14 ms·

Inequality in nature and society

145 points by wallflower 9y ago

cutcss 9y ago
> extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale. Yeah, and water is wet; since ever is known that the best tool to make money is... money; so the resource tends to get unevenly distributed and pile up in the hands of a few. And what's worse is that the punishment for not having enough money is... to lose money, obviously overdraft fees are the best example of this, but there are a million ways more.
- byproxy 9y ago
  "The Anatomy of Inequality" by Per Molander delves into this. It's a pretty good read.
- nugget 9y ago
  To expand on humanity's historical experience, the best known method of reducing wealth inequality seems to be revolutions and world wars - the more devastating and catastrophic, the better.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    you will get a kick reading Nietzsche biography.
  - cutcss 9y ago
    ...sure but, well, we have internet and other advancements since then, there may be a chance of less murderous solutions to work.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Sadly your comment has been auto-hidden for some reason, perhaps that of expressing an unpopular opinion.
- balthasar 9y ago
  I have seen it argued that government intervention leads to wealth concentration, that in a free market competition is supposed counteract this.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    except it is the exact opposite. and the entire article is about it... sigh.
    - balthasar 9y ago
      Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't agreeing with "government intervention leads to wealth concentration" I was stating that people who bring this up do not believe it is a given that "extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale". Cutcss was implying this is universally agreed upon but I've seen many people believe the opposite.
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    This is the homeopathic theory of government intervention: the much-less-government Belle Epoque had greater wealth concentration than a century later because government still intervened some in 1875. The lower the concentration of government, the more potent grows its poison, as libertarians attribute society's problems to this diminished residual. If things aren't better following government reduction, the solution must be to shrink it further, not to reconsider the theory. People still peddling revolutionary communism have a parallel homeopathic theory about capitalism. Bring up a bunch of empirically observed problems in the former USSR and they'll go "Oh, those 20th century 'communist' societies were state capitalist, not real communists; the problem was that they didn't get rid of capitalism enough. Under Real Communism we'd have all the good stuff and none of the bad." It's not very convincing.
- raarts 9y ago
  I did not know what 'overdraft fees' were until I came to live in the US. So for other non-US readers: For bank accounts where you are not allowed to overspend, but you try it anyway, there is a difference in how that is handled in the US vs European banks. If you spend more than your current balance ('overdraft'), US banks allow that, but charge you a hefty fee (my bank charges me $35 per violation). European banks just disallow it altogether. It even happened that one day I had a withdrawal, and a deposit. Overnight, the bank first processed the withdrawal (account balance became negative), next added the deposit (balance became positive again). Then charged me the $35 fee! They could have done it the other way around and not charge for it....
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Not only this, but banks were in the habit of ordering your account activity on a day-by-day basis so as to maximize your fee liability, a practice which cast Bank of America some $400 million a few years back and which Wells Fargo is trying to escape responsibility for at present through some other litigation strategy: https://consumerist.com/2011/07/14/bank-of-america-paying-out-410-million-for-reordering-your-transactions-to-maximize-overdraft-fees/ https://consumerist.com/2011/07/14/bank-of-america-paying-ou...
dvt 9y ago
(This is a slightly modified but highly relevant excerpt from a piece I wrote last year: Confusing Math with Morality[1].) In What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources[2], Ronald Dworkin makes a distinction between justified inequality of resources and unjustified inequality of resources. Dworkin borrows from Rawls, but the gist of his sentiment is summarized by SEP[3]: “Unequal distribution of resources is considered fair only when it results from the decisions and intentional actions of those concerned.” Conversely, provisions, gifts, bribes, and pure luck are conducive to an unfair (or unjust) inequality of resources. For example, a state lottery is unequal — and creates an unjust inequality of resources — because it’s random. It’s trivial to come up with a social policy that always converges wealth to a uniform distribution[4], but the problem is that unless this convergence is driven by what Dworkin calls ‘ambition-sensitive’ forces, this social policy is profoundly unfair — even though it might seem to be fair. [1] https://dvt.name/2017/07/10/confusing-math-with-morality/ https://dvt.name/2017/07/10/confusing-math-with-morality/ [2] http://homepage.univie.ac.at/herbert.preiss/files/Dworkin_What%20is%20Equality_Part2_Equality%20of%20Resources.pdf http://homepage.univie.ac.at/herbert.preiss/files/Dworkin_Wh... [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/#EquofRes https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/#EquofRes [4] https://www.gaussianwaves.com/gaussianwaves/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Histogram-of-Uniform-Distribution.jpg https://www.gaussianwaves.com/gaussianwaves/wp-content/uploa...
- matte_black 9y ago
  A random distribution of resources is not unfair, in fact it is the most fair way to distribute resources assuming each participant has an equal chance of gaining resources. A state lottery is not an unjust inequality, it is a justified inequality, because it's outcome is truly random.
