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A typical response to this issue is "why does it matter to you if someone else has more than you do?" - framing the issue as essentially envy. The obvious probl

by tmnvix 3y ago

A typical response to this issue is "why does it matter to you if someone else has more than you do?" - framing the issue as essentially envy. The obvious problem here is that it really is largely a zero-sum game. A dollar represents a claim on the world's resources, which are limited. Capitalism is an effective system for motivating productive activity, but it also has an inherent tendency to concentrate wealth. If we want to avoid a situation where a few people control such a large proportion of the world's resources that there is not enough left over to meet the needs of others, then we need to balance this tendency. Income taxes are one approach, but wealth taxes deal with the actual issue. Taxing wealth is not unfair if you accept that the economic system we have chosen is itself unfair. We give too many advantages to those that gather income through owning things (i.e. unearned income) compared with those that engage in productive activity (i.e. earned income). I say we 'give' those advantages because they are not due to some inherent law of nature. It is a choice we have made as a society. In the natural world hoarding works in the opposite way. A stash of nuts doesn't magically grow. Quite the opposite. Real effort has to be expended to preserve the stash.

thegrim33 3y ago
The economy would be a zero sum game if there was exactly X amount of dollars in circulation every year that people were fighting over, if the same X dollars kept changing hands. That is not the case. The economy expands and contracts. The amount of money in circulation expands by an average of 5-6% per year. The pie grows every year. If you can't even get something that basic correct in your analysis it kind of invalidates all of the rest of your ideas.
- tmnvix 3y ago
  > The amount of money in circulation expands by an average of 5-6% per year. I think you have to ask yourself where this newly minted money ends up first. I think you'll find that it largely just increases the nominal value of assets. > The pie grows every year. The 'pie' is the world's resources - not the money. If new money essentially just increases the nominal value of assets it doesn't invalidate what I've said. Quite the opposite. An increase in the money supply exacerbates wealth inequality as can be seen recently with historically low interest rates.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >The 'pie' is the world's resources - not the money. Except that's not zero sum either. Oil that was in the Permian Basin was there all along, but before the invention of fracking it might as well not exist because of how hard it was to get out of the ground. If some company gets rich because they were able to extract said oil, is the world really worse off because "inequality"?
  - latency-guy2 3y ago
    > The 'pie' is the world's resources If so, then its always increasing, we have not fully discovered all the world's resources.
    - effingwewt 3y ago
      Bullshit resources are finite. You are just being obstinate all over this thread not even rebutting points, just straw-manning. You read like an argumentative'AI'.
      - latency-guy2 3y ago
        Yes, the world's resources are finite and we use them up all the time. No, humanity has not discovered them all, or know the actual quantity available to us. Like how discovery of silicon leads to enrichment of a country pretty much immediately (relative scale, still may take a few decades). The resource was there the entire time, the economic output was not, it was not a part of the market until it's discovery. > You are just being obstinate all over this thread not even rebutting points, just straw-manning. If I am, then its in opposition to another's "strawman". > You read like an argumentative'AI'. Thanks, I do like to defeat other people's logic by the most simplest means. If you can't answer, then you don't have a solution, you have an opinion of dubious quality.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - twoodfin 3y ago
    Silicon is basically refined sand. Sand whose value is effectively 0. Refine it into a silicon wafer, etch it into semiconductor chips with a few billion transistors each, and that wafer of a few dozen chips is worth tens of thousands of dollars. If your imagination limits "resources" to bare materials, yes, of course they're limited—though there's an awful lot of sand in the Earth's crust. But it's a stunted view of economics, so stunted as to be worthless as a model.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
latency-guy2 3y ago
Give me a definition for fairness and I will find billions of people in this world who will disagree with you.
- pydry 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - brvsft 3y ago
    Are you going to commit some murders, bro?
    - pydry 3y ago
      You don't have to commit a murder if you can, say, tax a parasitic economic exchange out of existence. I would prefer that. However, the way that parasitic wealth extraction is currently growing is geometric. It is not sustainable given the levels of economic growth we currently have. This will, sadly, inevitably lead to violence.
  - latency-guy2 3y ago
    > I've always thought that economically, fairness would be "all the natural wealth is shared equally" with "all the man made wealth accumulates to the man doing the making" seemed like the most fair option. I don't. The world is not so simple, person "making" something sure creates something. Who prices it? How do you price it? Is a man entitled to the price he sets? How do you ensure a man who mines silicone today is pricing it correctly so that he does not "unfairly" disadvantage a man who is going to be born 300 years later that will live next to the now depleted silicone mine? Would that man born 300 years later even matter? Where should people live? Do we maximize the utility for the average? Do we maximize utility for the most productive? > So, the question we should probably not asking while stroking our chins is not "what is the precise level of wealth inequality that is fair?" No, we're still there, you can't pretend like you've convinced me with jumps in logic and then continue talking past me. Or you can, see how far that gets you in getting support. > It is "who are the parasites? and how do we kill the parasites?" You haven't even established what a "parasite" is, and you're jumping to culling them already? When does someone turn into a "parasite", exactly? See, we're back to asking what amount level of "wealth inequality" is OK again. This is what happens when you skip or ignore questions.
colonCapitalDee 3y ago
The world is not zero sum! The average human is better off now then they were any number of decades ago, and things have improved for those on the bottom even more. 38% of the world lived in extreme poverty in 1990, by 2019 that number was down to 9%. In that same time frame access to basic sanitation increased from 32% to 56%, life expectancy increased from 64 years to 71 years, and so on with various of quality of life statistics. Designing an economic system for "fairness" is a horrible idea. I would rather live in an economic system with high inequality, high standards of living, and high social mobility, than in a system with low inequality, low standards of living, and low social mobility. Inequality is bad in the same way that debt or medicine is bad: the danger is in the dose. A society with extreme inequality is probably screwed, but a society with moderate inequality is not necessarily worse off than a society with low inequality. Wealth taxes have been tried many times, they don't work very well. > In the natural world hoarding works in the opposite way. A stash of nuts doesn't magically grow. Quite the opposite. Real effort has to be expended to preserve the stash. So you would prefer to spend your time roaming the forest in proletariat ecstasy looking for more nuts, rather than using the nuts to plant some trees?
- cycomanic 3y ago
  The whole point being made in the video (which I think very few here actually watched) is that the only ones who benefit from this contracting/expanding are the top 1% (realistically more like 0.1%). If the economy is growing (not a zero sum game as you say), but the economic ability to own assets is decreasing then you are creating a situation where after some time all assets are owned by only very few. I'm not sure if you consider that a good basis for society. I certainly would prefer my children not to live in a cyberpunk distopia.
- tmnvix 3y ago
  > So you would prefer to spend your time roaming the forest in proletariat ecstasy looking for more nuts, rather than using the nuts to plant some trees? Planting trees would be productive activity, not hoarding. This is exactly the type of behaviour that should be rewarded. Of course, we need people to have access to resources in order to engage in productive activity (in this case land). Regarding your comment about the world not being zero sum, I agree to an extent (hence my comment that it is largely zero sum). Obviously we can - through productive activity - 'create wealth' in many ways. Another commenter gave the example of turning sand into silicon chips. My concern though - and where I think a zero sum situation exists - is with those resources that are fundamental to security, agency, and well being like land and clean water. I don't want my children to grow up in a world where they live to 120 but all of those resources are already hoarded and the prices are so high that they have little to no chance of getting a share. A world where only a few have access to use natural resources for their own benefit is a crappy world however you look at it. > Wealth taxes have been tried many times, they don't work very well. There's a whole debate to be had here, but I think I'll just say that I don't think that this is the case.

