The problem with this mentality is feedback loops. If money flows to those who own things more easily/readily than those who do things, society will be heavily stratified despite any individual efforts to improve one’s lot.
I’m not sure that this is a natural state. Maintenance of capital is expensive. It must be defended, repaired, furnished access, etc. These costs are naturally distributive.
Consider that in our society, somebody must be paying the maintenance costs of ownership. Who?
It isn't a natural state. Rigid stratification needs to be maintained forcibly through laws. Free markets are a natural state, and not coincidentally free markets produce lot of mobility.
The Pareto Principle is a bitch. There's no way to remove inequality without trampling on the rights of the few lucky people.
|If money flows to those who own things more easily/readily than those who do things
The vast majority of people with a lot of money are doing things. They are not idle, and it is not through idleness they wound up in their position. At least in the US.
This is doubly true for their money. It's not in a big swimming pool for them to paddle around in Scrooge McDuck style. Well, at least, most of it isn't.
|other factors = intelligence, hard work, lack of bad luck like disasters, unexpected medical bills, etc
How many of those can you attribute to luck? Winning the genetic lottery is one of the best things you can hope for. You have no control over it, and it greatly influences your outcomes. Born stupid and ugly? Tough luck, maybe in another life.
If you want to be the best cyclist in the world, training for it isn't enough, you need that extra 1% advantage genetics.
But for most everything else in life, you can be plenty good at what you want to do if you're willing to train for it. You don't have to be the best programmer in the world to make quite a good living by programming. It's hardly necessary to be the best businessman ever to run a good business. Etc.
Oh, and on the internet, you can be ugly as a mud brick and it won't have one iota of influence over your success or failure.
Maybe take inventory and look at what you can do, rather than obsessing about not looking like Keanu Reeves. Even so, Peter Dinklage, Danny DeVito, Kathy Bates, Bette Davis, are not the beautiful people. I've met a few movie actors in person, and without the makeup, lighting, and director, they look like ordinary schmucks.
I think you missed the point my post. I'm not one of the people on this board that like to decry success as just being a principle of luck, like it's some kind of lottery.
We're specifically talking about the wealthiest people in the world. The people who got that 1% advantage. I apparently made a mistake in describing those people as lucky (just meaning that there are only a handful of people that will sit at the top, so being one of those people is lucky; it's against the odds).
My whole argument is you can't just take their shit because you want it, and them having a lot of shit isn't a sign that they've done something wrong that allows you to trample on their rights. I think people concerned about inequality have lost the plot. Instead of helping people pull themselves up, they focus on taking from those at the top. Granted, we'll all be more equal financially, but it's hardly a utopian outcome, and no one's lot will be improved, only worsened.
It’s not about rich folks Scrooge McDucking it — it’s that if a rich person does a unit of work and a non-rich person does a unit of work, the rich person accumulates more wealth than the non-rich person as a result of the work. “Rich person work” is “decide how to allocate my capital”, which isn’t an option to many, but for those who have it as an option, it’s vastly more rewarding than actively making things.
Right. The Pareto principle is the observation that large amounts of resources tend to consolidate in a few 'hands'. It's observed in natural systems as well as human created ones.
So, back to your original point. You seemed to be saying that in order to reduce inequality (a good thing), you must trample of the rights of people, specifically the wealthy (a bad thing). But then you admit that it's largely luck which determines whether or not a person is wealthy.
I don't think it would be a big problem to redistribute a small portion of their wealth. Or, similar to what you said in a nearby comment, if society as a whole decides to redistribute a portion of your wealth then "tough luck" (although remember that you are still better off than most when considering how "tough" your luck is). So the original problem with reducing inequality seems to have been solved. It is not a great trespass on the rights of the wealthy to redistribute some of their wealth.
Most people in Germany lost everything in WW2, I mean everything. They were reduced to beggars.
But it wasn't long after the war ended that the people who had money before the war had money again, and the people who didn't before, didn't again. I.e. some people know how to make money. They make their own luck.
Well, I mean the government insists on only allowing rich people to invest and prevent poor people from doing the same, so the claim that his mentality is what's concentrating wealth while the government's own policies get away scot free is rather silly.
