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...and why is that wrong? --- Meta Comment This isn't a post about any economic theory or about debating the morality of the fixed pie fallacy. It's about kn

...and why is that wrong? --- Meta Comment This isn't a post about any economic theory or about debating the morality of the fixed pie fallacy. It's about knee-jerk moralistic responses to complex phenomena. It's just weird to see such things pop up on HN these days. It goes against the spirit of this community (satisfying intellectual curiosity) because even though a knee jerk reaction has its place, it can't help you find the answers. It just muddies up the waters.

afterburner 14y ago
Wealth concentration? The issue is that it turns out bad for the vast majority of people.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- derrida 14y ago
  I'll bite: efficient use of resources.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    We're not really seeing this efficiency, though. For all the money being funneled into a small set of people, most of whom are not entrepreneurs but well-connected parasites, there's very little coming of value out of it. Take human transportation. We're abysmal at it. Sure, we've gotten great at sending bits around, but for a person to travel from New York to London still costs several hundred dollars. The average person who works in New York commutes for about 35 minutes each way, and the inefficacy of our transport systems (all around the world) is reflected in ridiculous real estate prices. All of this is an unmitigated disaster, and the concentration of wealth isn't solving any of it. (For local transport, the solution is to tax landowners at extremely high rates and use the proceeds to build the world's best public transportation system in every major city, thus bringing housing costs down by increasing the available supply. The long-distance problem is harder and requires innovations in our energy policy.) There are big, real problems for humanity to solve, and rich people living out dreams based on what they saw in "kid-gets-rich" movies written decades ago do not solve them.
    - derrida 14y ago
      The comment changed that I replied to. My view was wealth concentration == inefficient use of resources (on the whole, exceptions being self-made entrepreneurs)
  - adventureful 14y ago
    michaelochurch: "We're not really seeing this efficiency, though. For all the money being funneled into a small set of people, most of whom are not entrepreneurs but well-connected parasites, there's very little coming of value out of it." Wow, that's such an absurdly broad, unprovable statement. You're talking about millions of people around the planet that qualify as millionaires (most of which are in the developing sections of the Asia Pacific region). So would you care to be very specific when slandering millions of people? Is Larry Page, or Jeff Bezos a parasite? How about Ellison? How about Gates? How about Sheldon Adelson, who built his empire from nothing and employs 40,000 people. How about Steve Jobs, was he a parasite? Who did Larry Ellison steal his wealth from in building the first major relational database company? How about the founders of Twitter, they're scumbag parasites, right? They're worth hundreds of millions. How about the founder of the 99 Cent stores? Was Sam Walton a big evil parasite? And on and on the list goes. Oh but you didn't mean THOSE rich people. So which very specific ones did you mean? Care to go down the Forbes 400 and name them all? No? Because for every one you can name, I can name ten that are not parasites.
    - _delirium 14y ago
      On the Walton example, Sam Walton has been dead for a while now. A number of Walton heirs and heiresses are on the Forbes 400 list, but they did not work for their money.
  - afterburner 14y ago
    The resources won't be used efficiently if the few with all the power/money can press their priorities on the rest of the populace. In the US, this takes the form of billionaires heavily influencing government policy, both through party funding to draw up the legislature and propaganda to win votes. In looser countries, this effect is even more direct. You have to count on benevolent tyrants if you allow wealth concentration to run its course. That's hoping for a lot.
jquery 14y ago
If aversion to monarchy is knee-jerk then count me in. I will jerk my knees until no monarchs remain, tech billionaires included.
- nacker 14y ago
  Monarchy may be making a big comeback. And that's a GOOD thing. Try taking a break from jerking your knees and read "Democracy: The God that Failed", by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: MONARCHY, DEMOCRACY, AND THE IDEA OF NATURAL ORDER From the vantage point of elementary economic theory and in light of historical evidence, then, a revisionist view of modern history results. The Whig theory of history, according to which mankind marches continually forward toward ever higher levels of progress, is incorrect. From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above short- sightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline. Nor does this verdict change if more or other indicators are included. Quite to the contrary. Without question the most important indicator of exploitation and present-orientedness not discussed above is war. Yet if this indicator were included the relative performance of democratic republican government appears to be even worse, not better. In addition to increased exploitation and social decay, the transition from monarchy to democracy has brought a change from limited warfare to total war, and the twentieth century, the age of democracy, must be ranked also among the most murderous periods in all of history. Long live King Larry of Lanai!
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    So you would get to rule America by simply being the idiot son of the previous ruler and with the help of family connections? Ridiculous
    - nacker 14y ago
      That knee jerk objection must have taken you all of two seconds to come up with! Like most interesting ideas, this one is NON-obvious. Try at least looking at the Amazon page for the book, or check out Lew Rockwell's enthusiastic endorsement of Hoppe's work, if you are part of the tl;dr crowd. It's FAR from ridiculous.
davidw 14y ago
> It's just weird to see such things pop up on HN these days. That's just what you get when you mix people of different ideologies and get them talking about economics/politics. That's why we try and avoid those topics.

