4 ms·

No, you've made the claim that that it's impossible to alter, I'm fairly sure it's up to you to show that one of imperfect information, externalities, market po

No, you've made the claim that that it's impossible to alter, I'm fairly sure it's up to you to show that one of imperfect information, externalities, market power, ~LNS or non-convexity of preferences or production result in the impossibility in the real world of producing a single even slightly different distribution when you're making a universal quantification on what is certainly a non-null hypothesis (never mind the abuse of mathematics that is drawing a straight line on a log-log plot and calling it a day, I know it's a good approximation for almost everything but so do you that it often fails to hold for the whole domain if you've ever took a single maths class) which otherwise clearly contradicts a well established fundamental result of economics. This is not a new theorem, if you're making the case that it cannot possibly hold in the real world in any way under any conceivable circumstances then you really ought to have a rock solid case already prepared, one that stands up to slightly more scrutiny than looking at any graph, literally any single one of them, and seeing that there is clearly a non-linear region there. You know, where all the people actually are. Maybe if you had the time to take a second math class you'd know that being able to fit a power law to the upper tail of a distribution is utterly meaningless considering you can fit it to the upper tail of basically any empirical distribution. You can go for sub- and superlinear PA schemes in your third one. The questions posed continue to be uninteresting, and they don't even have the honour of being accurate.

mjburgess 3y ago
I've already conceded that a small tribe could do it. It's not entirely clear that they have 'wealth' at all, since i'd define it to be that thing which accumulates 'alike pref-A' (ie., I will concede that processes which disrupt/regulate social networks produce, at best, power-laws in a theoretical limit). But the issue is that small tribes arent stable. The primary objective of tribes is foremost survival, and in the pursuit of every more gauretees of survival, they will pref attach to other stronger tribes (often by concequest, occasionally by consent, see eg., the formation of the UK vs. the formation of the british empire). So there are different 'social logics' taking place at each level: the individual wants to minimize the amount of their life wasted; the group wants to maximise its chances of survival etc. It's not that I do not see 'local violations' of pref-A-type expectations; they're quite common indeed. It's more that I see the 'effect size' from pref-A processes to be, empirically, overwhelming. A force of nature at every scale. People who are "anti-capitalist", ie., the person i was addressing, arent offering an analysis of the entire history of the human species in terms of these processes --- and how alternatives can be provided; rather they are profoundly ignorant of all this, have no interest in learning it, and are rather engaged in a religious crusade against their notion of sin. The first step to help this ideologue out of their crusade, is if even possible, to show that it isnt Sin which makes the world Fallen -- it Falls even under extremely simple, extremely fair procedures. This is intolerable to the fantatic whose crusade is against a human psychic reality they thing they can attack -- tilting at windmills, of course. If we're talking "two good-faith people who arent fantatics trying to model possible realitites" then the dialetic is different. I'd say: i have sets of entirely plausible propositions each of which entail 'inevitable extreme inequality', each of which plausibly model reality, each of which have high credences from a range of experts (etc.). I do not see the same on the other side; this may be my ignorance, but I have never encountered a systematic presentation of any explanatorily-plausible alternative. How on earth do you propose to hault 2*2*2*2*2... vs. 0.001*1.001*1.0001* ... ? By what means are most individuals on the planet coordinated so that the labours of one do not multiply benefit themselves, but "divisionally benefit" everyone? What process to the general benefit of society could be imagined where net wealth grows without inequality? THe only "divisional processes" i can imagine not only reduce net wealth, they are horsemen of the apocalypse.
- Alpha3031 3y ago
  > concede that processes which disrupt/regulate social networks produce, at best, power-laws in a theoretical limit I'm going to interpret that as acknowledging that the bulk of the distribution is not Pareto with Pareto fitting well only at the end of the right tail. This fits with a mostly multiplicative dNW/dt but in a random walk rather than monotonic increase, or a sublinear PA, but with increasing linearity at the very high end. Not that we actually need to model this blindly, dNW/dt is to a significant extent just Y, income, and we can and do measure income, at least. A lot more accurately than wealth, even. More importantly, there is enough data with both for the same individuals that we can examine the relationship between the two. Certainly, there is a positive correlation, but overall it seems R ~ 0.33 across many countries, which is fairly low, really, and if you want to eyeball the graph you can probably see the data points clustered tighter near the top. Now, I can't tell you what distribution @linschn might target as desired or if there are things beyond mere distribution that they would wish to address. My reading of their comment would be that they wish to focus on ensuring non-NW effects >> NW effects, i.e. high mobility, not necessarily high equality (does raise an interesting question here, would a combination of mobility and inequality also tend to increase zero-sum vs positive-sum competition?) Still, given that the correlation, although low, does exist, any actions increase to mobility does seem likely to reduce final inequality as a side effect. This does not necessarily shift the shape of the distribution (rather than spread) significantly, but there is no reason why it should need to. > How on earth do you propose to hault 22222... vs. 0.0011.0011.0001* ... ? By what means are most individuals on the planet coordinated so that the labours of one do not multiply benefit themselves, but "divisionally benefit" everyone? What process to the general benefit of society could be imagined where net wealth grows without inequality? I don't see why anyone should care for growth of total NW over Y. Wealth isn't real, there is not literally a warehouse full of stuff and services that wealthy people can draw upon, so it can only be a claim on future Y plus or minus inflation. I entirely agree with @linschn in this respect, seeing growth in wealth being higher than growth in income as a good thing is complete and utter madness, and yet those are the scenarios where the PA or PA-like effects relatively dominate. If during relative stagnation it's a choice between infinite paper growth (plus increasing concentration) and the apocalypse, let's have the apocalypse. At least the apocalypse is honest about what it is. In a way, it's the Greek sense of the word.

