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New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable
- account-5 1y agoI don't get how this is useful, just because it might not be inevitable doesn't stop it being a reality now. Also, house size? What a weird metric.
- haswell 1y agoThe argument that it is inevitable is used as a justification for the status quo. If it turned out that wealth inequality was unavoidable, it would change the nature of the solutions worth exploring.
- j_maffe 1y agoI'm not sure who made the argument that inequality is unavoidable. The argument is that it's a strong tendency and a common scenrio without structural provisions.
- latexr 1y ago> I'm not sure who made the argument that inequality is unavoidable. Rich people who benefit from everyone else thinking this is the natural way of things and thus they are not to blame. The same kind of people who call workers arrogant and say they should be thankful to employers and be put in their place through unemployment. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/09/the-viral-ceo-shows-the-true-face-of-capitalism https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/09/the-viral-ceo-shows-the-tru...
- account-5 1y agoPersonally I think related monetary wealth is inevitable, it's built into the system. Monetarily I'm at the poor end of wealth, but I am content and want for little. This is also why I probably don't get the house size metric used here. My current, humble, abode is big enough for my needs. Given more money I don't see me upgrading. What solutions will be worth exploring to solve current inequalities if we know it's not inevitable, given our current situation?
- roenxi 1y ago> By comparing the variability in house sizes, scientists could compare the degree of inequality in each society and how it related to population size and political complexity. I suspect the study is interesting but that rather undermines the conclusions as relevant in the modern era. The wealth inequality is because house construction isn't a particularly important store of wealth. It is quite difficult to consume a billion dollars worth of house construction; that is skyscraper or Great Pyramid of Giza territory. You'd miss most of a contemporary billionaire's wealth if you looked mainly at their housing.
- giantg2 1y agoNot to mention, most if the wealth in a primary residence isn't really accessible/utilized. A house bought years ago might appreciate to the point you wouldn't be able to afford it today. But if you sell it, where else are you going to live unless moving to a cheaper area? Then you have people who are house poor vs rich people who live relatively modestly (eg Warren Buffet). And thats all in the US. Other countries/cultures may have different practices that do not tie wealth to large houses.
- readthenotes1 1y agoAll we have to do to have wealth equality is to overcome pride, greed, envy, and sloth. The median wealth may be much lower as a result (since a lot of the things that have made us wealthy as the species are driven by pride, greed, and envy) but we may be happier as a people...
- datavirtue 1y agoUnintuitively, we used to do this with a 90% tax.
- deeThrow94 1y ago[dead]
- mapt 1y agoNOT to create an economically equal nation. Just a nation with as much economic inequality as the 60's, or even the 90's. A type of society in living memory, which is today beyond the imagination of policymakers.
- giantg2 1y agoCertain ethnic groups might disagree with how equal the past was.
- mapt 1y agoIn terms of social demographic equality, I'm explicitly not saying that it was equal, just "more equal". The differences between a white minimum wage worker and a black minimum wage worker in the 60's were significant, but... A minimum wage worker in the 60's, whatever their race, is a hell of a lot closer to indentured/enslaved servitude than to a billionaire. "In this America, the three wealthiest men (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg) own more wealth than the bottom half of our society – over 165 million people." Our political system appears to be aimed squarely at redistributing all human agency and happiness into one utility monster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster
- delichon 1y agoWealth inequality is only as inevitable as the Pareto Principle. Does anyone know of examples where that has been successfully resisted for long? I imagine that it takes a great deal of sustained effort and invasive control.
- janice1999 1y agoI think that question betrays an assumption that somehow insane wealth accumulation is "natural" and anything else is not. Modern capitalism with all its rules and (often brutal) enforcement requires no less "effort and invasive control" that alternatives, it's just that the wealthy are writing the rules in their favor.
