4 ms·
If we've got a higher level of comfort, why does it matter?
by Schiendelman 4mo ago
If we've got a higher level of comfort, why does it matter?
- happytoexplain 4mo agoComfort isn't a single number, nor is it the only variable.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoTell me more. What exactly would you like to redistribute that wealth to? What specific measurement is your concern? Also, please don't use the voting buttons for things you disagree with. I'm trying to have a productive conversation here.
- fsuts 4mo agoEquality in quality of Education As better education/tution leads to over achievement relative to natural ability. So you end up with people in positions of power that are beyond them, and low educated voter too
- Schiendelman 4mo agoAhh. Are you aware of the argument that education shouldn't be funded with property taxes, to even it out?
- fsuts 4mo agoNo, and did you mean should be or shouldn’t be?
- Schiendelman 4mo agoShouldn't be! I recommend starting there. A lot of the problems with education funding stem from the wealthy neighborhoods getting a lot more money because their local property taxes generate more revenue. Flattening that across an entire state, in the case of the US, would likely set up incentives to force the upper middle class to push up school funding.
- fsuts 4mo agoBecause some of us think of everyone else? Not everyone is fortunate to be born smart and able to make money. And these at the bottom struggle enormously
- vintermann 4mo agoIf we're wireheading anyone, why not start with Musk, Thiel, etc.?
- chistev 4mo agoI don't like how HN users downvote honest questions instead of engaging with it. Left you an upvote because I'm interested in responses to this.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoI appreciate you! My goal here is to guide people who care about things to take a little step toward working on them. :)
- chistev 4mo agoAnd I got down voted. Lol.
- happytoexplain 4mo agoYes, it's presumably a problem, but you also can't know why somebody is downvoting. They might believe a comment is dishonest or distracting or otherwise low-quality or non-curious, or breaks one of the subjective site rules. I try not to make assumptions when I get downvoted. I think: Maybe I was a little sarcastic or aggressive or I implied something weaselly; or maybe the downvoter just disagreed with me. I don't assume either way, and I don't guess about moral high ground or whatever. All my comment's points tell me is what delta of people clicked the down arrow, not what was in their heads individually.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoOh yeah, I just try to reinforce the HN guidelines when I can!
- Herring 4mo agoI spend a lot of time here: https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart Housing/medical/college etc are outpacing incomes. Loneliness has skyrocketed. People are voting for fascism and starting wars. Americans like to pretend with their big houses and fancy iphones, but things are NOT ok. Also note on that chart: younger demographics in the US are reporting significantly lower life evaluations compared to older demographics. So if you think things right now are bad, you haven't seen anything yet.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoI'm unconvinced that younger people have a harder time than the last couple of generations at the same ages, and would like to see evidence that this is not simply them overwhelming themselves with social media comparisons with others. Yes, housing, medical, and college are outpacing incomes. Which item would you want to work on if you only got to pick ONE thing?
- swed420 4mo ago> Yes, housing, medical, and college are outpacing incomes. Which item would you want to work on if you only got to pick ONE thing? Why would we intentionally narrow the discussion like this? That's something that pretend political parties do to prop up the interests of the uniparty of capital interests while squelching actual progress for the majority.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoWhy? Because an individual can only positively influence one thing at a time when it's so far outside of their sphere. My goal is to help people make positive change, and the only way to do that is with focus.
- swed420 4mo ago> Because an individual can only positively influence one thing at a time when it's so far outside of their sphere. Not true, but let's pretend it is: then pick the parent item that's affecting all of the child items: aforementioned faux democracy. Then everything else falls into place. But based on your various comments here, you don't seem interested in solving the root issues.
- jjj123 4mo agoBecause I believe we all deserve to have a relatively equal say in how society should function, and the existence of trillionaires is antithetical to that.
- citadel_melon 4mo agoThere are many more economic distortions that happen from having massive wealth inequality — too many to list in one comment — but the biggest one is that democracy isn’t possible with a certain level of wealth inequality. In such models where individuals in a market system can influence public/private institutions for their own interest (news organizations, private think tanks, lobbyists, public/private colleges, corporations, charities, nonprofits etc etc) will be able to reroute those institutional resources to gaming elections — which is unavoidable result over the market’s long run, similar to it being impossible to defend one’s currency against speculators over the long run — thus selection pressures force politicians and political institutions to either cater to these wealthy people’s whims and the institutions they control, or to somehow (and very unlikely) bare the selection pressures that are pushing them out of office. Given the law of large numbers, you’d presume at any point the average legislator would be captured more by these maladaptive selection pressures rather than somehow existing in spite of them. As democracy is eaten away, we will maintain a slow decay to a Russia-like sultan oligarchic system and the comforts the majority currently maintain will slowly go with them.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoI mean, this is measurable with the gini coefficient, yes. But if you generally handwave "people with lots of money", you don't have a story to tell, and then you don't convince nearly enough people of any one thing to accomplish it. You have to pick a problem. Right now, quality of life basically keeps going up, so it's pretty hard to act on anything you might care about here.
- citadel_melon 4mo agoConjecturing standards of living is going up is overly reductive. Essential costs — housing, groceries, education, etc — have been going up for most people and hit everyday people the hardest.
- swat535 4mo agoHigher level of comfort in what sense? Most people on the planet can't afford a home or start families. They can barely pay their rents to avoid ending on up the street.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoDo you believe that across the planet, that is worse or better than it was 20 years ago? 40 years ago?
- chadgpt3 4mo agoDo I have to believe it across the planet or just for me right now?
- Schiendelman 4mo agoGP said "most people on the planet"; I'm responding to that.
- swat535 4mo agoDo you believe the housing crisis, living wages and affordability is better than it was 20 years ago? 40 years ago? If so, where ?
- Schiendelman 4mo agoMedian wages are way up. Housing affordability is down, and it's pretty easy to trace that to a single root cause.
- JKCalhoun 4mo agoBecause we could have it so much better… Just one example: high-speed rail in the U.S.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoIf you're interested, I spent over a decade as a mass transit organizer, and I think there's a pretty clear path to high-speed rail in the US. But no one likes it!
- chadgpt3 4mo agoWe don't. It's not about being warm in winter. That's the least important thing as long as you're not actually freezing to death. We used to look forward to the future, now we dread it, and I don't think that's just me being in an existential crisis right now, other people have said it too.