5 ms·

Actually now that I think about it, there is one thing I'd change. In "Mind the Gap" I implied the reason people were upset by economic inequality was the mode

by pg 15y ago

Actually now that I think about it, there is one thing I'd change. In "Mind the Gap" I implied the reason people were upset by economic inequality was the model of wealth they learned as children. Now I suspect it goes deeper than that: I think humans may have a genetic predisposition to equality. What made me realize this was going to Africa and seeing lots of animals in the wild. All or nearly all the big mammals lived in groups and cooperated to survive. It was clear that our ancestors would in their day have been one of these groups, also cooperating to survive (as hunter-gatherers still do in a few places), and that their cooperative inclinations were probably genetically preprogrammed. If so then people's problem with inequality is not a learned behavior. It simply feels wrong to humans. That doesn't mean they're right. The Monte Carlo fallacy feels right to humans, but it isn't. But it does probably mean that people are happier, all other things being equal, when there is less inequality. Of course you have to balance this against (a) other, equally deeply held traditions, like not stealing, and (b) the slower technological/economic growth you get when you ban being rich.

rbarooah 15y ago
Could you explain what it means for people to be 'right' or not 'right' about inequality? I'm referring to where you say 'That doesn't mean they're right' If we're genetically constructed to feel unhappy about something, and we build a society that makes that thing true, then it seems as though we are manufacturing suffering, and we should seek to reduce it. From what perspective can it be 'right' to knowingly maintain a society where the majority of people are guaranteed to suffer? Also - isn't there a giant difference between 'banning being rich', and making it possible for a reasonable number of people to share in prosperity. There's plenty of evidence suggesting that the US was more prosperous when there was less inequality, and yet there were always some very rich people.
- pg 15y ago
  I mean this inclination doesn't imply anything about what economic policy should be, except in the narrowest sense that gratifying it will (all other things being equal, which they are decidedly not) make people feel better.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    Fair enough - I just saw this comment of yours:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979935 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979935 which clarifies a lot. It does seem as though political opinion is moving in the direction of reducing attempts to mitigate then problem at the low end. Also unconsidered is the idea that one period of adaptation early in one's life is no longer enough, and that is a new consequence of technological change that wasn't true during the heyday of the large corporation. If the 'poor' and 'middle classes' simply don't have the resources to devote to accomodating change and developing new skills, their position will be systematically enforced. Information may be more widely available than ever, but learning still takes a long time and requires practice, and tacit knowledge is ever more important.
  - zohebv 15y ago
    > I mean this inclination doesn't imply anything about what economic policy should be Isn't it disingenuous to infer that this inclination should not imply anything about economic policy? I would arrive at the opposite conclusion. Economics are sentiment driven by a huge factor. Robert Shiller's work in behavioral economics and his book Irrational exuberance has established and popularized this idea. Krugman's discussion of the unsuitability of BitCoin as a currency rests largely on the peculiar nature of human sentiment and behavior. Large income gaps are perceived by most people as unfair irrespective of the contributions by the wealthy. No one thinks that Bill Gates/ Edison made a greater contribution to social progress than Einstein/Gandhi. I don't think the association of the net worth of an individual to the contribution that they have made to society is very strong. Economies rewards people largely on the basis of demand/supply with I believe is a weak proxy for social contributions. Perhaps you want to draw an analogy to say gay marriage where the popular vote might end up denying gay rights, but I don't think a similar argument holds in the case of wealth distribution.
    - sokoloff 15y ago
      > No one thinks that Bill Gates/ Edison made a greater contribution to social progress than Einstein/Gandhi. Um, I do.
pwim 15y ago
Cooperation and equality don't necessarily go hand in hand. For instance, with your example of pack animals, often such group has a hierarchy, with an alpha at the top. Even though such animals may cooperate, their is a difference in status.
- pg 15y ago
  I'm only talking about economic inequality here, but I do think humans have an inclination toward equality of status too. Which seems to be complicated by a wish for leaders. Which tends to result in a love/hate relationship with said leaders.
  - zackattack 15y ago
    Have you read Sex at Dawn?
hasenj 15y ago
I don't know if people are opposed to mere inequality. Some people may not like when they have average income while some people are "filthy rich", and on that point I will agree that their resentment towards the rich is not justified much. However, there's another aspect of inequality: when a significantly large number of people are living in poverty, while others are "filthy rich". In this context, the issue is real and important, and people are right in being concerned about it. Even though the word inequality means merely "not equal" and could very well refer to the fact that some people are rich while some other aren't, I think that what most people really mean by "inequality" is the second case: where some people are extremely poor while some others are extremely rich.
