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> creates enormous inequality i dont know why everyone keeps getting away with statement like this. the proposition of equality as a meaningful metric is absu

> creates enormous inequality i dont know why everyone keeps getting away with statement like this. the proposition of equality as a meaningful metric is absurd at every level of examination. no one is equal to anyone else except on the most trivial and simplistic terms about anything. do you feel inferior to rich people? do you feel superior to poor people? what hogwash. i reject this axiom that inequality is bad. people don't hate inequality - they hate unfairness. they hate having their house repossesed because they took a loan they couldnt afford while the banks get a taxpayer bailout for making financial decisions THEY couldn't afford. people don't hate gates, jobs, buffet, or bezos; they love and idolize them. but if the system that purports to give commoners a path to wealth like those people instead shackles them with 200k in debt you have to fucking die to get rid of... things start feeling a little rebellious. the problem doesnt have anything to do with equality. there is a loss of control, of autonomy. no chance of growth or the ability to change your circumstances.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
boucher 5y ago
Inequality has nothing to do with feeling superior or inferior to others (though, our culture absolutely does encourage those beliefs). In a world with limited resources, huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. It also tends to concentrate political power in the same small group. Many people would say there is something inherently unfair about this. I think these things aren't as separate from your concerns as you make them out to be.
- kragen 5y ago
  The world has limited natural resources, but it doesn't have limited human welfare or enjoyment or wealth. Moreover, natural resources are not consumed, except for helium, energy, and the contents of spacecraft. The natural resources in a big plate glass window are a double handful of sand. The natural resources in a Rembrandt are the sunlight and rainfall needed to grow a sheaf of flax and a handful of powdered colorful rocks. The natural resources in a bottle of the finest wine are half a handful of sand, and the sunlight and rainfall needed to grow a bunch of grapes. The natural resources in an anti-malaria bed net are what is needed to grow a single cotton plant. A Rolls-Royce contained the same natural resources as a large Yugo. Poverty comes from lack of opportunity (usually due to centralization of control), perverse incentives (often due to lack of centralization of control), ignorance, delusion, and other kinds of mental problems, not from limited natural resources or from "a small group of people consuming vastly more."
  - Guvante 5y ago
    Oil isn't renewable and the rich tend to be the ones in control...
  - rustmachine 5y ago
    The natural ressources to maintain the cost of living in a rich country like mine (denmark) is so high, that it is impossible to imagine all the people in the world maintaining a similar living standard. Im talking not only the glass in my windows, but my energyconsumption, my use of fridges, phones, tvs and so on, all of which costs not only the ressources it costs to manufacture them, but also the entire system built up around it to maintain it. From shipping and transport to cheap labor in a 3rd world country. If all the people of india and china were to maintain a similar way of life as mine, the eco system would collapse right away.
    - hohloma 5y ago
      I bet 100 years ago rich people in developed countries thought the same. The answer was technology (more energy extraction and more efficient use of resources and energy) and now a better standard of living is achieved by several orders of magnitude more people even while the whole population has increased dramatically. Everyone in the world can live by same or better standards if technological progress continues. Ofcourse it will never be perfectly distributed, so there will always be "poor" and "rich".
      - rustmachine 5y ago
        100 years ago the west were in the middle of a very powerful industrial upswing which relied completely and explicitly on the exploitation of less developed countries. They maintained political and economic power through military force, which was ensured by their dominance of fossil fuels. I dont think the people in power 100-150 years ago were thinking very much about how to ensure the living standard of the countries they were exploiting. Because they knew that their own wealth was directly dependent on the exploitation of these very same people, and spent considerable military and colonial power to ensure that modernity, development and industrialization was something happened in the colonial powers - not in the colonies.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  The world has limited resources, but that doesn't mean wealth is limited. People create wealth by work and trade.
  - Kbelicius 5y ago
