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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

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.
      - kragen 5y ago
        Nowhere was dominance of fossil fuels or the very powerful industrial upswing stronger in 01922 than in the United States. But the US did not then have the huge international network of overseas military deployment and occupied territories it developed later that century. It did have some overseas territories: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Guam, Alaska, Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Wake Island, the Panama Canal, and arguably Honduras; but these were primarily naval bases and tourist resorts, not pools of cheap labor or troves of resources to exploit. To be sure, sugar from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hawaii, pineapples from Hawaii, and bananas from Honduras were obtained by exploitation of the residents of those unfortunate lands, enriching the US colonists, and gold was mined by the colonists in Alaska; but these resources were peripheral to the projects of US industrialization and energy supplies. 50 years earlier the US had none of them, just huge tracts of land taken by force from Native Americans. In Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Germany, the story was of course quite different. But it is perhaps not coincidental that the industrial power least addicted to plundering resources from colonies abroad became the land most prosperous in the epoch when industry and invention reshaped the world.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  > 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." “Mental problems”—did people fail to Think and Grow Rich or something?
  - kragen 5y ago
    Listen, I don't know if you have anyone in your family with mental problems, but it's very common for them to result in poverty, despite having what would appear to be opportunity, well-aligned incentives, knowledge, and correct beliefs. And I really don't think this is a thing you should be making fun of.
    - avgcorrection 5y ago
      I was making fun of the apparent idea that some people are poor because they have the wrong attitude. So that was not what you meant. You are still wrong however, and your opinion is harmful in my opnion. Mental issues may only cause poverty if there is a lack of safety net. Homeless people with Schizophrenia is ultimately caused by policy decisions. Schizophrenic people are more likely to be homeless in certain developed countries compared to others.
      - kragen 5y ago
        This comment is not up to the standards of this site, or indeed of decent human discourse, and I suggest that you delete it immediately. Specifically, you are lying about what I have said in order to smear me, while contributing no insight of your own, and all of this on a sensitive emotional issue.
        avgcorrection 5y ago
        I cleaned it up for you. > Specifically, you are lying about what I have said in order to smear me I did not.
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.

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.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Nowhere was dominance of fossil fuels or the very powerful industrial upswing stronger in 01922 than in the United States. But the US did not then have the huge international network of overseas military deployment and occupied territories it developed later that century. It did have some overseas territories: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Guam, Alaska, Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Wake Island, the Panama Canal, and arguably Honduras; but these were primarily naval bases and tourist resorts, not pools of cheap labor or troves of resources to exploit. To be sure, sugar from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hawaii, pineapples from Hawaii, and bananas from Honduras were obtained by exploitation of the residents of those unfortunate lands, enriching the US colonists, and gold was mined by the colonists in Alaska; but these resources were peripheral to the projects of US industrialization and energy supplies. 50 years earlier the US had none of them, just huge tracts of land taken by force from Native Americans. In Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Germany, the story was of course quite different. But it is perhaps not coincidental that the industrial power least addicted to plundering resources from colonies abroad became the land most prosperous in the epoch when industry and invention reshaped the world.
avgcorrection 5y ago
> 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." “Mental problems”—did people fail to Think and Grow Rich or something?
- kragen 5y ago
  Listen, I don't know if you have anyone in your family with mental problems, but it's very common for them to result in poverty, despite having what would appear to be opportunity, well-aligned incentives, knowledge, and correct beliefs. And I really don't think this is a thing you should be making fun of.
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    I was making fun of the apparent idea that some people are poor because they have the wrong attitude. So that was not what you meant. You are still wrong however, and your opinion is harmful in my opnion. Mental issues may only cause poverty if there is a lack of safety net. Homeless people with Schizophrenia is ultimately caused by policy decisions. Schizophrenic people are more likely to be homeless in certain developed countries compared to others.
    - kragen 5y ago
      This comment is not up to the standards of this site, or indeed of decent human discourse, and I suggest that you delete it immediately. Specifically, you are lying about what I have said in order to smear me, while contributing no insight of your own, and all of this on a sensitive emotional issue.
      - avgcorrection 5y ago
        I cleaned it up for you. > Specifically, you are lying about what I have said in order to smear me I did not.

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.