal is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Opportunity is the probability distribution over outcomes. You can't equalize opportunity without reducing the variance of outcomes.

mjolk 10y ago
Is your assertion that we should seek to normalize outcomes in order to address differences in opportunity?
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  I'm just giving a quantitative way to think about the issue. If we said, "Anyone has the opportunity to win the lottery, and the actual outcome isn't relevant", everyone would acknowledge that we're talking about a probability problem. If we mean what we say about equal opportunity, then we're essentially talking about cutting the probabilistic link between one's background and one's distribution over outcomes. Ways to do this include: * Admitting students to university based on merely adequate grades and their citizenship in the community, rather than based on a "meritocratic" competition that actually just conditions outcomes on starting-points. * Supporting trade unions and other institutions that regularize wages/salaries/incomes. * Taxing inheritance heavily. * Enforcing anti-trust law. The point is to ensure that random events like which family you're born into can't strongly affect the course of your life. I'd love to hear other, less "bog standard" ways to compress the distribution over outcomes, thus equalizing opportunity. However, note that we're talking about cutting a link. By default, opportunities are only available to people with past actual successes. By default, outcomes build upon outcomes and compound exponentially. We're looking to defy that natural process, cut a natural link, and thus regularize certain statistical structures.
  - mjolk 10y ago
    > If we mean what we say about equal opportunity, then we're essentially talking about cutting the probabilistic link between one's background and one's distribution over outcomes. The intrinsic problem with this approach is that it "drags others down", reducing the purpose of working harder or unfairly affects those more naturally capable. > * Admitting students to university based on merely adequate grades and their citizenship in the community Assuming you mean "citizenship in the community" to be "I live in state X, that means I have a better chance of access to X State University", over a generation, this would just mean that for higher achieving state X, students from state Y would be locked out of better opportunities based on geographic residency. A real life example would be higher admittance for Californians to California State schools, which reduces the opportunities for a kid from Missouri or Alabama (because of realistic capacity constraints). The kid that went to University of Missouri is now at a significant disadvantage (based on education) and is not able to compete against her peers for jobs in regions with better long-term opportunities, even if she had a lot of potential. University of Missouri then has to accommodate the lackluster abilities of its enrolling body (as it ostensibly does with a 77% acceptance rate), which leads to dropping STEM requirements, which means an even less capable constituency. > rather than based on a "meritocratic" competition that actually just conditions outcomes on starting-points. Related to the last point, this would seek to normalize the achievement by "boosting up" those that haven't demonstrated aptitude, while limiting the opportunity of those that would benefit from a more rigorous program. > * Supporting trade unions and other institutions that regularize wages/salaries/incomes. For non-specialized labor, maybe. If the idea is that the base salary would need to increase, that would just increase the costs of goods "across the board", which doesn't do much except broaden the divide between the full-time employed and the unemployed. Would you be willing to give up a percentage of your salary to someone else in your department that earns less, even if he/she doesn't work as hard or isn't as skilled? If yes, why aren't you doing that now? > * Taxing inheritance heavily. Why are others more entitled to the results of my labor after I'm dead versus when I'm alive? It's not my job to posthumously give advantage to the kids of strangers against my own in a competitive world. Also, if you try to implement this, you'll end up getting the government involved in interpersonal gifting (as the logical workaround would be to give the maximum tax deductible gift per year or sell assets to family at well below their value, if not just creating new avenues to tax avoidance). > * Enforcing anti-trust law. Agreed. > We're looking to defy that natural process, cut a natural link, and thus regularize certain statistical structures. This suggestion makes my brain feel fuzzy. If the thought is that it's a natural process for the above-average to create advantages for themselves and their own, isn't this asking for more laws to compel them to act against their own interests?