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Inequality is a reason for a law. The fact that it's a competitive advantage just means it's not a law that has to harm anyone in order to decrease inequality.
by kennywinker 4y ago
Inequality is a reason for a law. The fact that it's a competitive advantage just means it's not a law that has to harm anyone in order to decrease inequality.
- chacham15 4y ago[flagged]
- kennywinker 4y ago[flagged]
- danuker 4y agoThere is a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
- kennywinker 4y ago
- Ekaros 4y agoHmm, should we just take everyone's wealth every few years and split it evenly? After all wealth is opportunity. Hmm, or maybe set inheritance tax and gift tax to 100%. After all that is also equal opportunity.
- kennywinker 4y ago
- xvector 4y agoSuch a society would not fly. Imagine being a parent and unable to be able to give your kids an advantage. It would devolve into pure chaos.
- kennywinker 4y agoYou just described the situation of millions of parents in the US today. Why does your kid need a financial advantage? If society provided an equal footing for every child, the advantages you could provide to them would be love, advice inspiration, and bettering society so that there was more for them. You say “that’ll never fly”, but I say if we’re going to imagine a better world why not imagine it radically better not just incrementally better.
- robertlagrant 4y agoIt's not radically better. Giving people who at the age of 50 have enough money to live on no way of passing anything on will disincentivise a giant number of things you take for granted.
- kennywinker 4y agoLike what? I'm interested in disincentivizing the accumulation of more wealth than you can spend in a lifetime, and the continued sequestering of that wealth into family lines. We abolished the monarchy for a reason - we don't want to be ruled by people who were born into their position.
- robertlagrant 4y agoThere is a big difference between wealth and monarchy. You aren't ruled by people with money, although one of them might offer you a job.
- kennywinker 4y agoThey literally shape the world around us. Money = speech, so they speak louder than us. It may not be quite so restrictive as a lord-surf relationship, but “giving you a job” is a power dynamic that edges towards feudal when the choice is homelessness and starvation or work.
- LegitShady 4y agoan unjust world where some nosy stranger decides "intergenerational wealth is bad" and "everyone is fed, housed and educated" takes precedence over you working towards your children or your children's children's future because they feel justified in using political oppression to take what you've earned for your family. Not sure what kind of dystopia you're setting up where politicians will always use the greater good of everyone else to justify any actions against individuals.
- kennywinker 4y agoYou can't just pass a law against inter-generational wealth. It's too easy to work around, too many ways of passing money without directly inheriting it. The only way it could possibly work is if had cultural buy in. If everybody thought it was a good idea and believed in it, at that point the laws just codify and re-enforce the existing beliefs. So I'm not setting up a dystopia where politicians swoop in and rob the elderly. I'm suggesting what if we radically restructured our society so we ACTUALLY gave everyone an equal opportunity, instead of allowing inequality to accumulate generationaly in the ways it does.
- LegitShady 4y ago>The only way it could possibly work is if had cultural buy in. disagree. there are lots of unpopular laws that get passed as part of other bills, under the urging of activists or lobbyists against popular opinion, etc. >I'm suggesting what if we radically restructured our society so we ACTUALLY gave everyone an equal opportunity, instead of allowing inequality to accumulate generationaly in the ways it does. The details matter. Big sweeping statements like the above don't mean anything until you get to details - they sound like moral soundbites but they ignore the details of the actions required to get to that point. That way you never have to deal with negatives arising from your ideas, because you never discuss the details enough to get to the negatives, just the platitudes.
- kennywinker 4y ago> disagree. there are lots of unpopular laws that get passed as part of other bills, under the urging of activists or lobbyists against popular opinion, etc. Not saying it couldn't be made a law without cultural buy-in, I'm saying the law wouldn't be effective. There are too many workaround. You can give your child your stuff while you're still alive. You can put it all into a trust. You can create a scholarship where the criteria is being this one person. You can put it all in gold bars and bury it in the backyard. Etc. etc. etc. but if there is a cultural consensus that doing that is WRONG, people will by-and-large not do it. > The details matter. Indeed they do. But if we can't agree that the goal would be a good one, there's no point in getting into the details. It seems that there are a lot of people on here who don't think we should be seeking to create a society that actually provides equal opportunities - in that context, debating how to achieve that goal is pretty useless. If we all agree that it would be good, then we can discuss specific plans and proposals to get closer to that goal.
- danuker 4y ago> set inheritance tax and gift tax to 100% Would anyone leave inheritances or give gifts after that? People would just spend everything they have, targeting a $0 or negative net worth at death.
- otterley 4y agoThat’s kind of the point.
- robertlagrant 4y agoThe point is that people spend what they have? What would that do?
- kennywinker 4y agoWell, it'd be great for the economy.
- Kbelicius 4y agoIn this context there really isn't any difference between the two. Different opportunities lead to different outcomes and vice versa. So if you want same opportunities for everyone you'd have to accept, that to achieve that, same outcomes are also needed.
- Jtype 4y agoYou need to do a lot more reading if you think equality of opportunity and equality of output are the same. Saying that everyone should have equal rights and treatment under the law is a far cry from saying that everyone deserves the same outcomes in life. I assume that you're conflating equal opportunity( via rights and treatment under the law) with equal starting points, but they are far from the same things. Equal starting points are going to be impossible, literally a pipe dream without creating some form of dystopian nightmare that prevents people from having children, and instead farms genetically equal embryos who are then raised by the state. Which will also necessitate monoculture and risk humanity due to the lack in individual variation.