vorg 15y ago
> I think humans may have a genetic predisposition to equality. What made me realize this was going to Africa and seeing lots of animals in the wild. All or nearly all the big mammals lived in groups and cooperated to survive. It was clear that our ancestors would in their day have been one of these groups, also cooperating to survive (as hunter-gatherers still do in a few places), and that their cooperative inclinations were probably genetically preprogrammed. I'm not sure living in groups and cooperating implies a genetic predisposition to equality. Even though a group might have, say, twenty to fifty members, some members tend to rule and others tend to hang on the outskirts. I'd pick Venkat Rao's division into Sociopaths, Clueless, and Losers (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...) as the best way to divide up types of people in such a group. He writes about their role in businesses, but it's the same in a small societal group. The Sociopaths are the jocks who absolutely must have the power, eat the most food, and have the most offspring. The Losers are the ones who live at the edge of the group, eat the least food, and be eaten first by predators. The Clueless are the majority who follow the Sociopaths' rules and rise slowly through the group hierarchy to their natural level of competence. Perhaps society is best modeled as a cell, where the Sociopaths are the nucleus and the Losers are the membrane. It does seem to be a male-oriented model, where females act more like glue, facilitating relationships. The male Sociopaths would have two or more females each, eat the food, feed the women, and produce the most offspring. The male Clueless would only have one female and follow whatever other rules the Sociopaths impose, and get food based on their rank in society. Perhaps the females overall are most similar to male Clueless in this model. The male Losers would be the first to miss out on the food, not get any girls, and die young, being the first to be sacrificed to predators. And maybe there's the reason why Sociopaths naturally shun any interaction with Losers, going through the Clueless intermediaries, as in "the jocks hate the nerds". When there's any threat to their survival or status, the Sociopaths in the nucleus can't afford to have any emotional attachment to the Losers in the outer membrane. They need to be able to sacrifice Losers without hesitating if that's required for their own survival. I guess I'm saying not only are mammals built out of biological cells internally, but also make up societal cells externally. When there's plenty of food and the group grows too big, the Sociopaths start electioneering among the Clueless for loyalty. The group will eventually split in half, just like cells do, some Sociopaths taking some of the Clueless with them and the others taking the other Clueless. When there's just enough food for the Sociopaths to multiply but not enough Clueless for a successful cell split, the Sociopaths will turn on one another, a coup takes place, and the losing Sociopaths killed or thrown outside the membrane. This model describes how a genetic predisposition to inequality and hierarchy can also explain group living and apparent cooperation.
Goladus 15y ago
> (b) the slower technological/economic growth you get when you ban being rich. There's a world of difference between "ban being rich" and "resist oligarchy with progressive taxation, investment in public services, infrastructure, research, and consumer-friendly laws and protections."
- wnight 15y ago
  You could even ban being rich from exploitation of limited resources or when destroying the commons. I didn't agree to let my government lease oil-bearing land to the largest industrial polluters and allow them to horde the results. Makers versus takers...
vesrin 15y ago
There are examples of this sort of cooperation to survive in primitive human societies. Inuit Eskimos will share their game with the whole village. No one is allowed to starve, even if they don't participate in hunts (they are despised and looked down upon though). I would assume the same practice were true for most hunter-gatherer societies. But one aspect that led to this "wealth" sharing is the fact that in primitive societies people living in the same community were closely genetically related. Matt Ridley touches tangentially on this topic in his book "The Origins of Virtue".
schiptsov 15y ago
I think this predisposition may be not for equality but for cooperation. We have empathy, we have child care hard-wired and we have some sort of protection against cheaters, to benefit the whole community. (it is not a cultural invention, it is, like you've said, genetic predisposition). Equality/inequality is, I think, a cultural factor. Culture is also subject to some sort of evolution process, which means that some inventions got lost, but some remain and evolve. So, more equal society is indeed more stable and healthy. You might not see so intense struggling or competition which means less innovation and so-called progress, but innovations or progress aren't among ultimate goals of the process of human evolution.
egiva 15y ago
Thanks for this comment. Humans certainly are predisposed to equality, but it might better be termed as "reciprocity". You may have read a very famous book by Jared Diamond called "Guns, Germs and Steel" which won the '98 Pulitzer in nonfiction. A lot of these conversations about wealth and equality (and why they are not equal among different sets of society, or among countries) are addressed in the book. This is definitely a life-changing read worth looking into. Because you might be really (really) busy, I also recommend a short article that sumarizes a lot of the themes in an interesting way: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/SocJusticeRes.pdf http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/SocJusticeRes.pdf Cheers - Jamison

