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One thing that always bothers me about wealth distribution is that you can't simply move wealth around and expect things to get better. People who have wealth a

• shadowfox 12y ago
  > It's an unpopular opinion, but I don't think that everyone should have a roughly equal say in how things go. The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are The usual trouble with this sort of idea is who gets to decide the "elite" that makes the decisions. How do you prevent this group from becoming an insular clique and debar other people from similar opportunities etc. Power, imho, has a tendency to be self-propogating; people who achieve it hold on to it far after it is useful and tend to bestow it on their proteges, irrespective of their suitability to the task etc. (Anyway it is an opinion; you may disagree)
  • Taek 12y ago
    No I totally agree. I believe that there should be an elite who makes most of the decisions, which is mostly how things are today, but I also believe that there needs to be methods of being sure that the elite are operating in everyon'es best interest, and that they will be replaced if they aren't. There are a lot of broken incentives. If one of the elite comes to the realization that they are no longer the most useful person for the job, can we trust that they'll step down? Or will they hide this fact from everyone else and continue to enjoy their position of power? These types of problems are not solved and it's important to keep looking for better solutions. I just don't think that "all people have equal say" is a better solution.
    • Rylinks 12y ago
      Exit rights are a good starting point for a solution.
    • norseboar 12y ago
      Do you see this system of the elite ruling as an ideal that will never be reached (a la Plato's Republic) or as a practical system? Because in the latter case, you've got an intractable problem on your hands. The problem is a basic political systems one: at some point, you need the consent of the governed. There are no stable systems on the record where a majority of those governed dislike the leadership. Either the oppressed are a minority (colonial Europe, slavery in the US) or the gov'ts are short-lived and unstable (on an order of 50-100 years, in the short term these can work). The most stable regimes that don't have majority support are ones that suppress free speech, which is hard to argue is operating "in everybody's best interest". So, if you want a stable oligarchy that preserves some free speech, you need a group of "elites" that the whole society agrees is fit to lead them. I don't think the average voter believes themselves to be in the best position to run the country -- that's exactly why they vote for somebody else to do it. But if you take voting out of the equation, you're trying to build a system where you have an elite that has support of the majority, without consulting the majority. At best, you have a system of guesswork that results in something similar to democracy (because the oligarchy are people the majority supports anyway). At worst, you have an unstable government.
• cheepin 12y ago
  > I don't think that everyone should have a roughly equal say in how things go. What is the proper alternative? I mostly agree that designing government by committee is unlikely to succeed, but the problem of choosing competent people for government roles is something we largely haven't solved in all our history.
• Balgair 12y ago
  Ok, lets assume you are correct: Experience beggars experience. Those with know how of Russian should speak Russian, those with know how of car will fix cars, those with money shall decide what to do with money. Obviously we don't live in a world nearly static enough for this to occur. If so then the Zuck never would have made FB nor Carnegie would have left Ireland and we all would be worse off for it. Yes, these are historical issues. Lets try a future one. Assume that Pablo is a UPS driver. Pablo notices that many times when he has to turn left to make a delivery, he spends a lot of the time waiting at a red left turn arrow light. Pablo, needing to make his metrics, decides to cross intersections and make Uturns and rights and all other sorts of maneuvers. Pablo shares his insights with his co-workers and friends. Everyone benefits from Pablo's insights, more packages are delivered, the company spends less fuel idling, everyone makes their metrics, etc. Now in a world where the path was designed by Paco up at headquarters, Pablo could not make those alternative turns. If he did, he would have violated the paths that Paco designed and he would have faced repercussions. Why? Because Paco knows more than Pablo and Paco is the one responsible for designing the routes. You assume Paco has superior know how and experience and will be better. But Paco is just a man like everyone else, he makes mistakes and didn't see what Pablo was doing was beneficial. Not through malice, but just because Paco looks at google maps all day, not actual light cycles. It wasn't Paco's fault, nor was it Pablo's. It was just an oversight. But in a world where we do not assume that the most experienced are also flawless, Pablo took it upon himself to fix the problem, and everyone is ok with that. Multiply this example by thousands and you have a sense of what is going on out there. Also, sprinkle in some greed, malice, lies, sex and drugs, and all the other deadly sins and you get why we need democracy. It's because we all screw up, but if we screw up at least we can get each other out of it.
