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I think this is all true. The problem lies somewhere else. Companies like Amazon is what we want. Convenient, re-investing all profit to improve its services a

I think this is all true. The problem lies somewhere else. Companies like Amazon is what we want. Convenient, re-investing all profit to improve its services and lower its prices. They deliver beneficial goods and services to our society. That's great. The problem is in redistribution of wealth throughout our society. As we optimize production and delivery. The inequality of wealth distribution widens, because less and less crums fall behind for the poor to pick up. The pie gets bigger, but the portions most people are getting of it keeps getting smaller. If it grew faster then the portions shrank, all would be good, but I believe we're starting to see cases where it doesn't, and some people reaching a point where they get none of the pie. And this is not an Amazon's problem, or an economic one. This is a societal problem we'll have to address. What if not everyone is needed? What if society can sustain itself with only a fraction of the population? Who gets chosen to remain, and who gets cut out? Think of a dinner party. 10 people are invited. They form the party. How many of them are needed to cook? Not all 10, thats too many cook. It would actually be less efficient to have them all in the kitchen. So what if two of them cook? Do they only get to eat? Do they get more of the food? Maybe all 10 guests would have been able to cook, so who's lucky enough to be the chef and eat? This is now happening at the scale of our society. But we don't treat each other like friends at a party. So when we get to cook, we don't share. We should.

