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> If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionai

> If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic. I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't work like that. Quality of life is always measured relative to the people around us or to whom we are exposed in media or social media. If you look at modern Americans they have fabulously lavish quality of life in comparison to 19th century factory workers or 11th century peasants. Even people in the poorest quintile have access to safety, food, housing and entertainment that would have made people from centuries past gasp in awe. Antibiotics! Virtual reality! Same day shipping! But what really counts is how we perceive we are doing versus people we can compare ourselves to. That's where the suffering comes from. You have running hot water but your neighbor has a spa tub. You have the iPhone 6 but a friend just got the 12. You have a safe job that pays your bills but a classmate vacations in Portugal. I've been in other countries where the average quality of life was much lower than the US, and no one knew the difference or had any shame or sadness in their smaller cars, smaller bathrooms or lower square footage. If there were trillionaires but they all lived on Mars or some faraway continent and we knew nothing about them then they wouldn't cause us social suffering.

esyir 6y ago
Basically, crab in pot. Fuck having overall better conditions, I'm screwing myself over if it means I can be king of the dirt mound.
- llamataboot 6y ago
  No, not at all. Read The Spirit Level and also a bunch of happiness psychology. Relative equality and perception of fairness matter quite a lot to humans.
  - esyir 6y ago
    I'm fully aware of that. I also think it's something unfortunate that we have to figure out a way to route around. We should choose a system that gives one guy a billion dollars and everyone else a million, if the alternative is one that gives everyone 100k. This is an analogy for lifestyle, the actual implications of supply demand are being ignored here.
mariksolo 6y ago
It sounds to me like you do agree with them. The OP wasn't saying Americans feel wealthier, but rather that the quality of life relative to the past is higher.
leinadho 6y ago
Could it not be people's own responsibility to practice managing their perception of what they do have? This might be a more pragmatic solution for reducing social suffering, and I've found that you can learn to let material things have less importance in your life. Caveat: this is coming from someone in a relatively well-off country with decent welfare
- dougmwne 6y ago
  A person can be mindful and minimalist, people will be Moloch. Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone.
  - leinadho 6y ago
    Interesting word, Moloch, thanks for introducing me to it!
    - dougmwne 6y ago
      Then all credit goes to Ginsberg: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl
bko 6y ago
> I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't work like that. Quality of life is always measured relative to the people around us or to whom we are exposed in media or social media. If you're looking for validation and happiness based on what you see in social media, quality of life is the least of your concerns. Instead of accepting this as a matter of fact, why don't you look inward at the culture and ask yourself if this is a productive attitude to have, rather than trying to coerce the world to fit your view on human nature.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  If human nature wasn't greedy, vain and materialistic, the modern economy would not exist.
  - soganess 6y ago
    And if pithy comments didn't exist... we'ed have to accept that no single thing, or small cohort of factors decided the overall trajectory of society. Wealth, and power carry a social momentum. Antipodal to that is the high amount of frictional cost associated with change at scale. Those properties of our current economy effect what change is possible and when. The modern economy exists in this unequal hodgepodge for the same reason some animal look alien to you, because it was not planned. Unfortunately for us, unlike animal evolution, the rate of change of the economy, tech progress, political winds, and all the social tendrils that stem from that unholy amalgam grow rapidly and defy organization. You can call it the expected end result of human nature if it eases you. But. to me, it looks like a problem looking for some good engineering.
  - Z0rr0 6y ago
    Are you arguing that if we take away the bad parts of human nature, the economy would collapse? What useful function does greed, vanity, and materialism serve in the modern economy?
    - dougmwne 6y ago
solipsism 6y ago
You've made the case that what you call "social suffering" exists, but you haven't made the case that we should care about it. There are people struggling to survive, even in a country like the US. We have people dying in hospitals at differential rates based on their poverty level. One sweet day when everyone is guaranteed the most basic of human necessities, maybe then we'll start caring about the anxiety a (small-minded) percentage of us feel when our neighbor has two Teslas and we only have a Leaf.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  In a democracy the concerns of everyone are brought to the table, both the starving and the well fed.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Well I'd say the well fed are getting 90% of the food while they are only 1% of the table
soheyl 6y ago
But is it really "human nature"? Go back a few centuries, and everything belonged to a monarchy, and by everything, I mean even your life and your family. Were people unhappy "because of it"? For the vast majority of humans, I doubt it. They had just learned not to compare themselves with the king. For something to be human nature, I think it needs more time. And if peasants knew that comparing themselves to the king just does not make sense, maybe we can learn to have the same attitude towards Jeff Bezos.
- dougmwne 6y ago
  I would guide the comparison to the people closest to you, peers, bosses, schoolmates, people whose pet pictures you look at on Facebook. If those people are doing a lot better than you then it can cause some seriously negative emotions. I think the negative impact of social media is that we would have been previously unaware of the lives of more distantly related social connections such as old school friends or coworkers we'd fallen out of touch with and would only have people from our own family and town to compare with. Now you can see that Jimmy just got promoted at Google and took his last vacation to Nepal and you know for sure you've fallen behind on the hedonic treadmill.
  - soheyl 6y ago
    Agreed. The focus of the original article was the widening gap between the top 1% (or 5, or 10) and the rest of the population. I doubt that it will cause "unhappiness". Unhappiness exists when you compare yourself with people within your percentiles (+- 5%). A plumber in West Virginia is not unhappy because Bezos is so rich. He is unhappy because his welder brother-in-law just got paid after a better paying contract job (or is heavily in debt) and bought a used Audi.
- astan 6y ago
  Nice response. Part of the problem is "pull yourself up by bootstraps" PG-tier p0rn. With a king, an average person isn't being told everyday that they too can become a king, if only they worked harder. With people like startup founders, VCs, Musk, Bezos and the like, constantly writing articles on how you too can become rich like them: http://paulgraham.com/richnow.html http://paulgraham.com/richnow.html, average people view this life as achievable and it harbors disappointment and insecurity to not achieve those levels.
ElijahLynn 6y ago
What you describe seems to be term called "relative poverty" which is contrastable with "absolute poverty", which I just learned about recently. What I read recently made the case for "relative poverty" being more psychologically damaging than "absolute poverty". e.g. if everyone one in your society is the same poor then it isn't as bad as being poor in a society of wealth. This made a lot of sense to me as I tasted relative poverty a few times, and there seemed to be a feeling of shame around it. Not that anyone tried to shame the (relatively) poor but it just felt shameful. I never wanted to invite my millionaire family classmates over to my tiny, run down house for example, as it was too embarrassing. I eventually moved back to a place where we had similar levels of income and there was only a single millionaire and it felt a lot better.

