6 ms·

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? One argument could

by drorco 8mo ago

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

mcntsh 8mo ago
> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.
- Lionga 8mo ago
  money (or more exact wealth) is not a null sum game.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- drorco 8mo ago
  OK that's one thing, but still there are many new billionaires that didn't exist a few decades ago, let alone a few years ago. Why did they become billionaires and the wealth didn't distribute over a much larger group?
  - hrimfaxi 8mo ago
    Is the rate of billionaire generation increasing? Maybe that is the distribution in practice.
    - drorco 8mo ago
      Maybe, I think it definitely happened with millionaires, there are probably many more millionaires these days compared to a few decades ago. Inflation helped too for sure. But I think still a lot of people would argue the distribution is too unequal.
  - mcntsh 8mo ago
    Wealth doesn't go straight up, it bubbles up. And thinking about bubbles, imagine what happens when the GenAI one pops. The wealth some new billionaires had will go up in smoke, their assets will go on sale, and they'll be gobbled up by the old billionaires.
- kjshsh123 8mo ago
  There's a finite amount of money. There's not a finite amount of wealth. Having lots of wealth does not mean other people have less. If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago. Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.
  - ryandrake 8mo ago
    But relative wealth is all that matters, when it comes to lifestyle. If I have $100K net worth, and I'm living in a city where the first standard deviation net worth range is $80K to $120K, then I'm living a pretty average lifestyle, can afford my groceries and entertainment, and feel middle class. If I have a $200K net worth, and I'm living in a city where the range is $1M to $500M, then I'm pretty much living in poverty, even though I have "more wealth" than in scenario 1. This is also why, although my absolute wealth today is hundreds or thousands of times more than a king in the middle ages, I'm not actually living like a king today. It's also how gentrification works. You're living somewhere and all of a sudden a bunch of very wealthy people move in, raising the prices of everything. You're no more or less wealthy than before, but everything has become slightly worse.
    - AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
      Can everyone be rich enough to not be food insecure or medically insecure? I'd like to think so. Can everyone be rich enough to not be in the bottom 20%? No, no matter how rich we become. Can everyone be rich enough to have servants? No, unless you count machines as servants. But if you do, then I'm rich enough to have several.
    - kjshsh123 8mo ago
      That is exactly wrong. Real wealth is goods and services available. You live way better than a king. Your expected lifespan is higher than kings because of access to better food, nutrition, and medical care. You have access to luxuries like chocolate, and coffee that kings might have tasted once in their life, or at best every few weeks. Not understanding what wealth is, is precisely what leads to this mistaken thinking. As for gentrification, it is often just confusing correlation and causation. People blame rich people moving in, when really a place just actually became better due to improvements in goods or services like public transit exapansion.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
  "U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947" https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-share-gdp-on-record/ https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-sha...
- rayiner 8mo ago
  Is compounding interest why Jeff Bezos is rich? Or is it because you get three Amazon deliveries a day?
  - kg 8mo ago
    This reply has very strong "the average human does not eat 10 spiders a day; the average was thrown off by Spiders Georg who eats 10000 spiders a day" energy. Amazon does not have an exceedingly high profit margin, and my understanding is that a lot of it comes from stuff like AWS, not Amazon deliveries - correct me if I'm wrong here. So I'm not sure that "three amazon deliveries a day" - if this is even common - is why that man is personally rich. Even if it were a big source of revenue, that would go into Amazon's coffers, not necessarily his directly. Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed?
    - lotsofpulp 8mo ago
      > Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed? The answer depends on how should the losses from unsuccessful entrepreneurship be distributed?
      - jacquesm 8mo ago
        Oh that's an easy one: that's societies' problem. Always has been. The same with pollution and all of the other stuff that can be externalized.
        lotsofpulp 8mo ago
        Can you be more specific? Suppose I put $1M into developing a business. For whatever reason, construction hits a snag or revenues are not enough to cover expenses, how would it become “society’s” problem? Do I get made whole by the government giving me $1M, and the government takes posession of the property? If so, I foresee a lot more opportunities for corruption.
- Manuel_D 8mo ago
  > and the more you make means less other people have This is a false zero sum view of wealth that is unfortunately all too common.
  - N_Lens 8mo ago
    Economy growing at 3-5% in the US. Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich. The middle class is getting poorer and we can all see that.