  • TeMPOraL 12y ago
    But there comes a class of problems which I guess need no fictional example, because we're dug up to the neck in them - coordination problems. For instance, it would be better for people to agree and stop polluting the environment, or making crappy food (I don't mean fast-food, I mean borderline-unsafe food made as cheaply as possible), or switching away from fossil fuels. But we can't do that, because anyone who tries will get quickly outcompeted in the market by anyone who defects and keep doing the wrong thing. Therefore, we're stuck in local optima instead of moving to better global ones. There is an excellent piece by Yvain that goes into deep details of those problems[0], so I won't be repeating him here much, but the world is full of such problems, and apparent stupidity of institutions and markets are usually result of inability to coordinate. I'm not saying to give up democracy. But we have to appreciate that it has very troubling failure modes and that they're not theoretical. Real-life democracy tends to be extremely impotent. It has tremendous operating costs (think of all the resources wasted in a zero-sum game of political campaigning), and in the end people still can't agree on things like building infrastructure (NIMBYsm) or creating laws that benefit the population. Again, I'm not saying "ditch democracy". But there is a huge trade-off between security of decentralization and effectiveness of centralization. There's also the case that central planning doesn't suck that much - it sucks when done for humans by humans, because central planners operate at human speed. But consider that instead of Paco setting up routes, there is a computer named PCO, tasked with collecting real-time data from all drivers and optimizing routes. PCO may alter some of instructions it sends to drivers to explore the solution space, and it will quickly figure out that doing only rights leads to less fuel used. And then it may stumble upon other optimizations, like shifting delivery times in different parts of the city depending on traffic patterns - things that are impossible to figure out by Pablo, because they require global view. I think that central planning got a bad name because of Soviet implementation, but with modern computing, maybe we should re-evaluate its costs and benefits. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
• smutticus 12y ago
  One of my favorite Churchill quotes is, "The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter." You're position isn't all that strange, and it does cut right to the heart of the issue. Do we really want to live in a democratic society? Part of the problem with addressing this question is that we've generally agreed the answer is, 'Yes'. Even if we're not always willing to fully live that way. No one wants to be labelled as undemocratic, non-westerners get their countries bombed when they get that label. Another problem with this question is that the other systems of governance we've tried have mostly been worse. When you start trying to figure out how some people can have more say than others based on their merit you inevitably end up picking winners based on something other than general merit. Who gets to be more important than the rest? How do you hold them accountable as a class if they're the only ones that can ever hold the reigns of power? I appreciate your honesty about this, but your opinion also scares me. Because there is no way to achieve your perfect world without privileging the rights of some over the rights of others. I also don't like your comparison of decision making in business to that of decision making in government. In business it is easier to determine good outcomes. If more money is made, we made the right decision. Government involves morality, and outcomes cannot be measured with amoral assumptions of correctness. One person's good outcome in government is another person's bad outcome relative to morality. You're probably right when you say that the elite are better at holding the reigns of power than the rest of us. It's a very monarchist thing to say, but it's probably right in many contexts. And like monarchies it's something that I believe we should fight to change. John Dewey recognized this, and made it his prime motivator for compulsory education in the United States. To train citizens for a functioning democracy. Democracy to me isn't some state that we sit in and relish. It's something we focus on improving through constant education of ourselves and by teaching those around us.
  • Jun8 12y ago
    That quote is often attributed to Churchill but I haven't seen a clear citation yet. For his citable quote on democracy and the so-called Churchill Hypothesis see http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/summary/v010/10.3jasiewicz.html http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/summary/v0....