by pg 15y ago

rbarooah 15y ago

Could you explain what it means for people to be 'right' or not 'right' about inequality? I'm referring to where you say 'That doesn't mean they're right' If we're genetically constructed to feel unhappy about something, and we build a society that makes that thing true, then it seems as though we are manufacturing suffering, and we should seek to reduce it. From what perspective can it be 'right' to knowingly maintain a society where the majority of people are guaranteed to suffer? Also - isn't there a giant difference between 'banning being rich', and making it possible for a reasonable number of people to share in prosperity. There's plenty of evidence suggesting that the US was more prosperous when there was less inequality, and yet there were always some very rich people.

pg 15y ago
I mean this inclination doesn't imply anything about what economic policy should be, except in the narrowest sense that gratifying it will (all other things being equal, which they are decidedly not) make people feel better.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Fair enough - I just saw this comment of yours:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979935 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979935 which clarifies a lot. It does seem as though political opinion is moving in the direction of reducing attempts to mitigate then problem at the low end. Also unconsidered is the idea that one period of adaptation early in one's life is no longer enough, and that is a new consequence of technological change that wasn't true during the heyday of the large corporation. If the 'poor' and 'middle classes' simply don't have the resources to devote to accomodating change and developing new skills, their position will be systematically enforced. Information may be more widely available than ever, but learning still takes a long time and requires practice, and tacit knowledge is ever more important.
- zohebv 15y ago
  > I mean this inclination doesn't imply anything about what economic policy should be Isn't it disingenuous to infer that this inclination should not imply anything about economic policy? I would arrive at the opposite conclusion. Economics are sentiment driven by a huge factor. Robert Shiller's work in behavioral economics and his book Irrational exuberance has established and popularized this idea. Krugman's discussion of the unsuitability of BitCoin as a currency rests largely on the peculiar nature of human sentiment and behavior. Large income gaps are perceived by most people as unfair irrespective of the contributions by the wealthy. No one thinks that Bill Gates/ Edison made a greater contribution to social progress than Einstein/Gandhi. I don't think the association of the net worth of an individual to the contribution that they have made to society is very strong. Economies rewards people largely on the basis of demand/supply with I believe is a weak proxy for social contributions. Perhaps you want to draw an analogy to say gay marriage where the popular vote might end up denying gay rights, but I don't think a similar argument holds in the case of wealth distribution.
  - sokoloff 15y ago
    > No one thinks that Bill Gates/ Edison made a greater contribution to social progress than Einstein/Gandhi. Um, I do.

pwim 15y ago

Cooperation and equality don't necessarily go hand in hand. For instance, with your example of pack animals, often such group has a hierarchy, with an alpha at the top. Even though such animals may cooperate, their is a difference in status.

pg 15y ago
I'm only talking about economic inequality here, but I do think humans have an inclination toward equality of status too. Which seems to be complicated by a wish for leaders. Which tends to result in a love/hate relationship with said leaders.
- zackattack 15y ago
  Have you read Sex at Dawn?

hasenj 15y ago

I don't know if people are opposed to mere inequality. Some people may not like when they have average income while some people are "filthy rich", and on that point I will agree that their resentment towards the rich is not justified much. However, there's another aspect of inequality: when a significantly large number of people are living in poverty, while others are "filthy rich". In this context, the issue is real and important, and people are right in being concerned about it. Even though the word inequality means merely "not equal" and could very well refer to the fact that some people are rich while some other aren't, I think that what most people really mean by "inequality" is the second case: where some people are extremely poor while some others are extremely rich.

