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"You shouldn't be upset with the unfair treatment of someone if anyone in human history has had it worse than them" is not a particularly convincing moral argum

by slg 3y ago

"You shouldn't be upset with the unfair treatment of someone if anyone in human history has had it worse than them" is not a particularly convincing moral argument. I believe income inequality is bad because many people don't have enough to live comfortably and my parents taught me sharing is important. We can get into all sorts of economic arguments, but at its heart it is really as simple as that.

foobarian 3y ago
> I believe income inequality is bad because many people don't have enough to live comfortably and my parents taught me sharing is important. The "living comfortably" metric is useful. It rules out the "hunter gatherer" argument where we're back in stone age, presumably not comfortable but as equal as can be. If everyone had enough to live comfortably but inequality increased, would that be OK?
- jfengel 3y ago
  Pretty much, yeah, with the priviso that "comfortable" is relative to the times. These days, "comfortable" would include a place to live that is clean and fairly safe, food that is more than just enough calories, ordinary medical care, and access to the Internet. This is a lot more than a century ago, but they're widespread and cheap enough that we can easily afford to provide it for every (Western) citizen. It's costly, but we could provide it, and the super-wealthy could still be incredibly wealthy. Shy of that, there's going to be a lot of tension. I can't predict what that will look like in the future, and I can't say what to do about the non-Western majority of the world who can't afford to do this. But at least for the here-and-near-future-now, it's something that would allow people to live without desperation. We now have so much unnecessary desperation, and that's what I find offensive. We'll still be faced with problems of meaning, but at least we're avoiding the hypocrisy of wealthy people saying, "Go find your meaning by working for me, while I take the vast majority of the profits just because I'm already rich."
- slg 3y ago
  "Living comfortably" is obviously a subjective metric, but that is the general goal. Most people don't want equality of outcome in which everyone's life is exactly the same. Some range of wealth inequality is permissible in many people's minds, including mine. I think the problem with your hypothetical is that increasing wealth inequality generally comes at the expense of someone. It isn't simply that the billionaires' wealth grows faster than the wealth of the poorest. Often the billionaire is a billionaire because they have taken advantage of an unequal system which has real victims. Wealth inequality also leads to other issues of fairness that go beyond living conditions. For example, impact on the environment is one. That $100m yacht you mention will have a huge carbon cost. There is also a concern of political power in a democracy with free speech. If a billionaire can afford to plaster their political message on every TV network, radio station, and social media site, will that give them an outsized role in a democracy that is meant to grant political equality to all? This unequal distribution of political power can easily create a feedback loop that allows these billionaires to use their wealth to capture more wealth and political power.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Aren't you assuming a zero sum economy without growth? The four men in the article all created their own wealth, they didn't steal it, so this seems like a pretty poor situation to try and make the argument that wealth inequality must always create "real victims".
    - slg 3y ago
      The economy is neither zero-sum nor completely not zero-sum. The easiest way to prove that is to look at a company like Tesla. Do you think their entire market cap is newly created value? For that to be the case, everyone who purchased a Tesla wouldn't have purchased any other car if Tesla didn't exist. As soon as we acknowledge that Tesla has siphoned off customers from other companies, we acknowledge that there is at least some zero-sum nature to the economy. Then you just have to start looking for other places that this partial zero-sum situation exists such as employeer-employee relationships at Musk's companies and that brings us back to wealth inequality.
btilly 3y ago
In other words, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, you would rather that the poor were poorer given that the rich were less rich. Every documented great rise in the median wealth was accompanied by a rise in inequality. Every documented great rise in equality was accompanied by a disaster in which millions suffered. Given this, how much suffering is equality worth?
- digging 3y ago
  > Given this, how much suffering is equality worth? This is a false dichotomy because the premise isn't true. I don't think either of us have time to dig into papers right now to explore complex relationships between different factors of economic wellbeing. Let alone by trying to compare aggregates across all of history. Shouldn't it be obvious though that "you would rather that the poor were poorer given that the rich were less rich" is untrue slander? (and from Margaret Thatcher -- not often I see her quoted unironically.) People are explicitly asking for resources and help for the poorest. That this can only be accomplished by taking from the richest is a result of the greed of the richest who don't care about the quality of life of the poor (or don't care enough to understand how bad it is).
  - btilly 3y ago
    It should not be obvious. When measured on consumption data, the poor did indeed become richer under Thatcher. https://iea.org.uk/blog/thatcherism-and-poverty-did-the-poor-get-poorer https://iea.org.uk/blog/thatcherism-and-poverty-did-the-poor... Second, Thatcher specifically created a lot of disruption which lead to a lot of people becoming poorer. But the trend she discussed is generally true. Starting with the Industrial Revolution (which is still spreading in third world countries) we've seen a rise in general prosperity over and over again be tied to a rise in inequity. And documented rises in equity are generally tied to large disasters that destroy wealth. But third, my comment was a general one about psychology. Many of us respond negatively to rises in inequity. Even if it is tied to a general rise in prosperity.
    - digging 3y ago

by slg 3y ago

foobarian 3y ago

> I believe income inequality is bad because many people don't have enough to live comfortably and my parents taught me sharing is important. The "living comfortably" metric is useful. It rules out the "hunter gatherer" argument where we're back in stone age, presumably not comfortable but as equal as can be. If everyone had enough to live comfortably but inequality increased, would that be OK?