mjburgess 3y ago

I've already conceded that a small tribe could do it. It's not entirely clear that they have 'wealth' at all, since i'd define it to be that thing which accumulates 'alike pref-A' (ie., I will concede that processes which disrupt/regulate social networks produce, at best, power-laws in a theoretical limit). But the issue is that small tribes arent stable. The primary objective of tribes is foremost survival, and in the pursuit of every more gauretees of survival, they will pref attach to other stronger tribes (often by concequest, occasionally by consent, see eg., the formation of the UK vs. the formation of the british empire). So there are different 'social logics' taking place at each level: the individual wants to minimize the amount of their life wasted; the group wants to maximise its chances of survival etc. It's not that I do not see 'local violations' of pref-A-type expectations; they're quite common indeed. It's more that I see the 'effect size' from pref-A processes to be, empirically, overwhelming. A force of nature at every scale. People who are "anti-capitalist", ie., the person i was addressing, arent offering an analysis of the entire history of the human species in terms of these processes --- and how alternatives can be provided; rather they are profoundly ignorant of all this, have no interest in learning it, and are rather engaged in a religious crusade against their notion of sin. The first step to help this ideologue out of their crusade, is if even possible, to show that it isnt Sin which makes the world Fallen -- it Falls even under extremely simple, extremely fair procedures. This is intolerable to the fantatic whose crusade is against a human psychic reality they thing they can attack -- tilting at windmills, of course. If we're talking "two good-faith people who arent fantatics trying to model possible realitites" then the dialetic is different. I'd say: i have sets of entirely plausible propositions each of which entail 'inevitable extreme inequality', each of which plausibly model reality, each of which have high credences from a range of experts (etc.). I do not see the same on the other side; this may be my ignorance, but I have never encountered a systematic presentation of any explanatorily-plausible alternative. How on earth do you propose to hault 2*2*2*2*2... vs. 0.001*1.001*1.0001* ... ? By what means are most individuals on the planet coordinated so that the labours of one do not multiply benefit themselves, but "divisionally benefit" everyone? What process to the general benefit of society could be imagined where net wealth grows without inequality? THe only "divisional processes" i can imagine not only reduce net wealth, they are horsemen of the apocalypse.

Alpha3031 3y ago
> concede that processes which disrupt/regulate social networks produce, at best, power-laws in a theoretical limit I'm going to interpret that as acknowledging that the bulk of the distribution is not Pareto with Pareto fitting well only at the end of the right tail. This fits with a mostly multiplicative dNW/dt but in a random walk rather than monotonic increase, or a sublinear PA, but with increasing linearity at the very high end. Not that we actually need to model this blindly, dNW/dt is to a significant extent just Y, income, and we can and do measure income, at least. A lot more accurately than wealth, even. More importantly, there is enough data with both for the same individuals that we can examine the relationship between the two. Certainly, there is a positive correlation, but overall it seems R ~ 0.33 across many countries, which is fairly low, really, and if you want to eyeball the graph you can probably see the data points clustered tighter near the top. Now, I can't tell you what distribution @linschn might target as desired or if there are things beyond mere distribution that they would wish to address. My reading of their comment would be that they wish to focus on ensuring non-NW effects >> NW effects, i.e. high mobility, not necessarily high equality (does raise an interesting question here, would a combination of mobility and inequality also tend to increase zero-sum vs positive-sum competition?) Still, given that the correlation, although low, does exist, any actions increase to mobility does seem likely to reduce final inequality as a side effect. This does not necessarily shift the shape of the distribution (rather than spread) significantly, but there is no reason why it should need to. > How on earth do you propose to hault 22222... vs. 0.0011.0011.0001* ... ? By what means are most individuals on the planet coordinated so that the labours of one do not multiply benefit themselves, but "divisionally benefit" everyone? What process to the general benefit of society could be imagined where net wealth grows without inequality? I don't see why anyone should care for growth of total NW over Y. Wealth isn't real, there is not literally a warehouse full of stuff and services that wealthy people can draw upon, so it can only be a claim on future Y plus or minus inflation. I entirely agree with @linschn in this respect, seeing growth in wealth being higher than growth in income as a good thing is complete and utter madness, and yet those are the scenarios where the PA or PA-like effects relatively dominate. If during relative stagnation it's a choice between infinite paper growth (plus increasing concentration) and the apocalypse, let's have the apocalypse. At least the apocalypse is honest about what it is. In a way, it's the Greek sense of the word.