by tmnvix 3y ago

thegrim33 3y ago

The economy would be a zero sum game if there was exactly X amount of dollars in circulation every year that people were fighting over, if the same X dollars kept changing hands. That is not the case. The economy expands and contracts. The amount of money in circulation expands by an average of 5-6% per year. The pie grows every year. If you can't even get something that basic correct in your analysis it kind of invalidates all of the rest of your ideas.

tmnvix 3y ago
> The amount of money in circulation expands by an average of 5-6% per year. I think you have to ask yourself where this newly minted money ends up first. I think you'll find that it largely just increases the nominal value of assets. > The pie grows every year. The 'pie' is the world's resources - not the money. If new money essentially just increases the nominal value of assets it doesn't invalidate what I've said. Quite the opposite. An increase in the money supply exacerbates wealth inequality as can be seen recently with historically low interest rates.
- gruez 3y ago
  >The 'pie' is the world's resources - not the money. Except that's not zero sum either. Oil that was in the Permian Basin was there all along, but before the invention of fracking it might as well not exist because of how hard it was to get out of the ground. If some company gets rich because they were able to extract said oil, is the world really worse off because "inequality"?
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  > The 'pie' is the world's resources If so, then its always increasing, we have not fully discovered all the world's resources.
  - effingwewt 3y ago
    Bullshit resources are finite. You are just being obstinate all over this thread not even rebutting points, just straw-manning. You read like an argumentative'AI'.
    - latency-guy2 3y ago
      Yes, the world's resources are finite and we use them up all the time. No, humanity has not discovered them all, or know the actual quantity available to us. Like how discovery of silicon leads to enrichment of a country pretty much immediately (relative scale, still may take a few decades). The resource was there the entire time, the economic output was not, it was not a part of the market until it's discovery. > You are just being obstinate all over this thread not even rebutting points, just straw-manning. If I am, then its in opposition to another's "strawman". > You read like an argumentative'AI'. Thanks, I do like to defeat other people's logic by the most simplest means. If you can't answer, then you don't have a solution, you have an opinion of dubious quality.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- twoodfin 3y ago
  Silicon is basically refined sand. Sand whose value is effectively 0. Refine it into a silicon wafer, etch it into semiconductor chips with a few billion transistors each, and that wafer of a few dozen chips is worth tens of thousands of dollars. If your imagination limits "resources" to bare materials, yes, of course they're limited—though there's an awful lot of sand in the Earth's crust. But it's a stunted view of economics, so stunted as to be worthless as a model.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