  - dvt 9y ago
    You're free to diagree with Dworkin (and Rawls), but keep in mind they are some of the most preeminent minds of the past century. Your argument has to be a bit more thought out than merely explaining how randomness works. You would have to tackle the concept of "ambition-sensitivity" and its relationship to fairness, among other things.
irickt 9y ago
This can be read as a theoretical analysis of a basic income guarantee. >>> Equalizing Mechanisms. There are essentially two classes of mechanisms that can reduce inequality: suppression of dominance ... or lifting the majority out of the sticky state close to zero .... Starting with the latter, a small additive influx is a powerful antidote to the stickiness effect. ... In society, savings from income represent an additive contribution to wealth. Adding such a flux to our minimal model of wealth allows more households to gain wealth, thus populating the middle class and regularly breaking episodes of dominance by the previously dominant households Also, full pdf with methods and details: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13154.full.pdf?with-ds=yes http://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13154.full.pdf?with-ds=ye...
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Also worth looking at section 7 in the supplementary information, and figure S5.
dwaltrip 9y ago
There are fundamental causes for inequality that can't be fixed once-and-for-all. The Pareto principle and other similar dynamics provide a glimpse into this. We see this everywhere in nature (distribution of mass in a star system, distribution of energy in an ecosystem, etc). That being said, there are significant anachronistic, unjust human causes for inequality. Corruption, cultural/racial bias, skewed market incentives, externalities, etc. That is where we should focus our energy. There is much good that can and should be done there. And we can work to broadly lift the floor of human experience for all, even if such endeavors don't eliminate all relative inequality. A perfectly equal system would be static, unchanging, fixed in place. There would be no vibrance or life. Dynamic processes that bring about change do not provide the same result to all pieces of a system, and require non-uniformity to continue occurring. Think of the heat death of the universe -- everything everywhere is the same temperature, and no interesting changes can ever happen again. But this is certainly no excuse to not make the valuable and necessary improvements that we are capable of doing. Lastly, it is certainly possible that the "natural" dynamics driving inequality are not at ideal levels right now, and that we should enact policy changes or other measures that counteract such dynamics and increase equality (higher taxes, social programs, etc). I think this is likely the case, and support such efforts. Edit: Getting some downvotes. I hope no one think I'm implying regressive action, as I have no desire for that. I'd love to hear people's take on things. My main reason for posting is that I often see discussions that don't recognize what seem to me certain fundamental dynamics. If my understanding is off, please share how. Thanks.
- davidjsevans 9y ago
  Good comment. If more people understood the distribution of wealth was largely the result of natural laws of productivity (described by the Pareto Principle), and not just the result of corruption, exploiting externalities, etc, there would be much less resentment and envy towards the top 1%. Perhaps then we could focus on some solutions that don't make the 1% want to flee to a more free country, taking their productivity and wealth with them.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    The really tricky part is identifying how much is due to fundamental dynamics and how much is due to unjust anachronisms. For that, I don't have a good answer. I believe there is plenty of room for us make improvements, and that we have a responsibility to do so. You may have missed a change I made to my comment, also. We aren't completely beholden to the Pareto principle. We can work against it to a certain degree, if we choose, which would lessen inequality, with tolerable side effects.
lerie82 9y ago
I believe this paper is very full of one-sided ideals of what people think nature and society is.
IIAOPSW 9y ago
This is so weird. I was literally thinking about this exact thing last night. I was tempted to prove/simulate that even a mild interest generating mechanism (say 5% per anum) is enough to distort the wealth distribution far beyond what hard work and merit would suggest. I was just going to do a blog post but I guess these people went ahead and published. Dang.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
blagswod 9y ago
Free men are not equal; equal men are not free.
- NeoBasilisk 9y ago
  nice meme
  - blagswod 9y ago
    I guess this too is a meme? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
- Strudelnoggin 9y ago
  Not a meme at all sir. I think it is a good, thoughtful insight that conforms to the Hacker News community standards for what constitutes a "good post" however brief and, according to others, trite it might appear to be.
Strudelnoggin 9y ago
The inequality that the "wealth equalizing" institutions are intended to prevent end up becoming another cause of inequality. One only look as far as the former Soviet Union. They had "wealth equalizing" institutions as well which created a new privileged class of elites. Those elites were those who owned and operated the "wealth equalizing" institutions. The article's assertion "extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale" is wrong. These institutions would end up creating a new layer of inequality. The article's premise, therefore, should have been: "wealth inequality is inevitable", full stop.
- dcre 9y ago
  How much?
- mempko 9y ago
  it's inevitably with assets that are multiplicative. Multiplicative is the important detail.
joe_the_user 9y ago
