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We all only have so much time on this earth. Why is it fair for some folks to spend a disproportionate amount of that time toiling away for basic sustenance wh

We all only have so much time on this earth. Why is it fair for some folks to spend a disproportionate amount of that time toiling away for basic sustenance while others spend their days on their personal hotel sized yachts?

lotsofpulp 1y ago
It’s not fair, just like most of life due to the genes/parents/geography/etc you are born to.
delichon 1y ago
For the same reason that it's fair when one seed falls on asphalt and dies when another seed falls in shit and thrives: it isn't. Fairness turns out not to be one of the forces of the universe.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  Wealth inequality isn't some random thing though, our government and economic system enables it. It's not like we have no control over it.
  - delichon 1y ago
    Wealth inequality broadly follows the Pareto distribution, which is natural and does derive from randomness. We could define fairness as a flat distribution and redistribute accordingly, but that requires continual work to be done against the random Pareto distribution or it reverts. It's do-able, but it requires a long term consensus that doesn't currently exist.
    - scienceman 1y ago
      There is no one pareto distribution — it is a family of distributions, with different parameters meaning different intercepts, and therefore different levels on inequality.
  - theLiminator 1y ago
    I guess the question is is wealth inequality/income inequality something to be targeted? Also, there's the question of whether the living standards of the poorest improve faster if we target wealth/income inequality?
  - BurningFrog 1y ago
    Empirically, the only working paths to wealth equality is that everyone is poor. For a society to become wealthy, those who produce more wealth need to get to end up with more wealth.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    To some extent. If you vote in a rep and he lies about his policy, then the people are stuck with him for 2 or 6 years. We don't have mechanisms to impeach someone like that (some states might, but it's not a federal mechanism); his colleagues need to impeach him, which they hesitate to unless something dsmning occurs.
  - gruez 1y ago
    At the most fundamental level it is. Abilities of individuals varies wildly, which translates into productivity, and therefore wealth. As the economy becomes more globalized and more knowledge-based, differences in ability are magnified even more. A skilled antelope hunter can at best hunt 5x more than the median hunter, but someone who makes a killer app can make billions. Sure, government can play a role in redistributing that wealth, but that's an intervention, not the default state of things.
    - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      > Abilities of individuals varies wildly, which translates into productivity, and therefore wealth. Show me literally any study that correlates the amount of work performed/the value of work/the ability of the worker with wealth. I'll wait. I have read study after study after paper after paper, research on research, research verifying research, over and over, so many they have run utterly into a black ichor that issues from my eyes when people talk this brand of shit. The best predictor in the world of having wealth is being born into it. The second best is marrying into it. The third best is striking it lucky at the free market lottery, entry into which also requires some level of wealth and not a tiny amount of it either.
      - gruez 1y ago
        >Show me literally any study that correlates the amount of work performed/the value of work/the ability of the worker with wealth. I'll wait. This is trivially true if you accept the premise that "value of work" is the same as "amount paid", because the statement basically becomes "show me literally any study that correlates salary with wealth". However I suspect you reject the market wage as "value of work", and would rather have some subjective measure like "social value" or whatever. As imperfect market wage is, it's as objective of a measure as we can get, and letting people use whatever subjective measure they want will mean the argument will go nowhere because you can define your value function to whatever you want. >I have read study after study after paper after paper, research on research, research verifying research, over and over, so many they have run utterly into a black ichor that issues from my eyes when people talk this brand of shit. The best predictor in the world of having wealth is being born into it. The second best is marrying into it. The third best is striking it lucky at the free market lottery. My claim isn't that wealth right now is distributed 100% meritocratically, only that inequalities will emerge even if we somehow reset everyone's wealth, and therefore the claim that "Wealth inequality isn't some random thing" is incorrect.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  But that unfairness is itself based on forces of the universe, in this case: a seed can grow in shit, a seed cannot grow in asphalt. To extend your metaphor, we have tons of the available "surface area" for people to fall on paved with asphalt, to suit the preferences of those sitting in shit. These are not fixed things. We placed the asphalt. We can tear it up, if we so choose to.
  - delichon 1y ago
    We have the surface area for the next generation, but since unconstrained life grows exponentially, it runs out within a few generations. Isn't some kind of homeostasis preferable to repeated booms and busts?
    - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      If unconstrained life grows exponentially why is it every developed country is having a birthrate crisis? It seems most populations tend to naturally stabilize once parents realize they don't need to have like 7 kids hoping 2 or 3 survive childhood.
tw600040 1y ago
When someone asks how something is fair - coming back with life is like that or life isn't fair is not a valid response. Humanity should strive to make the systems as fair as possible while accepting the fact that unfairness will still exist. Why will theft etc be a crime if not for the idea of fairness. You can make the same life is unfair argument to defend theft but that's not the way it should be / is.
- gruez 1y ago
  >Humanity should strive to make the systems as fair as possible while accepting the fact that unfairness will still exist. The standard argument against this is that "inequality is a good thing because it leads to innovation" or whatever.
drewcoo 1y ago
So the question is "why is life unfair?" Or is it "why do bad beginnings with lots of drudgery not lead to yacht ownership?"
- int_19h 1y ago
  The question is rather "why do we accept that life is unfair rather than try to make it more fair?"