latency-guy2 3y ago

Give me a definition for fairness and I will find billions of people in this world who will disagree with you.

pydry 3y ago
[flagged]
- brvsft 3y ago
  Are you going to commit some murders, bro?
  - pydry 3y ago
    You don't have to commit a murder if you can, say, tax a parasitic economic exchange out of existence. I would prefer that. However, the way that parasitic wealth extraction is currently growing is geometric. It is not sustainable given the levels of economic growth we currently have. This will, sadly, inevitably lead to violence.
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  > I've always thought that economically, fairness would be "all the natural wealth is shared equally" with "all the man made wealth accumulates to the man doing the making" seemed like the most fair option. I don't. The world is not so simple, person "making" something sure creates something. Who prices it? How do you price it? Is a man entitled to the price he sets? How do you ensure a man who mines silicone today is pricing it correctly so that he does not "unfairly" disadvantage a man who is going to be born 300 years later that will live next to the now depleted silicone mine? Would that man born 300 years later even matter? Where should people live? Do we maximize the utility for the average? Do we maximize utility for the most productive? > So, the question we should probably not asking while stroking our chins is not "what is the precise level of wealth inequality that is fair?" No, we're still there, you can't pretend like you've convinced me with jumps in logic and then continue talking past me. Or you can, see how far that gets you in getting support. > It is "who are the parasites? and how do we kill the parasites?" You haven't even established what a "parasite" is, and you're jumping to culling them already? When does someone turn into a "parasite", exactly? See, we're back to asking what amount level of "wealth inequality" is OK again. This is what happens when you skip or ignore questions.

colonCapitalDee 3y ago

The world is not zero sum! The average human is better off now then they were any number of decades ago, and things have improved for those on the bottom even more. 38% of the world lived in extreme poverty in 1990, by 2019 that number was down to 9%. In that same time frame access to basic sanitation increased from 32% to 56%, life expectancy increased from 64 years to 71 years, and so on with various of quality of life statistics. Designing an economic system for "fairness" is a horrible idea. I would rather live in an economic system with high inequality, high standards of living, and high social mobility, than in a system with low inequality, low standards of living, and low social mobility. Inequality is bad in the same way that debt or medicine is bad: the danger is in the dose. A society with extreme inequality is probably screwed, but a society with moderate inequality is not necessarily worse off than a society with low inequality. Wealth taxes have been tried many times, they don't work very well. > In the natural world hoarding works in the opposite way. A stash of nuts doesn't magically grow. Quite the opposite. Real effort has to be expended to preserve the stash. So you would prefer to spend your time roaming the forest in proletariat ecstasy looking for more nuts, rather than using the nuts to plant some trees?

cycomanic 3y ago
The whole point being made in the video (which I think very few here actually watched) is that the only ones who benefit from this contracting/expanding are the top 1% (realistically more like 0.1%). If the economy is growing (not a zero sum game as you say), but the economic ability to own assets is decreasing then you are creating a situation where after some time all assets are owned by only very few. I'm not sure if you consider that a good basis for society. I certainly would prefer my children not to live in a cyberpunk distopia.
tmnvix 3y ago
> So you would prefer to spend your time roaming the forest in proletariat ecstasy looking for more nuts, rather than using the nuts to plant some trees? Planting trees would be productive activity, not hoarding. This is exactly the type of behaviour that should be rewarded. Of course, we need people to have access to resources in order to engage in productive activity (in this case land). Regarding your comment about the world not being zero sum, I agree to an extent (hence my comment that it is largely zero sum). Obviously we can - through productive activity - 'create wealth' in many ways. Another commenter gave the example of turning sand into silicon chips. My concern though - and where I think a zero sum situation exists - is with those resources that are fundamental to security, agency, and well being like land and clean water. I don't want my children to grow up in a world where they live to 120 but all of those resources are already hoarded and the prices are so high that they have little to no chance of getting a share. A world where only a few have access to use natural resources for their own benefit is a crappy world however you look at it. > Wealth taxes have been tried many times, they don't work very well. There's a whole debate to be had here, but I think I'll just say that I don't think that this is the case.