[amelius]

Yeah if you look at the Boltzmann Wealth Model, where every actor gives away 1 dollar to a random person, and you repeat this, then if you start with an equal wealth distribution, you end up with an exponential wealth distribution. That shows how strong exponential curves are :) A few "lucky" individuals become very wealthy, while the vast majority of people end up with very little or nothing.

The effect is so strong that I'm starting to wonder if we should have laws against power laws, like we have in engineering when we try to make things stable.

[skywalqer]

I believe a power law acts differently from an exponential distribution. I think wealth distribution is commonly approximated by a Pareto distribution.

In your model, the exponential distribution is caused by the fact that you cannot go below zero; otherwise, it would be a normal distribution.

I don't agree with your opinion about laws against power laws, but that is another matter.

[hammock]

Seems like a good argument against flat taxes

[Ferret7446]

That sounds semantically equivalent to legislating the value of the traditional gravitational constant.

[nonethewiser]

>The effect is so strong that I'm starting to wonder if we should have laws against power laws

This is literally and unironically communism.

[amelius]

Why? You want to earn exponentially more than other people the harder you work? Instead of just linear?

[nonethewiser]

Let me be more specific. Communism constitutes one way to combat the power law via law. Not all forms of law combatting power law are communism.

[amelius]

Hmm, I don't follow.

[bee_rider]

Sigmoid wealth tax maybe?

[trgn]

that's what progressive taxation is

[amelius]

Maybe, if you get the coefficients right.

[Balgair]

I mean, do we want the economy to be stable?

Not in a 'oh the rich don't so they control the media and so we don't' sorta way. But like in a 'lets educate people on the pluses and minuses, debate a while, and then come to an informed conclusion' sorta way.

Like, deep down, does the average person actually want a stable economy? Because it seems to me that there is an even split historically between the folks that want stability and a little patch of land and weekly rhythms, and the folks that just want to drunkenly burn couches in the street every full moon, or some such thing.

Not to be glib here at all. I like, would actually like to know the answer. Sorry if this comes off the cuff seeming.

[pstuart]

I have a dumbed down version of this question as variant of the Voight-Kampff test (Bladerunner) that goes like this.

You have 2 choices for how the world is shaped, pick 1:

A. You have a modest but comfortable home, a job that pays you enough so that you have what you need and can afford occasional luxuries (e.g., an annual holiday abroad), have good health insurance, access to education and childcare, etc. Everybody else has the same thing, and because of this you live in communities where the arts flourish because nobody has to worry about becoming homeless or destitute.

B. You live in magnificent mansion, one of dozens you own around the world (accessible via one of your personal Gulfstream jets). You have more money then you could ever spend in a lifetime (even recklessly). Your homes are staffed with obedient servants who cater to your every desire. I mean anything. You own them. Your mansions are on palatial estates with secure walls and guards to keep out the rabble outside -- who fight for scraps and are desperate enough to do any kind of work to keep your factories humming and printing cash.

I wouldn't hesitate to choose A because that's a world I'd love to live in and the world of B horrifies me. I don't say this as virtue signaling, it's my innate reaction.

I think that a significant portion of the population would love to choose B. And in some ways, some already have.

[achenet]

I really hate to call people stupid, but I would actually go ahead and call people who choose option B idiots.

I'm sorry if that offends anyone reading this, you can downvote me out of spite if that makes you feel better.

I say this because I read a while ago (like years) an article in the Economist showing that happiness in a society is correlated with equality - (sorry for the dash I am a human I just happen to use em dashes sometimes) not just amongst the poor, but also for the rich.

You'll note that rich people in highly unequal societies tend to struggle with mental illness more than in equal societies.

Money doesn't buy happiness. Being filthy rich won't heal the hurt in your heart. If you're too stupid too realize that, that's fine, enjoy your suffering, but I'd appreciate you having the honesty to admit that you're a deluded moron instead of trying to create completely false arguments for why the misery you're creating for yourself and others is actually a sign of anything less than pure human stupidity.

I couldn't find the original Economist article, nor the study it cited, but here's a link I found on Google.

https://leftfootforward.org/2017/03/people-are-happier-in-mo...

[hunterpayne]

Its a completely false dichotomy. You can have everyone choose A and still get B. The same faulty thinking always leads to populism, then extremism, then atrocity. So for the love of all that is holy, learn some economics or STFU on the topic.

[achenet]

Any resources you'd recommend to learn economics?

I have a hard time seeing how "I'd like to live in a world where everyone is equally cared for" accidentally leads to "others must suffer for me to be better cared for than any other human who has ever lived", but then again I'm not exactly an intelligent person so I can struggle to understand these sorts of things :)

[hunterpayne]

Not sure if you are serious. But consider a tragedy of the commons situation for the production of a commodity. Now consider that that commodity's price is influenced by weather. In such a situation, price will likely be volatile a lot of the time. You can mandate that your own producers follow certain laws to conserve your commons. But other places (ie governments) can choose to not follow those laws. And so you have a situation where everyone in a certain society can choose A but you still get B.