eigen-vector 9y ago
Good argument for socialism. The question that follows any argument that advocates some form of wealth sharing is "what do I get in return?". I think, as a society, we should be valuing the non-materialistic impact we can all have on each other. I am a software developer. I can build things and make money off that, great. I create some value and am compensated in return for that. I can now go seek things I cannot do myself like writing a song, or playing a sport in a manner worthy of my audience and go support the artist or the sportsperson. There now is a working model for wealth sharing. Once we come out of the basic shell of "socialism will breed a generation of welfare seekers", and look at a pivot of capitalism with wealth distribution in mind, it could see some success.
- pmiller2 9y ago
  Historically, the answer to "what's in it for me" for the elite when it comes to wealth sharing is that it acts as guillotine insurance.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    And for those who are wealthy but not part of the 1%, the answer is that the guillotine doesn't stop at the 1%.
  - Thlom 9y ago
    The social democracies in Scandinavia were basically a class compromise. The capital class accepted the welfare state, relatively high taxes, an organised working class and a organised labour market. In return the working class gave up their struggle for socialism and would follow rules of conflict resolution with the capital class to avoid un-necessary strikes.
- hashkb 9y ago
  > The question that follows any argument that advocates some form of wealth sharing is "what do I get in return?" This is a ridiculous question to ask. The basis of society is sharing resources; some of us have just forgotten because it's convenient. What do you get in return? To live in a society where nobody is starving, everyone is educated and free to do whatever makes them happy.
  - freeone3000 9y ago
    I'm already fed, educated, and free to do whatever I want. It doesn't help me for other people to get the same.
    - rosser 9y ago
      Yes it does. A broadly better-educated citizenry makes for a richer, more robust economy. Reducing or eliminating poverty, the same. "A rising tide lifts all boats," as they say. If you actively think that's not somehow fundamentally helpful to you, or in your best interests, maybe you don't belong in society. If your notion of "freedom" is predicated on other people starving (which I take people to mean when they say it's an infringement upon their freedom to be "forced" to participate in other people's not starving), then I think it's a pretty terrible one. If anyone, anywhere is starving, or enslaved, and you trumpet your own freedom in the face of that, you are necessarily treating freedom as zero-sum, and washing your hands of the costs the people on the other side of that coin are paying — often with their lives. When "freedom" is propped up on someone else's lack of it, I don't personally find it worth celebrating, or being all "Welp, I got mine!" over, myself. EDIT: Phrasing
Analemma_ 9y ago
This is why tax rates, especially at the top, should move together with changing "natural" wealth distributions. If technology and new business models are making more "winner take all" scenarios and favoring a few top earners and highly centralized businesses, we don't need to try and shut them down by inventing market distortions, just make top tax brackets higher. Amazon doesn't need to get broken up and at the same time no one has to starve either because it killed their mom-and-pop shop. Really, the current state of markets are such that we should have at least ~60% top marginal tax rates and treat capital gains exactly the same as income. Whether there's political will for that, I don't know, but it is the best solution.
- makmanalp 9y ago
  > we should have at least ~60% top marginal tax rates and treat capital gains exactly the same as income I agree on principle with this bit at least, but I'm pessimistic that a change like this could ever happen. It seems right now the cat and mouse game is around what counts as income and what doesn't, and increasingly complex methods of exercising control over some asset without ever "earning" it until it's beneficial to do so, if ever.
- eloff 9y ago
  Taxes can be part of the solution. But if you raise them too much people and companies find a way around it. They leave or they exploit loopholes. If the Panama papers taught us anything, it's that taxes will never be the whole solution.
losteric 9y ago
> Think of a dinner party. 10 people are invited. They form the party. How many of them are needed to cook? Not all 10, thats too many cook. It would actually be less efficient to have them all in the kitchen. So what if two of them cook? Do they only get to eat? Do they get more of the food? Maybe all 10 guests would have been able to cook, so who's lucky enough to be the chef and eat? What if they rotate responsibilities? Or, to reground the metaphor, maybe we need shorter work weeks?
- Pamar 9y ago
  Are you living in USA? France tried something in that direction: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek but it arguably didn’t work well for them because in Europe a full time employee has -on average- very high costs for the employer, and most importantly they job contract is not “at will” (i.e. getting rid of redundant employees is basically impossible). (N.B.: I am not saying that the European situation is good or bad, just that it is an obstacle towards shortening the workweek, as France apparently found out).
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    I think that France did a pretty untimely move with their 35 hours right when international competition was becoming much stronger. But it would work if the same policy was adopted by most of your competitors.
    - WJW 9y ago
      "If everyone just behaved themselves" is a solution to basically every problem humanity has, but it is pretty clear by now that that is not something we can depend upon. The tragedy of the commons is real and ongoing.
      - danmaz74 9y ago
        Well, we got to the 40-hours week, didn't we? My point is that the fact that the 35 hours didn't work in France this time doesn't mean they can't work in general.
amelius 9y ago
I'd like to compare the economy to an OS. A task of an OS is to schedule processes, and to do so in a way that is fair and efficient. It would be efficient to give priority to the process which has been running the longest, because that would minimize context switching. But clearly, it's not fair. So from an average user's perspective the OS would be a failure. In the economy, "priority" is given to those with the most wealth. Priority leads to more opportunities to increasing wealth. In other words, money agglutinates, and evidently for most participants, the economy is a failure. In the OS analogy, someone could step in and formulate a rule stating that new processes would get a minimum share of the CPU. This would be equivalent in the economy to giving poor people a minimum income to keep them happy enough to not cause any trouble for the wealthy. But clearly, it's a hack in both cases, and a deeper evaluation of the problem is necessary.
peacetreefrog 9y ago
What evidence do you have that portion of the pie is getting smaller for most people? I do not believe this at all. It's especially not true on a global scale, where globalization has improved the lives and wealth of millions in China and India.
- lkrubner 9y ago
  Wages for men have fallen since 1973: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/wages-in-the-usa-have-been-falling-since-1973 http://www.smashcompany.com/business/wages-in-the-usa-have-b... The fall is especially sharp if you count health care expenditures, which have risen faster than average inflation, but since that also effects women, you could remove the "men" from the first sentence. For specific examples of industries that have suffered, consider the decline in the wages for truckers: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/truckers-have-seen-there-wages-shrink-and-automation-can-not-be-blamed http://www.smashcompany.com/business/truckers-have-seen-ther... Men with college degrees have done better than men without college degrees: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/is-it-useful-to-have-a-college-degree http://www.smashcompany.com/business/is-it-useful-to-have-a-...
- eloff 9y ago
  It is true in the US. There's been a lot published on the subject and it won't be hard to find. The developing world is another story, but the inequality is arguably even more extreme. With a much higher percentage of people living in poverty. Their middle class is mostly growing though, so the picture is improving.
  - peacetreefrog 9y ago
    No, a lot depends on how you look at the data. See these two videos for a good overview: https://www.policyed.org/numbers-game https://www.policyed.org/numbers-game
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  Getting downvoted here, but see the non-partisan IGM economic survey on this. "The 9% cumulative increase in real US median household income since 1980 substantially understates how much better off people in the median American household are now economically, compared with 35 years ago." When asked to agree-disagree, 60% of economists (70% when you weight by confidence) agree with this. http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/us-median-income http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/us-median-income
ItsMe000001 9y ago
I would tend to agree but add one condition: They have to pay good living wages to all their employees, not just to the few (relative to total nr. of employees) at the top level, e.g. software engineers. Yes yes - "the market", surplus of low-skilled labor, etc. Look, as far as I can tell the "economy" and everything we have to guide it is the tool(!) and the humans are the top target, and not the other way around. That means if we find areas where the tool fails to deliver we have to adjust and use a different one. All those arguments based on "theory" place the tool first and make it the goal. I like this quote a lot (found on twitter, I found it on reddit): > When you blame a poor person for not getting a better job, you accept that while their job is necessary, whoever does it should be poor. (source: https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/855501957288517632 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/85550195728851763...) And from the reddit comments this one: > My favorite thing to ever hear come out of a custom's mouth was "get a real job". Standing there, performing a service that they themselves are requesting and spending legal tender on, and they don't see the validity of said job. I love efficiency. I love people who work hard, and who keep learning, experimenting, failing. I love entrepreneurs. I am independent myself, had a small business and worked as freelancer consultant. I also consider myself "conservative" when it comes to how to deal with "low-performers" who do so for no reason other than laziness. And yet, I won't accept the "market outcome" of extremely low wages and stressful lives (e.g. long commutes, multiple jobs, bad housing, etc.) for people who actually try, and I'd say that includes everyone who takes one of those warehouse jobs or any other job. The theory and the tool ("the market") are failing us because they could not care less about human fates. There is no reason whatsoever to accept that. It is completely in our power to do something about it. We should use "the market" when it works and look for a different tool when it doesn't. Already society is extremely selective about it (and equally selective in its perception), so nothing I say introduces a new element, not even at scale. So I see two choices (that I like, obviously other people can come up with other options including "everything is fine as it is"): - Force businesses like Amazon to pay living wages. This means they will have to have higher prices. Maybe large parts of their business model might not work any more. - Subsidize the work. Choose this option if you think having Amazon outcompete other businesses in some sectors still is better than not having it. Of course, anything is going to have a (low-skill labor) "market distorting effect". So what? It's not like there is none right now, the price for it all is being paid even now: The burden is carried by the employees, on shoulders considerably less capable of carrying it compared to other options.
troupe 9y ago
> The inequality of wealth distribution widens, because less and less crums fall behind for the poor to pick up. One of the best ways to increase your value in the job market is with education. Poor people have more and better educational opportunities today than at any point in time. Between libraries, universities, colleges, free online resources, etc. the opportunities are growing faster than ever. So if you consider access to education "crumbs" then I'd say there is more rather than less.
- Firadeoclus 9y ago
  In a competitive environment you have to compare yourself to others today, not yesterday. Your relative education level and the demand at that level is what counts. So while your absolute education opportunities may be better than ever, the requirements to get a half-decent job are higher, too. Which means you have to learn for longer to reach a higher absolute level. But even ignoring other resources, the poorest may simply not have as much time to spare as those from a wealthy family.
MR4D 9y ago
Interesting analogy you pose. I’d like to offer some amendments.... Pretend that everyone helps with cooking dinner. Then, when the food is served, the person who owns the house gets most of it, and you have barely enough to keep you from being hungry. But I think you’re right - it is a societal problem, and probably hard to fix (in practicality if not in theory).

