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:s/power/ability to create value/ Anyone who can create returns greater than their cost of capital creates value. A screw isn't loose. If you can figure out ho

by mucle6 3y ago

:s/power/ability to create value/ Anyone who can create returns greater than their cost of capital creates value. A screw isn't loose. If you can figure out how to add value to the world, then you get endless riches. > "People without power get as little as is available to keep them alive" Consider using less hyperbole in your worldview. Today has the highest living standards of any time.

jstarfish 3y ago
> Consider using less hyperbole in your worldview. Today has the highest living standards of any time. And yet the suicide rate keeps ticking upward. All is not well in Paradise Earth.
ajkjk 3y ago
? That wasn't hyperbole. The average living standards are high and the low end isn't, as it has always been. The proportions of people in the low end vs middle are different than they have been, because the economy has advanced, but it's the same story. It doesn't change the fact that wealth inequality doesn't need to be this unequal. You are choosing that system, over another which is less unequal, when you defend it. I can't imagine why! It's the same system, but better, with happier people, and the only difference is the rules of the game--which we get to choose.
- Dig1t 3y ago
  It’s okay to have inequality as long as the floor is sufficiently high. We literally have an obesity problem among America’s poorest people. Which speaks to having a decently high standard compared to the past, where being poor literally meant you starved to death. Similarly, hospitals will never turn you away in this country. Meaning you can show up at the emergency room and have life saving surgery and the worst case is you’ll get a bill in the mail, instead of dying in the streets (there are countries where this still happens). I’m not saying it’s perfect, I think the biggest problem has to do with mentally ill and drug addicted homeless, who don’t have the mental capacity to take care of themselves. But I do agree with GP that the conversation has more nuance.
  - ajkjk 3y ago
    I'll agree immediately that poverty is less-bad than it once was; food prices in particular are lower compared to labor than they have ever been in history and so people can basically survive with no income. Housing then becomes the actual limiting factor. For the purposes of criticizing power structures that allow structural inequality I don't... care? The floor is not sufficiently high right now, because tremendous swathes of people are in true poverty, aka existence that denies them dignity and self-determination, because living in this world is so expensive that they can't escape the trap of poverty. So yes, I feel totally fine saying that soccer players or whomever make way too much money, and I'd be the first to agree that the inequality is fine when it is. But we're not even close.
flir 3y ago
> Today has the highest living standards of any time. Doesn't matter. Humans assess their position relative to other humans, not on an absolute scale. Homo economicus does not exist. If you don't include psychology, your model of the world is very incomplete.

by mucle6 3y ago

jstarfish 3y ago

> Consider using less hyperbole in your worldview. Today has the highest living standards of any time. And yet the suicide rate keeps ticking upward. All is not well in Paradise Earth.

ajkjk 3y ago

? That wasn't hyperbole. The average living standards are high and the low end isn't, as it has always been. The proportions of people in the low end vs middle are different than they have been, because the economy has advanced, but it's the same story. It doesn't change the fact that wealth inequality doesn't need to be this unequal. You are choosing that system, over another which is less unequal, when you defend it. I can't imagine why! It's the same system, but better, with happier people, and the only difference is the rules of the game--which we get to choose.

Dig1t 3y ago
It’s okay to have inequality as long as the floor is sufficiently high. We literally have an obesity problem among America’s poorest people. Which speaks to having a decently high standard compared to the past, where being poor literally meant you starved to death. Similarly, hospitals will never turn you away in this country. Meaning you can show up at the emergency room and have life saving surgery and the worst case is you’ll get a bill in the mail, instead of dying in the streets (there are countries where this still happens). I’m not saying it’s perfect, I think the biggest problem has to do with mentally ill and drug addicted homeless, who don’t have the mental capacity to take care of themselves. But I do agree with GP that the conversation has more nuance.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  I'll agree immediately that poverty is less-bad than it once was; food prices in particular are lower compared to labor than they have ever been in history and so people can basically survive with no income. Housing then becomes the actual limiting factor. For the purposes of criticizing power structures that allow structural inequality I don't... care? The floor is not sufficiently high right now, because tremendous swathes of people are in true poverty, aka existence that denies them dignity and self-determination, because living in this world is so expensive that they can't escape the trap of poverty. So yes, I feel totally fine saying that soccer players or whomever make way too much money, and I'd be the first to agree that the inequality is fine when it is. But we're not even close.

flir 3y ago

> Today has the highest living standards of any time. Doesn't matter. Humans assess their position relative to other humans, not on an absolute scale. Homo economicus does not exist. If you don't include psychology, your model of the world is very incomplete.