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Things in the US seems absurd from an outsider perspective due to ideological beliefs. On the same month, you can read two articles coming from the US: 1) Jef

Things in the US seems absurd from an outsider perspective due to ideological beliefs. On the same month, you can read two articles coming from the US: 1) Jeff Bezos Becomes The First Person Ever Worth $200 Billion 2) Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent It doesn't take much thinking to conclude that there is something messed up with resource/capital allocation in this economy. But there are fanatic capitalist in the US with a blind/irrational faith in the "invisible hand" that is as dogmatic as praying for Zeus in greek mythology. Even worst, they can't even get their population to wear masks like many other countries to at least slow down the transmission, mainly due to another set of extreme dogmas and tribalism. It seems that superpowers can't help but get decayed from inside. With time and enough arrogance, world power societies tend sink in their own delusion when the rest of world pragmatically catch up and pass them by.

RhysU 6y ago
Hypothetically, Bezos could own all of the bars in NYC, decide they are now a bad bet, and not pay their rents. He could invest elsewhere while those businesses go bankrupt. It would be wise of him, in this hypothetical, to deploy capital to a place where it would obtain better returns than propping up a broad cross-section of marginal businesses. To your last paragraph, all superpowers eventually fade. Look on my works ye mighty and, etc.
- aogaili 6y ago
  Thank you I'll take a look. Again I'm not pointing at Bezos, he contributed a lot of great innovation to society and I'm a big user of Amazon services, I merely pointing out that things are really out of balance. And this inequality trend was bad before Corona and it just got way worst. So something seems fundamentally broken.
  - RhysU 6y ago
    Throughout most of human history wealth/power has been wildly skewed into a small number of hands. The historical anomaly is that equality today has become pervasive to the point that we find inequality to be noteworthy. Current trends may be reversion to the historical mean without anything being fundamentally broken. It's been a hell of a good few centuries for much of humanity. We should keep it up, of course, but a reversion is normal in a dynamic system with feedback even when an upward trend is "sticking".
    - aogaili 6y ago
      That is an interesting perspective. But my understanding that that human society were mostly hunter gatherers, with little resources to speak of and there is no concept of capital ownership and accumulation since there is nothing material to accumulate, it is only after the agricultural revolution (ownership of land and slaves) and industrial revolution (ownership of machines and oil) and information revolution (ownership of data) that capitalist started accumulating and owning more and more resources. Therefore, I really don't think capital accumulation is the natural order of things, just as fat accumulation in today's carbs rich society is not what the human body is designed for. I understand your perspective, but I think, and with all respect, it is defeatist mindset. There is sure a better modern economical systems specially with the improvements in human capability to make decisions using AI and modern technology.
      - RhysU 6y ago
        Kings and pharaohs accumulated capital even if they didn't use the word. We're something like 10,000 years into amassing resources at scale in the hands of the few. This growth coincides with states, incidentally, and is the subject of the very cool book https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States.... That book combined with https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/022647822X https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/022647822X (as a state, like a dog, must compete in an ecological niche) and an archeology professor that liked to point out that "progress" is a recent Western invention (vs recorded history) inform my perspective here. I am not saying that we shouldn't strive for better, just that I don't see a fairly short reversal, on the timescale of a lifetime, as a compelling reason to scrap the approaches that collectively have brought us this far.
        aogaili 6y ago
        I agree, I also don't see fairly short reversal either, but I do see a future possibility. I think I get your point now, you're saying that the current inequality existed since humans started accumulating resources (age of kings and pharaohs) and the strive for more economically equal societies is a very recent goal. Where I think we differ though, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you seem to implicitly imply that the current inequality is the natural order of things, given it's prevalence in modern human history. However I think it is the opposite, in that it is a recent trend, yes, 10k years is recent relative to 300K+ years of humanity, and there is nothing really natural about it, it is a byproduct of an aging human created socioeconomic systems, and not some physical law of nature, and it could and should be improved, that I think is the critical task of modern economists (and I'd love to read some books on that topic if any). I'll start reading the suggested books, I enjoyed the argument you presented because it puts the current inequality in the larger historical context.
thu2111 6y ago
It doesn't take much thinking to conclude that there is something messed up with resource/capital allocation in this economy Well, yes. The government forbids people from using local businesses and forces them on pain of terrible retaliation to buy from online services, and Jeff Bezos is very good at running those. That is a messed up allocation of resources but it's not Bezos' fault the government made so many of his competitors illegal to use.
- aogaili 6y ago
  Yeah, well I did not say whose fault is it, or how it should be structured, I just point merely that is not working well. I'm not economist, this is above my knowledge, but there has to be a better way of doing this.
aogaili 6y ago
I'd appreciate for those who downvote to put their reason, I might learn something. But please don't downvote because you don't like what you read.