vorg 15y ago

> I think humans may have a genetic predisposition to equality. What made me realize this was going to Africa and seeing lots of animals in the wild. All or nearly all the big mammals lived in groups and cooperated to survive. It was clear that our ancestors would in their day have been one of these groups, also cooperating to survive (as hunter-gatherers still do in a few places), and that their cooperative inclinations were probably genetically preprogrammed. I'm not sure living in groups and cooperating implies a genetic predisposition to equality. Even though a group might have, say, twenty to fifty members, some members tend to rule and others tend to hang on the outskirts. I'd pick Venkat Rao's division into Sociopaths, Clueless, and Losers (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...) as the best way to divide up types of people in such a group. He writes about their role in businesses, but it's the same in a small societal group. The Sociopaths are the jocks who absolutely must have the power, eat the most food, and have the most offspring. The Losers are the ones who live at the edge of the group, eat the least food, and be eaten first by predators. The Clueless are the majority who follow the Sociopaths' rules and rise slowly through the group hierarchy to their natural level of competence. Perhaps society is best modeled as a cell, where the Sociopaths are the nucleus and the Losers are the membrane. It does seem to be a male-oriented model, where females act more like glue, facilitating relationships. The male Sociopaths would have two or more females each, eat the food, feed the women, and produce the most offspring. The male Clueless would only have one female and follow whatever other rules the Sociopaths impose, and get food based on their rank in society. Perhaps the females overall are most similar to male Clueless in this model. The male Losers would be the first to miss out on the food, not get any girls, and die young, being the first to be sacrificed to predators. And maybe there's the reason why Sociopaths naturally shun any interaction with Losers, going through the Clueless intermediaries, as in "the jocks hate the nerds". When there's any threat to their survival or status, the Sociopaths in the nucleus can't afford to have any emotional attachment to the Losers in the outer membrane. They need to be able to sacrifice Losers without hesitating if that's required for their own survival. I guess I'm saying not only are mammals built out of biological cells internally, but also make up societal cells externally. When there's plenty of food and the group grows too big, the Sociopaths start electioneering among the Clueless for loyalty. The group will eventually split in half, just like cells do, some Sociopaths taking some of the Clueless with them and the others taking the other Clueless. When there's just enough food for the Sociopaths to multiply but not enough Clueless for a successful cell split, the Sociopaths will turn on one another, a coup takes place, and the losing Sociopaths killed or thrown outside the membrane. This model describes how a genetic predisposition to inequality and hierarchy can also explain group living and apparent cooperation.

Goladus 15y ago

> (b) the slower technological/economic growth you get when you ban being rich. There's a world of difference between "ban being rich" and "resist oligarchy with progressive taxation, investment in public services, infrastructure, research, and consumer-friendly laws and protections."

wnight 15y ago
You could even ban being rich from exploitation of limited resources or when destroying the commons. I didn't agree to let my government lease oil-bearing land to the largest industrial polluters and allow them to horde the results. Makers versus takers...

vesrin 15y ago

There are examples of this sort of cooperation to survive in primitive human societies. Inuit Eskimos will share their game with the whole village. No one is allowed to starve, even if they don't participate in hunts (they are despised and looked down upon though). I would assume the same practice were true for most hunter-gatherer societies. But one aspect that led to this "wealth" sharing is the fact that in primitive societies people living in the same community were closely genetically related. Matt Ridley touches tangentially on this topic in his book "The Origins of Virtue".

schiptsov 15y ago

I think this predisposition may be not for equality but for cooperation. We have empathy, we have child care hard-wired and we have some sort of protection against cheaters, to benefit the whole community. (it is not a cultural invention, it is, like you've said, genetic predisposition). Equality/inequality is, I think, a cultural factor. Culture is also subject to some sort of evolution process, which means that some inventions got lost, but some remain and evolve. So, more equal society is indeed more stable and healthy. You might not see so intense struggling or competition which means less innovation and so-called progress, but innovations or progress aren't among ultimate goals of the process of human evolution.

egiva 15y ago

Thanks for this comment. Humans certainly are predisposed to equality, but it might better be termed as "reciprocity". You may have read a very famous book by Jared Diamond called "Guns, Germs and Steel" which won the '98 Pulitzer in nonfiction. A lot of these conversations about wealth and equality (and why they are not equal among different sets of society, or among countries) are addressed in the book. This is definitely a life-changing read worth looking into. Because you might be really (really) busy, I also recommend a short article that sumarizes a lot of the themes in an interesting way: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/SocJusticeRes.pdf http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/SocJusticeRes.pdf Cheers - Jamison