eigen-vector 9y ago

Good argument for socialism. The question that follows any argument that advocates some form of wealth sharing is "what do I get in return?". I think, as a society, we should be valuing the non-materialistic impact we can all have on each other. I am a software developer. I can build things and make money off that, great. I create some value and am compensated in return for that. I can now go seek things I cannot do myself like writing a song, or playing a sport in a manner worthy of my audience and go support the artist or the sportsperson. There now is a working model for wealth sharing. Once we come out of the basic shell of "socialism will breed a generation of welfare seekers", and look at a pivot of capitalism with wealth distribution in mind, it could see some success.

pmiller2 9y ago
Historically, the answer to "what's in it for me" for the elite when it comes to wealth sharing is that it acts as guillotine insurance.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  And for those who are wealthy but not part of the 1%, the answer is that the guillotine doesn't stop at the 1%.
- Thlom 9y ago
  The social democracies in Scandinavia were basically a class compromise. The capital class accepted the welfare state, relatively high taxes, an organised working class and a organised labour market. In return the working class gave up their struggle for socialism and would follow rules of conflict resolution with the capital class to avoid un-necessary strikes.
hashkb 9y ago
> The question that follows any argument that advocates some form of wealth sharing is "what do I get in return?" This is a ridiculous question to ask. The basis of society is sharing resources; some of us have just forgotten because it's convenient. What do you get in return? To live in a society where nobody is starving, everyone is educated and free to do whatever makes them happy.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  I'm already fed, educated, and free to do whatever I want. It doesn't help me for other people to get the same.
  - rosser 9y ago
    Yes it does. A broadly better-educated citizenry makes for a richer, more robust economy. Reducing or eliminating poverty, the same. "A rising tide lifts all boats," as they say. If you actively think that's not somehow fundamentally helpful to you, or in your best interests, maybe you don't belong in society. If your notion of "freedom" is predicated on other people starving (which I take people to mean when they say it's an infringement upon their freedom to be "forced" to participate in other people's not starving), then I think it's a pretty terrible one. If anyone, anywhere is starving, or enslaved, and you trumpet your own freedom in the face of that, you are necessarily treating freedom as zero-sum, and washing your hands of the costs the people on the other side of that coin are paying — often with their lives. When "freedom" is propped up on someone else's lack of it, I don't personally find it worth celebrating, or being all "Welp, I got mine!" over, myself. EDIT: Phrasing

