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There literally is reason to believe that. “Logical” by your assessment or not, inequality is a far stronger contributor to unhappiness than absolute wealth. T

There literally is reason to believe that. “Logical” by your assessment or not, inequality is a far stronger contributor to unhappiness than absolute wealth. The premise of your argument is absurd. If we were to accept it, we’d have to expect that people in the 1100s were all just depressed/angry/anxious — including the wealthiest, most powerful people on the planet — to a degree that is literally unfathomable to a modern first-worlder. Brains just don’t work that way not because other people are fickle emotional messes, but because a brain like that wouldn’t work. (Yes, obviously poverty sucks and higher standards of living are preferable to lower, just to head off some strawmen)

roenxi 2y ago
I like your comment because it was logically consistent and there is actually an argument in there that I respect. However, you appear to be saying that the 1100s (where people were, I note, substantially more equal than today in absolute terms) are comparable to 2000s. I disagree - I would be unfathomably depressed/angry/anxious if my living standards reverted to my social equivalent in the 1100s, conditions were basically inhumane. We should be aiming to get society as far from 1100s as possible, both temporally and in terms of absolute living standards. I don't care if the wealthy are much better off than they were in 1100 if I get functional plumbing, air conditioning, reliable food, an electric car, Amazon and improved medical care out of the bargain. And I get much more than that [0]. Their wealth seems to be to my benefit. The wealthy got wealthy because my life got better along the way. [0] This is rhetorical, I don't own a car. But since I've already mentioned Musk ...
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  You’ve snuck in my own argument though. Correct, you’d be sad if you reverted to those conditions. That is because you will have a comparison point, i.e. you are acknowledging that the entire issue is one of relative wealth and standard of living as compared to some other comparator. In your just-provided example, the comparison is to your modern life. In a world without time travel, people can and do compare themselves to others living today because that is how brains work.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    If your argument is that we should aim to raise absolute living standards, then I agree with it. If your argument involves accepting 1100s living standards as acceptable, I disagree with it. The conditions in the 1100s are only acceptable as far as they led to the improvements found in the present. We don't need to compare to them to usefully make judgements about the present. It is a baseline that everyone should have opportunities (and results) far in excess of what 1100s peasants could achieve.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Neither of those is my argument and it's quite obvious you're arguing in bad faith. Here's my argument restated: "inequality is a far stronger contributor to unhappiness than absolute wealth." This is an empirical fact, not a belief or a wish about the way the world ought to work, and it overrides your belief/wish that people "should" just care about absolute living standards. You said, "there is no reason to believe that one person being insanely well off makes someone else worse off." This is quite literally incorrect. This has been studied. There is plenty of reason -- i.e. empirical evidence -- to believe exactly that. Here's a simple question: was every person in the 1100s woefully depressed/anxious/angry to a far greater degree than any modern first-worlder dissatisfied with their station in life? If no, then your premise is disproven. People's happiness and satisfaction are not determined by their absolute standard of living (regardless of whether you think they should be).
      - roenxi 2y ago
