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This article also hints at one of the reasons why humans chafe at economic inequality, and a rising tide lifting all boats is not enough to produce utopia: ther

This article also hints at one of the reasons why humans chafe at economic inequality, and a rising tide lifting all boats is not enough to produce utopia: there are some resources - desirable reproductive partners, status, land (esp. near others of high status) - which do not become more widely available as prosperity increases. The pursuit of these goods can even become more immiserating in a society with large differences in relative status, as the coveted attention of others flocks to global superstars rather than local stars. The author shows that these approximately zero-sum goods can be largely reduced to "attention".

meric 10y ago
And if we assume attention is valuable, while everything else is valueless, we've been pretty good at destroying what's valuable for what's valueless in the past century. Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us. Some of us pour our attention into hour long commutes where we spend our utmost effort not to give attention to anyone near us - it might make them uncomfortable. Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even. We spend our time fine-tuning our processes to be as "efficient" as possible, from the queue in the supermarket, to the queue in the fast food restaurant, to reduce our shopkeepers and waiters to mere actors following a script efficiently, and in some cases, completely replace them with machines. We make our workplace a place where colleagues gather for majority of their lives, but make it difficult to form enduring long term friendships. We spend lots of time worrying about economic inequality but much less time about attention inequality. The only relevant policy we do have is subsidised psychologic care. It's inhumane to deny human food, that's why we provide welfare. It's inhumane to neglect a child's need for parental love, which is why we place orphans in foster homes (not perfect). And what about adults, what do we do about attention inequality in terms of family, friendship, and sexual partners? We just sort of leave it up to them to figure it out, and then when we read about suicides in the paper, we write a comment "if you feel this way please seek help immediately". This is a summary of what I find wrong about modern society, and I have no solution besides enjoying the giving of time to those close to me when they ask for it. We've become a lot more efficient trading away our attention for physical goods that don't really matter to us except to trade in a zero sum game for more attention.
- dsjoerg 10y ago
  I'm excited to see the phrase "attention inequality". I've had similar thoughts for a few years and suspect that's a fertile line of inquiry. I haven't gotten far enough along in thinking about it to say anything very clear, but I think the relationship between our attitudes about wealth inequality vs attention inequality is important and telling. To many who don't think deeply, wealth inequality is terrible while attention inequality is natural and no big deal. The two kinds of inequality cause each other, which is also interesting. But mostly I'm interested in how our attitudes about one kind can or cannot, must or must not, apply to the other. EDIT: To circle back to your point, I disagree that attention can be "destroyed". I prefer to say that attention can never be destroyed, only shifted from one thing to another. So if you are ignoring your family and playing video games, you have not destroyed your attention, you have instead shifted it to the video game (and its creators).
  - meric 10y ago
    True, everyone has 24 hours a day, though what I really mean is the utility of that attention can be destroyed - the utility of 10 hours of your attention for the video game creator is measured in tens of dollars but could be priceless to your children. And I'm happy you are excited to see this phrase. :-)
- lmm 10y ago
  > Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us. > Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even. I think you've got this backwards. Those technologies are ways for the people who have the most attention to give out more attention than they could ever possibly do in person. They're precisely what makes the attention economy positive-sum.
  - inimino 10y ago
    You're saying that the video game or the celebrity is giving attention to the person watching it? Either I don't understand your comment, or you are the one who has it backwards...
DarkKomunalec 10y ago
We're a long way off from a system where a rising tide would lift all boats.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
But that also illustrates why economic inequality is getting blamed unfairly. Reducing inequality will not produce more hot women or flats in Manhattan/SF. The same number of people will get hot women, it's just that more women will go for dangerous unemployable bad boys and fewer will go for wealthy investment bankers or techies.
- marchenko 10y ago
  This is true if you assume strict monogamy, of both housing and mates. When inequality becomes very great, the very wealthy can purchase a greater share of the available housing (see ghost flats in London and Vancouver) and monopolize the reproductive years of a greater number of mates (usually women). To give a very rough example - when inequality is within a bridgeable margin (say an order of magnitude), a young woman may decide to marry the nice young doctor/coder rather than chase the fabulously wealthy scion. Presumably the promise of high spousal and parental investment on the part of the less-wealthy potential mate compensates for the reduced immediate access to material resources. If inequality becomes very large, it may be rational for that same woman to roll the dice on joining the throng chasing the scion. Where polygamy is normal, this is often what we observe. The case for housing is less clear - I would be interested to know whether there was a time when desirable housing was more normally distributed, although I have heard this was the case for white Americans in midcentury CA.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    When inequality becomes very great, the proportion of very wealthy goes down far faster than their ability to consume. I'm sure Richard Branson has a soft harem (to borrow the pickup-artist "soft polygamy" terminology). If he has a new girl every day (I'm half his age and I doubt I could physically pull that off) that's still only 365/year. As inequality goes up there are far fewer Richard Bransons as a proportion of the population. I'm just middle class, and I've often had 2-4 women in my soft harem at any one time. That means 100 guys like me - with no particular excess of money - can easily have the same effect as Branson would. I did some calculations a while back. If all the high net wealth people in NYC have 10 houses each, they'll have the same effect on housing as building one more NYU. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022235#12022920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022235#12022920 Our shortage of housing and attractive women is caused by an increasing middle class competing for them, and an inability/unwillingness (depending on how you characterize exclusionary zoning and an unwillingness to put down the fork) to increase the supply.
drabiega 10y ago
These goods are not even zero-sum, they're negative sum! This is one of the reasons large inequality is inefficient: larger and larger amounts of our production go to competition over these scarce goods without actually increasing the amount of them available to go around.