BTW, if you think that's somewhat arbitrary, I just described the global ag and fishing industries. So most food production has this quality. So any society that's largely agrarian will follow this pattern.

To start, learn about the following topics:

- Laffer curve

- Tragedy of the Commons

- Substitute products

- And of course, supply/demand curves

[amelius]

I think most people want to earn more the harder they work, and I think that is fine.

However, power laws basically spoil it because it gives a hard worker an exponential advantage, where they can (and will) use that money against other people who made different life choices.

[achenet]

> power laws basically spoil it because it gives a hard worker an exponential advantage

s/hard worker/person with more capital/

I can make 500 euros from a day of consulting as a software engineer. That's a typical day, working remotely, 9AM to 5PM, with a nice long lunch break.

Minimum wage in Bangladesh is around $133 per month. Many workers in the Bangladesh garment industry work 12 hour days. I look at what they do, and think "wow that's really hard I could never do that, glad I don't have to work that hard to live".

Yet somehow, I have exponentially more money than they do. And, thanks to the beauty of our current system, I can go ahead and invest that in the stock market, and get even richer while basically doing nothing.

It would be nice if we lived in a word that rewarded hard work, but as far as I can tell, we don't, and never have.

Look at the institution of slavery. For literally thousands of years, there was "those who worked", and "those who had".

The system rewards decision making, not hard work.

Now, if you're a young tech worker working on an important project at a big company, yes, choosing to work hard, IN THAT SPECIFIC CASE is a good decision, and it'll be rewarded.

But if you're a child laborer in a Third World sweatshop? No, your extra hour at the office probably won't get you anything extra.

If you're a Roman Senator in the year 30BC, you don't get rewarded for your work, you get rewarded for deciding to have your slaves spend more time farming grapes for wine and less farming wheat because wine sells for a higher price, which means that with your good decision making, you can now hire more slaves, to farm more grapes, to make more wine, which you can make for more money.

And if you look at rich people today, what they have is probably closer to the Roman Senator than the Third World sweatshop laborer - they find a thing that people like to buy, and invest lots of resources (their money, other people's labor) into making that thing and selling it, and are rewarded with money.

[amelius]

Just adding a note that making things is what people do naturally, and is what makes us human. People often say that without monetary incentives nothing would be made, but you just have to look at open source to know that that is just not true. (And yes, people make some money in open source sometimes, but you certainly won't find any filthy rich people there.)

[mswphd]

there is the other (significant) issue, that wealth (and its many benefits) are inherited, and by all indications the exponential advantage seems to pass down through generations (at least recently).

[pstuart]

I agree that people want to be rewarded for their effort, and should be.

But putting in 12 hour days being an EMT and saving peoples lives vs 12 hour days working with Claude to boost conversion pipelines have wildly different economic rewards.

I'm not suggesting a Harrison Bergeron economy but its also clear that the current system is trending towards B and the game is rigged to ensure that.

We don't live in a meritocracy -- there's a fair amount of luck involved (being in the right place at the right time).

[newfriend]

You could go do A right now at a local level. You don't though, because you don't actually want to live that way. It reeks of virtue signaling despite your protest.

[pstuart]

> You could go do A right now at a local level. You don't though, because you don't actually want to live that way.

"A" by its very nature is a "group effort". I could definitely be a better citizen and volunteer more and donate to causes, but that is a drop in the ocean.

And I pretty much do live that way myself. I have a modest home that I still have a mortgage on and live pretty simply. I drive a refurb'd EV, dress like slacker, and seek community and connection over flashy toys. I admit that when I walk through the first class section to my seat in coach I am not without envy.

> It reeks of virtue signaling despite your protest

The test in my mind is the cost of B, of living in that kind of world. The fact that you only see virtue signaling in my words says more about you than it does me.

[skybrian]

Seems like you left out the "millionaire next door." There are a lot of people who want to save up enough money to retire. Some of them want to retire early. This doesn't involve any mansions or extravagant living, but it does mean investing well.

How many people think multiple mansions is a realistic option for them? Not that many, I'd expect.

[pstuart]

Many Americans consider themselves to be temporarily distressed millionaires ;-)

I'm not trying to knock "personal ambition", the test was for who would knowingly and willingly choose to subjugate everybody else to misery if it meant that they could gorge themself on a firehose of wealth and power.

Basically, it is: are you a sociopath?

[Aurornis]

If you ask people what they want, they'll request some impossible combination of attributes without consideration of any tradeoffs.

They will also try to push all negative externalities on to people wealthier than themselves. Most people see themselves as middle class or lower middle class, even up to relatively high income levels. If you ask each of them where the tax rate should be increased, the answer is usually a few steps higher than their own income.

UBI is a topic where this becomes very obvious. When you explain UBI to most people they assume they will be receiving the UBI and some abstract combination of billionaires and corporations would pay for it. Then you show them the math that it wouldn't work and they start to become less enamored with the idea. (Or lately: They just don't believe you and retreat to their imagined ideal free of pesky economics)