  • 12y ago
• vishnugupta 12y ago
  > If you take that wealth and move it to the average person. Wealth redistribution doesn't necessarily mean taking money/wealth, literally, from wealthy and giving it away to poor. It includes, among others, subsidized education, free access to basic health care, nutritious food, potable water, eradication of epidemics, decent housing, decent retirement income and so on. This is the problem I see in societies that are highly unequal (read US :-)) where in a democratically elected government is reduced to make way for capitalists. All or most of the above are controlled by multinational corporations whose sole motive is higher profits. So what ends up happening is that even a middle class family is just one calamity away (e.g., death of bread earner, a high cost health problem) from being pushed below poverty line. Even education for that matter has gotten privatized to an extent where only wealthy can afford good education; as various studies have shown education does make a significant difference when it comes to money earned over longer period. Or take 2008 recession where pension corpus of millions was reduced to zilch for no mistake of theirs. Wealth distribution, at least in my mind, means that ensuring that most of the citizens are on level playing when it comes to basic necessities. Over and above that of course one must be rewarded as per their contribution to the society and hard work. Poor are poor not just because they don't have money but also because they are unable to get out of it. They have to go through unspeakable ordeal just to get one meal a day and this places enormous cognitive load on the entire family. So of course children of poor, more often than not, remain poor as their basic intelligence itself gets suppressed due to lack of nutritious food, cognitive load etc., The book, "Poor Economics", was an eye opener for me in this regard. I once used to blame the poor for their situation but this book changed all of that. I would highly recommend it; to the extent that this should be made a mandatory reading in all colleges :-). > We want to make sure that the incentives of the people in power are aligned with the people who are not in power. This is really a tough ask. Unless decision makers, i.e., those in power, are accountable, every single day, to those not in power, decision makers will soon align themselves with private, capitalist corporations. You have a multi billion dollar arms manufacturer, oil corporations funding millions to election campaigns of US presidents. And then you have US citizens who get to vote once in five years; we also know that the voting itself can be rigged, public opinion can be swayed and etc., Now, whom do you think would the president side with? Oil corporation or US citizens? The answer is obvious! And so you will end up having Iraq war which is yet another way to funnel massive amount of tax payer money to private corporations; the cruel irony is that most of foot soldiers who are fighting the war and dying come from poor, disadvantaged families. Democracy as it's played out in US (and India) today is a complete farce. The fact that executive powers and policy making is concentrated in so few a hands in itself is indicative that this isn't democracy. Instead of giving power to the few and somehow hoping that their interests are aligned with rest of the citizens what needs to be done is build strong institutions. Democracy is fundamentally about strong institutions (court of law; education system; health care system; labor friendly laws) which are run and maintained by common citizens. Elected representatives' main job is do minor tweaks to the policies. This way the executive power remains with the commoner. What has been happening is a very systemic eradication of these democratic institutions; privatized education, private health care; private police force; private fire fighters and so on. Once you have hallowed the core of democracy by privatizing it you are left with just a handful of elected representatives who wield enormous power over rest of the citizens. They of course end up serving private corporations. US is run and controlled, more or less, by just a handful of private corporations which are in turn owned by a hundred individuals. Election, democracy etc., is just to keep the citizens believing that they have a say in the way the society is run when the reality is completely opposite. India, following the foot steps of US, is getting there really fast.
• nhaehnle 12y ago
  > It's an unpopular opinion, but I don't think that everyone should have a roughly equal say in how things go. The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are. To really get to the truths behind this opinion, it is important to distinguish one's political goals from the politically implemented policies in pursuit of those goals. I fully agree with you that the average person is not well equipped to decide on policies. However, the vast majority of people in the elite aren't equipped for that either! Look at somebody like Bill Gross, for example, who was removed from PIMCO after continuously making bad investments based on his misunderstanding of basic economic facts. I wouldn't want somebody like that calling the shots in government. Honestly, I would expect the connection between wealth and quality of policy analysis to be relatively weak. Education is certainly a confounding variable, but not all education is equal. (A good computer scientist doesn't necessarily make a good economist.) In fact, in certain policy areas such as economics, being part of the elite - which usually means being a high-level executive - is probably a negative for the quality of your policy analysis, because executives see the world from a micro-economic perspective rather than from the macro perspective that is needed in politics. In any case - I agree that a certain level of "elitism" is probably justified when it comes to the question of policy analysis, though you really have to be very careful who you think the "elite" is in that context. However, if you leave politics up to an elite, then the goals of politics will also shift to match the goals of that elite, which is probably not a good representation of the goals of the overall population. And therein lies the real crux, because when it comes to deciding what the political goals should be, everybody really does have the same qualification. And this is ultimately the reason why democracy is the right way to go. The tough problem is to establish institutions that translate democratically established goals into good policy.