meric 10y ago

And if we assume attention is valuable, while everything else is valueless, we've been pretty good at destroying what's valuable for what's valueless in the past century. Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us. Some of us pour our attention into hour long commutes where we spend our utmost effort not to give attention to anyone near us - it might make them uncomfortable. Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even. We spend our time fine-tuning our processes to be as "efficient" as possible, from the queue in the supermarket, to the queue in the fast food restaurant, to reduce our shopkeepers and waiters to mere actors following a script efficiently, and in some cases, completely replace them with machines. We make our workplace a place where colleagues gather for majority of their lives, but make it difficult to form enduring long term friendships. We spend lots of time worrying about economic inequality but much less time about attention inequality. The only relevant policy we do have is subsidised psychologic care. It's inhumane to deny human food, that's why we provide welfare. It's inhumane to neglect a child's need for parental love, which is why we place orphans in foster homes (not perfect). And what about adults, what do we do about attention inequality in terms of family, friendship, and sexual partners? We just sort of leave it up to them to figure it out, and then when we read about suicides in the paper, we write a comment "if you feel this way please seek help immediately". This is a summary of what I find wrong about modern society, and I have no solution besides enjoying the giving of time to those close to me when they ask for it. We've become a lot more efficient trading away our attention for physical goods that don't really matter to us except to trade in a zero sum game for more attention.

dsjoerg 10y ago
I'm excited to see the phrase "attention inequality". I've had similar thoughts for a few years and suspect that's a fertile line of inquiry. I haven't gotten far enough along in thinking about it to say anything very clear, but I think the relationship between our attitudes about wealth inequality vs attention inequality is important and telling. To many who don't think deeply, wealth inequality is terrible while attention inequality is natural and no big deal. The two kinds of inequality cause each other, which is also interesting. But mostly I'm interested in how our attitudes about one kind can or cannot, must or must not, apply to the other. EDIT: To circle back to your point, I disagree that attention can be "destroyed". I prefer to say that attention can never be destroyed, only shifted from one thing to another. So if you are ignoring your family and playing video games, you have not destroyed your attention, you have instead shifted it to the video game (and its creators).
- meric 10y ago
  True, everyone has 24 hours a day, though what I really mean is the utility of that attention can be destroyed - the utility of 10 hours of your attention for the video game creator is measured in tens of dollars but could be priceless to your children. And I'm happy you are excited to see this phrase. :-)
lmm 10y ago
> Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us. > Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even. I think you've got this backwards. Those technologies are ways for the people who have the most attention to give out more attention than they could ever possibly do in person. They're precisely what makes the attention economy positive-sum.
- inimino 10y ago
  You're saying that the video game or the celebrity is giving attention to the person watching it? Either I don't understand your comment, or you are the one who has it backwards...

DarkKomunalec 10y ago

We're a long way off from a system where a rising tide would lift all boats.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

But that also illustrates why economic inequality is getting blamed unfairly. Reducing inequality will not produce more hot women or flats in Manhattan/SF. The same number of people will get hot women, it's just that more women will go for dangerous unemployable bad boys and fewer will go for wealthy investment bankers or techies.

marchenko 10y ago
This is true if you assume strict monogamy, of both housing and mates. When inequality becomes very great, the very wealthy can purchase a greater share of the available housing (see ghost flats in London and Vancouver) and monopolize the reproductive years of a greater number of mates (usually women). To give a very rough example - when inequality is within a bridgeable margin (say an order of magnitude), a young woman may decide to marry the nice young doctor/coder rather than chase the fabulously wealthy scion. Presumably the promise of high spousal and parental investment on the part of the less-wealthy potential mate compensates for the reduced immediate access to material resources. If inequality becomes very large, it may be rational for that same woman to roll the dice on joining the throng chasing the scion. Where polygamy is normal, this is often what we observe. The case for housing is less clear - I would be interested to know whether there was a time when desirable housing was more normally distributed, although I have heard this was the case for white Americans in midcentury CA.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  When inequality becomes very great, the proportion of very wealthy goes down far faster than their ability to consume. I'm sure Richard Branson has a soft harem (to borrow the pickup-artist "soft polygamy" terminology). If he has a new girl every day (I'm half his age and I doubt I could physically pull that off) that's still only 365/year. As inequality goes up there are far fewer Richard Bransons as a proportion of the population. I'm just middle class, and I've often had 2-4 women in my soft harem at any one time. That means 100 guys like me - with no particular excess of money - can easily have the same effect as Branson would. I did some calculations a while back. If all the high net wealth people in NYC have 10 houses each, they'll have the same effect on housing as building one more NYU. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022235#12022920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022235#12022920 Our shortage of housing and attractive women is caused by an increasing middle class competing for them, and an inability/unwillingness (depending on how you characterize exclusionary zoning and an unwillingness to put down the fork) to increase the supply.

drabiega 10y ago

These goods are not even zero-sum, they're negative sum! This is one of the reasons large inequality is inefficient: larger and larger amounts of our production go to competition over these scarce goods without actually increasing the amount of them available to go around.