4 ms·

The suggestion that modern society has greater inequality than we had under feudalism is certainly the most laughably ridiculous thing I’ve heard today.

vmception 6y ago
at least in feudal times the peasants knew they didnt have a say in the matter Our society should stop feeding children lies about systemic inclusivity.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Your additional suggestion that corruption in modern democracies is somehow comparable to the representation afforded to feudal peasants is only very slightly less laughably ridiculous than the parent comment about economic inequality.
  - vmception 6y ago
    I didn’t say anything about corruption, didn’t imply anything about corruption, and I am now clarifying that I am not referring to anything about corruption. Children are fed lies about their role in this society and spend a lifetime acting surprised that their ideas never happen. We could also just stop doing that. Its not corrupt that we don't have a direct democracy, we just dont have a direct democracy. And the system we do have has different rules, which simply don't include the capability of “the proletariat” to have the same effect as immortal organizations with enough resources to maintain focus.
reilly3000 6y ago
First, let me say I do think I interpreted that article's data incorrectly as the US at .81 Gini coeficient, when in reality its probably closer to ~.45. Medieval Europe was closer to 40, but definitely not the magnitude I took from my initial source. There are several ways to look at inequality. The most simplistic way to so do is looking at relative wealthy by decile and comparing the ratio between the top and bottom. In feudal society, everybody was relatively poor, and the wealth gap may be on the order of 10-100X. In modern times, that ratio may be far larger and under a certain definition that would be mean higher inequality. I'll concede that this approach fails to capture the practical experience of the haves and have-nots over time, and having our's hit all-time highs isn't immoral if there is some baseline of sufficiency at the bottom. It also doesn't account for social mobility, which we exceptional at. Still, we live in a novel time where orders of magnitude of wealth that haven't existed before. It is hard to fathom, and calls into question what is and isn't a de-facto privilege of enjoying. I found this article which offers some more nuanced approaches to measuring inequality in different societies than Gini. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5388/1/MPRA_paper_5388.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5388/1/MPRA_paper_5388.pdf
- cycomanic 6y ago
  Not commenting on the rest, just wanted to say something about you claim that "our" (I assume you mean US) mobilty is exceptional. That is an often repeated myth, and in fact part of the US "folklore" ("rags to riches"). However this is not based on reality, the US ranks behind most European countries and canada on social mobility: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Although the ranking is named "social mobility" it isn't clear that that is what is measured; the report seems slightly confused. The visual capitalist provides a definition of social mobility - children having a better life than their parents or being unconstrained by their socio-economic status. But the index they reference doesn't measure that. It measures more general Quality of Life metrics like prevalence of malnourishment or quality of the social safety net. So while a high score reflects an easier life for the low end of the social ladder it doesn't actually measure their ability to move up it. I could on paper come up with a country that scored quite well on most of the index measures and had a rigid caste system where children could never outperform their parents and cannot escape their birth status.
  - reilly3000 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks for sharing. You're right about the folklore, and while there are some strong outliers that have done quite well in the US, but those would be hard to attribute to anything special about US education and support systems.

vmception 6y ago

at least in feudal times the peasants knew they didnt have a say in the matter Our society should stop feeding children lies about systemic inclusivity.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
Your additional suggestion that corruption in modern democracies is somehow comparable to the representation afforded to feudal peasants is only very slightly less laughably ridiculous than the parent comment about economic inequality.
- vmception 6y ago
  I didn’t say anything about corruption, didn’t imply anything about corruption, and I am now clarifying that I am not referring to anything about corruption. Children are fed lies about their role in this society and spend a lifetime acting surprised that their ideas never happen. We could also just stop doing that. Its not corrupt that we don't have a direct democracy, we just dont have a direct democracy. And the system we do have has different rules, which simply don't include the capability of “the proletariat” to have the same effect as immortal organizations with enough resources to maintain focus.

reilly3000 6y ago

First, let me say I do think I interpreted that article's data incorrectly as the US at .81 Gini coeficient, when in reality its probably closer to ~.45. Medieval Europe was closer to 40, but definitely not the magnitude I took from my initial source. There are several ways to look at inequality. The most simplistic way to so do is looking at relative wealthy by decile and comparing the ratio between the top and bottom. In feudal society, everybody was relatively poor, and the wealth gap may be on the order of 10-100X. In modern times, that ratio may be far larger and under a certain definition that would be mean higher inequality. I'll concede that this approach fails to capture the practical experience of the haves and have-nots over time, and having our's hit all-time highs isn't immoral if there is some baseline of sufficiency at the bottom. It also doesn't account for social mobility, which we exceptional at. Still, we live in a novel time where orders of magnitude of wealth that haven't existed before. It is hard to fathom, and calls into question what is and isn't a de-facto privilege of enjoying. I found this article which offers some more nuanced approaches to measuring inequality in different societies than Gini. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5388/1/MPRA_paper_5388.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5388/1/MPRA_paper_5388.pdf

cycomanic 6y ago
Not commenting on the rest, just wanted to say something about you claim that "our" (I assume you mean US) mobilty is exceptional. That is an often repeated myth, and in fact part of the US "folklore" ("rags to riches"). However this is not based on reality, the US ranks behind most European countries and canada on social mobility: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...
- roenxi 6y ago
  Although the ranking is named "social mobility" it isn't clear that that is what is measured; the report seems slightly confused. The visual capitalist provides a definition of social mobility - children having a better life than their parents or being unconstrained by their socio-economic status. But the index they reference doesn't measure that. It measures more general Quality of Life metrics like prevalence of malnourishment or quality of the social safety net. So while a high score reflects an easier life for the low end of the social ladder it doesn't actually measure their ability to move up it. I could on paper come up with a country that scored quite well on most of the index measures and had a rigid caste system where children could never outperform their parents and cannot escape their birth status.
- reilly3000 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing. You're right about the folklore, and while there are some strong outliers that have done quite well in the US, but those would be hard to attribute to anything special about US education and support systems.