RhysU 6y ago

Hypothetically, Bezos could own all of the bars in NYC, decide they are now a bad bet, and not pay their rents. He could invest elsewhere while those businesses go bankrupt. It would be wise of him, in this hypothetical, to deploy capital to a place where it would obtain better returns than propping up a broad cross-section of marginal businesses. To your last paragraph, all superpowers eventually fade. Look on my works ye mighty and, etc.

aogaili 6y ago
Thank you I'll take a look. Again I'm not pointing at Bezos, he contributed a lot of great innovation to society and I'm a big user of Amazon services, I merely pointing out that things are really out of balance. And this inequality trend was bad before Corona and it just got way worst. So something seems fundamentally broken.
- RhysU 6y ago
  Throughout most of human history wealth/power has been wildly skewed into a small number of hands. The historical anomaly is that equality today has become pervasive to the point that we find inequality to be noteworthy. Current trends may be reversion to the historical mean without anything being fundamentally broken. It's been a hell of a good few centuries for much of humanity. We should keep it up, of course, but a reversion is normal in a dynamic system with feedback even when an upward trend is "sticking".
  - aogaili 6y ago
    That is an interesting perspective. But my understanding that that human society were mostly hunter gatherers, with little resources to speak of and there is no concept of capital ownership and accumulation since there is nothing material to accumulate, it is only after the agricultural revolution (ownership of land and slaves) and industrial revolution (ownership of machines and oil) and information revolution (ownership of data) that capitalist started accumulating and owning more and more resources. Therefore, I really don't think capital accumulation is the natural order of things, just as fat accumulation in today's carbs rich society is not what the human body is designed for. I understand your perspective, but I think, and with all respect, it is defeatist mindset. There is sure a better modern economical systems specially with the improvements in human capability to make decisions using AI and modern technology.
    - RhysU 6y ago
      Kings and pharaohs accumulated capital even if they didn't use the word. We're something like 10,000 years into amassing resources at scale in the hands of the few. This growth coincides with states, incidentally, and is the subject of the very cool book https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States.... That book combined with https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/022647822X https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/022647822X (as a state, like a dog, must compete in an ecological niche) and an archeology professor that liked to point out that "progress" is a recent Western invention (vs recorded history) inform my perspective here. I am not saying that we shouldn't strive for better, just that I don't see a fairly short reversal, on the timescale of a lifetime, as a compelling reason to scrap the approaches that collectively have brought us this far.
      - aogaili 6y ago
        I agree, I also don't see fairly short reversal either, but I do see a future possibility. I think I get your point now, you're saying that the current inequality existed since humans started accumulating resources (age of kings and pharaohs) and the strive for more economically equal societies is a very recent goal. Where I think we differ though, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you seem to implicitly imply that the current inequality is the natural order of things, given it's prevalence in modern human history. However I think it is the opposite, in that it is a recent trend, yes, 10k years is recent relative to 300K+ years of humanity, and there is nothing really natural about it, it is a byproduct of an aging human created socioeconomic systems, and not some physical law of nature, and it could and should be improved, that I think is the critical task of modern economists (and I'd love to read some books on that topic if any). I'll start reading the suggested books, I enjoyed the argument you presented because it puts the current inequality in the larger historical context.

thu2111 6y ago

It doesn't take much thinking to conclude that there is something messed up with resource/capital allocation in this economy Well, yes. The government forbids people from using local businesses and forces them on pain of terrible retaliation to buy from online services, and Jeff Bezos is very good at running those. That is a messed up allocation of resources but it's not Bezos' fault the government made so many of his competitors illegal to use.

aogaili 6y ago
Yeah, well I did not say whose fault is it, or how it should be structured, I just point merely that is not working well. I'm not economist, this is above my knowledge, but there has to be a better way of doing this.

aogaili 6y ago

I'd appreciate for those who downvote to put their reason, I might learn something. But please don't downvote because you don't like what you read.