3 ms·

If Minecraft were the only video game in history, or the most successful one, or the majority of the video game industry, then you might have a point. But it is

by gwern 9y ago

If Minecraft were the only video game in history, or the most successful one, or the majority of the video game industry, then you might have a point. But it is merely one of many franchises or players along with Mario, League of Legends, Starcraft, Dota, WoW, Angry Birds etc etc. That is my point: none of these numbers are given any kind of context and OP is relying on sheer innumeracy to intimidate the reader. "4 billion pounds! Wow, that's a lot!" Actually no, it's not, it's a tiny portion of an entire economy (UK national wealth is more like 9000 billion pounds). What OP needs to do is show that aristocrats control a large and relatively unchanged from historical levels of the economy, and they fail abysmally at that, to the point where you have to conclude the opposite: if the richest aristocrat they can find is that poor and these are the best statistics they can come up with, that rather disproves their case. > You apparently also think that an individual being worth the same as 1/30th of a highly successful business even though their main claim to fame was being born to the right person isn't remarkable. It isn't. The Forbes list has many non-aristocrats who inherited much or all of their money and are vastly wealthier. Consider the Waltons heirs. As I said, wealth inequality is nothing new or interesting.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so much wealth to one person. The creator of Mario isn't as rich is he? You could point to a lot of people who have contributed amazing things to society and who aren't even millionaires, but you did exactly the opposite. You found a game dev who was very unusually a Billionaire, then you talked down the product that made him so rich as if he wasn't even special. You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really seem connected with reality either. Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this?
- gwern 9y ago
  > Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so much wealth to one person. Notch shared a lot of the money, hence my focus on the total sales price. Lots of people have gotten extremely rich on an individual level from video games, if you want to nitpick about that: Gabe Newell or Palmer Luckey. There are other Asian examples, and a number of billionaires benefit heavily from video games, like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. None of this affects my point: no matter how you slice it, the quoted aristocrat is not particularly wealthy. > You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really seem connected with reality either. That's literally from the article. > Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this? Because I am incensed by lying with statistics. There is no excuse for lines like "Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies". That is lying to the reader and trying to trick them. Unforgivable.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    The word inactive is not in the article. The article says the hereditery peers seldom turned up, not that the house of lords stopped having a say in how the country was run. The point the author is trying to make is the opposite of yours, that they rule without bothering to even give the appearance of interest in the affairs of those they rule over. Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what it's trying to trick people into thinking? Can I also note that taking a noble stand against misinformation and misleading uses of numbers seems inconsistent with the points I've already taken issue with.
    - gwern 9y ago
      If they are rarely showing up, then they are not shaping the debate or likely doing anything but voting, assuming they are not merely having minimal quorums and slacking on that as well; this inherently cedes all initiative and the public debate, and is a huge loss of power. Imagine a president who didn't bother to give speeches, travel, propose new legislation, or do much beyond veto occasional legislation. How much power would he have? Darn little. And they then lost most of that. > Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what it's trying to trick people into thinking? It is a lie because it is implying that most or all of them are aristocrats and implying 'private individuals' is a synonym for them and trying to get the reader to not notice that technically 'individuals and corporations' != aristocrats and in fact many or most of them likely are not because of the massive decimation in aristocratic wealth, while not even trying to make the case for that; it is pure begging the question, it cannot add any evidence to the claim the aristocracy still controls as large a fraction of national wealth as it ever did (at best, you could reason backwards - 'assuming they are still wealthy, then a large fraction of those 432 must be aristocrats').

by gwern 9y ago

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so much wealth to one person. The creator of Mario isn't as rich is he? You could point to a lot of people who have contributed amazing things to society and who aren't even millionaires, but you did exactly the opposite. You found a game dev who was very unusually a Billionaire, then you talked down the product that made him so rich as if he wasn't even special. You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really seem connected with reality either. Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this?

gwern 9y ago
> Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so much wealth to one person. Notch shared a lot of the money, hence my focus on the total sales price. Lots of people have gotten extremely rich on an individual level from video games, if you want to nitpick about that: Gabe Newell or Palmer Luckey. There are other Asian examples, and a number of billionaires benefit heavily from video games, like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. None of this affects my point: no matter how you slice it, the quoted aristocrat is not particularly wealthy. > You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really seem connected with reality either. That's literally from the article. > Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this? Because I am incensed by lying with statistics. There is no excuse for lines like "Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies". That is lying to the reader and trying to trick them. Unforgivable.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  The word inactive is not in the article. The article says the hereditery peers seldom turned up, not that the house of lords stopped having a say in how the country was run. The point the author is trying to make is the opposite of yours, that they rule without bothering to even give the appearance of interest in the affairs of those they rule over. Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what it's trying to trick people into thinking? Can I also note that taking a noble stand against misinformation and misleading uses of numbers seems inconsistent with the points I've already taken issue with.
  - gwern 9y ago
    If they are rarely showing up, then they are not shaping the debate or likely doing anything but voting, assuming they are not merely having minimal quorums and slacking on that as well; this inherently cedes all initiative and the public debate, and is a huge loss of power. Imagine a president who didn't bother to give speeches, travel, propose new legislation, or do much beyond veto occasional legislation. How much power would he have? Darn little. And they then lost most of that. > Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what it's trying to trick people into thinking? It is a lie because it is implying that most or all of them are aristocrats and implying 'private individuals' is a synonym for them and trying to get the reader to not notice that technically 'individuals and corporations' != aristocrats and in fact many or most of them likely are not because of the massive decimation in aristocratic wealth, while not even trying to make the case for that; it is pure begging the question, it cannot add any evidence to the claim the aristocracy still controls as large a fraction of national wealth as it ever did (at best, you could reason backwards - 'assuming they are still wealthy, then a large fraction of those 432 must be aristocrats').