- ajuc 1y agoThere's many ways to get low wealth inequality. 1. reset the accumulation every 50 years or more often. The reset can be a war, a dictatorship, revolution, whatever. It's how Eastern Europe has low wealth inequality despite no systemic measures. It's not a stable solution (if you leave them alone they will accumulate capital and become oligarchy unless other measures are implemented). That's why EU Eastern Europe is different from non-EU Eastern Europe by the way - EU is a huge regulatory force preventing oligarchies from arising. 2. taxation + welfare system that redistributes enough wealth to prevent runaway feedback loops. See socialdemocratic Europe. 3. other regulations preventing non-monetary runaway loops (lobbying laws, antimonopoly rules, electoral system preventing influence from money into politics, trade unions, etc.) 4. economy focused on activities that are less suitable for wealth accumulation. This is not a binary switch, more like a spectrum going from hydrocarbons to service based economy. It's also not a long-term solution, it just speeds up or slows down the accumulation. Even in service-based economy you eventually get oligarchy if you have no regulation (see USA). IMHO the obvious choice is combination of 2 and 3, the others are shortcuts that happen by accident and you can't depend on them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we... BTW "invasive control" is a biased view. Unchecked unregulated capitalism is just as invasive if not more. The only difference is who is invasive towards whom. I prefer elected officials controlling my employers over unelected billionaires controlling their workers. Notice how in US it's common to have to explain to your boss why you want a day off. Like he owns you and it's his good will that you may be allowed to get sick or to rest. In EU not only is this illegal - even if it would be legal - it would be a huge breach of etiquette for your employer to ask how exactly are you sick. For someone from Europe it's USA that looks crazy invasive.
- yapyap 1y agoYeah as mentioned in the article, if governed strong enough there will be less wealth inequality. Problem being that in the modern day governing power and wealth are pretty much 1:1, and wealthy people don’t have any other principles than wealth, they don’t have morals or religious beliefs that go above wealth for them. So they won’t want to make everyone more financially equal.
- immibis 1y agoYou've been downvoted, just like every other comment that says our current level of wealth inequality isn't inevitable. I wonder why this would happen on a venture capitalist's private discussion forum.
- thyristan 1y agoI think that house size is a metric of convenience because it is archeologically simple. But there are modern examples of societies where house size doesn't correlate with wealth and wealth was stored in other kinds of assets, material or immaterial. E.g. in the communist eastern block, living quarters were quite standardized, and while the very highest levels of society had special arrangements, a professor might have lived in the same quarters as a factory worker. The differences were in the "job extras" such as personal drivers and cars, travel permits, spots on the waiting list for goods and services and social prestige that translated to influence. Certain early modern European societies, especially protestant ones, also frowned upon overt displays of wealth through bigger and more ostentatious housing. However, that might be detectable archeologically when using build quality as a metric. Cities like Amsterdam also had very peculiar systems of allotting and taxing building spaces, thereby leading to the well-known equal-sized and narrow houses.
- Retric 1y agoYour examples are confusing wealth with social status. An influencer or politician may have relatively low wealth compared to a lottery winner, but the winner has vastly less impact on society. The issue with wealth inequality is it feeds on itself where other forms of influence tend to erode over time and need to be constantly maintained. A surprisingly long list of people could literally donate 100+M to every presidential election for the rest of their life with interest making up the difference before the next election.
- antennafirepla 1y ago[dead]
- logicchains 1y agoAll those societies studied were poorer than even the least developed nations today. We know it's possible to have wealth equality with poverty; Mao-era China showed this. The solution is simple: make it hard to accumulate wealth, so nobody has much wealth. The question is whether it's possible to have a wealthy society with no wealth equality, and empirically there's zero evidence this is possible.
- feverzsj 1y agoWhen the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.
- amelius 1y agoNo the rich will play it such that that never happens. Poor folks are kept just poor enough to not disturb the rich.
- immibis 1y agoUntil the rich, over generations, get complacent with their situation and forget they are supposed to be doing that.
- M95D 1y agoWhen the revolts eventually start, the rich already ran away with the gold.
- ImPostingOnHN 1y agoand the robots with guns
- drewcoo 1y agoIn our system, the rich will convince some of the poor that they _could_ be rich. Together, those groups will feed on the rest of the poor. The rich have figured out how to deal with unionists, socialists, and communists. This is not the same as the previous gilded age.
