[groby_b]

You might want to pay closer attention to the complaints about inequality. What that focus is about is the degree of inequality.

Most people talking about it are not actually pursuing a world of absolute equality, but a world with reasonable levels of inequality, and with regulations that make a rapidly increasing spread less likely. I.e. we want floor and ceiling not too far apart, and not rapidly separating. Which means UBI alone, or minimum wage, or any number of floor-focused things are not the answer. Neither is a wealth tax, or any number of ceiling focused things the answer, by themselves.

[darawk]

> You might want to pay closer attention to the complaints about inequality. What that focus is about is the degree of inequality.

I pay quite a bit of attention to it. I'm aware of what it is people are complaining about. Everything I said stands.

> Most people talking about it are not actually pursuing a world of absolute equality, but a world with reasonable levels of inequality, and with regulations that make a rapidly increasing spread less likely. I.e. we want floor and ceiling not too far apart, and not rapidly separating. Which means UBI alone, or minimum wage, or any number of floor-focused things are not the answer. Neither is a wealth tax, or any number of ceiling focused things the answer, by themselves.

Why? What's good about that? What, exactly, is the benefit we get from pursuing a flat wealth distribution? People often promote this idea, making the implicit assumption that reducing inequality is somehow a good in and of itself.

The point of these things should be to improve the material living standards of as many people as possible. If reducing inequality is a necessary side effect of doing that, then fine. But I see no reason to pursue that as an actual ultimate goal.

[jjoonathan]

The notion of "value" pursued and optimized by our economy is proportional to wealth. Feeding a starving poor person has no economic value, but helping a rich person drain middle class retirement accounts has enormous economic value.

To the extent that the wealth distribution is unequal, our economy will ignore real, pressing issues among the poor in order to focus on the increasingly esoteric "needs" of the wealthy.

That's why absurdly lopsided wealth distribution is a problem.

[darawk]

> The notion of "value" pursued and optimized by our economy is proportional to wealth. Feeding a starving poor person has no economic value, but helping a rich person win the game of thrones / bank accounts has enormous economic value.

If you feed a poor person so that they can get a job and contribute to society, that generates quite a lot of economic value. But yes, you're right, giving away food does not increase GDP on its own. But then, neither does zero-sum wealth transfer.

> To the extent that the wealth distribution is unequal, our society will ignore real, pressing issues in order to focus its energy on silly zero-sum pissing contests among the few individuals that matter according to said distribution.

Is that so? That must be why our technology looks the same today as it did 100 years ago. Or 50 years ago. Or 20 years ago. Or 10 years ago. All those zero-sum pissing contests.

[jjoonathan]

> If you feed a poor person so that they can get a job and contribute to society, that generates quite a lot of economic value.

Not for you. Feeding a poor starving person does not make you richer. If they could have afforded to pay, they would not be starving. The economy fails to incentivize the satisfaction of a real need because it does not value the needs of those without money.

That, of course, is an extreme example, but the same principle applies to all the shades of gray.

> Is that so? That must be why our technology looks the same today as it did 100 years ago. Or 50 years ago. Or 20 years ago. Or 10 years ago. All those zero-sum pissing contests.

Any system of power can lay claim to the products of the society it governs, but I have always found those claims wanting, because there are so many other factors involved. Technological progress in particular. Capitalism's advocates are really good

The notion of incentivizing people to do important work is not unique to capitalism. Capitalism is not even particularly good at it, and is getting worse at it, as inequality in the wealth distribution drives capitalism's notion of what is important further and further away from what most people actually find important.

Capitalism on a somewhat level-ish wealth distribution is great: everyone gets a say in what's important. Capitalism on a super skewed wealth distribution is not great: only the lucky few get to say what's important, and everyone else is ignored. The wealth distribution is the problem, and policy to make sure it doesn't run away is going to be the eventual solution.

[darawk]

> Not for you. Feeding a poor starving person does not make you richer. If they could have afforded to pay, they would not be starving. The economy fails to incentivize the satisfaction of a real need because it does not value the needs of those without money.

It does not value the needs of those who have not contributed to its largesse. You are valued in proportion to your contribution, or the contribution of your parents.

> The notion of incentivizing people to do important work is not unique to capitalism. Capitalism is not even particularly good at it, and is getting worse at it,

Capitalism is certainly the best of any system i'm aware of. Is there some other system you're aware of that's done a better job of producing innovation?

> as inequality in the wealth distribution drives capitalism's notion of what is important further and further away from what most people actually find important.

Hm? Away from what most people find important? How do you get people's money if you're not offering them something in exchange that they find important?

[tomp]

Is the degree of inequality really the issue though? Personally, I like that there are people like Jeff Bezos who can personally fund a space company.

The real problems, for me, are the power imbalances (lobbying, corruption, tax evation by rich people), and rent seeking (e.g. owning real estate or entrenched businesses).

[groby_b]

Power imbalance is directly created by the insanely rich. Bezos bought an entire newspaper. Sheldon Adelson buys his politicians more directly, but same difference.

And rent seeking is what enables the imbalance. Without rent-seeking, it'd be much harder for the gap to widen (because rent seeking captures wealth creation for the benefit of the rent seeker)

And of course, the two feed into each other - power imbalance allows for lobbying, creating opportunities to obtain rent. Which, in turn, widens the power imbalance.

Maybe you could theoretically fix those two without addressing inequality. I don't know. I suspect it wouldn't work - if you truly fixed power imbalances and rent seeking, I'd wager you'd address wealth disparity too.

I'd see all of them as tangled in the big hairy cluster that is laissez-faire capitalism.