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I've heard them called "court intellectuals." The problem with Pinker's optimism isn't that it's wrong. If you look at aggregate statistics everything is getti

by api 9y ago

I've heard them called "court intellectuals." The problem with Pinker's optimism isn't that it's wrong. If you look at aggregate statistics everything is getting better. The problem is that the distribution of that wealth is shifting toward an extreme hockey stick. A rising tide no longer lifts all boats. Those realities don't show up in aggregate statistics. You get what you measure. In fact it's even worse than that. In certain cases a rising tide sinks many peoples' boats. Case in point: exploding asset prices. The savings of the extremely wealthy are re-invested in issuing more private debt, which in turn inflates the cost of things like real estate and college tuition which makes these basic things less affordable to ordinary people. One person can't afford a house because someone else's money has been parked in real estate. Then there's the fact that advancing technology keeps raising the bar for entry level labor. Eventually the bar gets raised so high that someone with a merely average IQ or who is too young to possess the required experience is no longer profitably employable, leading to mass youth and lower class unemployment. Basically it doesn't matter if everything is getting better for someone else. It matters if it's getting better for you. The trouble is that all the solutions we have to wealth inequality are totalitarian and generally against the grain of enlightenment humanism. The most effective economic levelers are authoritarian socialism and warfare. The latter creates a huge amount of stimulus spending that creates a lot of jobs and effectively redistributes wealth to the working class. Without either forcible redistribution or war, wealth seems to just accumulate at the top due to network effects until the richest 0.01% own everything.

Findeton 9y ago
The rich 0.01% can’t own everything in a free market because they still need to profit by selling their products and services to the rest of humanity. And for that to happen, the rest of humanity still needs to be earning money. The market will solve this by itself, if governments don’t fuck it up. If everything is owned by a small group of people (which communists say it’s the government) that’s communism not capitalism. Capitalism requires people making transactions in order to achieve the main goal of generating profits.
- api 9y ago
  The majority of humanity can work for subsistence level wages. The primary economic activity of the rich can be gambling, which typically takes the form of repeated inflation of asset and financial instrument bubbles. The rich can also make money selling luxury goods to one another and to an upper middle (professional) class. That class would still exist but would be relatively small like the priestly and knight classes of feudal Europe. This isn't optimal from an economic perspective nor does it result in the greatest wealth for the rich or anyone else, but it seems to be how things unfold. All we need is powdered wigs and merkins and we'll be in 17th century France. The problem is that the rich are human and humans don't respond to Skinner boxes any differently from rats. The lower classes generally can't lose themselves in Skinner boxes because they must engage in something resembling productive work to survive. The rich on the other hand are untethered from this demand and will naturally find whatever Skinner boxes present themselves. Financial speculation, literal gambling, hedonism (Trump with his porn stars etc.), and palace intrigue (which in the modern age takes the form of political maneuvering or media/celebrity drama) are all Skinner boxes that deliver those dopamine hits with escalating spacing between doses that we're wired to become addicted to. Super-wealthy people who engage in productive work (e.g. Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk) are so notable because they're rare. Maybe they have some inborn or conditioned resistance to Skinner boxes that most people lack.
RoutinePlayer 9y ago
-> The trouble is that all the solutions we have to wealth inequality are totalitarian and generally against the grain of enlightenment humanism. The most effective economic levelers are authoritarian socialism and warfare. Really? Is the democratic socialism practiced in most of Europe totalitarian and authoritarian?
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  I think his point is that if you have entrenched inequality, the two proven ways of eliminating it are via war and via revolution. I don't think he's saying that all democratic socialist states are authoritarian, or that democratic socialism can't prevent inequality.
thraway180306 9y ago
aggregate statistics everything is getting better Is that something to brag about? I just realized that in aggregate things might have been getting monotonically better in every period of aggregate civilization. Enslaving by the Romans was not without benefits. Fall of the Roman Empire meant a dip, but given wider distribution onto Germans, Huns, Vandals &c. I don't think it's unreasonable to argue most people were better off. About inequality I think HN's own @pron nails it: the issue is power and disempowerment. Solutions aren't known, but neglect by reframing the issue as lesser evils as you just did is a sure way to discontent and violence.
lhnz 9y ago
> The problem with Pinker's optimism isn't that > it's wrong. If you look at aggregate statistics > everything is getting better. The problem is > that the distribution of that wealth is shifting > toward an extreme hockey stick. A rising tide no > longer lifts all boats. There are fewer people living in poverty.
- danharaj 9y ago
  The definition of poverty is decided by people who have an incentive to say poverty is declining. It changes over time. Why do people take these definitions at face value without examining what they actually mean?
  - thraway180306 9y ago
    But think of the children. I've heard all these metrics tend to correlate with infant mortality rates, so they all must be good. Never mind the affluent US which should be the reference of wealthy, has these things decoupled with mortality increasing.
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    So your position is that here has not been a massive, species-wide reduction in poverty (and pretty much every other negative outcome) over the last 250 years?
    - danharaj 9y ago
      Mu.
- api 9y ago
  Depends on where you live. In developed nations there are now more people living in poverty. There's more unemployment, more people with no savings, more people in too much debt, and in the USA at least declining life spans among working class Americans. A lot of people in the developed world are going to see books like this as a lot of out-of-touch "why do they not eat cake?" and self-congratulation by educated elites who don't have to work two jobs to afford the ever-increasing rent. Keep in mind that anyone making over $80-$100k is "elite" by global standards. That would include probably 80% of the users on this board. Aggregate statistics can be extremely misleading. To give a wild example: if our understanding of the second law of thermodynamics is correct the entire universe is increasing in entropy. Does this imply that trees can't grow, cells can't divide, and factories can't operate? Aggregate trends do not imply much of anything at all about specific outcomes at a smaller scale.