If you're talking about the "accredited investor" rules, I believe that those are both intended and have the actual effect of protecting poor and middle income people from scammers (by making the exploitation of them with some fantastical get-rich-quick scheme into a specific federal crime).
Does it also prevent them from investing in Facebook in 2004? Yes it does.
> If you're talking about the "accredited investor" rules, I believe that those are both intended and have the actual effect of protecting poor and middle income people from scammers (by making the exploitation of them with some fantastical get-rich-quick scheme into a specific federal crime).
Yeah, so the thing is that the wealth of a lot of the people with inherited wealth was made via investments by ancestors for whom a similar investment today would be illegal.
It is certainly true that many people lost a lot of money through bad investments before the accredited investor rules. It's also true a lot of people made a shit ton of money. The issue now is that today, they have the effect of ensuring that only the rich can invest in the most lucrative investments.
Anyone can invest. At robinhood.com, you can even buy just one share of stock for no commission. I know a person who scrimps enough to be able to buy one share of stock per month.
That's not what I'm referring to at all. I mean if your friend has a company and wants to take his company public, he can only sell the stock before the IPO to 'accredited investors', thus concentrating the bulk of the profit potential to those who are already rich. It's not just pre-IPO sales but many other investments. For example, if you live in a poor neighborhood and your friend owns a successful restaurant in your neighborhood, he cannot seek investment from you. Instead, he has to seek investment from a rich person, because the government does not think you are smart enough to invest in your friend's business. this again literally takes money from the poor and hands it to the rich.
The restrictions are completely onerous. Someone I know was soliciting investments of $25k for a business he owned in the community. I had the money in cash, and I was perfectly happy to lose it all (but hopefully I'd make some money). I believed in the business and wanted in. However, since I did not make $200k / yr, and I didn't already have $1m in wealth, I was not allowed. Why? At the time I was taking monthly vacations to Hawaii, New Orleans, skiing, etc. I was eating out every day. I was basically living a life of luxury. But, because of the amount of money in my pocket book, I was barred from taking one potential leap from the working class to the wealthy class. On the other hand, an already wealthy man would be more than allowed to invest.
Of course, I could invest in the public stock market, but the fact is that the public stock market forces people to only invest in certain companies. Many people feel skeptical towards companies over which they cannot directly observe.
Obviously, I understand the stock market exists, but if you think stocks are the most lucrative investments, you have a lot to learn about the financial systems.
> if you think stocks are the most lucrative investments
I didn't say that. But they are the easiest to get into and it's a level playing field (all the info you need about companies is online). Few will deny that early investments in MSFT, AMZN, etc., were incredibly lucrative, and anyone could have invested in them.
As for the minimum investment thing, that came about because of endless lawsuits people bring over failed investments claiming they had no idea what they were doing and need a nanny (i.e. the government) to hold their hand. I don't advocate such restrictions, so don't hang me on it.
> you have a lot to learn about the financial systems
I've done tolerably well investing in stocks, and so as you can see I talk about what I know.
They may be lucrative but since the same people were denied access to the more lucrative investments it should come as no surprise that the growth of their capital is less than the growth of capital of the rich.
This is not rocket science. Piketty says that when r > g, that is, when return on investment is greater than rate of economic growth, the rich get richer. It is not much of an extrapolation to conclude that if R > r, that is, when the rate of growth of capital of the rich people investments is greater than the rate of growth of capital of regular joe investments, that the rich also get richer
I am well aware of the reason the rules are in place. But in the same way the government cannot ban poor people from starting their own businesses, neither do they have the right to restrict investment by rhe poor. The governmebt simply has to put up with the lawsuits or declare by statute that certain behaviors cannot make someone civilly liable.
Im sure youve done well in stocks. I have too. However, given my time working in management consulting, i can assure you that you could be doing a lot better if you were allowed to invest like the rich do.
> They may be lucrative but since the same people were denied access to the more lucrative investments
Do you realize how much MSFT and AMZN went up since their IPO?
> neither do they have the right to restrict investment by rhe poor.
We can agree on that point, at least. Ironically, the government encourages the poor to invest in lottery tickets, which are not even investments, but straight up gambling.
Consider that in our society, somebody must be paying the maintenance costs of ownership. Who?