4 ms·

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 hare

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.

pestilent 10y ago
I did some somewhat similar calculations for my country. What you say is true and doesn't even just apply to the super-rich. The amount of people who have 10 or more times higher income than average is around 1 in 100 people in my country. So the frequency drops by 2 orders of magnitude as income ratio grows by 1 order of magnitude. In the US it's perhaps not 1:100, but it's also unlikely to be anywhere near 1:10. So yes, the average person "suffers" from competition from people who are near their general level of income way more than from competition from rich people.
- meric 10y ago
  I'd like to point out - the increased participation of people in "soft harems" reduce the number of mates available in monogamy relationships. The resource "Exclusivity * attention" (what a lot of people value) is being destroyed by the increasing number of people engaging in polygamy; the number of monogamous mates available is reduced in the sense that it makes it harder for monogamous mates to find each other in a polygamous world. And inequality is increased - "superstars" have 365 mates instead of just 1.
  - pestilent 10y ago
    I don't think you understood the point, I am not arguing against that. I am arguing that these "superstars" are not important because they are so rare compared to the increased number of partners they can have. They are, as a group, less competition for an average person than middle class people who mostly have from zero to a small number of partners but are very numerous.
    - meric 10y ago
      Ok. Good point.

pestilent 10y ago

I did some somewhat similar calculations for my country. What you say is true and doesn't even just apply to the super-rich. The amount of people who have 10 or more times higher income than average is around 1 in 100 people in my country. So the frequency drops by 2 orders of magnitude as income ratio grows by 1 order of magnitude. In the US it's perhaps not 1:100, but it's also unlikely to be anywhere near 1:10. So yes, the average person "suffers" from competition from people who are near their general level of income way more than from competition from rich people.

meric 10y ago
I'd like to point out - the increased participation of people in "soft harems" reduce the number of mates available in monogamy relationships. The resource "Exclusivity * attention" (what a lot of people value) is being destroyed by the increasing number of people engaging in polygamy; the number of monogamous mates available is reduced in the sense that it makes it harder for monogamous mates to find each other in a polygamous world. And inequality is increased - "superstars" have 365 mates instead of just 1.
- pestilent 10y ago
  I don't think you understood the point, I am not arguing against that. I am arguing that these "superstars" are not important because they are so rare compared to the increased number of partners they can have. They are, as a group, less competition for an average person than middle class people who mostly have from zero to a small number of partners but are very numerous.
  - meric 10y ago
    Ok. Good point.