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One obvious example is housing. Those that have more than you can afford to live in safer neighborhoods. Those less well off but still able to afford to own a h

One obvious example is housing. Those that have more than you can afford to live in safer neighborhoods. Those less well off but still able to afford to own a home will be forced to live in neighborhoods with higher crime, higher levels of pollution, "food deserts", or any other number of negative factors. Sure, you can opt to drive til you qualify and avoid some of those problems but now you spend an hour or more each way in your car. That too comes with negative consequences to your health.

civilized 5y ago
That's poverty though, not inequality per se.
- chongli 5y ago
  It’s not poverty though. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, laptop, plenty of food to eat, TV, refrigerator, washer and dryer, and all sorts of other toys and time saving appliances, you’re not in poverty by any global or historical standards. You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty.
  - civilized 5y ago
    > You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty. But this sentence contains no reference to how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer. It contains a description of how Y could be better off if Y had more. If inequality was eliminated by making it so no one had access to safe schools, it would not solve the problem at all. If you don't want to call the problem poverty, whatever, but it's definitely not inequality.
    - meowkit 5y ago
      I assume you don't know who Robert Sapolsky is in the parent comment. "how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer" is the observation of someone who is above you in the hierarchy of A (A is whatever measure you want, usually its financial wealth or social status). This involuntary comparison allows you to derive your relative position, and this is a biologically stressful activity when you are toward the bottom of the hierarchy. This constant reflexive update is not great for people in a highly unequal society because its a constant stress inducer and has direct physical and mental health implications that bleed over into things like the political sphere. Both "pointy" hierarchies and flattened hierarchies are bad. Flattened hierarchies are when we are all equal, and thus society stagnates. Pointy hierarchies are the traditional kings at the top, serfs at the bottom. These inevitably collapse at some point for multitudes of reasons. There is probably a happy, more stable medium. Societies that are becoming unequal have a gradient trending toward the pointy hierarchy state. Poverty is a specific threshold of material wealth, and is related, but ultimately orthogonal to the discussion.
      - kiba 5y ago
        OK, but I don't care about the billionaires or the rich guy down the road having a big giant yacht.
      - thegrimmest 5y ago
        I don't think there's any escaping the stressors of deep hierarchies. Social status is a scarce commodity, and will continue to be scarce regardless of wealth. I think the better solution is to proscribe severe punishment/suffering for violating the peace a la Japan. Classical conditioning works on people too.
kiba 5y ago
This has to do with extremely poor land use policies combined together with bad incentive in the housing market, hence "robust" housing market as if it's something to be celebrated. I note that the San Francisco housing crisis has been ongoing for at least a few years if not longer according to the notes I have been taking.
- chongli 5y ago
  Those land use policies come from nimbyism and a desire to “pull the ladder up behind you” that we see so often in our society. I think, and it sounds like the research supports, that inequality drives people to act more selfishly and this is the result we see.
  - kiba 5y ago
    No, the price of real estate must rise to enrich you. Can't having rising real estate price if you don't restrict housing. It is in part an incentive problem. If you institute a land value tax, we would reward the richest person around, because he makes the best investment, but he would also pay the greatest amount of taxes, because he bought the most productive or most desirable land.
krisoft 5y ago
You are not arguing the question. An unsafe, polluted, food desert neighbourhood is less healthy not because there are safe, clean, well supplied neighbourhoods. It is less healthy because the lack of safety, pollution and lack of healthy food makes people unhealthy. If you can make the whole country polluted, food deserty and unsafe you made everyone more equal, but nobody will get healthier. If a multi-billonaire buys a palace at the edge of a safe, clean neighbourhood that increases the inequality tremendously but won't make the people in the neighbourhood sicker.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

civilized 5y ago

That's poverty though, not inequality per se.

chongli 5y ago
It’s not poverty though. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, laptop, plenty of food to eat, TV, refrigerator, washer and dryer, and all sorts of other toys and time saving appliances, you’re not in poverty by any global or historical standards. You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty.
- civilized 5y ago
  > You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty. But this sentence contains no reference to how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer. It contains a description of how Y could be better off if Y had more. If inequality was eliminated by making it so no one had access to safe schools, it would not solve the problem at all. If you don't want to call the problem poverty, whatever, but it's definitely not inequality.
  - meowkit 5y ago
    I assume you don't know who Robert Sapolsky is in the parent comment. "how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer" is the observation of someone who is above you in the hierarchy of A (A is whatever measure you want, usually its financial wealth or social status). This involuntary comparison allows you to derive your relative position, and this is a biologically stressful activity when you are toward the bottom of the hierarchy. This constant reflexive update is not great for people in a highly unequal society because its a constant stress inducer and has direct physical and mental health implications that bleed over into things like the political sphere. Both "pointy" hierarchies and flattened hierarchies are bad. Flattened hierarchies are when we are all equal, and thus society stagnates. Pointy hierarchies are the traditional kings at the top, serfs at the bottom. These inevitably collapse at some point for multitudes of reasons. There is probably a happy, more stable medium. Societies that are becoming unequal have a gradient trending toward the pointy hierarchy state. Poverty is a specific threshold of material wealth, and is related, but ultimately orthogonal to the discussion.
    - kiba 5y ago
      OK, but I don't care about the billionaires or the rich guy down the road having a big giant yacht.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      I don't think there's any escaping the stressors of deep hierarchies. Social status is a scarce commodity, and will continue to be scarce regardless of wealth. I think the better solution is to proscribe severe punishment/suffering for violating the peace a la Japan. Classical conditioning works on people too.

kiba 5y ago

This has to do with extremely poor land use policies combined together with bad incentive in the housing market, hence "robust" housing market as if it's something to be celebrated. I note that the San Francisco housing crisis has been ongoing for at least a few years if not longer according to the notes I have been taking.

chongli 5y ago
Those land use policies come from nimbyism and a desire to “pull the ladder up behind you” that we see so often in our society. I think, and it sounds like the research supports, that inequality drives people to act more selfishly and this is the result we see.
- kiba 5y ago
  No, the price of real estate must rise to enrich you. Can't having rising real estate price if you don't restrict housing. It is in part an incentive problem. If you institute a land value tax, we would reward the richest person around, because he makes the best investment, but he would also pay the greatest amount of taxes, because he bought the most productive or most desirable land.

krisoft 5y ago

You are not arguing the question. An unsafe, polluted, food desert neighbourhood is less healthy not because there are safe, clean, well supplied neighbourhoods. It is less healthy because the lack of safety, pollution and lack of healthy food makes people unhealthy. If you can make the whole country polluted, food deserty and unsafe you made everyone more equal, but nobody will get healthier. If a multi-billonaire buys a palace at the edge of a safe, clean neighbourhood that increases the inequality tremendously but won't make the people in the neighbourhood sicker.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]