- immibis 1y agoYep - the three-tiered pyramid. At the top you have the top. At the bottom you have the bottom. You already know those. In the middle, keeping the top and bottom from colliding, you have the people recruited from the bottom by the top, for the job of keeping the top and bottom separated, in exchange for being elevated out of the bottom, but not all the way to the top.
- ajkjk 1y ago"reveals" -> "argues"
- schnable 1y ago"debunks the myth" => "makes a case" And the question begging of assuming that equality is a desirable goal. We also need to look at the cost of equality (of house sizes?) -- if it requires authoritarian government, theocracy, slavery, subjugation of other tribes, maybe it's not necessarily a goal unto it self? Those other factors at least need to be considered! Truly garbage science writing.
- xyzzy9563 1y agoIn pre-historic times everyone was equally poor so there was no wealth inequality. The tribes in the Andaman Islands also have very low wealth inequality, but all they own are bows and arrows and huts.
- boh 1y agoThe trick is not have "wealth" (ie property ownership/rights). Societies that were nomadic with low/no property ownership culture did not have wealth inequality since there wasn't that much "wealth" to have. They had their hierarchies but those were weak, more akin to the kind of hierarchies you have in families ("everyone listens to grandma" kind of hierarchy). Wealth inequality is obviously synthetic (and this study is kind of silly), since you need a governing body to maintain property rights (along with creating what today are the most valuable legal ownership structures, like intellectual property). A corporation, a mortgage, a deed, equity, all the defining elements of wealth, are exclusively legal constructs created/administered by governments. The wealth of every wealthy person you can think of is based on their rights to property, not the property itself (i.e stocks, deeds, trademarks, copyrights etc.). This requires a very elaborate infrastructure to maintain and a culture to support it. Wealth isn't a given and actually is very easily destroyed (when governments are toppled or property rights are taken away--Communist rebellions of the twentieth century are a good example).
- reese_john 1y agoIt's true that formal wealth systems (like land, stock ownership and trademarks) require an elaborate legal and cultural infrastructure to maintain — but only at scale. The absence of such systems doesn't eliminate wealth inequality, it just changes how it's enforced. In less formal or collapsed systems, wealth and resources are often controlled by a ruling oligarchy or individuals whose hard power acts as a de facto property right. For example, many argue that Vladimir Putin is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, despite lacking formal ownership on paper — his political and military power effectively grants him control over immense resources. Wealth inequality ultimately stems from control over resources, whether legitimized by law or enforced through power.
- boh 1y agoPower people have power because of power is more of a movie trope than the actual mechanics of the world you live in. Wealth is exclusively abstract legal constructs in the modern world. You might be surprised to know that even Putin's wealth is tied to legal ownership structures, (regardless if they're maintained by bogus shell companies, he has effective rights to the property). Whatever niche counter-example comes after doesn't influence how global inequality is administered or experienced by the majority of people.
- conductr 1y ago> Instead, it seems to be a consequence of political choices and governance structures. These are all human constructs and the missing variable is greed, so likely inequality is inevitable once the human condition variables are accounted for
- codr7 1y agoGreed is very much a product of the system we live in, just look at the numb-wits who run this world. Among native peoples, sharing seems to be the default.
- BurningFrog 1y agoExtreme poverty - by modern standards - is also the default among cultures with strong sharing rules. This is not by coincidence!
- codr7 1y agoIn the current system, yes, of course.
- BurningFrog 1y agoSince the dawn of time!
- drewcoo 1y agoExtremes of wealth are caused by hoarding, not by sharing.
- dingnuts 1y agoit's too early for the noble savage fallacy
- codr7 1y agoRight, and people wonder why nothing changes. There's a concerted effort in this world to make all alternatives look worse, and right now you're part of the problem.
- amelius 1y agoHuh, you only have to play one game of Monopoly to understand how wealth inequality becomes a thing. And even more so if you enter the game after a few rounds have already been played.
- immibis 1y agoIn Monopoly you always end with extreme inequality, because the game is designed to make that happen. Who designs the game of real world politics?
- culanuchachamim 1y agoThe gane was designed exactly to become a monopoly after a few rounds. The real world have a lot more variables, so it's not comparable.