  • carls 12y ago
    Well said.
  • kchoudhu 12y ago
    Bill Gross is incompetent? The guy who used to manage a 2 trillion dollar bond fund? I can think of many economically incompetent people, but Bill Gross is not one of them. A terrible manager, yes, but not incompetent.
• GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  So just out of curiosity, do you see yourself in the "have a say" group or the "do not have a say" group?
  • georgemcbay 12y ago
    I can't speak for OP, but I'm sure most people would pick the former for themselves, just like everyone thinks that everyone other than themselves is a horrible driver. The fundamental attribution error is very pervasive. This is part of why (as dumb as the average person is) I'm not down with the "elite ruling class" idea, even if we're basically stuck with that now whether we like it or not (except the elites aren't really individuals but large corporate interests who essentially own large swaths of government actors who supposedly represent citizens).
• guelo 12y ago
  Representative democracy is the elitist idea that elites will run the government but with an escape valve to let average people have some input into the system to prevent the elites from becoming too insulated and ignoring the needs of the average people. But representative democracy breaks down when moneyed elites take control of the voting system. Then it's just elites all around with no input from the population.
  • zo1 12y ago
    If the noble concepts supposedly behind democracy had any traction with governments, they would have led us to a direct democracy, not a representative one. Instead, we get a half-assed attempt at letting free-people to rule themselves. Forget money as some sort of concept that breaks democracy by allowing people to game the system. The bigger problem you have to worry about is the smooth-talkers, the influential leaders and all their legions of followers. Their single influential vote, counts a whole lot more than yours, or ours, and that single vote means no equality.
    • waps 12y ago
      What about the fact that most direct democracies, aside from making representative democracy look practical, all failed when confronted with the real world ? Besides, having read the history of Athens, direct democracy can be described as mob rule, and there the problem of 51% of the population votes to kill off the 49% others was a very real problem. Every American probably can imagine the problems guilds created in medieval Europe, right ? Athens was a state where the equivalent of guilds could literally and legally decide to kill the competition (which they did, several times). Besides, let's not lose sight of reality here. America would be a near-theocracy if it was a direct democracy.
    • eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      >If the noble concepts supposedly behind democracy had any traction with governments, they would have led us to a direct democracy, not a representative one. Switzerland seems to work pretty well by direct democracy.
• saalweachter 12y ago
  > It's an unpopular opinion, but I don't think that everyone should have a roughly equal say in how things go. So something that comes up in any discussion like this (economics, politics, global climate change) is that there are several layers of questions to the debate. Some of the questions are matters of preference, some are matters of fact or science. For instance, on the topic of inequality & a wealth tax, we could have these questions: * Is a democratic society desirable? (a matter of preference) * Does inequality (in wealth) distort the democratic process? (a matter of fact) * Does a wealth tax correct the inequality in a way which solves the problem? (a matter of fact) * Is the wealth tax the best way to solve the problem? (a matter of preference) For more fun, different people could have different questions, but it still makes for plenty of hilarity when one person is arguing whether a wealth tax is effective and another is arguing whether it is desirable and another is arguing whether it is necessary, and no one understands why they aren't making any headway. Now, to tie this around to your comment, I would clarify that what I mean by "a democratic society" is one where every person has an equal say in matters of preference. In a rational society, these are the only disagreements. I am happy to debate whether, if climate change is happening, we should do something about it. I have neither the desire nor the time to argue whether it is happening or whether it is man-made; these are matters of science and my preference matters not one bit. The problem we have now is that both matters of fact and matters of preference are up for debate, and the extremely wealthy have a disproportionate say in both.
• asdkl234890 12y ago
  One thing that always bothers me about wealth distribution is that you can't simply move wealth around and expect things to get better. Things have gotten better in countries which have reduced inequality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw Don't confuse persons with populations. They are not the same thing. A person is very different from a population.
