[raven105x]

It is very rare for someone to have a sound argument from first principles as to why inequality is worse than equality for society as a whole. The majority don't get past "well, it's wrong because people kept saying so since I was young, duh!" to consider the pros and cons of inequality as opposed to equality (either as abstract ideals, or actualized realities) for society as whole.

[qwytw]

Because it's self evident. Historically extreme inequality generally led to social and economic instability (e.g. the collapse of the Roman republic, French/Russian revolutions/what is happening now) and to misallocation of resources and other suboptimal outcomes.

Obviously aiming for absolute equality would probably be more harmful. But there are plenty of arguments on why excessively high inequality is bad for the society as a whole. If you never bothered to read them and resort to silly conjectures like: "well, it's wrong because people kept saying so since I was young, duh!". Well...

[dvt]

> Because it's self evident.

It's not self-evident, as there are plenty of counter-arguments, including the Chinese Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the British Empire, the Caste System in India (going strong for over 3 millennia), and so on. Most of human history has been a period of extreme inequality. All you've got is a handful of revolutions in the last 500 years?

You actually need to make a moral argument. For example, slavery is bad not because it caused the the Civil War, but because it's morally wrong (and there's plenty of arguments here). I've also yet to see a very crystalized train of thought as to why inequality (maybe even extreme inequality) is morally wrong.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

There's several things to unpack.

Assume civilization has the perfect capacity and amount of resources to meet the basic needs (however that's defined) of all people.

Inequality here might be worse than a different civilization where we are in extreme abundance.

If one person has 99% of wealth and everyone else shares 1% - but that is still enough for everyone to have a good life - then it probably matters much less than the same amount of inequality when there's just enough resources.

So I think the amount of resources and the level of inequality matter - not just inequality in general.

Additionally, it matters what the people with most of the wealth are doing. If they're spending it mostly on orgies - that's probably not great. If they're spending it on making advances that we wouldn't otherwise invest in if things were equal - then I'd argue that's good.

All of this is going to be highly subjective based on what you think is basic needs and a good life and how much envy you have.

[dvt]

> So I think the amount of resources and the level of inequality matter - not just inequality in general.

Yep, I think I agree with this, although I've often seen stuff like "Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg shouldn't have that much money. No one should."

So I think the typical anti-inequality argument has a much stronger conclusion.

[cheschire]

Isn't moral argumentation subjective though and based on the moral premises an audience is willing to accept? How can one make a crystalized train of thought that withstands the subjective nature of all audiences, when the spectrum of humanity ranges from billionaires and cannibals to popes and middle school teachers?

Or perhaps I'm incorrectly inferring from your use of the word "crystalized" that you're looking for near undefeatable resiliency.

[qwytw]

> including the Chinese Empire, the Egyptian Empire, the British Empire, the Caste System in India

Yes. All of those were indeed miserable places to be if you were poor or did not have right skin color etc. I agree.

> You actually need to make a moral argument. For example, slavery is bad not because it caused the the Civil War, but because it's morally wrong (and there's plenty of arguments here)

No necessarily. I'd prefer to make an utilitarian argument. Over long periods of time high inequality leads to inefficiency due to wealth accumulation across different generations.

I could try and make more arguments, but I'll let you have a go this time..

[greysphere]

Here's a simple model: people have a desirable quality that exists in some people and doesn't in others. This quality is randomly distributed among all people. To express the quality, a person must have access to some amount (K) of resources. How do we maximize the expression of this quality? We maximize the number of people with K or more resources. Assuming some power-lawish distribution of resources what coefficient of that curve accomplishes this? The answer is the flattest one, assuming the total amount of resources exceeds K*population.

This model is communicated at large in various forms, "meritocracy", "you can do anything if you put your mind to it", "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", "every life is sacred" and so on. It's such a common model, it seems unsurprising that many people balk at a need for explanation. It's like asking 'explain from first principles why 2+2=4'.

[bbwwnn]

If the amount of resources is below Kpopulation - e.g. K/2population, wouldn’t that model suggest allocation K to half the population and 0 to the other half? If it is significantly above - e.g. 2Kpopulation, what’s the issue with giving everyone K and e.g. one person all the remaining resources?

[greysphere]

I agree the model quality expression model suggests both those resource distribution models would be maximal. My supposition though is resource distribution is going to be power-law-ish, which it doesn't have to be restricted like that, but seems a natural expectation.

And yes when the available resources are below the saturation point, more analysis will be necessary to determine what's optimal. A more advanced model would account for a variety of qualities, each with different importance and different Ks, suggest distributions for those and relate them to total available resources. My intuition, based on 'lots of distributions end up being gaussian' is that equality is maximal except when significantly resource constrained (ie some state like war or famine), or k for some particularly important quality is extremely high (which interestingly is another common narrative: Noah's Ark, the Manhattan Project, Armageddon, The Martian.)

[Al-Khwarizmi]

That there is not one K, but many, and we don't even know their exact values.

[bbwwnn]

Could you or someone elaborate on that? It’s not obvious to me how uncertainty around K implies that equality is a good thing… it feels like there is some (perhaps obviously correct) assumption here on the distribution of K that’s missing here. Now if we say that utility provided to society by a person is concave with respect to their resources, then equality becomes obvious, but that seems different than this toy model (and also not obviously correct).

[nine_k]

Some inequality in wealth is ok and healthy: it allows to concentrate capital and build big things that a co-op usually cannot build.

Extreme inequality is dangerous because the few wealthiest people concentrate enough power to overpower the mechanisms that keep the society stable and working. If you can bribe your way out of problems with law, or force the hand of the government by lobbying or menacing, you can break the society, while also acquiring even more wealth. If not stopped, the process leads to a dictatorship at the mildest, or a downfall at the most extreme.

[Biologist123]

> It is very rare for someone to have a sound argument from first principles as to why inequality is worse than equality for society as a whole.

Rare to find sound argument does not equal absence of argument.

I’m not sure what a first principles case would be here, but I guess it would need to start with an agreement about what a person is and what a society is, and the interaction between those two. Difficult as these are not agreed upon, even in the west.

On a relatively orthodox view on these points, your argument might be that beyond a given level of inequality, there are diminishing marginal returns to even the beneficiaries of the inequality. Tinbergen, a relatively well-known economist, thought this was around 5x disparity in income (ignore assets). You might argue about the precise figure, but having lived in places where there is high inequality, the crime rate put a serious cap on my perceived quality of life.

[logicchains]

If you want it in a less abstract sense, in this case it's essentially a kind of theft. A slow, steady transfer of wealth from currency holders to large financial institutions. Much as how counterfeiting is theft. Now people can argue it's okay to give the government the moral right to counterfeit for the greater good, but it's harder to make the argument that the financial industry should also be given that right.

[imtringued]

Optimal inequality has a limit but people advocating for inequality don't think there is any limit. A single person owning everything due to a gene that increases economic performance by 0.01% above all other humans would be fair game.

[EricDeb]

it's very very clear when money = speech