        > Here's a simple question: was every person in the 1100s woefully depressed/anxious/angry to a far greater degree than any modern first-worlder dissatisfied with their station in life? Again, I like the logical rigour in your argument. The only problem you have is that the underlying point is stupid. The answer is yes. The 1100s is woefully depressing/anxiety inducing/infuriating compared to the modern first world. Nobody would choose to go back to the 1100s. Trying to defend that position is dumb and a disservice to the very real problems in the present caused by low real living standards. There is an urgent and pressing need to get poor people (indeed, all people) cheap energy, more goods and better services. Telling them that they'd have had to suck it up and cope in the 1100s isn't a path to good outcomes. I think you're probably trying to make a point about hedonistic adjustment? It isn't a bad point in the abstract but it doesn't work in this argument. The people who account for that usually end up taking vows of poverty or Epicurean-style hedonism. Which is cool and all but the logical end of that philosophy is maximising inequality. The wealthy are still wealthy but the adherents are as poor as they can manage because they'll be happy regardless of what inequality is present. > This is quite literally incorrect. This has been studied. You've asserted that twice, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. A fairly cursory glance at reality and the literature suggests that people can't actually detect inequality with any reliability [0, 1] and I don't think people are at all consistent on defining what the word means. It is hard for the average person to get worked up about something they can't detect. You have no idea how equal we two are, for example. And even among peers in meatspace it's a struggle to estimate any real metric - credit is a huge confounder. People do get worked up by being in a lower class or in an unpleasant spot in the status hierarchy - but that isn't inequality as much as 10% of the population is going to be in each decile as a statistical matter of fact. It isn't possible to change that. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590051X23000084 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590051X2... - "Moreover, and somewhat surprisingly, the reality is contrary to people’s perception since low (high) actual income inequality in the region is often reflected in its overestimated (underestimated) perception." is a choice tidbit. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07311214211062106 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07311214211062... - Leads with "While some scholars suggest that awareness of income inequality is strongest when the actual level of inequality is high, others find that individuals’ awareness of income inequality is largely unresponsive to actual inequality"
- ryandrake 2y ago
  How about this argument? This is kind of how I look at the problem: Would it be OK to have a single individual worth $1e24, while everyone else has the standard distribution of wealth as we know it in 2024? A septillionaire could give $1 trillion to every person on the planet every year for 100 years and still have 99.99% of his money left. How much power and influence over the world would someone like that have, while the rest have comparatively close to zero? I think we all agree that wouldn't work for a functioning society--we have to have some limit. We probably also agree that $1million is probably too low a limit. So it's not a question of whether there should be a limit but where that threshold is.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    That is a bad argument - you're starting with an internationally absurd hypothetical and drawing conclusions based on it without drawing it back to the real world on the key points. We need to know what form the wealth is and why it is divided up in such a lopsided distribution before the argument gets interesting. Eg, maybe the septillionaire has a magic coin that everyone agrees is worth one septillion just because. He can't give a trillion dollars to everyone in the world because his wealth is indivisible and apart from the magic coin there aren't any real resources to divvy up. If the "wealth" is money in a bank account a similar problem occurs - if he gives out cash payments, there aren't more real resources so the only thing that happens is lots of inflation. Real living standards might not change. You can hopefully see the logical issue here with the argument - we can both just pick absurd premises and point out that we could get our preferred moral outcome from them. Although my hypothetical isn't as absurd as it might seem on its face. Zuckerburg's wealth is divorced from physical goods for example. Facebook's real consumption is only a couple of server farms worth of stuff. We could seize all the servers but it is hard to see what resources could be freed up for better uses in the real world. > I think we all agree that wouldn't work for a functioning society--we have to have some limit. No we don't. If the highest living standards (in a for-everyone sense) resulted from infinite inequality, we should go with that.