esyir 6y ago

Basically, crab in pot. Fuck having overall better conditions, I'm screwing myself over if it means I can be king of the dirt mound.

llamataboot 6y ago
No, not at all. Read The Spirit Level and also a bunch of happiness psychology. Relative equality and perception of fairness matter quite a lot to humans.
- esyir 6y ago
  I'm fully aware of that. I also think it's something unfortunate that we have to figure out a way to route around. We should choose a system that gives one guy a billion dollars and everyone else a million, if the alternative is one that gives everyone 100k. This is an analogy for lifestyle, the actual implications of supply demand are being ignored here.

mariksolo 6y ago

It sounds to me like you do agree with them. The OP wasn't saying Americans feel wealthier, but rather that the quality of life relative to the past is higher.

leinadho 6y ago

Could it not be people's own responsibility to practice managing their perception of what they do have? This might be a more pragmatic solution for reducing social suffering, and I've found that you can learn to let material things have less importance in your life. Caveat: this is coming from someone in a relatively well-off country with decent welfare

dougmwne 6y ago
A person can be mindful and minimalist, people will be Moloch. Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone.
- leinadho 6y ago
  Interesting word, Moloch, thanks for introducing me to it!
  - dougmwne 6y ago
    Then all credit goes to Ginsberg: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl

bko 6y ago

> I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't work like that. Quality of life is always measured relative to the people around us or to whom we are exposed in media or social media. If you're looking for validation and happiness based on what you see in social media, quality of life is the least of your concerns. Instead of accepting this as a matter of fact, why don't you look inward at the culture and ask yourself if this is a productive attitude to have, rather than trying to coerce the world to fit your view on human nature.

