5 ms·

If we imagine that "life goodness" can be measured by a single real number, and we model it with a normal distribution with a mean somewhere on the positive axi

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

If we imagine that "life goodness" can be measured by a single real number, and we model it with a normal distribution with a mean somewhere on the positive axis, then one way to say what you describe is that we create a threshold somewhere along the left-hand tail of that distribution, and we declare anything below the threshold as morally unacceptable, in need of social constraints that prevent the permissibility of outcomes falling further to the left than our threshold. As technology enables expansion of the right-side tail for the relatively most wealthy, it seems like a reasonable utilitarian goal to say that we should adjust the left-side threshold more and more to the right, in a "optimize the well-being of the least well off" sense. So I'd view this ever rightward moving threshold as a very good thing that represents exactly what we want in terms of progress. If we ever got to a point where we said, welp "poor people" are now above the magic threshold (e.g. because the people on the left tail of the distribution mostly have hot showers, cell phones, and Netflix), so what more do they want? ... why are they complaining? ... this would be incredibly frightening. Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop, in favor of creating skewness in the distribution that concentrates more wealth into the right-side tail, as long as that left-side threshold stays above the "hot showers, cell phones, and Netflix" line.

turc1656 8y ago
"Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop..." No, that's not what that would mean. It means the producers of society get to determine at what point they wish to stop providing government mandated subsidies through either taxation or deficit spending to the non-producers or those who produce far less value. There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people deciding that they do not wish to handover any more of their wealth. If your opinion is that the "system" is the culprit and these people are being squashed by bad laws, policies, etc., the proper recourse is not to legally rob others to help those people - the solution is to fix the bad laws and policies that may benefit the rich unfairly. Underlying your claim appears to be some baseline assumption that the poor have some sort of legitimate claim on the productivity of other citizens. I strongly disagree with this assumption. I personally do not believe that anyone has a right to the fruits of my labor. The government, however, says otherwise and demands that I fork over non-trivial amounts of money to other people - individuals, to be clear, not public goods. I'm fine with the idea of taxation to provide for public goods like roads, military, etc. The modern poor in developed nations (and especially the US) have a standard of living that exceeds what the average family experienced in most of the 20th century. This concept of poor is obviously relative and it is the Keeping Up With The Jones' mentality that drives this nonsense of ever-increasing handouts. There was a great video I saw once by a guy who used to be homeless and on welfare. He said that when he was on welfare he was never grateful for anything he received because he was just mad others had more. He gave the analogy of imagining that your boss came over and said you did such a fantastic job you are getting 100k for a bonus. You're ecstatic and grateful. Then you find out that everyone else in your office got 200k bonuses. You immediately turn to anger and resentment, despite the fact that you are now 100k wealthier. Helping thy neighbor is great. But legally mandating it is a terrible idea and has been terrible in practice.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I think you're misusing the word "producers" when you mean "people who disingenuously accumulated wealth on the backs of the labor product of others they exploited."
  - turc1656 8y ago
    No. I definitely don't mean that. The vast majority of producers (myself included, and most likely you as well) create value for society. I know that I don't disingenuously accumulate wealth or exploit anyone. But I am a producer. This is the case for most people. There's only a small minority of very wealthy people who exploit the labor of others. And as I mentioned in my prior comment, the appropriate solution is to fix the law to prevent the exploitation, not to take from all of the producers to pay for those exploited. And that is also assuming that exploitation is the only reason someone would find themselves poor. And it is definitely not the only reason.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      As a first-world software developer, I definitely do disingenuously accumulate wealth as a side effect of all sorts of world-wide labor exploits, particularly if I work at a large US corp with far-reaching political influence. For example, the value of that equity bonus I think I "earned" might only have been as high as it was because my company found some loophole to avoid taxes that it sincerely should have been paying for the sake of unequivocal civic responsibility. Just because good-natured "regular" people participate in the broader system of exploitation does not mean that they are earning what they get, not at all, myself included. I benefit from huge luck. Luck about when and where I was born, luck about education opportunities, luck of genetics. In addition I benefit from direct effects and side effects of government spending, publicly funded university research, basic infrastructure, and all manner of support staff. The cumulative "product" I make is not my own. It's a function mostly of just how lucky I am, and also significantly a function of the whole Lorentzian field of infrastructure/productivity/opportunity/civility that I'm enveloped in because of a whole bunch of people doing jobs that they are deeply underpaid for.
philwelch 8y ago
Here's the thing, though. On a global level, poverty is measured by a threshold of whether or not you can sleep through the night without getting bitten by malaria-infested mosqitoes. Gig workers in Western countries aren't anywhere near the left-hand side of the tail. Most of these distributive justice arguments have a nationalistic bent where the global poor don't matter at all.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I agree with you completely, and spent a lot of time in the past decade reading around 80000 Hours, Giving What We Can, Peter Singer, etc. But I do think there are other forms of suffering, for example severe mental suffering that co-occurs with extreme addiction-related problems, combined with poverty conditions that are surprisingly quite bad, even on a world scale, in parts of the US. In general, I think far too little attention is paid to the way overall quality of life degrades in the presence of psychological trauma. You can have plenty of first world resources and still be living one of the worst lives on the planet, in terms of experienced suffering. My comment was couched in terms of creature comforts that we have in most parts of the first world, but that's not necessarily the specific standard I'm advocating for, and the more general idea is just that people towards the left of the distribution should never be made to feel like they "shouldn't have" the comforts further to the right -- basically that we all should see progress as somewhat tied to both driving the mean to the right, and reducing the variance so that people at least in the far left tail are continuously brought closer to the far right tail.
  - darkerside 8y ago
    But that existential psychological suffering will ALWAYS be there. No matter how we move lines and curves. Some people will always be missing out, and giving them more won't fix it if we provide the same benefit to all their peers as well. There are other better ways to resolve the vicious psychological cycle you describe, but they're not material.
darkerside 8y ago
Trying to move that line is laudable. Just don't think we'll ever be done moving it, regardless of whether indeterminate progress is sustainable or not.