jfengel 3y ago
Pretty much, yeah, with the priviso that "comfortable" is relative to the times. These days, "comfortable" would include a place to live that is clean and fairly safe, food that is more than just enough calories, ordinary medical care, and access to the Internet. This is a lot more than a century ago, but they're widespread and cheap enough that we can easily afford to provide it for every (Western) citizen. It's costly, but we could provide it, and the super-wealthy could still be incredibly wealthy. Shy of that, there's going to be a lot of tension. I can't predict what that will look like in the future, and I can't say what to do about the non-Western majority of the world who can't afford to do this. But at least for the here-and-near-future-now, it's something that would allow people to live without desperation. We now have so much unnecessary desperation, and that's what I find offensive. We'll still be faced with problems of meaning, but at least we're avoiding the hypocrisy of wealthy people saying, "Go find your meaning by working for me, while I take the vast majority of the profits just because I'm already rich."
slg 3y ago
"Living comfortably" is obviously a subjective metric, but that is the general goal. Most people don't want equality of outcome in which everyone's life is exactly the same. Some range of wealth inequality is permissible in many people's minds, including mine. I think the problem with your hypothetical is that increasing wealth inequality generally comes at the expense of someone. It isn't simply that the billionaires' wealth grows faster than the wealth of the poorest. Often the billionaire is a billionaire because they have taken advantage of an unequal system which has real victims. Wealth inequality also leads to other issues of fairness that go beyond living conditions. For example, impact on the environment is one. That $100m yacht you mention will have a huge carbon cost. There is also a concern of political power in a democracy with free speech. If a billionaire can afford to plaster their political message on every TV network, radio station, and social media site, will that give them an outsized role in a democracy that is meant to grant political equality to all? This unequal distribution of political power can easily create a feedback loop that allows these billionaires to use their wealth to capture more wealth and political power.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Aren't you assuming a zero sum economy without growth? The four men in the article all created their own wealth, they didn't steal it, so this seems like a pretty poor situation to try and make the argument that wealth inequality must always create "real victims".
  - slg 3y ago
    The economy is neither zero-sum nor completely not zero-sum. The easiest way to prove that is to look at a company like Tesla. Do you think their entire market cap is newly created value? For that to be the case, everyone who purchased a Tesla wouldn't have purchased any other car if Tesla didn't exist. As soon as we acknowledge that Tesla has siphoned off customers from other companies, we acknowledge that there is at least some zero-sum nature to the economy. Then you just have to start looking for other places that this partial zero-sum situation exists such as employeer-employee relationships at Musk's companies and that brings us back to wealth inequality.

btilly 3y ago

In other words, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, you would rather that the poor were poorer given that the rich were less rich. Every documented great rise in the median wealth was accompanied by a rise in inequality. Every documented great rise in equality was accompanied by a disaster in which millions suffered. Given this, how much suffering is equality worth?

digging 3y ago
> Given this, how much suffering is equality worth? This is a false dichotomy because the premise isn't true. I don't think either of us have time to dig into papers right now to explore complex relationships between different factors of economic wellbeing. Let alone by trying to compare aggregates across all of history. Shouldn't it be obvious though that "you would rather that the poor were poorer given that the rich were less rich" is untrue slander? (and from Margaret Thatcher -- not often I see her quoted unironically.) People are explicitly asking for resources and help for the poorest. That this can only be accomplished by taking from the richest is a result of the greed of the richest who don't care about the quality of life of the poor (or don't care enough to understand how bad it is).
- btilly 3y ago
  It should not be obvious. When measured on consumption data, the poor did indeed become richer under Thatcher. https://iea.org.uk/blog/thatcherism-and-poverty-did-the-poor-get-poorer https://iea.org.uk/blog/thatcherism-and-poverty-did-the-poor... Second, Thatcher specifically created a lot of disruption which lead to a lot of people becoming poorer. But the trend she discussed is generally true. Starting with the Industrial Revolution (which is still spreading in third world countries) we've seen a rise in general prosperity over and over again be tied to a rise in inequity. And documented rises in equity are generally tied to large disasters that destroy wealth. But third, my comment was a general one about psychology. Many of us respond negatively to rises in inequity. Even if it is tied to a general rise in prosperity.
  - digging 3y ago