Wealth inequality

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doodle
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Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Sat Dec 19, 2020 8:55 pm

Is there a level of wealth inequality where libertarians might consider the idea of redistribution or government action through UBI in order to preserve social cohesion?

The scenario I'm thinking of pertains to increased automation and high levels of unemployment.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Smith1776 » Sat Dec 19, 2020 9:32 pm

doodle wrote: ↑
Sat Dec 19, 2020 8:55 pm
Is there a level of wealth inequality where libertarians might consider the idea of redistribution or government action through UBI in order to preserve social cohesion?

The scenario I'm thinking of pertains to increased automation and high levels of unemployment.
I'm with Warren Buffett on this one, generally speaking. Even Buffett, the consummate capitalist, has said that government needs to step in sometimes to steer markets gone awry.

What I DETEST is the ivory tower types who think they have it all figured out sitting in front of their computer screens. As if they can have it all figured out and articulated in a stream of consciousness forum post.

The reality is that it's a HARD problem. Again, even Buffett would admit he doesn't know the precise solution in terms of exactly how much capital from who and when -- more like just the general tenor of the solution.

This is true of most major topics in economics. We all need to take a step back and admit that most of us don't really know what the right answer is.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Smith1776 » Sat Dec 19, 2020 9:40 pm

Oh, and yes, I personally think that eventually machines and AI will be more capable than humans in almost every aspect of society relevant to jobs.

I imagine eventually it will get to the point where even if you wanted a job you won't be able to get one. The idea that humans will retrain and reorganize as advancements in technology are made has a limit.

Society has always been a combination of labour and capital. If the machines are more capable than us then suddenly it's all capital and no labour. What then? The owners of the capital win it all? UBI may indeed be the answer.

One way I could see the above scenario play out differently is human+machine integration. Humans might be able to keep up with machines because eventually we literally meld into the same entity. It starts with one implant. Then two. Then before you know it we're cyborgs. After a while, we're 100% non-organic.

But... like I said before: who really knows?
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by whatchamacallit » Sat Dec 19, 2020 11:17 pm

It is a tough thought experiment.

I always like to remove the money from the scenario.

What resources are the people lacking that they need to be given?

Does enough of the resource even exist for everyone to have it?

Making sure there is actually enough of the resource available should come way before any thought of giving people money to buy it.

My opinion is that if there was really enough of that desired resource for everyone then it would also be affordable.

Extreme automation of production would also be extremely deflationary. The resource would be so abundant that the income need wouldn't be there.

Edit: To get back to wealth inequality, is wealth inequality really the problem or is it a supply shortage of the resources so many desire?
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Sun Dec 20, 2020 8:46 am

I'll admit that wealth inequality today is a psychological issue based on getting what one perceives as ones fair share more so than a issue of survival in most cases. I think humans probably have some degree of an idea of what fairness is built into them. I remember one-time working a part-time gig back in college and just getting a massive amount of tips for very little work...it just happened that a confluence of events in that position led to me being tipped to the point where I was making about 75 dollars an hour...a lot of money for me back then. On the other hand other individuals at the event who were busting their ass literally made maybe a few dollars above minimum wage. I definitely felt a lot of guilt about that and a sense that we were all in this together and that my position was in many ways orders of magnitude easier than what they were doing yet I was making ten times more. I ended up handing out about about 40 bucks to the guys bussing tables and then gave about 20 more to some homeless people to try to make me feel better.

The typical market analysis would go that I was ten times more valuable than everyone else there and that I was getting what I deserved because the free market said so. I think that's bullshit. Had it not been for those other individuals killing themselves trying to just make enough to pay their rent and buy enough food to be able to wake up tomorrow and do it again none of the rest of us would be able to make what we did.

I wonder sometimes how people like Bezos sleep at night knowing there are individuals in his company who are living on food stamps while he makes over 2 billion dollars a week. There is something fundamentally wrong with that picture to me.

At the margins and from a micro perspective I understand the argument that redistribution is a bad idea. Of course some individuals are more valuable than others and it is incredibly frustrating to see incompetent lazy people being rewarded the same and disincentivizing to do so.

However, just like my example or the Amazon example I can't help but feel that there are many instances where our system has led to rewarding some individuals beyond what is fair.

How does one rectify that in our complex system? I have no idea. Thousands of years ago in a tribal group I'm sure they would have worked it out socially somehow or the rewards to the best hunters and warriors and builders would have been respect and recognition moreso than getting to keep 75% percent of the resources and the rest of the tribe just making due with the scraps.