turc1656 8y ago

"Essentially the wealthy would be deciding at which threshold upward human progress gets to stop..." No, that's not what that would mean. It means the producers of society get to determine at what point they wish to stop providing government mandated subsidies through either taxation or deficit spending to the non-producers or those who produce far less value. There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people deciding that they do not wish to handover any more of their wealth. If your opinion is that the "system" is the culprit and these people are being squashed by bad laws, policies, etc., the proper recourse is not to legally rob others to help those people - the solution is to fix the bad laws and policies that may benefit the rich unfairly. Underlying your claim appears to be some baseline assumption that the poor have some sort of legitimate claim on the productivity of other citizens. I strongly disagree with this assumption. I personally do not believe that anyone has a right to the fruits of my labor. The government, however, says otherwise and demands that I fork over non-trivial amounts of money to other people - individuals, to be clear, not public goods. I'm fine with the idea of taxation to provide for public goods like roads, military, etc. The modern poor in developed nations (and especially the US) have a standard of living that exceeds what the average family experienced in most of the 20th century. This concept of poor is obviously relative and it is the Keeping Up With The Jones' mentality that drives this nonsense of ever-increasing handouts. There was a great video I saw once by a guy who used to be homeless and on welfare. He said that when he was on welfare he was never grateful for anything he received because he was just mad others had more. He gave the analogy of imagining that your boss came over and said you did such a fantastic job you are getting 100k for a bonus. You're ecstatic and grateful. Then you find out that everyone else in your office got 200k bonuses. You immediately turn to anger and resentment, despite the fact that you are now 100k wealthier. Helping thy neighbor is great. But legally mandating it is a terrible idea and has been terrible in practice.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I think you're misusing the word "producers" when you mean "people who disingenuously accumulated wealth on the backs of the labor product of others they exploited."
- turc1656 8y ago
  No. I definitely don't mean that. The vast majority of producers (myself included, and most likely you as well) create value for society. I know that I don't disingenuously accumulate wealth or exploit anyone. But I am a producer. This is the case for most people. There's only a small minority of very wealthy people who exploit the labor of others. And as I mentioned in my prior comment, the appropriate solution is to fix the law to prevent the exploitation, not to take from all of the producers to pay for those exploited. And that is also assuming that exploitation is the only reason someone would find themselves poor. And it is definitely not the only reason.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    As a first-world software developer, I definitely do disingenuously accumulate wealth as a side effect of all sorts of world-wide labor exploits, particularly if I work at a large US corp with far-reaching political influence. For example, the value of that equity bonus I think I "earned" might only have been as high as it was because my company found some loophole to avoid taxes that it sincerely should have been paying for the sake of unequivocal civic responsibility. Just because good-natured "regular" people participate in the broader system of exploitation does not mean that they are earning what they get, not at all, myself included. I benefit from huge luck. Luck about when and where I was born, luck about education opportunities, luck of genetics. In addition I benefit from direct effects and side effects of government spending, publicly funded university research, basic infrastructure, and all manner of support staff. The cumulative "product" I make is not my own. It's a function mostly of just how lucky I am, and also significantly a function of the whole Lorentzian field of infrastructure/productivity/opportunity/civility that I'm enveloped in because of a whole bunch of people doing jobs that they are deeply underpaid for.

philwelch 8y ago

Here's the thing, though. On a global level, poverty is measured by a threshold of whether or not you can sleep through the night without getting bitten by malaria-infested mosqitoes. Gig workers in Western countries aren't anywhere near the left-hand side of the tail. Most of these distributive justice arguments have a nationalistic bent where the global poor don't matter at all.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I agree with you completely, and spent a lot of time in the past decade reading around 80000 Hours, Giving What We Can, Peter Singer, etc. But I do think there are other forms of suffering, for example severe mental suffering that co-occurs with extreme addiction-related problems, combined with poverty conditions that are surprisingly quite bad, even on a world scale, in parts of the US. In general, I think far too little attention is paid to the way overall quality of life degrades in the presence of psychological trauma. You can have plenty of first world resources and still be living one of the worst lives on the planet, in terms of experienced suffering. My comment was couched in terms of creature comforts that we have in most parts of the first world, but that's not necessarily the specific standard I'm advocating for, and the more general idea is just that people towards the left of the distribution should never be made to feel like they "shouldn't have" the comforts further to the right -- basically that we all should see progress as somewhat tied to both driving the mean to the right, and reducing the variance so that people at least in the far left tail are continuously brought closer to the far right tail.
- darkerside 8y ago
  But that existential psychological suffering will ALWAYS be there. No matter how we move lines and curves. Some people will always be missing out, and giving them more won't fix it if we provide the same benefit to all their peers as well. There are other better ways to resolve the vicious psychological cycle you describe, but they're not material.

darkerside 8y ago

Trying to move that line is laudable. Just don't think we'll ever be done moving it, regardless of whether indeterminate progress is sustainable or not.