    How does it not mean that wealth is limited? I mean, how can you have more wealth than the value of world resources?
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      Here is an example: Oil was an annoying sticky substance until the liquid-fuelled internal combustion engine was invented in 1876. This invention turned it into the most valuable resource in the world for the next 150 years. That invention turned useless goo into gazillions of wealth.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- refurb 5y ago
  huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. Are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk consuming vastly more available resources? I mean most of their wealth is invested, in companies, that provide a livelihood for tens of thousands of individuals. Let’s say we stopped Elon and Jeff from accumulating such wealth (i.e. stopped their companies from growing and/or forced them to divest their investments and captured it via taxes). I think we can all agree that both companies would likely be much smaller. So how many jobs not created? How many consumers paying higher prices? How much was technology advances delayed? I don’t have answers but they are questions worth asking.
- inimino 5y ago
  > huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. Why would you think so? Inequality means wealth inequality, it does not measure consumption. There are still people starving in the world; that is because they cannot afford to buy food, not because Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are eating 1000000x more food than the average person.
ausbah 5y ago
and the system thats causes such unfairness isn't perpetuated / influenced by those with massive amounts of wealth more than everyone else?
froh 5y ago
Yes! It's the level of inequality that's problematic, not the inequality per se. People are not the same, but they weigh the same.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
> the proposition of equality as a meaningful metric is absurd at every level of examination In industrial capitalist societies, measures of inequality are historically the best predictors of political crisis, including but not limited to the the election of Hitler and the Holocaust. I think people have plenty of good reason to consider them. You are confusing the metric of inequality with the ideal of equality. These are very different things. Statistical measures of inequality have always been highly correlated with measures of societal health in some way or another, but different measures mean different things depending on the type of society it is. For example, you are focusing on the very poor vs. the very rich, but most Americans tend to associate inequality with the size of the middle class. >the problem doesnt have anything to do with equality. there is a loss of control, of autonomy. no chance of growth or the ability to change your circumstances. A lot of people think there is a chance for success and spend most of their lives learning there isn’t. They idolize Bezos and Musk because the media does, and guess who runs the media…
djrobstep 5y ago
What are you talking about? Equality is a well-established concept. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that people don’t believe in it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
avgcorrection 5y ago
> do you feel inferior to rich people? do you feel superior to poor people? what hogwash. i reject this axiom that inequality is bad. > people don't hate inequality - they hate unfairness. You seem to contradict yourself in the span of two paragraphs. Inequality is OK (according to you) if it is fair. So rich people are superior to poor people? (It’s not about “feeling” inferior in any case. It’s about having enough money to live. And yes, the interests of the rich often work against the interests of the poor in such a way that the lives of the poor gets to be more and more difficult.) Or maybe we’re just seeing unfair inequality right now? Well then the distinction doesn’t matter much in any case. When was the last time that inequality was fair? Rich people are created off the backs of relatively poor people, i.e. the working class. To a large degree, rich people need other people to be relatively poor in order to maintain their wealth. Why do you think that businesses hate when workers organize for better pay and conditions? I guess they should be fine with it if the inequality was “fair”… Bah. Maybe my reading comprehension is off.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  > So rich people are superior to poor people? Some people have higher earning potential than others. Does that make them superior?
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    No. It makes the world unfair. But the OP seemed to presume that the world was fair. That’s a common wrong presumption that these “poor people are actually rich” people have: that the world is fair. It’s also a popular assumption on message boards populated by high-income folks for obvious reasons.
pasquinelli 5y ago
creates inequality is kind of like a cop saying the suspect became deceased. i'd change from "creates inequality" to "relies on exploitation."

