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> “So there need to be powerful forces from the top of the country that proclaim the income/wealth/opportunity gap to be a national emergency and take on the re

> “So there need to be powerful forces from the top of the country that proclaim the income/wealth/opportunity gap to be a national emergency and take on the responsibility for re-engineering the system so that it works better.” And what if the system turns out to work worse? Who shall bear the consequences of the re-engineering? Being a successful hedge fund manager, doesn’t magically make you an expert in complex systems, such as the economy. The amount of people wanting to re-engineer society these days is staggering. The desire to make the world a better place for more people is commendable, but people need to understand the limitations of controlling complexity. IMHO, we need to teach more people about complex systems and the limitations of top down engineering approaches to such systems, as they exhibit emerging properties unaccounted for in one’s modeling. What we need is to give power back to the individual, decentralize the control over the economy and lower the barriers to entry, so that everyone can have an equal chance of trying their luck. We need to evolve a better system, bottom up. See localism. [1] [2] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Localism_(politics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Localism_(politics) [2] https://www.academia.edu/38433249/Multiscale_Localism_Political_Clarity_under_Complexity https://www.academia.edu/38433249/Multiscale_Localism_Politi...

outlace 8y ago
Yeah only a billionaire like Dalio can afford to recommend massive top-down re-engineering of the economy. If it doesn’t work he’ll just have a few less billion and the rest of us may not have jobs.
- njepa 8y ago
  Maybe I am a bit cynical. But from my perspective this, and similar calls for change, doesn't come from suddenly longing for America at its best. But because they increasingly realize that China is coming for their lunch.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    That’s very valid reasoning to support change!
- plainOldText 8y ago
  Indeed! It’s very easy to give advice, or in the case of politicians, make decisions that will affect millions of people when your decisions are divorced from their consequences, which is basically all modern politics.
seba_dos1 8y ago
> The amount of people wanting to re-engineer society these days is staggering. It's just like there might be some reason for that!
astazangasta 8y ago
It seems unlikely that if we genuinely tried to re-engineer the system to make it better that it would turn out worse. The fact is that our problems - the ones leading to revolution - are pretty straightforward and have been solved many times in other countries, including this one. The most obvious one is public healthcare. This is probably the number one problem facing most Americans - everyone encounters problems with health care, and the terror of medical debt keeps all of us chained to our jobs. But this is a solved problem - health care is twice as large as a share of the economy in the US, with worse outcomes, as it in other OECD countries, which all - ALL - have functioning public healthcare systems. And this isn't fucking rocket science - there are a number of perfectly fine functioning schemes available. All you have to do is be willing to face down the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The only problem is there are not many politicians in America willing to do that. That, by itself, would probably take care of a good deal of income inequality - pharma, e.g., is basically a tax of 1.5% of GDP, taking money from average people and putting it into the pockets of the very wealthy. If we want to go further the next no-brainer is simple: break up the TBTF banks. We should have done it in 2008. Instead we got Obama shielding the banks while they foreclosed on millions of Americans, not to mention perpetrating several other notable frauds. This is basically "income inequality, the industry" - it is full of vampiric individuals who keep trying to find new criminal schemes for enriching themselves. Putting a stake in it is not that complicated - break up the big players and a financial transaction tax would do it. But again, finding politicians willing to slay those demons is tough. Of course as a committed anti-capitalist, I don't want to stop there. But the fact is that capitalism can do just fine, as far as staving off revolution goes. The US did it for decades, and only part of that was because of the Palmer raids and COINTELPRO and other such things. The vast majority of it was because of decent pensions, job security, and productivity growth. It just requires a modest commitment to make sure that the vast amounts of wealth we are constantly generating are distributed somewhat more evenly.
zarkov99 8y ago
I agree with the over confident architect syndrome you suggest, but there is more to solving the current set of problems than just democratizing access to opportunities. There is an accelerating shift towards a world where the only valuable human labor is that of ever more exclusive elites. We deal more and more with information, and going from information to things requires fewer and fewer humans. You need only one search engine, one Operating System, one browser, one online retailer. And only a handful of engineers, scientists, a few artists, writers, athletes, politicians, to satisfy the needs of the entire population. In other words while for a few outliers the rewards will be fantastic most human's economic value is trending towards 0. There is really a need to address the resulting inequality and crisis in meaning, tweaking capitalism is not going to be enough.

outlace 8y ago

Yeah only a billionaire like Dalio can afford to recommend massive top-down re-engineering of the economy. If it doesn’t work he’ll just have a few less billion and the rest of us may not have jobs.

njepa 8y ago
Maybe I am a bit cynical. But from my perspective this, and similar calls for change, doesn't come from suddenly longing for America at its best. But because they increasingly realize that China is coming for their lunch.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  That’s very valid reasoning to support change!
plainOldText 8y ago
Indeed! It’s very easy to give advice, or in the case of politicians, make decisions that will affect millions of people when your decisions are divorced from their consequences, which is basically all modern politics.

seba_dos1 8y ago

> The amount of people wanting to re-engineer society these days is staggering. It's just like there might be some reason for that!

astazangasta 8y ago

It seems unlikely that if we genuinely tried to re-engineer the system to make it better that it would turn out worse. The fact is that our problems - the ones leading to revolution - are pretty straightforward and have been solved many times in other countries, including this one. The most obvious one is public healthcare. This is probably the number one problem facing most Americans - everyone encounters problems with health care, and the terror of medical debt keeps all of us chained to our jobs. But this is a solved problem - health care is twice as large as a share of the economy in the US, with worse outcomes, as it in other OECD countries, which all - ALL - have functioning public healthcare systems. And this isn't fucking rocket science - there are a number of perfectly fine functioning schemes available. All you have to do is be willing to face down the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The only problem is there are not many politicians in America willing to do that. That, by itself, would probably take care of a good deal of income inequality - pharma, e.g., is basically a tax of 1.5% of GDP, taking money from average people and putting it into the pockets of the very wealthy. If we want to go further the next no-brainer is simple: break up the TBTF banks. We should have done it in 2008. Instead we got Obama shielding the banks while they foreclosed on millions of Americans, not to mention perpetrating several other notable frauds. This is basically "income inequality, the industry" - it is full of vampiric individuals who keep trying to find new criminal schemes for enriching themselves. Putting a stake in it is not that complicated - break up the big players and a financial transaction tax would do it. But again, finding politicians willing to slay those demons is tough. Of course as a committed anti-capitalist, I don't want to stop there. But the fact is that capitalism can do just fine, as far as staving off revolution goes. The US did it for decades, and only part of that was because of the Palmer raids and COINTELPRO and other such things. The vast majority of it was because of decent pensions, job security, and productivity growth. It just requires a modest commitment to make sure that the vast amounts of wealth we are constantly generating are distributed somewhat more evenly.

zarkov99 8y ago

I agree with the over confident architect syndrome you suggest, but there is more to solving the current set of problems than just democratizing access to opportunities. There is an accelerating shift towards a world where the only valuable human labor is that of ever more exclusive elites. We deal more and more with information, and going from information to things requires fewer and fewer humans. You need only one search engine, one Operating System, one browser, one online retailer. And only a handful of engineers, scientists, a few artists, writers, athletes, politicians, to satisfy the needs of the entire population. In other words while for a few outliers the rewards will be fantastic most human's economic value is trending towards 0. There is really a need to address the resulting inequality and crisis in meaning, tweaking capitalism is not going to be enough.