by api 9y ago

Findeton 9y ago

The rich 0.01% can’t own everything in a free market because they still need to profit by selling their products and services to the rest of humanity. And for that to happen, the rest of humanity still needs to be earning money. The market will solve this by itself, if governments don’t fuck it up. If everything is owned by a small group of people (which communists say it’s the government) that’s communism not capitalism. Capitalism requires people making transactions in order to achieve the main goal of generating profits.

api 9y ago
The majority of humanity can work for subsistence level wages. The primary economic activity of the rich can be gambling, which typically takes the form of repeated inflation of asset and financial instrument bubbles. The rich can also make money selling luxury goods to one another and to an upper middle (professional) class. That class would still exist but would be relatively small like the priestly and knight classes of feudal Europe. This isn't optimal from an economic perspective nor does it result in the greatest wealth for the rich or anyone else, but it seems to be how things unfold. All we need is powdered wigs and merkins and we'll be in 17th century France. The problem is that the rich are human and humans don't respond to Skinner boxes any differently from rats. The lower classes generally can't lose themselves in Skinner boxes because they must engage in something resembling productive work to survive. The rich on the other hand are untethered from this demand and will naturally find whatever Skinner boxes present themselves. Financial speculation, literal gambling, hedonism (Trump with his porn stars etc.), and palace intrigue (which in the modern age takes the form of political maneuvering or media/celebrity drama) are all Skinner boxes that deliver those dopamine hits with escalating spacing between doses that we're wired to become addicted to. Super-wealthy people who engage in productive work (e.g. Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk) are so notable because they're rare. Maybe they have some inborn or conditioned resistance to Skinner boxes that most people lack.

RoutinePlayer 9y ago

-> The trouble is that all the solutions we have to wealth inequality are totalitarian and generally against the grain of enlightenment humanism. The most effective economic levelers are authoritarian socialism and warfare. Really? Is the democratic socialism practiced in most of Europe totalitarian and authoritarian?

soVeryTired 9y ago
I think his point is that if you have entrenched inequality, the two proven ways of eliminating it are via war and via revolution. I don't think he's saying that all democratic socialist states are authoritarian, or that democratic socialism can't prevent inequality.

thraway180306 9y ago

aggregate statistics everything is getting better Is that something to brag about? I just realized that in aggregate things might have been getting monotonically better in every period of aggregate civilization. Enslaving by the Romans was not without benefits. Fall of the Roman Empire meant a dip, but given wider distribution onto Germans, Huns, Vandals &c. I don't think it's unreasonable to argue most people were better off. About inequality I think HN's own @pron nails it: the issue is power and disempowerment. Solutions aren't known, but neglect by reframing the issue as lesser evils as you just did is a sure way to discontent and violence.

lhnz 9y ago

> The problem with Pinker's optimism isn't that > it's wrong. If you look at aggregate statistics > everything is getting better. The problem is > that the distribution of that wealth is shifting > toward an extreme hockey stick. A rising tide no > longer lifts all boats. There are fewer people living in poverty.

danharaj 9y ago
The definition of poverty is decided by people who have an incentive to say poverty is declining. It changes over time. Why do people take these definitions at face value without examining what they actually mean?
- thraway180306 9y ago
  But think of the children. I've heard all these metrics tend to correlate with infant mortality rates, so they all must be good. Never mind the affluent US which should be the reference of wealthy, has these things decoupled with mortality increasing.
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  So your position is that here has not been a massive, species-wide reduction in poverty (and pretty much every other negative outcome) over the last 250 years?
  - danharaj 9y ago
    Mu.
api 9y ago
Depends on where you live. In developed nations there are now more people living in poverty. There's more unemployment, more people with no savings, more people in too much debt, and in the USA at least declining life spans among working class Americans. A lot of people in the developed world are going to see books like this as a lot of out-of-touch "why do they not eat cake?" and self-congratulation by educated elites who don't have to work two jobs to afford the ever-increasing rent. Keep in mind that anyone making over $80-$100k is "elite" by global standards. That would include probably 80% of the users on this board. Aggregate statistics can be extremely misleading. To give a wild example: if our understanding of the second law of thermodynamics is correct the entire universe is increasing in entropy. Does this imply that trees can't grow, cells can't divide, and factories can't operate? Aggregate trends do not imply much of anything at all about specific outcomes at a smaller scale.