"Most societies" is a meaningless term. Measuring "most" is impossible and any metric is more or less going to come out of a value judgment to begin with. Some human societies have a lot of equality and some have a lot inequality. The only useful point is that inequality can easily arise by chance but appear as "meritocracy" after the fact, being self justifying. Anyway, the main question is "what level of inequality or equality do we want?" That is, for some value of "we" able to make it's choice come to fruition. Maybe that "we" is the elite, that small number of people at the top already. Indeed, at points in America's history, the elite actually saw considerable value in some level of equality but that seems well in the past. Maybe that we is a larger group (the voters, "the working class", "angry people", who knows). That larger group would need to be able to do something more than be unhappy, of course.
- adamsea 9y ago
  > "Most societies" is a meaningless term. Measuring "most" is impossible and any metric is more or less going to come out of a value judgment to begin with. Some human societies have a lot of equality and some have a lot inequality. I would bet there are true (though perhaps simple or obvious) claims which can be made in sociology and/or anthropology about "most societies." Such, as, perhaps, burying the dead. Are you a sociologist or anthropologist? Or, do you have some other claim to expertise in this domain? If so, forgive my critique.
  - joe_the_user 9y ago
    Fine, I should perhaps say "in this context, 'most societies' is a meaningless term." - though I would hope that contextualizing is obvious. As far as expertise goes, I think all one needs is moderate acquaintance with statistics to learn the "most" is a slippery generalization whenever one gets to get complex phenomena in wide-ranging contexts. And human societies and their interrelations are some of the most complex and slippery of them.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Pyxl101 9y ago
solidsnack9000 9y ago
It seems that, without some way to rebalance every few generations, things become anti-competitive very quickly. But without some way to hold onto one’s gains, what’s the point of winning? Hmmm...
thalesofmiletus 9y ago
obviously this does not apply to the modern day "serfs". seeing as none of us will take most of the things we hold dear off the planet anytime soon. we inherently share all things. the reason why our current reality does not follow suit is because people have been conditioned for generations to believe and not do anything about the following "the one who has will even take from the one who has not" whether you want to describe business, cutting in line, capitalism, any exchange. they have also been conditioned to believe that they have some right to have things that others do not have rights too. which is a corrosive idea just like the previous one. mix these two ideas with the competitive environment that we are indoctrinated into and then you will have your answer as to why there is inequality. the other part of the puzzle is that they have also been lied to and told that for some reason all the resources on earth cannot be shared and they have to have be exchanged for an intermediary currency which you get by working. if we are all living on one ball in space how can you say we do not own everything that is on it. each one of us. there is absolutely no reason why everyone on earth cannot have equal access to everything. if there is not enough of something then it is not shareable. not one individual can own it. that is where the discussion ends. in the future there will be a time where wanting so much of something that it disrupts the balance of society will be a punishable offense. people will go to rehab centers for it. kinda like modern day hoarding. we are just not there now. we will get there though once the repercussions of someone having a house made out of diamonds contrasts with millions living in tents. i still don't understand how you can justify one person having a yearly salary of hundreds of millions of dollars. you can't, that person is no different than you and me. it just happens to sit at the top of a pyramid supported by many of others who believe its koolaid.
stanfordkid 9y ago
IMO, The comparison between Nature and Billionaires/wealth is just mind-bogglingly inane. For starters, the evolution and convergence of the species distributions within an eco-system is a multi-generational game versus a single-generation (or at least single-digit) game for wealth accumulation in most societies. Secondly, the strategy used within the games are almost completely different (in the case of wealth distribution there is a high degree of choice/variability by individual actors) while in the case of species dominance there is only pseudo-random variability based on genetic code. The variability also does not change within the course of a single generation. A more fair comparison might be to compare the amount of territory controlled by the average pack of lions versus the most dominant pack of lions. In this case, the games are at least somewhat similar. I would actually be really interested to see this type of analysis, and I think it could be done very well, for many different species.
- flyinglizard 9y ago
  Lions don’t have technological means to control more land (which tend to yield nonlinear benefits), nor would I guess that lions expand their territory just for the thrill (like humans do after meeting their physical needs).
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> A more fair comparison might be to compare the amount of territory controlled by the average pack of lions versus the most dominant pack of lions. The article addresses this and notes there is no great difference in this respect: Although the surprising similarity between inequality of species abundances and wealth may have the same roots on an abstract level, this does not imply that wealth inequality is “natural.” Indeed, in nature, the amount of resources held by individuals (e.g., territory size) is typically quite equal within a species.

