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Inequality is inevitable. It is baked into everything in nature, from the stars to ocean depths. When was the last time you looked up at the night sky and saw

Inequality is inevitable. It is baked into everything in nature, from the stars to ocean depths. When was the last time you looked up at the night sky and saw a uniformly spaced and evenly lit field of stars? Evolution itself would not exist without inequality. Yes, some animals were better than others at certain tasks and evolutionary pressure did it's thing over time. I suck as a dancer. I suck as a painter. I suck at a lot of things. And yet, I am a better than others at certain things and I am massively better than others in other areas. My life and that of everyone around me has inequality as a positive element rather than a negative. This is why I hire a plumber and an electrician and don't do everything myself. EQUALITY OF OUTCOME IS A FANTASY. Equality of opportunity is important and should be promoted far and wide. Trying to force equal outcomes is just silly, sorry. Hence the Pareto distribution. It's real and it is a fact of nature everywhere you look. There is no such thing as equally distributed outcomes in but the most esoteric corner cases (having trouble thinking of one example). As for the scale of inequality. That's another red herring. The way I live today is beyond the equivalent of a rich person a hundred years ago. It is WAY beyond the super-rich before that. Kings did not live this way centuries ago. And yet I don't have Bill Gates level money. Not even close. The average person today lives far better than the wealthy lived not too long ago. They certainly have greater access to amazing medical advances as well as technology. There are over FOUR AND A HALF BILLION people world-wide using the internet. When you consider that, in rough terms, about two and a half billion out of the 7.7 billion on the planet cannot use the internet (too young or too old) that means that approximately 87% of those able to use the internet use it. You start slicing that further and you might just discover the percentage is much higher than that. For example, my father certainly falls under the category of not too old to be counted as a potential internet user. However, he has less than zero interest and doesn't use it. My mother, on the other hand, is on the 'net every day. Anyhow, the point is that this business of vilifying the "1%" is just silly. It has no bearing whatsoever on how people live. In other words, they are not taking oxygen out of the room, quite to the contrary. We do need to raise even more people out of poverty, with some areas of the world notable for a desperate need for improvement. Nobody is saying we can't and should not do better, we always can. What isn't sensible is the constant finger-pointing to this mythical "1%" as the problem. Every year we raise millions of people out of poverty. Life, in general, has been getting better and better over time. Even in places where people have difficult lives you'll find they wear clothes and have things that are markedly better than what was available to them just a decade or two ago. If we want to make things better for more people we just need to continue to focus on growing economies through free market capitalism. It's the only force in known history that has elevated so many people out of the dark ages. Everything else is a formula for disaster and misery, also a historical fact. OK, I'll duck now. Let me have it.