    - votepaunchy 8mo ago
      Or the wealthy are pulling up the average and most of the rest are not “growing the economy” with increased productivity.
      - dns_snek 8mo ago
        I think we should put this to the test. The working class stops working for a week/month and we'll see how "productive" the rich capitalists really are.
        cindyllm 8mo ago
        [dead]
      - N_Lens 8mo ago
        Capitalists earn money through control of capital. They're actually parasites that extract all the labour and value from others below them in the system. Capital is taxed lower than labour in most developed countries, at every turn capital is advantaged at the expense of living beings. There is no positive morality in this system of mass impoverishment.
    - Manuel_D 8mo ago
      > Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich. No, that logic doesn't follow. Say my wealth grew by 3% and my neighbor's grew by 5%. That doesn't imply any sort of "siphoning" at play.
- cbolton 8mo ago
  I think you have the right idea, if poorly worded. The economy is not a zero sum game, but the idea works when you apply it not on wealth but on wealth increase. That's more or less the famous r > g formula of Piketty: when the rate of return of capital is larger than the growth rate of the economy, wealth gets more concentrated. Its application has been disputed but the basic principle certainly applies in many situations.
mcny 8mo ago
Not to be too glib but my mom would ask counter questions like this: Why is it that we have to trim out nails when they grow? Why not leave it natural? Why do we remove the weed in between the pavers in our backyard? Why not let it be natural? The fact is the world around us needs constant work. Our capitalism is no different. It needs constant pruning or it becomes gluttonous. There was a book I think which said most people involved in illegal drug trafficking are barely getting by, most of the income is soaked up at the top. I don't remember the point the bio was trying to make but it feels like that way for any enterprise these days. The richest people in the US have reportedly increased their net worth by over 1.5T over the course of the last year or so. How is this sustainable?
- drorco 8mo ago
  Isn't this basically Entropy? Why do stars fuse and spread out their energy? Can't they just keep it all in? They are going to blow up/die out eventually, how is this sustainable? The notion I'm getting is that these forces that drive change are bigger than all of us, and they are inherently unsustainable in the larger scale of things, pretty similar to how solar systems are not really sustainable in a scale much larger than us, but not that is still pretty small in a universal scale. So for your perspective it might be unsustainable, but for the bigger system what you describe is smaller than a grain of sand.
  - mcny 8mo ago
    The point is everything needs work. We can't just say oh capitalism produces billionaires so billionaires must be good.
    - drorco 8mo ago
      Or in the absence of other competing systems which can be shown to be more efficient, we could say OK seems like billionaires are part of this ecosystem. If you'd like, similar to how we don't like mosquitos but they are nevertheless an important part of the current ecosystem, whether we like it or not. Though if we ever find a better alternative, they'd definitely be in a hard spot.
vladvasiliu 8mo ago
I think there's clearly a question of envy which doesn't seem addressed. I'm not particularly in favour of high taxation, but I think that the argument is a bit more subtle than that. The general point is that "the ultra rich" are able to benefit from a whole host of loopholes which allow them to pay proportionally less than the plebs. Now, this specific point seems somewhat debatable, judging by the fact that people don't seem to agree; I personally have not looked into the matter to form an opinion. Maybe our tax code hasn't kept up with the financialization of the economy. In any case, this whole tax increase thing, at least as I see it in France, since to spill over to "regular rich people", as in engineers or similar who "just" have a relatively high salary. Another issue, which I think is different but is rolled into complaints about rising tax rates is what the state actually does with the money. As in "I'm ok with paying tax, but not to fund this or that thing". In France, specifically, many "public service" offices have closed, having people either travel great distances or fight half-assed computer systems, while, at the same time, the number of public servants (so, cost) has increased.
palmotea 8mo ago
> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Luck always plays the biggest role. Maybe the billionaires would have always been successful in some way, but not be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Also, your argument sounds like a just-so story designed to support the status quo. > the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Is is really a good idea to be ruled by the people with the greatest "wealth attraction?" > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. Yes, because regardless of anything else, the wealth imbalance has been politically destabilizing. Your comment strikes me as out-of-touch quantitative thinking: making certain easily-measured numbers going up the highest goal, while ignoring other things that are harder to quantify. That's a blind spot shared by a lot of people, especially tech people.
- drorco 8mo ago