Analemma_ 9y ago

This is why tax rates, especially at the top, should move together with changing "natural" wealth distributions. If technology and new business models are making more "winner take all" scenarios and favoring a few top earners and highly centralized businesses, we don't need to try and shut them down by inventing market distortions, just make top tax brackets higher. Amazon doesn't need to get broken up and at the same time no one has to starve either because it killed their mom-and-pop shop. Really, the current state of markets are such that we should have at least ~60% top marginal tax rates and treat capital gains exactly the same as income. Whether there's political will for that, I don't know, but it is the best solution.

makmanalp 9y ago
> we should have at least ~60% top marginal tax rates and treat capital gains exactly the same as income I agree on principle with this bit at least, but I'm pessimistic that a change like this could ever happen. It seems right now the cat and mouse game is around what counts as income and what doesn't, and increasingly complex methods of exercising control over some asset without ever "earning" it until it's beneficial to do so, if ever.
eloff 9y ago
Taxes can be part of the solution. But if you raise them too much people and companies find a way around it. They leave or they exploit loopholes. If the Panama papers taught us anything, it's that taxes will never be the whole solution.

losteric 9y ago

> Think of a dinner party. 10 people are invited. They form the party. How many of them are needed to cook? Not all 10, thats too many cook. It would actually be less efficient to have them all in the kitchen. So what if two of them cook? Do they only get to eat? Do they get more of the food? Maybe all 10 guests would have been able to cook, so who's lucky enough to be the chef and eat? What if they rotate responsibilities? Or, to reground the metaphor, maybe we need shorter work weeks?

Pamar 9y ago
Are you living in USA? France tried something in that direction: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek but it arguably didn’t work well for them because in Europe a full time employee has -on average- very high costs for the employer, and most importantly they job contract is not “at will” (i.e. getting rid of redundant employees is basically impossible). (N.B.: I am not saying that the European situation is good or bad, just that it is an obstacle towards shortening the workweek, as France apparently found out).
- danmaz74 9y ago
  I think that France did a pretty untimely move with their 35 hours right when international competition was becoming much stronger. But it would work if the same policy was adopted by most of your competitors.
  - WJW 9y ago
    "If everyone just behaved themselves" is a solution to basically every problem humanity has, but it is pretty clear by now that that is not something we can depend upon. The tragedy of the commons is real and ongoing.
    - danmaz74 9y ago
      Well, we got to the 40-hours week, didn't we? My point is that the fact that the 35 hours didn't work in France this time doesn't mean they can't work in general.

amelius 9y ago

I'd like to compare the economy to an OS. A task of an OS is to schedule processes, and to do so in a way that is fair and efficient. It would be efficient to give priority to the process which has been running the longest, because that would minimize context switching. But clearly, it's not fair. So from an average user's perspective the OS would be a failure. In the economy, "priority" is given to those with the most wealth. Priority leads to more opportunities to increasing wealth. In other words, money agglutinates, and evidently for most participants, the economy is a failure. In the OS analogy, someone could step in and formulate a rule stating that new processes would get a minimum share of the CPU. This would be equivalent in the economy to giving poor people a minimum income to keep them happy enough to not cause any trouble for the wealthy. But clearly, it's a hack in both cases, and a deeper evaluation of the problem is necessary.

peacetreefrog 9y ago

What evidence do you have that portion of the pie is getting smaller for most people? I do not believe this at all. It's especially not true on a global scale, where globalization has improved the lives and wealth of millions in China and India.