145 points by wallflower 9y ago

> extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale. Yeah, and water is wet; since ever is known that the best tool to make money is... money; so the resource tends to get unevenly distributed and pile up in the hands of a few. And what's worse is that the punishment for not having enough money is... to lose money, obviously overdraft fees are the best example of this, but there are a million ways more.

byproxy 9y ago
"The Anatomy of Inequality" by Per Molander delves into this. It's a pretty good read.
nugget 9y ago
To expand on humanity's historical experience, the best known method of reducing wealth inequality seems to be revolutions and world wars - the more devastating and catastrophic, the better.
- gcb0 9y ago
  you will get a kick reading Nietzsche biography.
- cutcss 9y ago
  ...sure but, well, we have internet and other advancements since then, there may be a chance of less murderous solutions to work.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Sadly your comment has been auto-hidden for some reason, perhaps that of expressing an unpopular opinion.
balthasar 9y ago
I have seen it argued that government intervention leads to wealth concentration, that in a free market competition is supposed counteract this.
- gcb0 9y ago
  except it is the exact opposite. and the entire article is about it... sigh.
  - balthasar 9y ago
    Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't agreeing with "government intervention leads to wealth concentration" I was stating that people who bring this up do not believe it is a given that "extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale". Cutcss was implying this is universally agreed upon but I've seen many people believe the opposite.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  This is the homeopathic theory of government intervention: the much-less-government Belle Epoque had greater wealth concentration than a century later because government still intervened some in 1875. The lower the concentration of government, the more potent grows its poison, as libertarians attribute society's problems to this diminished residual. If things aren't better following government reduction, the solution must be to shrink it further, not to reconsider the theory. People still peddling revolutionary communism have a parallel homeopathic theory about capitalism. Bring up a bunch of empirically observed problems in the former USSR and they'll go "Oh, those 20th century 'communist' societies were state capitalist, not real communists; the problem was that they didn't get rid of capitalism enough. Under Real Communism we'd have all the good stuff and none of the bad." It's not very convincing.
raarts 9y ago
I did not know what 'overdraft fees' were until I came to live in the US. So for other non-US readers: For bank accounts where you are not allowed to overspend, but you try it anyway, there is a difference in how that is handled in the US vs European banks. If you spend more than your current balance ('overdraft'), US banks allow that, but charge you a hefty fee (my bank charges me $35 per violation). European banks just disallow it altogether. It even happened that one day I had a withdrawal, and a deposit. Overnight, the bank first processed the withdrawal (account balance became negative), next added the deposit (balance became positive again). Then charged me the $35 fee! They could have done it the other way around and not charge for it....
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Not only this, but banks were in the habit of ordering your account activity on a day-by-day basis so as to maximize your fee liability, a practice which cast Bank of America some $400 million a few years back and which Wells Fargo is trying to escape responsibility for at present through some other litigation strategy: https://consumerist.com/2011/07/14/bank-of-america-paying-out-410-million-for-reordering-your-transactions-to-maximize-overdraft-fees/ https://consumerist.com/2011/07/14/bank-of-america-paying-ou...