As one more example, imagine a group of ancient hunters going out to get food. One guy is great at shooting..he was blessed with an innate ability to shoot....without him they would never be able to take down the animal. However that guy cannot make the shot if someone doesn't put himself in danger and go scare the animal out of the brush and into the open. That job is in many ways easier although more hazardous to your health and anyone can do it. From a market perspective the shooter is worth way more. However he is useless without the other guy helping. In our system if we equate the shooter to the CEO making 10 million a year and the brush guy to a worker making 30,000 then for every pound of meat the worker got, the shooter would take 333 pounds. On a thousand pound animal the worker would get enough to feed himself and family for a day...the other guy would get enough for a year. I don't think that degree of fairness would stand back then...yet someone it does today and we are supposed to feel ok about it. I think it runs counter to our genetics.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Sun Dec 20, 2020 8:54 am

There are limiting factors for wealth inequality. A soft limit is some form of collective organization/bargaining (i.e. unionization), and the ultimate one is revolution.

Like it or not, these are trends that have played out over and over again throughout human history whenever the majority perceived that a small minority was "hoarding" wealth and immiserating them. Note the words "majority" and "perceive" in that sentence. The tipping point is definitely nebulous and fuzzy. It's not like there's a mathematical equation for when the peasants will revolt. It's based on things like overall moods and feelings. Hard to predict.

Those who deny that there is any problem with any level of wealth inequality would do well to learn the lessons of history. The people who get whacked first when there's a class-based revolution aren't the actual elites, but rather the professional and technical classes, the academics, the upper middle class, etc. I.e. people generally like those who post on this board. The real elites aren't very vulnerable, but the members of the upper middle class who derive their comfortable livelihood by servicing the system definitely are.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:12 am

Luckily, based on how I live everyone thinks I'm dirt poor. Ive been offered free coffee while sitting outside starbucks cause I guess I look homeless. Lol

I think this is interesting...
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:17 am

Those who deny that there is any problem with any level of wealth inequality would do well to learn the lessons of history.
My perception is that there are a lot of theoretically minded people here who don't put much stock in empirical historical evidence when it contradicts their "logical" theories.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:48 am

doodle wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:17 am
My perception is that there are a lot of theoretically minded people here who don't put much stock in empirical historical evidence when it contradicts their "logical" theories.
You know it's funny... Years ago when I was a hard AnCap, I started writing a book about how a totally 100% non-government society would be possible to implement today. I got about 150 pages in and many parts practically wrote themselves! It was so easy in the beginning. But over time, certain topics kept popping up as troublesome because my understanding of history provided different lessons from the ones implied by my arguments. I would try to fit the history into my theory, or explain how the history didn't disprove the theory because this situation or that situation would be different in the future, but eventually it became obvious that I was trying to torture reality into fitting an ideology. The effort collapsed under the weight of its own justifications.

That project was the beginning of the end of my interest in Anarcho-Capitalism. I never finished the book, but I keep the draft around to remind myself of the perils of being too theoretical and not checking your ideas against reality.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Sun Dec 20, 2020 10:03 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:48 am
doodle wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:17 am
My perception is that there are a lot of theoretically minded people here who don't put much stock in empirical historical evidence when it contradicts their "logical" theories.
You know it's funny... Years ago when I was a hard AnCap, I started writing a book about how a totally 100% non-government society would be possible to implement today. I got about 150 pages in and many parts practically wrote themselves! It was so easy in the beginning. But over time, certain topics kept popping up as troublesome because my understanding of history provided different lessons from the ones implied by my arguments. I would try to fit the history into my theory, or explain how the history didn't disprove the theory because this situation or that situation would be different in the future, but eventually it became obvious that I was trying to torture reality into fitting an ideology. The effort collapsed under the weight of its own justifications.

That project was the beginning of the end of my interest in Anarcho-Capitalism. I never finished the book, but I keep the draft around to remind myself of the perils of being too theoretical and not checking your ideas against reality.
I think I remember you talking about that project here years ago...how time flies!

Although humans are definitely evolved in the logical frontal cortex region our amygdalas are still driving most of our behavior. There isn't much that separates us from other hungry animals that will kill you for a half empty jar of peanut butter. We also have maybe a million years of genetic evolution in closely knit tribal units with built inideas of fairness and justice. Hard core libertarians get so stuck in their theories sometimes that I think they overlook or dismiss a lot of important realities about our species...as if they were dealing with a race of purely logical Vulcans
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Sun Dec 20, 2020 10:54 am

My professional life in the software world has taught me that people who are the most openly obsessed with the ideas of logic and rationality are often very emotional people, and these preferences are often more aspirational than descriptive.