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

boucher 5y ago

Inequality has nothing to do with feeling superior or inferior to others (though, our culture absolutely does encourage those beliefs). In a world with limited resources, huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. It also tends to concentrate political power in the same small group. Many people would say there is something inherently unfair about this. I think these things aren't as separate from your concerns as you make them out to be.

kragen 5y ago
The world has limited natural resources, but it doesn't have limited human welfare or enjoyment or wealth. Moreover, natural resources are not consumed, except for helium, energy, and the contents of spacecraft. The natural resources in a big plate glass window are a double handful of sand. The natural resources in a Rembrandt are the sunlight and rainfall needed to grow a sheaf of flax and a handful of powdered colorful rocks. The natural resources in a bottle of the finest wine are half a handful of sand, and the sunlight and rainfall needed to grow a bunch of grapes. The natural resources in an anti-malaria bed net are what is needed to grow a single cotton plant. A Rolls-Royce contained the same natural resources as a large Yugo. Poverty comes from lack of opportunity (usually due to centralization of control), perverse incentives (often due to lack of centralization of control), ignorance, delusion, and other kinds of mental problems, not from limited natural resources or from "a small group of people consuming vastly more."
- Guvante 5y ago
  Oil isn't renewable and the rich tend to be the ones in control...
- rustmachine 5y ago
  The natural ressources to maintain the cost of living in a rich country like mine (denmark) is so high, that it is impossible to imagine all the people in the world maintaining a similar living standard. Im talking not only the glass in my windows, but my energyconsumption, my use of fridges, phones, tvs and so on, all of which costs not only the ressources it costs to manufacture them, but also the entire system built up around it to maintain it. From shipping and transport to cheap labor in a 3rd world country. If all the people of india and china were to maintain a similar way of life as mine, the eco system would collapse right away.
  - hohloma 5y ago
    I bet 100 years ago rich people in developed countries thought the same. The answer was technology (more energy extraction and more efficient use of resources and energy) and now a better standard of living is achieved by several orders of magnitude more people even while the whole population has increased dramatically. Everyone in the world can live by same or better standards if technological progress continues. Ofcourse it will never be perfectly distributed, so there will always be "poor" and "rich".
    - rustmachine 5y ago
      100 years ago the west were in the middle of a very powerful industrial upswing which relied completely and explicitly on the exploitation of less developed countries. They maintained political and economic power through military force, which was ensured by their dominance of fossil fuels. I dont think the people in power 100-150 years ago were thinking very much about how to ensure the living standard of the countries they were exploiting. Because they knew that their own wealth was directly dependent on the exploitation of these very same people, and spent considerable military and colonial power to ensure that modernity, development and industrialization was something happened in the colonial powers - not in the colonies.
BurningFrog 5y ago
The world has limited resources, but that doesn't mean wealth is limited. People create wealth by work and trade.
- Kbelicius 5y ago
  How does it not mean that wealth is limited? I mean, how can you have more wealth than the value of world resources?
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    Here is an example: Oil was an annoying sticky substance until the liquid-fuelled internal combustion engine was invented in 1876. This invention turned it into the most valuable resource in the world for the next 150 years. That invention turned useless goo into gazillions of wealth.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
refurb 5y ago
huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. Are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk consuming vastly more available resources? I mean most of their wealth is invested, in companies, that provide a livelihood for tens of thousands of individuals. Let’s say we stopped Elon and Jeff from accumulating such wealth (i.e. stopped their companies from growing and/or forced them to divest their investments and captured it via taxes). I think we can all agree that both companies would likely be much smaller. So how many jobs not created? How many consumers paying higher prices? How much was technology advances delayed? I don’t have answers but they are questions worth asking.
inimino 5y ago
> huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. Why would you think so? Inequality means wealth inequality, it does not measure consumption. There are still people starving in the world; that is because they cannot afford to buy food, not because Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are eating 1000000x more food than the average person.

ausbah 5y ago

and the system thats causes such unfairness isn't perpetuated / influenced by those with massive amounts of wealth more than everyone else?

froh 5y ago

Yes! It's the level of inequality that's problematic, not the inequality per se. People are not the same, but they weigh the same.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

> the proposition of equality as a meaningful metric is absurd at every level of examination In industrial capitalist societies, measures of inequality are historically the best predictors of political crisis, including but not limited to the the election of Hitler and the Holocaust. I think people have plenty of good reason to consider them. You are confusing the metric of inequality with the ideal of equality. These are very different things. Statistical measures of inequality have always been highly correlated with measures of societal health in some way or another, but different measures mean different things depending on the type of society it is. For example, you are focusing on the very poor vs. the very rich, but most Americans tend to associate inequality with the size of the middle class. >the problem doesnt have anything to do with equality. there is a loss of control, of autonomy. no chance of growth or the ability to change your circumstances. A lot of people think there is a chance for success and spend most of their lives learning there isn’t. They idolize Bezos and Musk because the media does, and guess who runs the media…

djrobstep 5y ago

What are you talking about? Equality is a well-established concept. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that people don’t believe in it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

avgcorrection 5y ago

> do you feel inferior to rich people? do you feel superior to poor people? what hogwash. i reject this axiom that inequality is bad. > people don't hate inequality - they hate unfairness. You seem to contradict yourself in the span of two paragraphs. Inequality is OK (according to you) if it is fair. So rich people are superior to poor people? (It’s not about “feeling” inferior in any case. It’s about having enough money to live. And yes, the interests of the rich often work against the interests of the poor in such a way that the lives of the poor gets to be more and more difficult.) Or maybe we’re just seeing unfair inequality right now? Well then the distinction doesn’t matter much in any case. When was the last time that inequality was fair? Rich people are created off the backs of relatively poor people, i.e. the working class. To a large degree, rich people need other people to be relatively poor in order to maintain their wealth. Why do you think that businesses hate when workers organize for better pay and conditions? I guess they should be fine with it if the inequality was “fair”… Bah. Maybe my reading comprehension is off.

WithinReason 5y ago
> So rich people are superior to poor people? Some people have higher earning potential than others. Does that make them superior?
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  No. It makes the world unfair. But the OP seemed to presume that the world was fair. That’s a common wrong presumption that these “poor people are actually rich” people have: that the world is fair. It’s also a popular assumption on message boards populated by high-income folks for obvious reasons.

pasquinelli 5y ago

creates inequality is kind of like a cop saying the suspect became deceased. i'd change from "creates inequality" to "relies on exploitation."