  I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world and so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. We can try and moderate it as a system (e.g some forms of democracy, socialism, etc.) to maybe lower the amplitudes, but it would be ignorant to deny that this might be a core part of current human nature. Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. Now imagine, there'd be some alien government, who'd be like "whoa humans are making way too disproportionate progress compared to the other species, let's tax/prune them so they don't get too much power".
  - ahf8Aithaex7Nai 8mo ago
    > ... so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. What do you mean, you found that out? And what does that have to do with anything? > So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. To me, that doesn't sound like an observation, but rather an interpretation. We could apply various epistemological carpet beaters to see what remains. One would be the critique of ideology. A few others can be found in the philosophy of science. It also seems to contradict your reference to thermodynamics. Wouldn't that mean that personality traits don't play a role at all? We don't look at individual particles, and certainly not at their personality traits. > Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?
RGamma 8mo ago
There's many shades of grey between financial laissez faire and enforced equality. This entire "taxes are theft/unnecessary" (and frankly extremist in the neutral definition of the word) thinking is destroying the US politically and socially right now. Do you not see this? Probably because you don't feel it in your pocket (yet, let's see what happens when the USD crashes. I will feel it too, no doubt.) There's the belief that the economy can be a mighty tool to improve our lives, but isn't it going pretty much overboard since some time? Is this materialistic growth-at-all-costs ideology really making average US lives better these days? From the outside the US feels like a runner that is stretching its arm towards the finish line (total automation) while also falling on their ass.
koe123 8mo ago
> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? Compound interest, and as (admittedly) an armchair economist I buy into the argument that goes along the lines of: "when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth". In my view, r has been greater than g for some time now. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. To me, it is clear that while Europe optimizes for quality of life to a large extent, Americans really drink the coo-laid and enthusiastically optimize for shareholder value. I highly encourage you to give life in Europe a go at some point. I hope you'll return (or stay) also having reached the same perspective.
- kjshsh123 8mo ago
  This isn't a view thing though. We have the data. What you're saying is what Piketty said. Only issue is, when you account for depreciation, you find that r>g applied to housing (so boomer NIMBYs) not billionaires. This is not a Karl Marx thing, but a Henry George thing. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-rise-in-the-net-capital-share/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...
- drorco 8mo ago
  I'm not American. I did stay for months though in the US (SF, NY) and Europe (Italy, France, Greece, PT, DE, more) at times. I think for competitive and talented people, US in general offers much more lucrative opportunities as long as you're OK with the US specific drawbacks. For non-competitive people, living in Europe would probably be a more convenient. I think the problem though is in the future, both the US and Europe has grave societal and economic issues but from the different angles. Europe lacks economical drive and seems to discourage change on a cultural level. The US on the other hand seems to be an extreme catalyst. I'm not familiar enough with quantitative data to judge on the compound interest, nevertheless I think in the last few decades we have already been witness on the global level to major changes in wealth: empires like UK have shrank, giants like China have risen. This had been very different a few decades ago and is an anecdote at least that compound interest can only do so much for empires, in the face of major changes.
dv_dt 8mo ago
Look for the Sugarscape model research studies. With uniform equally distributed starting point, fairly unbiased rules, and a set of random early wins, large disparities tend to accumulate over time without active policy to counteract it.
- jibal 8mo ago
  Which is why there should be active policy to counteract it.
jibal 8mo ago
> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed That's not an argument, it's a completely counterfactual assertion ... or rather, the assertion that this is the cause of uneven distribution of wealth. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. But of course it's not true, it's just an attempt to justify a morally bankrupt sociopathic ideology.
rawgabbit 8mo ago
You could have asked the same question when slavery was legal. Why is slavery not evenly distributed. Social injustice has been the default since the beginning of known history. Social justice is something that has to be fought for.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
1718627440 8mo ago
Because a tree has better access times than a list, so some amount of hierarchy results in a better performance than unstructured set of individuals. As directing people means more available work force for ones goals, and money represents ability to do something and availability to resources, some people will have more money than others.