dvt 9y ago

(This is a slightly modified but highly relevant excerpt from a piece I wrote last year: Confusing Math with Morality[1].) In What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources[2], Ronald Dworkin makes a distinction between justified inequality of resources and unjustified inequality of resources. Dworkin borrows from Rawls, but the gist of his sentiment is summarized by SEP[3]: “Unequal distribution of resources is considered fair only when it results from the decisions and intentional actions of those concerned.” Conversely, provisions, gifts, bribes, and pure luck are conducive to an unfair (or unjust) inequality of resources. For example, a state lottery is unequal — and creates an unjust inequality of resources — because it’s random. It’s trivial to come up with a social policy that always converges wealth to a uniform distribution[4], but the problem is that unless this convergence is driven by what Dworkin calls ‘ambition-sensitive’ forces, this social policy is profoundly unfair — even though it might seem to be fair. [1] https://dvt.name/2017/07/10/confusing-math-with-morality/ https://dvt.name/2017/07/10/confusing-math-with-morality/ [2] http://homepage.univie.ac.at/herbert.preiss/files/Dworkin_What%20is%20Equality_Part2_Equality%20of%20Resources.pdf http://homepage.univie.ac.at/herbert.preiss/files/Dworkin_Wh... [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/#EquofRes https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/#EquofRes [4] https://www.gaussianwaves.com/gaussianwaves/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Histogram-of-Uniform-Distribution.jpg https://www.gaussianwaves.com/gaussianwaves/wp-content/uploa...

matte_black 9y ago
A random distribution of resources is not unfair, in fact it is the most fair way to distribute resources assuming each participant has an equal chance of gaining resources. A state lottery is not an unjust inequality, it is a justified inequality, because it's outcome is truly random.
- dvt 9y ago
  You're free to diagree with Dworkin (and Rawls), but keep in mind they are some of the most preeminent minds of the past century. Your argument has to be a bit more thought out than merely explaining how randomness works. You would have to tackle the concept of "ambition-sensitivity" and its relationship to fairness, among other things.

irickt 9y ago

This can be read as a theoretical analysis of a basic income guarantee. >>> Equalizing Mechanisms. There are essentially two classes of mechanisms that can reduce inequality: suppression of dominance ... or lifting the majority out of the sticky state close to zero .... Starting with the latter, a small additive influx is a powerful antidote to the stickiness effect. ... In society, savings from income represent an additive contribution to wealth. Adding such a flux to our minimal model of wealth allows more households to gain wealth, thus populating the middle class and regularly breaking episodes of dominance by the previously dominant households Also, full pdf with methods and details: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13154.full.pdf?with-ds=yes http://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13154.full.pdf?with-ds=ye...

anigbrowl 9y ago
Also worth looking at section 7 in the supplementary information, and figure S5.