- amelius 1y agoThere were two versions of the game originally, one with tax and the other without. The trick is to figure out a way of taxing that offsets the random and unfair aspects of the rules of the economy/game. However, I believe even the taxed version of the game wasn't very successful at it.
- state_less 1y agoToo little inequality means there is nothing to strive for, the ambitious won’t have much reward to work for. Too much inequality means too few participants in the economic decision making process which leads to instability (i.e. the mad king phenomenon). We are getting closer to the point of instability now, as we reach higher levels of inequality.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y agoHow much do you think was the reward that set in motion all the free and open source software that underlie the many OSes, DBs, and dev tools that we still use for free today?
- stackskipton 1y agoFair amount? Yes, many started out as someone messing around but paid developers funded by commercial entities followed most of successful open source we use today.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y agoSo then we have proof by example that money is not a necessary incentive for people to create, no? And even if the FOSS projects eventually evolved into foundations that solicit some form of funding, they’re still mostly non-profits that are collecting just enough money to sustain their continued operations and aren’t really chasing profits and growth like regular companies do.
- altcognito 1y agoMoney was exactly what allowed FOSS projects to succeed. Developers with a day job have enough free time to do their own projects for their own reasons.
- hyperjeff 1y agoAmbition, with respect to wealth, can be a double-edged sword. One can imagine being both ambitious and allowing everyone to share in the benefits, and the act of participating in some advance as its own reward. Those that do gain some advantage often are hiding the tremendous work of others, gaining a grotesque share of the fortune for their being in the right place and time. To paraphrase a scene from Life of Brian, it is the (so-called) ambitious, often, who are the problem.
- kazinator 1y ago> Instead, it seems to be a consequence of political choices and governance structures. When was that ever controversial? The nonstrawman version of the inevitability of wealth inequality is that governance structures which make everyone equal do not succeed. The governance structures that make possible wealth inequality are themselves inevitable.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- antiquark 1y agoThe problem with these "house size studies" is that they ignore the nomadic people who lived in the surrounding areas and were (by definition), not housed. How many nomadics were there, and how much wealth did they have? This question would probably impact the conclusion that there was less wealth inequality back then.
- hagbard_c 1y agoOoglr, Gnurgh and Borrr are three cavemen, each of them setting out on their path towards success. Ooglr gets himself a club, hunts down a few ratty creatures and thinks "that'll do for today, it is nice weather and I'd rather be oogling the cave girls than chasing those stupid ratty creatures so now that I have enough for tonight I'll stop chasing and start oogling". The next day he chases down a few more ratty creatures, calls it a day once he got himself a few and continued oogling. For some reason those girls did not seem to return his longing gaze, could they not recognise him for the successful hunter-of-ratty-creatures that he was? Gnurgh sees things differently. He finds himself a good-sized elk shoolder blade and starts digging a pit. When the pit is deep enough he covers it with branches and leaves and waits until his intended target - an aurochs - stumbles into the pit. You see, he scouted out aurochs trails until he found a spot where the ground looked good for digging a pit while the beasts could not avoid the spot where he intended to dig his pit. He also prepared a number of spears to dispatch whatever happened to stumble into his pit as well as some flint knives to cut his prey up into slivers. Did I mention the drying racks he made to dry the meat? Well, now I did. Knowing that meat spoils quite fast he started cutting up the oversized cow and worked through the night and the next night upon which he had himself a supply of meat enough to feed a family through the winter (it was a big aurochs). He had placed one of his drying racks next to his fire pit and found out the meat from that rack was more tasty than that from the racks further away from the fire and made a mental note to repeat that the next time with more racks. All the time Gnurgh was hard at work he was watched by some comely cave girls and before long he did have a family to feed through the winter. Borrr did not like chasing things with clubs. He did not like digging pits either. He half-heartedly tried to catch himself a fish in the stream but the water was cold and the fish slippery so it got away and was probably laughing at him somewhere. Besides, why would he bother? He could just go to one of Gnurgh's drying racks and pilfer some meat? Then, once sated he'd lie in wait for one of those girls. Is wealth inequality really inevitable?
- immibis 1y agoIn your mind, yes. That's why studies are necessary. To quote codr7 without violating HN guidelines: > There's a concerted effort in this world to make all alternatives look worse.