by drorco 8mo ago

mcntsh 8mo ago

> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.

Lionga 8mo ago
money (or more exact wealth) is not a null sum game.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
drorco 8mo ago
OK that's one thing, but still there are many new billionaires that didn't exist a few decades ago, let alone a few years ago. Why did they become billionaires and the wealth didn't distribute over a much larger group?
- hrimfaxi 8mo ago
  Is the rate of billionaire generation increasing? Maybe that is the distribution in practice.
  - drorco 8mo ago
    Maybe, I think it definitely happened with millionaires, there are probably many more millionaires these days compared to a few decades ago. Inflation helped too for sure. But I think still a lot of people would argue the distribution is too unequal.
- mcntsh 8mo ago
  Wealth doesn't go straight up, it bubbles up. And thinking about bubbles, imagine what happens when the GenAI one pops. The wealth some new billionaires had will go up in smoke, their assets will go on sale, and they'll be gobbled up by the old billionaires.
kjshsh123 8mo ago
There's a finite amount of money. There's not a finite amount of wealth. Having lots of wealth does not mean other people have less. If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago. Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.
- ryandrake 8mo ago
  But relative wealth is all that matters, when it comes to lifestyle. If I have $100K net worth, and I'm living in a city where the first standard deviation net worth range is $80K to $120K, then I'm living a pretty average lifestyle, can afford my groceries and entertainment, and feel middle class. If I have a $200K net worth, and I'm living in a city where the range is $1M to $500M, then I'm pretty much living in poverty, even though I have "more wealth" than in scenario 1. This is also why, although my absolute wealth today is hundreds or thousands of times more than a king in the middle ages, I'm not actually living like a king today. It's also how gentrification works. You're living somewhere and all of a sudden a bunch of very wealthy people move in, raising the prices of everything. You're no more or less wealthy than before, but everything has become slightly worse.
  - AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
    Can everyone be rich enough to not be food insecure or medically insecure? I'd like to think so. Can everyone be rich enough to not be in the bottom 20%? No, no matter how rich we become. Can everyone be rich enough to have servants? No, unless you count machines as servants. But if you do, then I'm rich enough to have several.
  - kjshsh123 8mo ago
    That is exactly wrong. Real wealth is goods and services available. You live way better than a king. Your expected lifespan is higher than kings because of access to better food, nutrition, and medical care. You have access to luxuries like chocolate, and coffee that kings might have tasted once in their life, or at best every few weeks. Not understanding what wealth is, is precisely what leads to this mistaken thinking. As for gentrification, it is often just confusing correlation and causation. People blame rich people moving in, when really a place just actually became better due to improvements in goods or services like public transit exapansion.
_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
"U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947" https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-share-gdp-on-record/ https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-sha...
rayiner 8mo ago
Is compounding interest why Jeff Bezos is rich? Or is it because you get three Amazon deliveries a day?
- kg 8mo ago
  This reply has very strong "the average human does not eat 10 spiders a day; the average was thrown off by Spiders Georg who eats 10000 spiders a day" energy. Amazon does not have an exceedingly high profit margin, and my understanding is that a lot of it comes from stuff like AWS, not Amazon deliveries - correct me if I'm wrong here. So I'm not sure that "three amazon deliveries a day" - if this is even common - is why that man is personally rich. Even if it were a big source of revenue, that would go into Amazon's coffers, not necessarily his directly. Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed?
  - lotsofpulp 8mo ago
    > Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed? The answer depends on how should the losses from unsuccessful entrepreneurship be distributed?
    - jacquesm 8mo ago
      Oh that's an easy one: that's societies' problem. Always has been. The same with pollution and all of the other stuff that can be externalized.
      - lotsofpulp 8mo ago
        Can you be more specific? Suppose I put $1M into developing a business. For whatever reason, construction hits a snag or revenues are not enough to cover expenses, how would it become “society’s” problem? Do I get made whole by the government giving me $1M, and the government takes posession of the property? If so, I foresee a lot more opportunities for corruption.
Manuel_D 8mo ago
> and the more you make means less other people have This is a false zero sum view of wealth that is unfortunately all too common.
- N_Lens 8mo ago
  Economy growing at 3-5% in the US. Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich. The middle class is getting poorer and we can all see that.
  - votepaunchy 8mo ago
    Or the wealthy are pulling up the average and most of the rest are not “growing the economy” with increased productivity.
    - dns_snek 8mo ago
      I think we should put this to the test. The working class stops working for a week/month and we'll see how "productive" the rich capitalists really are.
      - cindyllm 8mo ago
        [dead]
    - N_Lens 8mo ago
      Capitalists earn money through control of capital. They're actually parasites that extract all the labour and value from others below them in the system. Capital is taxed lower than labour in most developed countries, at every turn capital is advantaged at the expense of living beings. There is no positive morality in this system of mass impoverishment.
  - Manuel_D 8mo ago
    > Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich. No, that logic doesn't follow. Say my wealth grew by 3% and my neighbor's grew by 5%. That doesn't imply any sort of "siphoning" at play.
cbolton 8mo ago
I think you have the right idea, if poorly worded. The economy is not a zero sum game, but the idea works when you apply it not on wealth but on wealth increase. That's more or less the famous r > g formula of Piketty: when the rate of return of capital is larger than the growth rate of the economy, wealth gets more concentrated. Its application has been disputed but the basic principle certainly applies in many situations.