If I can express a stereotype for a moment, I've found that this is especially true of Germans. They are so much more emotional than they will admit. :)
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Sun Dec 20, 2020 11:17 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 10:54 am
My professional life in the software world has taught me that people who are the most openly obsessed with the ideas of logic and rationality are often very emotional people, and these preferences are often more aspirational than descriptive.

If I can express a stereotype for a moment, I've found that this is especially true of Germans. They are so much more emotional that they will admit. :)
I can think of one recently departed anarcho cap here that fits that description well.

That might be true of Germans, a lot of the Dutch I met while over there were pretty vulcan. Brutally honest most of the time. Not a lot of white lies and sugar coating.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Libertarian666 » Wed Dec 23, 2020 10:31 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:48 am
doodle wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:17 am
My perception is that there are a lot of theoretically minded people here who don't put much stock in empirical historical evidence when it contradicts their "logical" theories.
You know it's funny... Years ago when I was a hard AnCap, I started writing a book about how a totally 100% non-government society would be possible to implement today. I got about 150 pages in and many parts practically wrote themselves! It was so easy in the beginning. But over time, certain topics kept popping up as troublesome because my understanding of history provided different lessons from the ones implied by my arguments. I would try to fit the history into my theory, or explain how the history didn't disprove the theory because this situation or that situation would be different in the future, but eventually it became obvious that I was trying to torture reality into fitting an ideology. The effort collapsed under the weight of its own justifications.

That project was the beginning of the end of my interest in Anarcho-Capitalism. I never finished the book, but I keep the draft around to remind myself of the perils of being too theoretical and not checking your ideas against reality.
How about sending me that book? I might be able to complete it for you. :D
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Xan » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:11 am

Libertarian666 wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 23, 2020 10:31 am
Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:48 am
doodle wrote: ↑
Sun Dec 20, 2020 9:17 am
My perception is that there are a lot of theoretically minded people here who don't put much stock in empirical historical evidence when it contradicts their "logical" theories.
You know it's funny... Years ago when I was a hard AnCap, I started writing a book about how a totally 100% non-government society would be possible to implement today. I got about 150 pages in and many parts practically wrote themselves! It was so easy in the beginning. But over time, certain topics kept popping up as troublesome because my understanding of history provided different lessons from the ones implied by my arguments. I would try to fit the history into my theory, or explain how the history didn't disprove the theory because this situation or that situation would be different in the future, but eventually it became obvious that I was trying to torture reality into fitting an ideology. The effort collapsed under the weight of its own justifications.

That project was the beginning of the end of my interest in Anarcho-Capitalism. I never finished the book, but I keep the draft around to remind myself of the perils of being too theoretical and not checking your ideas against reality.
How about sending me that book? I might be able to complete it for you. :D
Tech's version would be worth a read.

What also would be interesting, PS, would be a book ABOUT the book you were writing. Maybe large parts of it would be your draft. It would almost be an annotated version of your draft -- here's where I was going with this, and here's where it fell apart.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:25 am

Nah, I don't feel like the basic idea can be salvaged. And because I don't believe in the goal anymore, I don't feel comfortable being a part of helping somebody else achieve that goal.

Also, a lot of it is frankly a bit embarrassing for me to read today. So many headstrong and unsupported assertions. So much self-contradiction. So many obvious omissions that can't be added without challenging the basic philosophical underpinnings. I'm not sure I'd want to see any of it in print, even a heavily cleaned up version. It would have to discard a huge amount of what's already there to be any good. ...in which case, it would make more sense to start from scratch. So anyone who believes that a stable 100% government-less society is feasible is welcome to write their own book explaining how it would work. :)
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by vnatale » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:26 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:25 am
Nah, I don't feel like the basic idea can be salvaged. And because I don't believe in the goal anymore, I don't feel comfortable being a part of helping somebody else achieve that goal.

Also, a lot of it is frankly a bit embarrassing for me to read today. So many headstrong and unsupported assertions. So much self-contradiction. So many obvious omissions that can't be added without challenging the basic philosophical underpinnings. I'm not sure I'd want to see any of it in print, even a heavily cleaned up version. It would have to discard a huge amount of what's already there to be any good. ...in which case, it would make more sense to start from scratch. So anyone who believes that a stable 100% government-less society is feasible is welcome to write their own book explaining how it would work. :)
SUPERB response!

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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Libertarian666 » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:33 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:25 am
Nah, I don't feel like the basic idea can be salvaged. And because I don't believe in the goal anymore, I don't feel comfortable being a part of helping somebody else achieve that goal.