- kennywinker 4y agoPublic schooling, a non-rights based government program that provides everyone with education regardless of the economic circumstances they were born into, does not create equal starting points - but it is an improvement in the equality of everyone's starting point. Hardly a dystopian nightmare. Seems to me that there is a lot more we could do while still avoiding your dystopian nightmare scenario
- robertlagrant 4y agoNo, you're mixing up concepts. Public schooling is to do with equality of opportunity.
- kennywinker 4y agoWhat set of rules did you use to draw the line between an opportunity and an outcome there? Why does it stop at highschool, and not continue on to university, jobs, or board seats? Because you might just as well frame public school as the government stepping in to mandate that there are seats in elementary and high school for everyone.
- goatlover 4y agoEqual opportunity is a lot different than equal outcome. The first does not guarantee equal outcomes, as individuals vary in all sorts of ways, including skill and ambition. Achieving equal outcome almost certainly means a serious reduction of liberty, because you can't allow people to be free to do better than others.
- kennywinker 4y ago
- danuker 4y ago> like women not being able to have their own bank account up until the 1970s I am surprised to learn this!
- DaveExeter 4y agoDon't be surprised, it is simply a lie!
- kennywinker 4y agoNot a lie, but it was a simplification of a nuanced fact that I used for the sake of brevity and quippyness. So, for actual factual nuanced details, it depends on where you are and what you're specifically talking about. E.g. in canada it was 1964 when women became legally entitled to open a bank account without their husband’s signature. I can't find a specific date that women were able to access basic non-credit banking services without a cosigner everywhere in the US. It happened in California in the 1800s, but there seem to have been significant obstacles for women accessing banking tools up until some time in the 1960s - without a legal requirement, it's up to the individual banks, some would have been easier than others. The 1970s bit was a reference to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, passed in 1974 - “Prior to the law, for car loans or financial transactions, a woman was expected to have someone — a father or husband, typically a male — co-sign for that transaction,” So yes, what I said was only true about access to credit-baring accounts, not all accounts. But before you dismiss how that would have impacted the presence of women on corporate boards - it was 1988 when the Women's Business Ownership Act of 1988 passed and put an end to state laws that required women to have male relatives sign business loans. So yeah, the reality is both better than what I said, and worse than what I said.
- tut-urut-utut 4y ago[flagged]
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago1. Communism with central planning / with internal price signals cannot work, because the computation for efficient goods distribution scales as the fourth power of the number of differentiated goods in the economy (where in addition to physical goods, every individual appointment time with every individual service provider is its own differentiated good.) 2. Even in a world where essential resources are plentiful, many people compete for status, which is a zero-sum game. 3. Perhaps as a result, communism when attempted historically results in famine and/or shortages and/or genocides.
- ClassyJacket 4y agoCapitalism also results in famine, shortages, and genocides, yet you don't criticize it for that.
- Veen 4y ago> Capitalism also results in famine Capitalist societies experience famine, but that's not the same as causing famine, something which has happened numerous times in communist societies: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921–1922 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921–1922 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
- tut-urut-utut 4y agoAll of these famines are exeprienced in communist countries, but not caused by communism. IIRC those were mostly direct or indirect consequences of wars and economic sanctions that capitalist countries lead against communist countries. Compare that with the following famines that were both experienced and caused by capitalism: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India If you look at the full list of famines, you'll find the difference between capitalism and communism astonishing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine
- CapitalistCartr 4y ago[flagged]
- native_samples 4y ago[flagged]
- kennywinker 4y agoApparently there is what we are doing now, and there’s communism? No other possible things we could do. No other changes we could make that could increase the equality of outcomes, because if we even think about that idea we’ve got full blown north korea on our hands.
- native_samples 4y ago[flagged]
- kennywinker 4y ago[flagged]
- native_samples 4y agoNobody is arguing there are no biases or suboptimal behaviours in the global economy, only that so far capitalism is the best system known for optimizing out those suboptimal behaviours. And that in particular, having governments try to short-circuit the process often make things worse rather than better. "Tax brackets, medicaid, and public schools, to name a few. None of those are communism" Tax brackets and medicaid are indeed not communism, though in a communist system Medicaid would be the only option. Those are safety nets, not forced equalization of outcomes (state schools aren't really a safety net, and in my view shouldn't exist; governments have a poor track record with education and ensuring everyone has access to it could be done in other ways like voucher schemes). "A mandate for diversity on corporate boards wouldn't be communism either - it'd be an attempt to undo historical biases that give people unequal opportunities based on their race or gender." These laws aren't safety nets designed to ensure a minimum quality of life for all. They are communism because they are direct attempts to enforce equality of outcome for only special demographic groups who are favoured by the ideology.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're tedious, extremely repetitive, and usually turn nasty. That's why the HN guidelines specifically ask people to avoid them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If anyone would like further explanation, you can find 7 years' worth here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- robertlagrant 4y agoWhat I'm quoting isn't talking about inequality; it's only talking about competitive advantage. That's what I'm commenting on.