HammockWarrior 7y ago
I think most people promoting redistribution would agree on the benefits of equality of opportunity over outcome (obviously not all). They would simply argue that equality of opportunity is not there yet and the Gini coefficient can perhaps be used to measure that. For example if the Nordic countries operate well and have better equality of opportunity in the 30s as opposed to the US's 40s and we have seen in the past that the 30s worked well for the US then perhaps it's the 30s we should be shooting for with our efforts.
- robomartin 7y ago
  Sure, but you have to consider that the often-touted Nordic countries have a very different demographic composition than the US. Easy example: Estimates place the illegal immigrant population of the US somewhere in the 25 million range (as a conservative estimate). Assuming half of them are of working age, that is, in rough terms, over 10% of the portion of the US population that is working (about 108 million). The vast majority of the people who enter the US in this manner do not have college degrees or high-value professions. Which means their earning potential will be severely reduced. Take 10% of the workforce in any Nordic country, replace it with people who are educationally challenged and the numbers will look very different. Please note: I am NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, arguing that we should not try to do better. However, certain things are simply inescapable realities that simply take tons of time and effort to improve. Not to go too far, the US is famous for spending more money per student than, dare I say, most nations in the world, and yet our educational results in mathematics, language and other areas don't rank very well at all when compared to nations with much less to spend. Inequality at work. Money isn't the only variable. Perhaps that's the real thing that bothers me about these discussions about inequality. These are complex multivariate problems and these discussions make it sound like the only variable worth considering is how much money the top 1% have. It isn't. In fact, I would venture to guess that this factor or variable might not even make the list of the top 100 factors if we were to make such a list from a framework of being brutally honest rather than political. Simple example of this: Brutal dictatorial regimes hold back their population, cause misery, suffering and inequality. That's a big one. Places like Latin America, North Korea, the Middle East and a good deal of Africa are afflicted by this. Do we, the "civilized world" in the name of creating equal opportunity and access to better outcomes, invade all of these countries, depose all tyrants and institute one hundred years of external benevolent control? This is crazy, of course, but it is also reality. As a single example, I researched the Paris Accord in great detail and learned that dictators were enriching themselves, their families and associates with the money put into the system by the US and Europe. Money that was supposed to be devoted towards these nations becoming "greener" ended-up buying the ruling class new jets, cars and other "energy efficient" luxuries. So, yeah, the "do we invade and rule" scenario isn't too far fetched if we truly care about creating equality of opportunity and elevating millions out of truly deplorable conditions. Not an easy problem. Not a single variable problem. And the "richest 1%" thing is a complete red herring.

HammockWarrior 7y ago

I think most people promoting redistribution would agree on the benefits of equality of opportunity over outcome (obviously not all). They would simply argue that equality of opportunity is not there yet and the Gini coefficient can perhaps be used to measure that. For example if the Nordic countries operate well and have better equality of opportunity in the 30s as opposed to the US's 40s and we have seen in the past that the 30s worked well for the US then perhaps it's the 30s we should be shooting for with our efforts.

robomartin 7y ago
Sure, but you have to consider that the often-touted Nordic countries have a very different demographic composition than the US. Easy example: Estimates place the illegal immigrant population of the US somewhere in the 25 million range (as a conservative estimate). Assuming half of them are of working age, that is, in rough terms, over 10% of the portion of the US population that is working (about 108 million). The vast majority of the people who enter the US in this manner do not have college degrees or high-value professions. Which means their earning potential will be severely reduced. Take 10% of the workforce in any Nordic country, replace it with people who are educationally challenged and the numbers will look very different. Please note: I am NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, arguing that we should not try to do better. However, certain things are simply inescapable realities that simply take tons of time and effort to improve. Not to go too far, the US is famous for spending more money per student than, dare I say, most nations in the world, and yet our educational results in mathematics, language and other areas don't rank very well at all when compared to nations with much less to spend. Inequality at work. Money isn't the only variable. Perhaps that's the real thing that bothers me about these discussions about inequality. These are complex multivariate problems and these discussions make it sound like the only variable worth considering is how much money the top 1% have. It isn't. In fact, I would venture to guess that this factor or variable might not even make the list of the top 100 factors if we were to make such a list from a framework of being brutally honest rather than political. Simple example of this: Brutal dictatorial regimes hold back their population, cause misery, suffering and inequality. That's a big one. Places like Latin America, North Korea, the Middle East and a good deal of Africa are afflicted by this. Do we, the "civilized world" in the name of creating equal opportunity and access to better outcomes, invade all of these countries, depose all tyrants and institute one hundred years of external benevolent control? This is crazy, of course, but it is also reality. As a single example, I researched the Paris Accord in great detail and learned that dictators were enriching themselves, their families and associates with the money put into the system by the US and Europe. Money that was supposed to be devoted towards these nations becoming "greener" ended-up buying the ruling class new jets, cars and other "energy efficient" luxuries. So, yeah, the "do we invade and rule" scenario isn't too far fetched if we truly care about creating equality of opportunity and elevating millions out of truly deplorable conditions. Not an easy problem. Not a single variable problem. And the "richest 1%" thing is a complete red herring.