dwaltrip 9y ago

There are fundamental causes for inequality that can't be fixed once-and-for-all. The Pareto principle and other similar dynamics provide a glimpse into this. We see this everywhere in nature (distribution of mass in a star system, distribution of energy in an ecosystem, etc). That being said, there are significant anachronistic, unjust human causes for inequality. Corruption, cultural/racial bias, skewed market incentives, externalities, etc. That is where we should focus our energy. There is much good that can and should be done there. And we can work to broadly lift the floor of human experience for all, even if such endeavors don't eliminate all relative inequality. A perfectly equal system would be static, unchanging, fixed in place. There would be no vibrance or life. Dynamic processes that bring about change do not provide the same result to all pieces of a system, and require non-uniformity to continue occurring. Think of the heat death of the universe -- everything everywhere is the same temperature, and no interesting changes can ever happen again. But this is certainly no excuse to not make the valuable and necessary improvements that we are capable of doing. Lastly, it is certainly possible that the "natural" dynamics driving inequality are not at ideal levels right now, and that we should enact policy changes or other measures that counteract such dynamics and increase equality (higher taxes, social programs, etc). I think this is likely the case, and support such efforts. Edit: Getting some downvotes. I hope no one think I'm implying regressive action, as I have no desire for that. I'd love to hear people's take on things. My main reason for posting is that I often see discussions that don't recognize what seem to me certain fundamental dynamics. If my understanding is off, please share how. Thanks.

davidjsevans 9y ago
Good comment. If more people understood the distribution of wealth was largely the result of natural laws of productivity (described by the Pareto Principle), and not just the result of corruption, exploiting externalities, etc, there would be much less resentment and envy towards the top 1%. Perhaps then we could focus on some solutions that don't make the 1% want to flee to a more free country, taking their productivity and wealth with them.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  The really tricky part is identifying how much is due to fundamental dynamics and how much is due to unjust anachronisms. For that, I don't have a good answer. I believe there is plenty of room for us make improvements, and that we have a responsibility to do so. You may have missed a change I made to my comment, also. We aren't completely beholden to the Pareto principle. We can work against it to a certain degree, if we choose, which would lessen inequality, with tolerable side effects.

lerie82 9y ago

I believe this paper is very full of one-sided ideals of what people think nature and society is.

IIAOPSW 9y ago

This is so weird. I was literally thinking about this exact thing last night. I was tempted to prove/simulate that even a mild interest generating mechanism (say 5% per anum) is enough to distort the wealth distribution far beyond what hard work and merit would suggest. I was just going to do a blog post but I guess these people went ahead and published. Dang.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

blagswod 9y ago

Free men are not equal; equal men are not free.

NeoBasilisk 9y ago
nice meme
- blagswod 9y ago
  I guess this too is a meme? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Strudelnoggin 9y ago
Not a meme at all sir. I think it is a good, thoughtful insight that conforms to the Hacker News community standards for what constitutes a "good post" however brief and, according to others, trite it might appear to be.

Strudelnoggin 9y ago

The inequality that the "wealth equalizing" institutions are intended to prevent end up becoming another cause of inequality. One only look as far as the former Soviet Union. They had "wealth equalizing" institutions as well which created a new privileged class of elites. Those elites were those who owned and operated the "wealth equalizing" institutions. The article's assertion "extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale" is wrong. These institutions would end up creating a new layer of inequality. The article's premise, therefore, should have been: "wealth inequality is inevitable", full stop.

dcre 9y ago
How much?
mempko 9y ago
it's inevitably with assets that are multiplicative. Multiplicative is the important detail.

joe_the_user 9y ago

"Most societies" is a meaningless term. Measuring "most" is impossible and any metric is more or less going to come out of a value judgment to begin with. Some human societies have a lot of equality and some have a lot inequality. The only useful point is that inequality can easily arise by chance but appear as "meritocracy" after the fact, being self justifying. Anyway, the main question is "what level of inequality or equality do we want?" That is, for some value of "we" able to make it's choice come to fruition. Maybe that "we" is the elite, that small number of people at the top already. Indeed, at points in America's history, the elite actually saw considerable value in some level of equality but that seems well in the past. Maybe that we is a larger group (the voters, "the working class", "angry people", who knows). That larger group would need to be able to do something more than be unhappy, of course.