mcny 8mo ago

Not to be too glib but my mom would ask counter questions like this: Why is it that we have to trim out nails when they grow? Why not leave it natural? Why do we remove the weed in between the pavers in our backyard? Why not let it be natural? The fact is the world around us needs constant work. Our capitalism is no different. It needs constant pruning or it becomes gluttonous. There was a book I think which said most people involved in illegal drug trafficking are barely getting by, most of the income is soaked up at the top. I don't remember the point the bio was trying to make but it feels like that way for any enterprise these days. The richest people in the US have reportedly increased their net worth by over 1.5T over the course of the last year or so. How is this sustainable?

drorco 8mo ago
Isn't this basically Entropy? Why do stars fuse and spread out their energy? Can't they just keep it all in? They are going to blow up/die out eventually, how is this sustainable? The notion I'm getting is that these forces that drive change are bigger than all of us, and they are inherently unsustainable in the larger scale of things, pretty similar to how solar systems are not really sustainable in a scale much larger than us, but not that is still pretty small in a universal scale. So for your perspective it might be unsustainable, but for the bigger system what you describe is smaller than a grain of sand.
- mcny 8mo ago
  The point is everything needs work. We can't just say oh capitalism produces billionaires so billionaires must be good.
  - drorco 8mo ago
    Or in the absence of other competing systems which can be shown to be more efficient, we could say OK seems like billionaires are part of this ecosystem. If you'd like, similar to how we don't like mosquitos but they are nevertheless an important part of the current ecosystem, whether we like it or not. Though if we ever find a better alternative, they'd definitely be in a hard spot.

vladvasiliu 8mo ago

I think there's clearly a question of envy which doesn't seem addressed. I'm not particularly in favour of high taxation, but I think that the argument is a bit more subtle than that. The general point is that "the ultra rich" are able to benefit from a whole host of loopholes which allow them to pay proportionally less than the plebs. Now, this specific point seems somewhat debatable, judging by the fact that people don't seem to agree; I personally have not looked into the matter to form an opinion. Maybe our tax code hasn't kept up with the financialization of the economy. In any case, this whole tax increase thing, at least as I see it in France, since to spill over to "regular rich people", as in engineers or similar who "just" have a relatively high salary. Another issue, which I think is different but is rolled into complaints about rising tax rates is what the state actually does with the money. As in "I'm ok with paying tax, but not to fund this or that thing". In France, specifically, many "public service" offices have closed, having people either travel great distances or fight half-assed computer systems, while, at the same time, the number of public servants (so, cost) has increased.

palmotea 8mo ago

> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Luck always plays the biggest role. Maybe the billionaires would have always been successful in some way, but not be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Also, your argument sounds like a just-so story designed to support the status quo. > the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Is is really a good idea to be ruled by the people with the greatest "wealth attraction?" > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. Yes, because regardless of anything else, the wealth imbalance has been politically destabilizing. Your comment strikes me as out-of-touch quantitative thinking: making certain easily-measured numbers going up the highest goal, while ignoring other things that are harder to quantify. That's a blind spot shared by a lot of people, especially tech people.