Also, a lot of it is frankly a bit embarrassing for me to read today. So many headstrong and unsupported assertions. So much self-contradiction. So many obvious omissions that can't be added without challenging the basic philosophical underpinnings. I'm not sure I'd want to see any of it in print, even a heavily cleaned up version. It would have to discard a huge amount of what's already there to be any good. ...in which case, it would make more sense to start from scratch. So anyone who believes that a stable 100% government-less society is feasible is welcome to write their own book explaining how it would work. :)
No problem.

The real question, however, is why anyone believes that a stable governmental society that protects individual freedom is feasible, since history is void of such examples and but is replete with counter-examples.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Wed Dec 23, 2020 1:04 pm

Not taking the bait, sorry. :)
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Smith1776 » Wed Dec 23, 2020 1:34 pm

Lol
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Libertarian666 » Wed Dec 23, 2020 2:00 pm

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 23, 2020 1:04 pm
Not taking the bait, sorry. :)
Bait? What bait?
Did I miss something? O0
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Wed Dec 23, 2020 3:01 pm

Yes, everything.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by glennds » Thu Dec 24, 2020 9:04 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:25 am
Nah, I don't feel like the basic idea can be salvaged. And because I don't believe in the goal anymore, I don't feel comfortable being a part of helping somebody else achieve that goal.

Also, a lot of it is frankly a bit embarrassing for me to read today. So many headstrong and unsupported assertions. So much self-contradiction. So many obvious omissions that can't be added without challenging the basic philosophical underpinnings. I'm not sure I'd want to see any of it in print, even a heavily cleaned up version. It would have to discard a huge amount of what's already there to be any good. ...in which case, it would make more sense to start from scratch. So anyone who believes that a stable 100% government-less society is feasible is welcome to write their own book explaining how it would work. :)
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by doodle » Thu Dec 24, 2020 9:11 am

glennds wrote: ↑
Thu Dec 24, 2020 9:04 am
Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:25 am
Nah, I don't feel like the basic idea can be salvaged. And because I don't believe in the goal anymore, I don't feel comfortable being a part of helping somebody else achieve that goal.

Also, a lot of it is frankly a bit embarrassing for me to read today. So many headstrong and unsupported assertions. So much self-contradiction. So many obvious omissions that can't be added without challenging the basic philosophical underpinnings. I'm not sure I'd want to see any of it in print, even a heavily cleaned up version. It would have to discard a huge amount of what's already there to be any good. ...in which case, it would make more sense to start from scratch. So anyone who believes that a stable 100% government-less society is feasible is welcome to write their own book explaining how it would work. :)
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The AnCap crowd in my mind makes the exact same mistake the communists make. Their theories fundamentally disregard the nature and behavior of humans. The communists ignore human selfishness and greed and the ancaps ignore human irrationality and the fundamental truth that in a world without laws might ultimately makes right.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by Pointedstick » Thu Dec 24, 2020 10:06 am

Yeah, all these -isms are born of the same strain of simplistic, purity-minded thinking that if we all got back to the ONE SINGLE THING that's the most important thing evarrrrrrr, then we'd have brought about the utopia.
  • Communism denies the value of anything other than collective solidarity
  • Capitalism denies the value of anything that can't be bought and sold
  • Fascism denies the value of anything other than ethic nation-state identity
  • Libertarianism and Anarchism deny the value of anything other than individual decision-making
Thus they achieve strong support among unbalanced people who only care about that one thing, but can't possibly win over everyone, because most people are either more balanced in their valuation of what life has to offer, or believe that different single thing is the most important thing ever. It is a recipe for constant ideological warfare that produces no victors, only carnage.
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Re: Wealth inequality

Post by glennds » Thu Dec 24, 2020 10:11 am

Pointedstick wrote: ↑
Thu Dec 24, 2020 10:06 am
Yeah, all these -isms are born of the same strain of simplistic, purity-minded thinking that if we all got back to the ONE SINGLE THING that's the most important thing evarrrrrrr, then we'd have brought about the utopia.
  • Communism denies the value of anything other than collective solidarity
  • Capitalism denies the value of anything that can't be bought and sold
  • Fascism denies the value of anything other than ethic nation-state identity
  • Libertarianism and Anarchism deny the value of anything other than individual decision-making
Thus they achieve strong support among unbalanced people who only care about that one thing, but can't possibly win over everyone, because most people are either more balanced in their valuation of what life has to offer, or believe that different single thing is the most important thing ever. It is a recipe for constant ideological warfare that produces no victors, only carnage.
Similar reasoning is why the Buddha advocated the middle way as the path to liberation.
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