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Hang on, let me try to understand your point: 1. A computer simulation where wealth is exchanged by chance has power-law behavior 2. Wealth IRL has power-law

Hang on, let me try to understand your point: 1. A computer simulation where wealth is exchanged by chance has power-law behavior 2. Wealth IRL has power-law behavior 3. Therefore, wealth IRL was exchanged by chance (as opposed to skill) Is this what you were saying? If not, mind breaking down what you are saying? Needless to say, the above is affirming the consequent. The exchange mechanism random simulation is modelling need not be the actual mechanism in real life (though it may very well be a good model, viewing skill as randomly assigned to members of the population).

Applejinx 7y ago
'Therefore' is the only part of that which is unjustified. I'll break it down: 1. The computer simulation demonstrates that simple exchange produces power-law wealth in the absence of value or meaning. 2. Wealth IRL is considerably in excess of this power-law behavior, to the point where it's a real impediment, because… 3. Wealth IRL owes more to capital protecting itself and rewriting the market's or government's rules to cheat. Skill has next to nothing to do with it: wealth derives from crime, manipulation and abuse, and there isn't a fortune anywhere that doesn't have blood on it. So, far from being a simple claim that 'wealth IRL does not correlate with merit/skill', I am rather claiming that wealth IRL correlates with evil, abuse, and criminality. Admittedly worse than your 'how dare you say wealth isn't correlated with merit', but there it is. Sorries :) The fact that random chance also helps some of these criminals get their start is just a sort of bonus for the criminals, and a handicap to any free market system that might otherwise be a mechanism serving to assert a sort of crude meritocracy. Skill means absolutely nothing. It's about the ability to act criminally and to exploit existing resources and personal relationships, and always has been, all the way on back into dim prehistory. When it gets too extreme, the guillotines come out or there's some sort of typically very destructive revolution that serves as a great setback to civilization in general. This, too, has happened over and over. It happens not when evil grows too great in its abuse of the peasantry (because nobody ever cares about them), but when the 10 percent or the 1 percent start to get beat up too much by that 0.01 percent, just as the original article highlights. When the 'upper middle class' starts to suffer, that's when things get dicey, because those are the people who can afford to fight their rulers and who have the time, attention and resources to do so. How's that, does that help? :)
- throw0932 7y ago
  It seems that you can simplify what you're saying to "wealth IRL is acquired mostly by crime, manipulation, or abuse, rather than skill". The simulation doesn't seem to add to your point. Instead, you're making an empirical, falsifiable claim about the nature of wealth acquisition. At this point, you're disagreeing less with me and more with the economists in the original article, Piketty and Saez, who found skill to be the top driver, not "next to nothing."

Applejinx 7y ago

'Therefore' is the only part of that which is unjustified. I'll break it down: 1. The computer simulation demonstrates that simple exchange produces power-law wealth in the absence of value or meaning. 2. Wealth IRL is considerably in excess of this power-law behavior, to the point where it's a real impediment, because… 3. Wealth IRL owes more to capital protecting itself and rewriting the market's or government's rules to cheat. Skill has next to nothing to do with it: wealth derives from crime, manipulation and abuse, and there isn't a fortune anywhere that doesn't have blood on it. So, far from being a simple claim that 'wealth IRL does not correlate with merit/skill', I am rather claiming that wealth IRL correlates with evil, abuse, and criminality. Admittedly worse than your 'how dare you say wealth isn't correlated with merit', but there it is. Sorries :) The fact that random chance also helps some of these criminals get their start is just a sort of bonus for the criminals, and a handicap to any free market system that might otherwise be a mechanism serving to assert a sort of crude meritocracy. Skill means absolutely nothing. It's about the ability to act criminally and to exploit existing resources and personal relationships, and always has been, all the way on back into dim prehistory. When it gets too extreme, the guillotines come out or there's some sort of typically very destructive revolution that serves as a great setback to civilization in general. This, too, has happened over and over. It happens not when evil grows too great in its abuse of the peasantry (because nobody ever cares about them), but when the 10 percent or the 1 percent start to get beat up too much by that 0.01 percent, just as the original article highlights. When the 'upper middle class' starts to suffer, that's when things get dicey, because those are the people who can afford to fight their rulers and who have the time, attention and resources to do so. How's that, does that help? :)

throw0932 7y ago
It seems that you can simplify what you're saying to "wealth IRL is acquired mostly by crime, manipulation, or abuse, rather than skill". The simulation doesn't seem to add to your point. Instead, you're making an empirical, falsifiable claim about the nature of wealth acquisition. At this point, you're disagreeing less with me and more with the economists in the original article, Piketty and Saez, who found skill to be the top driver, not "next to nothing."