adamsea 9y ago
> "Most societies" is a meaningless term. Measuring "most" is impossible and any metric is more or less going to come out of a value judgment to begin with. Some human societies have a lot of equality and some have a lot inequality. I would bet there are true (though perhaps simple or obvious) claims which can be made in sociology and/or anthropology about "most societies." Such, as, perhaps, burying the dead. Are you a sociologist or anthropologist? Or, do you have some other claim to expertise in this domain? If so, forgive my critique.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  Fine, I should perhaps say "in this context, 'most societies' is a meaningless term." - though I would hope that contextualizing is obvious. As far as expertise goes, I think all one needs is moderate acquaintance with statistics to learn the "most" is a slippery generalization whenever one gets to get complex phenomena in wide-ranging contexts. And human societies and their interrelations are some of the most complex and slippery of them.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Pyxl101 9y ago

solidsnack9000 9y ago

It seems that, without some way to rebalance every few generations, things become anti-competitive very quickly. But without some way to hold onto one’s gains, what’s the point of winning? Hmmm...

thalesofmiletus 9y ago

obviously this does not apply to the modern day "serfs". seeing as none of us will take most of the things we hold dear off the planet anytime soon. we inherently share all things. the reason why our current reality does not follow suit is because people have been conditioned for generations to believe and not do anything about the following "the one who has will even take from the one who has not" whether you want to describe business, cutting in line, capitalism, any exchange. they have also been conditioned to believe that they have some right to have things that others do not have rights too. which is a corrosive idea just like the previous one. mix these two ideas with the competitive environment that we are indoctrinated into and then you will have your answer as to why there is inequality. the other part of the puzzle is that they have also been lied to and told that for some reason all the resources on earth cannot be shared and they have to have be exchanged for an intermediary currency which you get by working. if we are all living on one ball in space how can you say we do not own everything that is on it. each one of us. there is absolutely no reason why everyone on earth cannot have equal access to everything. if there is not enough of something then it is not shareable. not one individual can own it. that is where the discussion ends. in the future there will be a time where wanting so much of something that it disrupts the balance of society will be a punishable offense. people will go to rehab centers for it. kinda like modern day hoarding. we are just not there now. we will get there though once the repercussions of someone having a house made out of diamonds contrasts with millions living in tents. i still don't understand how you can justify one person having a yearly salary of hundreds of millions of dollars. you can't, that person is no different than you and me. it just happens to sit at the top of a pyramid supported by many of others who believe its koolaid.

stanfordkid 9y ago

IMO, The comparison between Nature and Billionaires/wealth is just mind-bogglingly inane. For starters, the evolution and convergence of the species distributions within an eco-system is a multi-generational game versus a single-generation (or at least single-digit) game for wealth accumulation in most societies. Secondly, the strategy used within the games are almost completely different (in the case of wealth distribution there is a high degree of choice/variability by individual actors) while in the case of species dominance there is only pseudo-random variability based on genetic code. The variability also does not change within the course of a single generation. A more fair comparison might be to compare the amount of territory controlled by the average pack of lions versus the most dominant pack of lions. In this case, the games are at least somewhat similar. I would actually be really interested to see this type of analysis, and I think it could be done very well, for many different species.

flyinglizard 9y ago
Lions don’t have technological means to control more land (which tend to yield nonlinear benefits), nor would I guess that lions expand their territory just for the thrill (like humans do after meeting their physical needs).
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> A more fair comparison might be to compare the amount of territory controlled by the average pack of lions versus the most dominant pack of lions. The article addresses this and notes there is no great difference in this respect: Although the surprising similarity between inequality of species abundances and wealth may have the same roots on an abstract level, this does not imply that wealth inequality is “natural.” Indeed, in nature, the amount of resources held by individuals (e.g., territory size) is typically quite equal within a species.