• dools 12y ago
  Whilst not everyone has a good understanding of a wide range of complex topics (economics, diplomacy, medical science etc.) they have a very acute understanding of their own best interests. Having a democracy ensures that policy makers at least have to convince people that something is in their best interests. Just because a policy maker is capable of convincing the public that something is in their best interests, does not always mean that it is. However the fact that they have to works enough of the time that democracy is working better than other systems of government so far by many measures.
• tiatia 12y ago
  "The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are. " I tend to disagree but I guess it depends on your definition of "Elite". If I define "Elite" as wealthy people than you are wrong. Most rich people, especially if the wealth is inherited, have little to no idea how to solve "large" problems and what are the problems in the world. I give you two quotes to think about. Both quotes are not meant condescending but just shows how out of touch they were with the common people. Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: "Let them eat brioche." (Queen Marie Antoinette) "An ancient Chinese emperor who, being told that his subjects didn't have enough rice to eat, replied, 'Why don't they eat meat?' (何不食肉糜？)Emperor Hui of Jin in Zizhi Tongjian.
• deciplex 12y ago
  >It's an unpopular opinion, but I don't think that everyone should have a roughly equal say in how things go. The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are. Everyone has different specialties, and different volumes of abilities. You wouldn't let an intern have an equal say as a senior engineer when designing the core infrastructure. You especially wouldn't let the janitor have an equal say - he's got no experience in desiging such things! >I'm always very uneasy about equality talks because all people are not equally suited to make global policy decisions. Nor are they equally incentivized to make the most informed and rational decisions. I completely agree with this, however I don't think the guiding principle behind having a democracy in the first place, is that you'll arrive at optimum (or even good) policy decisions, provided you give everyone a say. Rather, the franchise is supposed to serve as a check on the wealthy and the ruling class, so that they can not monopolize political power. If the disparity in wealth and power grows too great, they can circumvent even that, which is what we're seeing happen in the West now.
• prof_hobart 12y ago
  > People who have wealth are going to be better with that wealth than people who don't. Do you have any empirical data to back that up? The lack of old money that Gates alludes to in his article seems to suggest otherwise. Even with the advantages that simply having large amounts of wealth gives you (better education, easier access to seed capital for new ventures, better access to other influential people etc), surprisingly few of the modern day mega rich in the US started out with large amounts of wealth. There's also plenty of evidence (such as http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-22/for-ceos-correlation-between-pay-and-stock-performance-is-pretty-random http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-22/for-ceos-cor...) to suggest there's little, if any, correlation between how much a CEO earns and the success of a company. > The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are. I would agree that not everyone is equally well equipped to deal with large problems, but I don't see much evidence to suggest that there's much correlation between wealth and ability to successfully tackle the myriad problems facing the average society. Is a multi-millionaire businessman automatically better placed to decide on education policy than a teaching professional, or on the structure of a nations health service than medical professionals etc?
  • nathan_long 12y ago
    >> People who have wealth are going to be better with that wealth than people who don't. > Do you have any empirical data to back that up? The lack of old money that Gates alludes to in his article seems to suggest otherwise. Gates looked at a list of the very wealthiest people and asked how many inherited their wealth. Even if the answer is 0%, we could still ask about other brackets. Eg, how likely are Gates' descendants to be in the bottom income bracket? How likely are the children of someone in the bottom bracket to be middle class?
• joyeuse6701 12y ago
  You can't keep wealth and expect things to get better either... Fortunes and the opportunities inherent to them have been lost by fools of the next generation who invested poorly or just consumed. Naturally those who earned it we would say should keep it, but I'd agree with Gates/Buffet that it is a sort of odd thing. I agree we don't want inexperienced people handling the wealth and that I would say includes family of the wealthy.
• eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >It's an unpopular opinion, but I don't think that everyone should have a roughly equal say in how things go. The average person isn't as well equipped to deal with large problems as the elite are. You are assuming the elite are far wiser and more ethical than the broad masses. That is not at all well-evidenced.