lkrubner 9y ago
Wages for men have fallen since 1973: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/wages-in-the-usa-have-been-falling-since-1973 http://www.smashcompany.com/business/wages-in-the-usa-have-b... The fall is especially sharp if you count health care expenditures, which have risen faster than average inflation, but since that also effects women, you could remove the "men" from the first sentence. For specific examples of industries that have suffered, consider the decline in the wages for truckers: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/truckers-have-seen-there-wages-shrink-and-automation-can-not-be-blamed http://www.smashcompany.com/business/truckers-have-seen-ther... Men with college degrees have done better than men without college degrees: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/is-it-useful-to-have-a-college-degree http://www.smashcompany.com/business/is-it-useful-to-have-a-...
eloff 9y ago
It is true in the US. There's been a lot published on the subject and it won't be hard to find. The developing world is another story, but the inequality is arguably even more extreme. With a much higher percentage of people living in poverty. Their middle class is mostly growing though, so the picture is improving.
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  No, a lot depends on how you look at the data. See these two videos for a good overview: https://www.policyed.org/numbers-game https://www.policyed.org/numbers-game
peacetreefrog 9y ago
Getting downvoted here, but see the non-partisan IGM economic survey on this. "The 9% cumulative increase in real US median household income since 1980 substantially understates how much better off people in the median American household are now economically, compared with 35 years ago." When asked to agree-disagree, 60% of economists (70% when you weight by confidence) agree with this. http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/us-median-income http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/us-median-income

ItsMe000001 9y ago

I would tend to agree but add one condition: They have to pay good living wages to all their employees, not just to the few (relative to total nr. of employees) at the top level, e.g. software engineers. Yes yes - "the market", surplus of low-skilled labor, etc. Look, as far as I can tell the "economy" and everything we have to guide it is the tool(!) and the humans are the top target, and not the other way around. That means if we find areas where the tool fails to deliver we have to adjust and use a different one. All those arguments based on "theory" place the tool first and make it the goal. I like this quote a lot (found on twitter, I found it on reddit): > When you blame a poor person for not getting a better job, you accept that while their job is necessary, whoever does it should be poor. (source: https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/855501957288517632 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/85550195728851763...) And from the reddit comments this one: > My favorite thing to ever hear come out of a custom's mouth was "get a real job". Standing there, performing a service that they themselves are requesting and spending legal tender on, and they don't see the validity of said job. I love efficiency. I love people who work hard, and who keep learning, experimenting, failing. I love entrepreneurs. I am independent myself, had a small business and worked as freelancer consultant. I also consider myself "conservative" when it comes to how to deal with "low-performers" who do so for no reason other than laziness. And yet, I won't accept the "market outcome" of extremely low wages and stressful lives (e.g. long commutes, multiple jobs, bad housing, etc.) for people who actually try, and I'd say that includes everyone who takes one of those warehouse jobs or any other job. The theory and the tool ("the market") are failing us because they could not care less about human fates. There is no reason whatsoever to accept that. It is completely in our power to do something about it. We should use "the market" when it works and look for a different tool when it doesn't. Already society is extremely selective about it (and equally selective in its perception), so nothing I say introduces a new element, not even at scale. So I see two choices (that I like, obviously other people can come up with other options including "everything is fine as it is"): - Force businesses like Amazon to pay living wages. This means they will have to have higher prices. Maybe large parts of their business model might not work any more. - Subsidize the work. Choose this option if you think having Amazon outcompete other businesses in some sectors still is better than not having it. Of course, anything is going to have a (low-skill labor) "market distorting effect". So what? It's not like there is none right now, the price for it all is being paid even now: The burden is carried by the employees, on shoulders considerably less capable of carrying it compared to other options.

troupe 9y ago

> The inequality of wealth distribution widens, because less and less crums fall behind for the poor to pick up. One of the best ways to increase your value in the job market is with education. Poor people have more and better educational opportunities today than at any point in time. Between libraries, universities, colleges, free online resources, etc. the opportunities are growing faster than ever. So if you consider access to education "crumbs" then I'd say there is more rather than less.

Firadeoclus 9y ago
In a competitive environment you have to compare yourself to others today, not yesterday. Your relative education level and the demand at that level is what counts. So while your absolute education opportunities may be better than ever, the requirements to get a half-decent job are higher, too. Which means you have to learn for longer to reach a higher absolute level. But even ignoring other resources, the poorest may simply not have as much time to spare as those from a wealthy family.

MR4D 9y ago

Interesting analogy you pose. I’d like to offer some amendments.... Pretend that everyone helps with cooking dinner. Then, when the food is served, the person who owns the house gets most of it, and you have barely enough to keep you from being hungry. But I think you’re right - it is a societal problem, and probably hard to fix (in practicality if not in theory).