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We have control over how society's feedback mechanisms are structured We do. However, that doesn't mean that tweaking knobs won't simply result in a pareto dis

We have control over how society's feedback mechanisms are structured We do. However, that doesn't mean that tweaking knobs won't simply result in a pareto distribution with different winners and losers. At the end of the day, every individual has fitness along a variety of different vectors. You might achieve equality along one or two vectors by tweaking one knob, but then see side effects that result in pareto distributions along different vectors. Income distribution is a textbook wicked problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem My view is that income equality is the wrong thing to optimize for. Instead, we should optimize for progress and productivity that increases the overall welfare of society fastest, even if some individuals do far better than others. Those individuals capable of contributing the most to meeting the needs and desires of the most individuals deserve the most resources to enable them. Those who have the least to contribute will benefit via surpluses created as a result of productivity gains.

paulddraper 10y ago
Exactly. It's easy to make (a) some rich and some poor (capitalism) or (b) everyone poor (communism). (c) making everyone rich is beyond the possibility curve. Equality hampers any progress that requires risk. E.g. Steve Jobs. He took crazy insane risks. But only because there were maybe crazy insane rewards on the other side.
eevilspock 10y ago
> Those individuals capable of contributing the most to meeting the needs and desires of the most individuals deserve the most resources to enable them. Deserve? Deserve? Seriously? Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? Does Bill Gates deserve $90 billion? But Albert Einstein deserves only $900K? Zuckerberg, inventor of Facebook, deserves $45 billion, but the Tim-Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, deserves some tiny faction of that? The 80 richest billionaires deserves as much as the bottom 50% of the Earth's population? A scrawny computer programmer makes ten times the farmhand. But suddenly the two are stranded on an island, where muscle and hunting skills are more important than computer skills. Does the farmhand suddenly become a more deserving person, deserving ten times the food?
- prostoalex 10y ago
  > Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? Survivor bias. For the sake of proper comparison it should be all hedge fund managers combined vs all kindergarten teachers combined - a good portion of hedge fund managers never see any money (or, better yet, are main contributors to their fund and then promptly go into negative). Not saying that averages work out better for teachers, but a random teacher likely has a larger paycheck than a random fund manager. Next up - does the guy who bought a $1 PowerBall ticket deserve 100% of the jackpot when there are honest hard-working people who bought five times as many tickets?
  - eevilspock 10y ago
    No. Don't change the question or introduce a red herring. Simply answer it: Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? And to your "next up": No. Luck != deserve. That is essentially my point, and the implicit point of the OP. A primitive society leaves all to luck. An advanced, mature, fair society does its best to eliminate chance (e.g. insurance, the root meaning of which is precisely that). The lottery is a patently backward thing (the opposite of insurance) and I'm appalled that our state governments perpetrate and profit from such harmful and exploitative things.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      prostoalex's point is that hedge fund management varies greatly in its pay, while kingergarten teaching does not. If you want to "play the lottery", do the former. If not, do the latter. It's a free society.
    - sumedh 10y ago
      > Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? These are hard questions to answer. Lot of people can become a kindergarten teacher but not a lot of people can become a successful hedge fund manager. So in the end the free market decides who deserves more.
anigbrowl 10y ago
Those individuals capable of contributing the most to meeting the needs and desires of the most individuals deserve the most resources to enable them. As measured by who, and how? This is standard economic orthodoxy but the fact that many important metrics like life expectancy are running counter to what you'd expect from looking at GDP etc. suggests that we have hit a local maximum and need to revise our models and methods. This is not the best of all possible worlds, and reiterating the first principles that you believe in will not make it so, any more than praying for justice while carrying on in exactly the same way in all other respects.

paulddraper 10y ago

Exactly. It's easy to make (a) some rich and some poor (capitalism) or (b) everyone poor (communism). (c) making everyone rich is beyond the possibility curve. Equality hampers any progress that requires risk. E.g. Steve Jobs. He took crazy insane risks. But only because there were maybe crazy insane rewards on the other side.

eevilspock 10y ago

> Those individuals capable of contributing the most to meeting the needs and desires of the most individuals deserve the most resources to enable them. Deserve? Deserve? Seriously? Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? Does Bill Gates deserve $90 billion? But Albert Einstein deserves only $900K? Zuckerberg, inventor of Facebook, deserves $45 billion, but the Tim-Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, deserves some tiny faction of that? The 80 richest billionaires deserves as much as the bottom 50% of the Earth's population? A scrawny computer programmer makes ten times the farmhand. But suddenly the two are stranded on an island, where muscle and hunting skills are more important than computer skills. Does the farmhand suddenly become a more deserving person, deserving ten times the food?

prostoalex 10y ago
> Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? Survivor bias. For the sake of proper comparison it should be all hedge fund managers combined vs all kindergarten teachers combined - a good portion of hedge fund managers never see any money (or, better yet, are main contributors to their fund and then promptly go into negative). Not saying that averages work out better for teachers, but a random teacher likely has a larger paycheck than a random fund manager. Next up - does the guy who bought a $1 PowerBall ticket deserve 100% of the jackpot when there are honest hard-working people who bought five times as many tickets?
- eevilspock 10y ago
  No. Don't change the question or introduce a red herring. Simply answer it: Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? And to your "next up": No. Luck != deserve. That is essentially my point, and the implicit point of the OP. A primitive society leaves all to luck. An advanced, mature, fair society does its best to eliminate chance (e.g. insurance, the root meaning of which is precisely that). The lottery is a patently backward thing (the opposite of insurance) and I'm appalled that our state governments perpetrate and profit from such harmful and exploitative things.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    prostoalex's point is that hedge fund management varies greatly in its pay, while kingergarten teaching does not. If you want to "play the lottery", do the former. If not, do the latter. It's a free society.
  - sumedh 10y ago
    > Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine? These are hard questions to answer. Lot of people can become a kindergarten teacher but not a lot of people can become a successful hedge fund manager. So in the end the free market decides who deserves more.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Those individuals capable of contributing the most to meeting the needs and desires of the most individuals deserve the most resources to enable them. As measured by who, and how? This is standard economic orthodoxy but the fact that many important metrics like life expectancy are running counter to what you'd expect from looking at GDP etc. suggests that we have hit a local maximum and need to revise our models and methods. This is not the best of all possible worlds, and reiterating the first principles that you believe in will not make it so, any more than praying for justice while carrying on in exactly the same way in all other respects.