[kofejnik]

yes, exactly; to have equality, you'll have to reduce everyone to the lower common denominator, which will be rather low

Also, I don't see why exactly inequality is inherently bad. I'm poorer than Bezos, _and that is a good thing_. Pretty much like Steph Curry is better than me at basketball and so he should have a lot more ball possesion should we be playing on the same team, Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with.

[onion2k]

to have equality, you'll have to reduce everyone to the lower common denominator, which will be rather low

Why must everyone go down to the lower common denominator? Wouldn't moving everyone to the average also be equality? For most middle-class Westerners that would be a reduction, but for most people on Earth that would very likely be a small improvement, and in some cases a significant improvement.

The real problem is that it's logistically impossible. Someone living in the middle of a desert just can't have access to the sort of food wealth and stable energy supply we have because the technologies to get those things to where they are don't really exist yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to move everyone towards the average a bit though.

[tathougies]

Of course the technology exists to bring food to the desert. Move to california if you think this is what the hold up is.

[onion2k]

California has ports and airports and... roads. People stay in the same places for a long time. Try delivering fresh produce to nomadic Bedouin tribes in the Eastern Sahara and you might find it a little trickier.

[Mirioron]

Then perhaps living in the Eastern Sahara is not a good choice?

[kofejnik]

If everybody is forced to be average, what's the point of even trying? I'd probably noodle on my guitar all day and play Fallout, rather than work

[onion2k]

A huge number of people work very hard for much less than middle class Westerners have. They would all get more than they have now. I suspect that would lead to better global productivity even with the loss of your input.

[beerandt]

Do people still actually believe this?

"Next time it will work because the workers will be properly motivated!"

[headsupernova]

exactly, that sounds rad. We don't have to do all of this busywork. Post scarcity is here.

[chipotle_coyote]

It's a bit of a strawman to take arguments of the general form "we should enact policies to reduce inequality" and implicitly restate them as "we should enact policies that force perfect equality," then argue against that restatement, don't you think?

[beerandt]

I think the concept of "inequality" itself is a type of straw man. It's basically a problem that will perputually exist. Arguments (straw man or not) pointing out the lack of a concrete, absolute (non-relative), morally justified goal is appropriate as long as "inequality" itself is the stated "problem."

If we were talking about a fixed, concrete goal, then I'd agree with you. Reducing poverty, reducing world hunger, increasing standards of living, etc are things that can be accomplished by setting some absolute, concrete moral goals, which moving towards by any measure might be considered morally good. But "inequality" on its own is, prima facia, a term that requires comparison to the point of "perfect equality".

Doing good things might result in less inequality, but reducing inequality for the sake of itself is just justification of envy. There's nothing inherently "evil" or even negative about it.

On a side note: "Reducing inequality" is an activists dream. They can sell political solutions forever for a problem that will always exist, by some form of the definition.

(Unless we were to oversimplify it and set some standard deviation type hard-target for income distribution, but I've not heard anyone suggest this, let alone an appropriate "fair" target distribution. I'm not for it, but it's at least a measurable goal.)

[SketchySeaBeast]

> Bezos is much better than me in allocating resources, so he should have a lot more resources to play with.

How do you know that, though? Have you had the opportunity to be in the exact same place he was for the exact same time? Do you sincerely believe there aren't, in the billions of people on earth, someone with better resource allocation skills than Bezos? Having more money is not proof of ability.

[pksdjfikkkkdsff]

We know that because he did it. He literally proved it by becoming a Billionaire.

Yes, lots of people were alive in the exact same time when he started Amazon.

[SketchySeaBeast]

How is that proof of ability more than luck?

[pksdjfikkkkdsff]

He has been going at it consistently for many, many years now. He just happened to be lucky year after year?

Most people don't even try, but it doesn't stop them from accusing people who put in the work and who take the risks from just being lucky.

[VladimirIvanov]

Bezos also had parents that gave him a several 100 thousand dollar loan that they never expected to be paid back. He's a product of Montessori and Ivy League education. Definitely not a rags to riches story

[pksdjfikkkkdsff]

From 100 thousands to Billions is kind of rags to riches. And even so - you are saying he doesn't deserve his success? It doesn't count because he went to Montessori school?

[kofejnik]

I was a very bright kid (won math olympiads a lot), and I can get loans easily. Still I'm not Bezos-rich somehow ...

[SketchySeaBeast]

The problem I think is that people attribute all of success to the sheer iron will and willingness to suffer of the individual, when that just isn't the case. Are you attributing all of Amazon's success to Bezos solely? If he left do you assume Amazon would immediately start to fail? Was it Bill Gates alone who kept Microsoft afloat?

You have to consider luck, there's a ton of people in the world who put in the work and didn't get anything, and it's not just because they didn't work hard enough.

[kofejnik]

I don't see how luck invalidates my point; yes, you probably need luck to make big bucks, but that is just a part of the game. If you make so that no one can get seriously rich, "to prevent exploitation", congratulations, this is how you get Soviet Union, with Gulag and Golodomor and other stuff, but with oh so nice intentions, workers owning means of production, blah blah blah

[pksdjfikkkkdsff]

Not everybody becomes a Billionaire, but most people with intelligence and skill amount to at least something. The luck factor is mitigated by people trying several things until they succeed. You throw out the hypothetical example of the talented people who didn't amount to anything, but how common is it really?

Would you also say Steve Jobs was merely lucky, and everybody else could have founded Apple? Perhaps people just don't know enough about what those CEOs do?

And of course at a basic level, it is always luck, because even being born, being healthy, the place where you are born, intelligence, and so on, are luck.

I think to assume people don't deserve stuff because they were lucky is rather backwards.

Imagine you had a brain tumor, and you need brain surgery. There is a surgeon who was very lucky - he was born white, male, to a wealthy family, so that he could afford to go to the best schools to become a really good brain surgeon.

Would you then say that guy doesn't deserve your money, because he was just lucky?`

I'd say that's just bullshit. It doesn't matter why or how he got his qualifications by luck, magic, whatever. What matters right now, what makes you willing to give him money, is that he can provide you with the best odds of a successful brain surgery.

You are welcome to pick a random poor person from the street to perform that surgery, for the sake of fairness. After all, it isn't their fault that they weren't able to afford the education to become a brain surgeon, right?

And if you say that brain surgeon should have to operate on you for free, that is exploitation, plain and simple. You dispose of his body. In the end he would be punished for becoming a brain surgeon, because people would feel entitled to his services and would make him work 20 hours a day, with no compensation.

[fullstackchris]

There is an excellent paper on this, it is a combination of both luck and skill:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068