lotsofpulp 1y ago

It’s not fair, just like most of life due to the genes/parents/geography/etc you are born to.

delichon 1y ago

For the same reason that it's fair when one seed falls on asphalt and dies when another seed falls in shit and thrives: it isn't. Fairness turns out not to be one of the forces of the universe.

candiddevmike 1y ago
Wealth inequality isn't some random thing though, our government and economic system enables it. It's not like we have no control over it.
- delichon 1y ago
  Wealth inequality broadly follows the Pareto distribution, which is natural and does derive from randomness. We could define fairness as a flat distribution and redistribute accordingly, but that requires continual work to be done against the random Pareto distribution or it reverts. It's do-able, but it requires a long term consensus that doesn't currently exist.
  - scienceman 1y ago
    There is no one pareto distribution — it is a family of distributions, with different parameters meaning different intercepts, and therefore different levels on inequality.
- theLiminator 1y ago
  I guess the question is is wealth inequality/income inequality something to be targeted? Also, there's the question of whether the living standards of the poorest improve faster if we target wealth/income inequality?
- BurningFrog 1y ago
  Empirically, the only working paths to wealth equality is that everyone is poor. For a society to become wealthy, those who produce more wealth need to get to end up with more wealth.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  To some extent. If you vote in a rep and he lies about his policy, then the people are stuck with him for 2 or 6 years. We don't have mechanisms to impeach someone like that (some states might, but it's not a federal mechanism); his colleagues need to impeach him, which they hesitate to unless something dsmning occurs.
- gruez 1y ago
  At the most fundamental level it is. Abilities of individuals varies wildly, which translates into productivity, and therefore wealth. As the economy becomes more globalized and more knowledge-based, differences in ability are magnified even more. A skilled antelope hunter can at best hunt 5x more than the median hunter, but someone who makes a killer app can make billions. Sure, government can play a role in redistributing that wealth, but that's an intervention, not the default state of things.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    > Abilities of individuals varies wildly, which translates into productivity, and therefore wealth. Show me literally any study that correlates the amount of work performed/the value of work/the ability of the worker with wealth. I'll wait. I have read study after study after paper after paper, research on research, research verifying research, over and over, so many they have run utterly into a black ichor that issues from my eyes when people talk this brand of shit. The best predictor in the world of having wealth is being born into it. The second best is marrying into it. The third best is striking it lucky at the free market lottery, entry into which also requires some level of wealth and not a tiny amount of it either.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Show me literally any study that correlates the amount of work performed/the value of work/the ability of the worker with wealth. I'll wait. This is trivially true if you accept the premise that "value of work" is the same as "amount paid", because the statement basically becomes "show me literally any study that correlates salary with wealth". However I suspect you reject the market wage as "value of work", and would rather have some subjective measure like "social value" or whatever. As imperfect market wage is, it's as objective of a measure as we can get, and letting people use whatever subjective measure they want will mean the argument will go nowhere because you can define your value function to whatever you want. >I have read study after study after paper after paper, research on research, research verifying research, over and over, so many they have run utterly into a black ichor that issues from my eyes when people talk this brand of shit. The best predictor in the world of having wealth is being born into it. The second best is marrying into it. The third best is striking it lucky at the free market lottery. My claim isn't that wealth right now is distributed 100% meritocratically, only that inequalities will emerge even if we somehow reset everyone's wealth, and therefore the claim that "Wealth inequality isn't some random thing" is incorrect.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
But that unfairness is itself based on forces of the universe, in this case: a seed can grow in shit, a seed cannot grow in asphalt. To extend your metaphor, we have tons of the available "surface area" for people to fall on paved with asphalt, to suit the preferences of those sitting in shit. These are not fixed things. We placed the asphalt. We can tear it up, if we so choose to.
- delichon 1y ago
  We have the surface area for the next generation, but since unconstrained life grows exponentially, it runs out within a few generations. Isn't some kind of homeostasis preferable to repeated booms and busts?
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    If unconstrained life grows exponentially why is it every developed country is having a birthrate crisis? It seems most populations tend to naturally stabilize once parents realize they don't need to have like 7 kids hoping 2 or 3 survive childhood.

tw600040 1y ago

When someone asks how something is fair - coming back with life is like that or life isn't fair is not a valid response. Humanity should strive to make the systems as fair as possible while accepting the fact that unfairness will still exist. Why will theft etc be a crime if not for the idea of fairness. You can make the same life is unfair argument to defend theft but that's not the way it should be / is.

gruez 1y ago
>Humanity should strive to make the systems as fair as possible while accepting the fact that unfairness will still exist. The standard argument against this is that "inequality is a good thing because it leads to innovation" or whatever.

drewcoo 1y ago

So the question is "why is life unfair?" Or is it "why do bad beginnings with lots of drudgery not lead to yacht ownership?"

int_19h 1y ago
The question is rather "why do we accept that life is unfair rather than try to make it more fair?"