Comment by loteck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by loteck | Hacker News Reader

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> So when I hear people saying that economic inequality is bad and should be eliminated, I feel rather like a wild animal overhearing a conversation between hunters. But the thing that strikes me most about the conversations I overhear is how confused they are. They don't even seem clear whether they want to kill me or not.

Straw man aside, I continue to be deeply concerned about individuals who spend their time believing they are being hunted, literally or figuratively, to the end that they or some aspect of them is to be "killed". This is the kind of paranoid rhetoric that you can often find emanating, frequently unchallenged, from people who are often people of means, with some degree of privilege.

It's a significant concern, I believe, because the claimant, despite being a privileged and often powerful person, is admitting they have formulated their outlook based on a feeling they are a victim, or soon will be.

The reality is that their station in life means they are able to protect themselves from nearly all meaningful victimization. But either they do not understand this fact, or they are deliberately ignoring it. Either way, the positions they formulate based on this fear of nearly impossible victimization are often extremely flawed.

You can turn on a news station covering presidential politics if you'd like to see a consistent example of this being demonstrated.

I'd urge PG to be a little more self-aware, and I'm disappointed at the list of editors and helpers he credits who are unable to help question him into a more thoroughly developed narrative.

I think there is some validity to Graham's paranoia.

There is another way to characterize the trends that Paul Graham observes. Perhaps growing economic inequality is a natural consequence of capitalism itself, and the "defragmentation" (or greater economic socialization) of the economy brought about by World War II was only a temporary reprieve from the overall trend toward greater inequality.

This view is essentially Marx's original critique that, given enough time, capitalism will destroy itself. As wealth accumulates at the upper end of the income spectrum, it has a self-reinforcing and accelerating feedback effect: greater wealth purchases greater political and social influence, which enables even greater wealth production, often at the expense of the poor and the less wealthy. The system inevitably sows the seeds of its own destruction.

History has shown that massive inequalities lead to instability and revolution. As a self-admitted beneficiary and generator of said inequality, Graham is right to be worried about how he would do during such a period of instability.

> As wealth accumulates at the upper end of the income spectrum, it has a self-reinforcing and accelerating feedback effect: greater wealth purchases greater political and social influence, which enables even greater wealth production, often at the expense of the poor and the less wealthy.

A case for wealth accumulating on top can be made, if you believe wealthy individuals, on average, are better at allocating funds for a given "common good objective" than the government. In that case you would expect them to be more intelligent and benevolent in their allocation of this wealth as well as less susceptible to corruption (financial, moral, ideological) than the bureaucracy.

Systems wherein the wealthy are the primary allocators of 'funds for common good objectives' have already existed. They were called 'aristocracies'.

They did not result in improved lives for the non-wealthy.

"It is remarkable how under siege and victimized even the most powerful members of society feel, how much they tout their own up-by-their-bootstraps story.

In fact, a basic ritual associated with entrance into the circle of winners is constructing a personal story about how it was through grit, talent, and determination that you fought your way into it.

Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire son of a car company CEO and governor of Michigan, told an audience at a 2012 Republican debate that if you squinted hard enough, he looked like a figure right out of a Horatio Alger tale. “And I—I mean—you know, my dad, as you know—born in Mexico, poor, didn’t get a college degree—became head of a car company. I could have stayed in Detroit, like him, and gotten pulled up in the car company. I went off on my own. I didn’t inherit money from my parents. What I have, I earned. I worked hard, the American way.”

Twilight of the Elites, Chapter 5 "Winners"

It's just an analogy. I think you're reading way too much into the choice of words.

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