afterburner 14y ago

Wealth concentration? The issue is that it turns out bad for the vast majority of people.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
derrida 14y ago
I'll bite: efficient use of resources.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  We're not really seeing this efficiency, though. For all the money being funneled into a small set of people, most of whom are not entrepreneurs but well-connected parasites, there's very little coming of value out of it. Take human transportation. We're abysmal at it. Sure, we've gotten great at sending bits around, but for a person to travel from New York to London still costs several hundred dollars. The average person who works in New York commutes for about 35 minutes each way, and the inefficacy of our transport systems (all around the world) is reflected in ridiculous real estate prices. All of this is an unmitigated disaster, and the concentration of wealth isn't solving any of it. (For local transport, the solution is to tax landowners at extremely high rates and use the proceeds to build the world's best public transportation system in every major city, thus bringing housing costs down by increasing the available supply. The long-distance problem is harder and requires innovations in our energy policy.) There are big, real problems for humanity to solve, and rich people living out dreams based on what they saw in "kid-gets-rich" movies written decades ago do not solve them.
  - derrida 14y ago
    The comment changed that I replied to. My view was wealth concentration == inefficient use of resources (on the whole, exceptions being self-made entrepreneurs)
- adventureful 14y ago
  michaelochurch: "We're not really seeing this efficiency, though. For all the money being funneled into a small set of people, most of whom are not entrepreneurs but well-connected parasites, there's very little coming of value out of it." Wow, that's such an absurdly broad, unprovable statement. You're talking about millions of people around the planet that qualify as millionaires (most of which are in the developing sections of the Asia Pacific region). So would you care to be very specific when slandering millions of people? Is Larry Page, or Jeff Bezos a parasite? How about Ellison? How about Gates? How about Sheldon Adelson, who built his empire from nothing and employs 40,000 people. How about Steve Jobs, was he a parasite? Who did Larry Ellison steal his wealth from in building the first major relational database company? How about the founders of Twitter, they're scumbag parasites, right? They're worth hundreds of millions. How about the founder of the 99 Cent stores? Was Sam Walton a big evil parasite? And on and on the list goes. Oh but you didn't mean THOSE rich people. So which very specific ones did you mean? Care to go down the Forbes 400 and name them all? No? Because for every one you can name, I can name ten that are not parasites.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    On the Walton example, Sam Walton has been dead for a while now. A number of Walton heirs and heiresses are on the Forbes 400 list, but they did not work for their money.
- afterburner 14y ago
  The resources won't be used efficiently if the few with all the power/money can press their priorities on the rest of the populace. In the US, this takes the form of billionaires heavily influencing government policy, both through party funding to draw up the legislature and propaganda to win votes. In looser countries, this effect is even more direct. You have to count on benevolent tyrants if you allow wealth concentration to run its course. That's hoping for a lot.

jquery 14y ago

If aversion to monarchy is knee-jerk then count me in. I will jerk my knees until no monarchs remain, tech billionaires included.

nacker 14y ago
Monarchy may be making a big comeback. And that's a GOOD thing. Try taking a break from jerking your knees and read "Democracy: The God that Failed", by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: MONARCHY, DEMOCRACY, AND THE IDEA OF NATURAL ORDER From the vantage point of elementary economic theory and in light of historical evidence, then, a revisionist view of modern history results. The Whig theory of history, according to which mankind marches continually forward toward ever higher levels of progress, is incorrect. From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above short- sightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline. Nor does this verdict change if more or other indicators are included. Quite to the contrary. Without question the most important indicator of exploitation and present-orientedness not discussed above is war. Yet if this indicator were included the relative performance of democratic republican government appears to be even worse, not better. In addition to increased exploitation and social decay, the transition from monarchy to democracy has brought a change from limited warfare to total war, and the twentieth century, the age of democracy, must be ranked also among the most murderous periods in all of history. Long live King Larry of Lanai!
- excuse-me 14y ago
  So you would get to rule America by simply being the idiot son of the previous ruler and with the help of family connections? Ridiculous
  - nacker 14y ago
    That knee jerk objection must have taken you all of two seconds to come up with! Like most interesting ideas, this one is NON-obvious. Try at least looking at the Amazon page for the book, or check out Lew Rockwell's enthusiastic endorsement of Hoppe's work, if you are part of the tl;dr crowd. It's FAR from ridiculous.

davidw 14y ago

> It's just weird to see such things pop up on HN these days. That's just what you get when you mix people of different ideologies and get them talking about economics/politics. That's why we try and avoid those topics.