drorco 8mo ago
I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world and so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. We can try and moderate it as a system (e.g some forms of democracy, socialism, etc.) to maybe lower the amplitudes, but it would be ignorant to deny that this might be a core part of current human nature. Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. Now imagine, there'd be some alien government, who'd be like "whoa humans are making way too disproportionate progress compared to the other species, let's tax/prune them so they don't get too much power".
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 8mo ago
  > ... so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. What do you mean, you found that out? And what does that have to do with anything? > So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. To me, that doesn't sound like an observation, but rather an interpretation. We could apply various epistemological carpet beaters to see what remains. One would be the critique of ideology. A few others can be found in the philosophy of science. It also seems to contradict your reference to thermodynamics. Wouldn't that mean that personality traits don't play a role at all? We don't look at individual particles, and certainly not at their personality traits. > Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?

RGamma 8mo ago

There's many shades of grey between financial laissez faire and enforced equality. This entire "taxes are theft/unnecessary" (and frankly extremist in the neutral definition of the word) thinking is destroying the US politically and socially right now. Do you not see this? Probably because you don't feel it in your pocket (yet, let's see what happens when the USD crashes. I will feel it too, no doubt.) There's the belief that the economy can be a mighty tool to improve our lives, but isn't it going pretty much overboard since some time? Is this materialistic growth-at-all-costs ideology really making average US lives better these days? From the outside the US feels like a runner that is stretching its arm towards the finish line (total automation) while also falling on their ass.

koe123 8mo ago

> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? Compound interest, and as (admittedly) an armchair economist I buy into the argument that goes along the lines of: "when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth". In my view, r has been greater than g for some time now. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. To me, it is clear that while Europe optimizes for quality of life to a large extent, Americans really drink the coo-laid and enthusiastically optimize for shareholder value. I highly encourage you to give life in Europe a go at some point. I hope you'll return (or stay) also having reached the same perspective.

kjshsh123 8mo ago
This isn't a view thing though. We have the data. What you're saying is what Piketty said. Only issue is, when you account for depreciation, you find that r>g applied to housing (so boomer NIMBYs) not billionaires. This is not a Karl Marx thing, but a Henry George thing. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-rise-in-the-net-capital-share/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...
drorco 8mo ago
I'm not American. I did stay for months though in the US (SF, NY) and Europe (Italy, France, Greece, PT, DE, more) at times. I think for competitive and talented people, US in general offers much more lucrative opportunities as long as you're OK with the US specific drawbacks. For non-competitive people, living in Europe would probably be a more convenient. I think the problem though is in the future, both the US and Europe has grave societal and economic issues but from the different angles. Europe lacks economical drive and seems to discourage change on a cultural level. The US on the other hand seems to be an extreme catalyst. I'm not familiar enough with quantitative data to judge on the compound interest, nevertheless I think in the last few decades we have already been witness on the global level to major changes in wealth: empires like UK have shrank, giants like China have risen. This had been very different a few decades ago and is an anecdote at least that compound interest can only do so much for empires, in the face of major changes.

dv_dt 8mo ago

Look for the Sugarscape model research studies. With uniform equally distributed starting point, fairly unbiased rules, and a set of random early wins, large disparities tend to accumulate over time without active policy to counteract it.

jibal 8mo ago
Which is why there should be active policy to counteract it.

jibal 8mo ago

> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed That's not an argument, it's a completely counterfactual assertion ... or rather, the assertion that this is the cause of uneven distribution of wealth. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. But of course it's not true, it's just an attempt to justify a morally bankrupt sociopathic ideology.

rawgabbit 8mo ago

You could have asked the same question when slavery was legal. Why is slavery not evenly distributed. Social injustice has been the default since the beginning of known history. Social justice is something that has to be fought for.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

1718627440 8mo ago

Because a tree has better access times than a list, so some amount of hierarchy results in a better performance than unstructured set of individuals. As directing people means more available work force for ones goals, and money represents ability to do something and availability to resources, some people will have more money than others.