dougmwne 6y ago
If human nature wasn't greedy, vain and materialistic, the modern economy would not exist.
- soganess 6y ago
  And if pithy comments didn't exist... we'ed have to accept that no single thing, or small cohort of factors decided the overall trajectory of society. Wealth, and power carry a social momentum. Antipodal to that is the high amount of frictional cost associated with change at scale. Those properties of our current economy effect what change is possible and when. The modern economy exists in this unequal hodgepodge for the same reason some animal look alien to you, because it was not planned. Unfortunately for us, unlike animal evolution, the rate of change of the economy, tech progress, political winds, and all the social tendrils that stem from that unholy amalgam grow rapidly and defy organization. You can call it the expected end result of human nature if it eases you. But. to me, it looks like a problem looking for some good engineering.
- Z0rr0 6y ago
  Are you arguing that if we take away the bad parts of human nature, the economy would collapse? What useful function does greed, vanity, and materialism serve in the modern economy?
  - dougmwne 6y ago

solipsism 6y ago

You've made the case that what you call "social suffering" exists, but you haven't made the case that we should care about it. There are people struggling to survive, even in a country like the US. We have people dying in hospitals at differential rates based on their poverty level. One sweet day when everyone is guaranteed the most basic of human necessities, maybe then we'll start caring about the anxiety a (small-minded) percentage of us feel when our neighbor has two Teslas and we only have a Leaf.

dougmwne 6y ago
In a democracy the concerns of everyone are brought to the table, both the starving and the well fed.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Well I'd say the well fed are getting 90% of the food while they are only 1% of the table

soheyl 6y ago

But is it really "human nature"? Go back a few centuries, and everything belonged to a monarchy, and by everything, I mean even your life and your family. Were people unhappy "because of it"? For the vast majority of humans, I doubt it. They had just learned not to compare themselves with the king. For something to be human nature, I think it needs more time. And if peasants knew that comparing themselves to the king just does not make sense, maybe we can learn to have the same attitude towards Jeff Bezos.

dougmwne 6y ago
I would guide the comparison to the people closest to you, peers, bosses, schoolmates, people whose pet pictures you look at on Facebook. If those people are doing a lot better than you then it can cause some seriously negative emotions. I think the negative impact of social media is that we would have been previously unaware of the lives of more distantly related social connections such as old school friends or coworkers we'd fallen out of touch with and would only have people from our own family and town to compare with. Now you can see that Jimmy just got promoted at Google and took his last vacation to Nepal and you know for sure you've fallen behind on the hedonic treadmill.
- soheyl 6y ago
  Agreed. The focus of the original article was the widening gap between the top 1% (or 5, or 10) and the rest of the population. I doubt that it will cause "unhappiness". Unhappiness exists when you compare yourself with people within your percentiles (+- 5%). A plumber in West Virginia is not unhappy because Bezos is so rich. He is unhappy because his welder brother-in-law just got paid after a better paying contract job (or is heavily in debt) and bought a used Audi.
astan 6y ago
Nice response. Part of the problem is "pull yourself up by bootstraps" PG-tier p0rn. With a king, an average person isn't being told everyday that they too can become a king, if only they worked harder. With people like startup founders, VCs, Musk, Bezos and the like, constantly writing articles on how you too can become rich like them: http://paulgraham.com/richnow.html http://paulgraham.com/richnow.html, average people view this life as achievable and it harbors disappointment and insecurity to not achieve those levels.

ElijahLynn 6y ago

What you describe seems to be term called "relative poverty" which is contrastable with "absolute poverty", which I just learned about recently. What I read recently made the case for "relative poverty" being more psychologically damaging than "absolute poverty". e.g. if everyone one in your society is the same poor then it isn't as bad as being poor in a society of wealth. This made a lot of sense to me as I tasted relative poverty a few times, and there seemed to be a feeling of shame around it. Not that anyone tried to shame the (relatively) poor but it just felt shameful. I never wanted to invite my millionaire family classmates over to my tiny, run down house for example, as it was too embarrassing. I eventually moved back to a place where we had similar levels of income and there was only a single millionaire and it felt a lot better.