roenxi 2y ago

I like your comment because it was logically consistent and there is actually an argument in there that I respect. However, you appear to be saying that the 1100s (where people were, I note, substantially more equal than today in absolute terms) are comparable to 2000s. I disagree - I would be unfathomably depressed/angry/anxious if my living standards reverted to my social equivalent in the 1100s, conditions were basically inhumane. We should be aiming to get society as far from 1100s as possible, both temporally and in terms of absolute living standards. I don't care if the wealthy are much better off than they were in 1100 if I get functional plumbing, air conditioning, reliable food, an electric car, Amazon and improved medical care out of the bargain. And I get much more than that [0]. Their wealth seems to be to my benefit. The wealthy got wealthy because my life got better along the way. [0] This is rhetorical, I don't own a car. But since I've already mentioned Musk ...

llamaimperative 2y ago
You’ve snuck in my own argument though. Correct, you’d be sad if you reverted to those conditions. That is because you will have a comparison point, i.e. you are acknowledging that the entire issue is one of relative wealth and standard of living as compared to some other comparator. In your just-provided example, the comparison is to your modern life. In a world without time travel, people can and do compare themselves to others living today because that is how brains work.
- roenxi 2y ago
  If your argument is that we should aim to raise absolute living standards, then I agree with it. If your argument involves accepting 1100s living standards as acceptable, I disagree with it. The conditions in the 1100s are only acceptable as far as they led to the improvements found in the present. We don't need to compare to them to usefully make judgements about the present. It is a baseline that everyone should have opportunities (and results) far in excess of what 1100s peasants could achieve.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Neither of those is my argument and it's quite obvious you're arguing in bad faith. Here's my argument restated: "inequality is a far stronger contributor to unhappiness than absolute wealth." This is an empirical fact, not a belief or a wish about the way the world ought to work, and it overrides your belief/wish that people "should" just care about absolute living standards. You said, "there is no reason to believe that one person being insanely well off makes someone else worse off." This is quite literally incorrect. This has been studied. There is plenty of reason -- i.e. empirical evidence -- to believe exactly that. Here's a simple question: was every person in the 1100s woefully depressed/anxious/angry to a far greater degree than any modern first-worlder dissatisfied with their station in life? If no, then your premise is disproven. People's happiness and satisfaction are not determined by their absolute standard of living (regardless of whether you think they should be).
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > Here's a simple question: was every person in the 1100s woefully depressed/anxious/angry to a far greater degree than any modern first-worlder dissatisfied with their station in life? Again, I like the logical rigour in your argument. The only problem you have is that the underlying point is stupid. The answer is yes. The 1100s is woefully depressing/anxiety inducing/infuriating compared to the modern first world. Nobody would choose to go back to the 1100s. Trying to defend that position is dumb and a disservice to the very real problems in the present caused by low real living standards. There is an urgent and pressing need to get poor people (indeed, all people) cheap energy, more goods and better services. Telling them that they'd have had to suck it up and cope in the 1100s isn't a path to good outcomes. I think you're probably trying to make a point about hedonistic adjustment? It isn't a bad point in the abstract but it doesn't work in this argument. The people who account for that usually end up taking vows of poverty or Epicurean-style hedonism. Which is cool and all but the logical end of that philosophy is maximising inequality. The wealthy are still wealthy but the adherents are as poor as they can manage because they'll be happy regardless of what inequality is present. > This is quite literally incorrect. This has been studied. You've asserted that twice, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. A fairly cursory glance at reality and the literature suggests that people can't actually detect inequality with any reliability [0, 1] and I don't think people are at all consistent on defining what the word means. It is hard for the average person to get worked up about something they can't detect. You have no idea how equal we two are, for example. And even among peers in meatspace it's a struggle to estimate any real metric - credit is a huge confounder. People do get worked up by being in a lower class or in an unpleasant spot in the status hierarchy - but that isn't inequality as much as 10% of the population is going to be in each decile as a statistical matter of fact. It isn't possible to change that. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590051X23000084 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590051X2... - "Moreover, and somewhat surprisingly, the reality is contrary to people’s perception since low (high) actual income inequality in the region is often reflected in its overestimated (underestimated) perception." is a choice tidbit. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07311214211062106 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07311214211062... - Leads with "While some scholars suggest that awareness of income inequality is strongest when the actual level of inequality is high, others find that individuals’ awareness of income inequality is largely unresponsive to actual inequality"
ryandrake 2y ago
How about this argument? This is kind of how I look at the problem: Would it be OK to have a single individual worth $1e24, while everyone else has the standard distribution of wealth as we know it in 2024? A septillionaire could give $1 trillion to every person on the planet every year for 100 years and still have 99.99% of his money left. How much power and influence over the world would someone like that have, while the rest have comparatively close to zero? I think we all agree that wouldn't work for a functioning society--we have to have some limit. We probably also agree that $1million is probably too low a limit. So it's not a question of whether there should be a limit but where that threshold is.
- roenxi 2y ago
  That is a bad argument - you're starting with an internationally absurd hypothetical and drawing conclusions based on it without drawing it back to the real world on the key points. We need to know what form the wealth is and why it is divided up in such a lopsided distribution before the argument gets interesting. Eg, maybe the septillionaire has a magic coin that everyone agrees is worth one septillion just because. He can't give a trillion dollars to everyone in the world because his wealth is indivisible and apart from the magic coin there aren't any real resources to divvy up. If the "wealth" is money in a bank account a similar problem occurs - if he gives out cash payments, there aren't more real resources so the only thing that happens is lots of inflation. Real living standards might not change. You can hopefully see the logical issue here with the argument - we can both just pick absurd premises and point out that we could get our preferred moral outcome from them. Although my hypothetical isn't as absurd as it might seem on its face. Zuckerburg's wealth is divorced from physical goods for example. Facebook's real consumption is only a couple of server farms worth of stuff. We could seize all the servers but it is hard to see what resources could be freed up for better uses in the real world. > I think we all agree that wouldn't work for a functioning society--we have to have some limit. No we don't. If the highest living standards (in a for-everyone sense) resulted from infinite inequality, we should go with that.