6 ms·

Why shouldn't the coefficient be zero? I'm curious what your reasoning is.

• tunesmith 7y ago
  I'm more reflecting the general consensus. That's communism, which is generally seen as a failed economic system, and difficult to practically enforce. Although maybe that all changes in a post-scarcity economy, like is Star Trek technically communist? Should the goal actually be GINI-0?
  • endtime 7y ago
    Star Trek isn't communist; capitalism and communism are both approaches to the allocation of resources. Neither really applies in a post-scarcity society.
    • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Which Star Trek is post-scarcity. They all [within the Federation] have trading and limitations of resources, no? They're entirely egalitarian either, perhaps that's why you say they're not communist, see for example the luxuries that a captain has that crew do not and the preferences (larger quarters) that accrue with seniority.
      • bena 7y ago
        Next Generation is post-scarcity. Replicators make fighting over a slice of pizza pointless. Just replicate another slice. It's both a story-telling crutch and obstacle. It's a crutch in that they never have to explain how they provide for the entire crew while out in space. They just transform energy into matter. It's an obstacle as they can't really tell a story that involves a limited resource unless they explain why it can't be simply replicated. Now, sometimes, they say just that. But it's always something they have to acknowledge. And we have to bow to the fact that Star Trek is entirely fiction. We don't really know how a post-scarcity society will function. So we will wind up still projecting contemporary mores on them. So the captain gets a special office and larger quarters. DS9 has replicators, but they're also trying to be the "wild west frontier" Star Trek, so they're not available to everyone and there are non-Federation societies present. And those societies aren't post-scarcity, so money exists. (And then there are the societies that are both technically post-scarcity, yet still materialistic which is just weird) Voyager has replicators on the ship, but their solution is to remove the ship from the Federation and handwave the fact that for the most part, starships don't require fuel in a traditional sense. I think the fuel for starships would be antimatter, but it's never an issue on the show unless it needs to be.
    • thrower123 7y ago
      Star Trek is also almost entirely set on the decks of a warship or a military outpost, so the economics are very artificial.
  • jlongr 7y ago
    I think a system where one persons gets literally all the wealth would also be difficult to enforce or sustain. However, without getting bogged down in the details of the implementation, I think GINI-1 would result in a society where no one has incentive to work because one person gets all of the benefit of that work. Whereas with GINI-0 everyone benefits from their work, and anyone who produces more value than most others is still incentivized to work because they will still see a marginal gain in wealth, albeit reduced from what they would normally earn in a higher inequality system since it is somehow redistributed equally to everyone. Perhaps the goal is not GINI-0 but as close as possible to it.
    • sokoloff 7y ago
      How much extra effort would you personally put in if I guaranteed that you got your “fair share” which just happened to be 4/350,000,000 assuming you had a family of four? If you worked really hard to create an extra $1,000,000 in value, where shall we send your family literally the additional penny?
      • mamon 7y ago
        And that's exactly why perfect GINI score is not 0, but around 0.25 - it balances those two goals: ensuring that everyone has their needs met and still has motivation to put in extra effort.
• Enginerrrd 7y ago
  The biggest thing is that's not a very natural distribution for a parameter like wealth. You'd have a VERY hard time trying to maintain that given innate differences between individuals in terms of expense of effort and the like. There will always be ways to try to gain additional "wealth" that doesn't meet whatever definition you try to use to equate everything.
  • everdrive 7y ago
    People grumble that luck has a lot to do with success. And that might seem unfair, but there's no removing it. Good luck trying to get people to avoid arranging themselves into a bell curve. Combined with what you'd outlined, differences in individuals / differences in efforts / and luck seem impossible to ever fully equalize. How can anyone hope to normalize these differences?
    • james_s_tayler 7y ago
      Exactly. The central limit theorem wins every time.
• bhupy 7y ago
  Because one point of view is that the difference between the poorest and the richest is less important than ensuring that the minimum standard of living of the poorest is livable/acceptable. In society A, let's say that the gap between the poor and the rich was high, but the poor had their basic needs being met. In society B, let's say that the gap between the poor and the rich is 0, but the standard of living of everyone is worse than the poorest in society A. In this case, most would agree that society A is better off despite having a non-zero Gini coefficient. Obviously we want a society where everyone is equal AND their standard of living is as high as it could possibly be, but wars have been fought over figuring out how best to organize society to achieve that.
  • Simon_says 7y ago
    > Obviously we want a society where everyone is equal ... Oh, this is not obvious at all!
• adamsb6 7y ago
  That would require a whole lot of violence.
  • gojomo 7y ago
    And not just once, to initially achieve exactly-equal distribution. Due to the natural variety in persons' behavior, skills, and preferences, some will build or collect a different mix of things. Those things will then get valued as "wealth" or "income" of different magnitudes that violate the `gini=0` constraint. So, you'd need constant additional violence to re-level the holdings against peoples' individual actions.
• stronglikedan 7y ago
  Because some people are naturally lazier than others, and, while the most lazy still deserve a bare minimum social support system, they definitely don't deserve the same amount as the least lazy.
  • jlongr 7y ago
    Does the dollar amount of additional wealth given to the least-lazy person matter? Or is it only significant that they earn some marginal amount more than the second least-lazy person?
    • jonfw 7y ago
      The larger the correlation between effort and reward, the more motivation. A more marginal reward would result in more marginal motivation. A significant reward would provide significant motivation.
    • notahacker 7y ago
      If the least lazy person earns some marginal amount more than the second least lazy person, the Gini coefficient isn't zero. And if the laziest [or unluckiest] person is reliant to some degree on receiving byproducts of the less lazy people's output, then they might be better off in absolute terms from that non-zero Gini coefficient incentivising the less lazy people to work harder. [the magnitude of the amount likely matters in real world situations too. The answer to whether you'd consider working as hard as people in your company who are less lazy than you probably depends on whether you're being offered an extra dollar or extra million dollars to do so]