[cutcss]

> extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale.

Yeah, and water is wet; since ever is known that the best tool to make money is... money; so the resource tends to get unevenly distributed and pile up in the hands of a few. And what's worse is that the punishment for not having enough money is... to lose money, obviously overdraft fees are the best example of this, but there are a million ways more.

[raarts]

I did not know what 'overdraft fees' were until I came to live in the US. So for other non-US readers: For bank accounts where you are not allowed to overspend, but you try it anyway, there is a difference in how that is handled in the US vs European banks. If you spend more than your current balance ('overdraft'), US banks allow that, but charge you a hefty fee (my bank charges me $35 per violation). European banks just disallow it altogether.

It even happened that one day I had a withdrawal, and a deposit. Overnight, the bank first processed the withdrawal (account balance became negative), next added the deposit (balance became positive again). Then charged me the $35 fee! They could have done it the other way around and not charge for it....

[anigbrowl]

Not only this, but banks were in the habit of ordering your account activity on a day-by-day basis so as to maximize your fee liability, a practice which cast Bank of America some $400 million a few years back and which Wells Fargo is trying to escape responsibility for at present through some other litigation strategy: https://consumerist.com/2011/07/14/bank-of-america-paying-ou...

[nugget]

To expand on humanity's historical experience, the best known method of reducing wealth inequality seems to be revolutions and world wars - the more devastating and catastrophic, the better.

[cutcss]

...sure but, well, we have internet and other advancements since then, there may be a chance of less murderous solutions to work.

[gcb0]

you will get a kick reading Nietzsche biography.

[balthasar]

I have seen it argued that government intervention leads to wealth concentration, that in a free market competition is supposed counteract this.

[philipkglass]

This is the homeopathic theory of government intervention: the much-less-government Belle Epoque had greater wealth concentration than a century later because government still intervened some in 1875. The lower the concentration of government, the more potent grows its poison, as libertarians attribute society's problems to this diminished residual. If things aren't better following government reduction, the solution must be to shrink it further, not to reconsider the theory.

People still peddling revolutionary communism have a parallel homeopathic theory about capitalism. Bring up a bunch of empirically observed problems in the former USSR and they'll go "Oh, those 20th century 'communist' societies were state capitalist, not real communists; the problem was that they didn't get rid of capitalism enough. Under Real Communism we'd have all the good stuff and none of the bad."

It's not very convincing.

[gcb0]

except it is the exact opposite. and the entire article is about it... sigh.

[balthasar]

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't agreeing with "government intervention leads to wealth concentration" I was stating that people who bring this up do not believe it is a given that "extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale". Cutcss was implying this is universally agreed upon but I've seen many people believe the opposite.

[byproxy]

"The Anatomy of Inequality" by Per Molander delves into this. It's a pretty good read.

[anigbrowl]

Sadly your comment has been auto-hidden for some reason, perhaps that of expressing an unpopular opinion.