Comment by hasbroslasher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hasbroslasher | Hacker News Reader

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Of course desire for redistribution is motivated by self-interest! Why should laypeople starve while an ever tinier class of people continues to own and profit from the world? The irony of the "they just want free shit" people is the sad truth that the wealthy are constantly acting out of political self-interest as well, just that their interests are lessening the government's interference with their finances.

The irony I always see in these scenarios is affluent people's short term memory about history - the invading barbarians, the destruction of the aristocrats' temples, the brutal dictatorships that gained hold from popular outrage about the bourgeois. There's an easy way to prevent this kind of thing, and it's by fostering a society where people can't get angry enough (or powerful enough) to do something totally stupid. A second American revolution seems unlikely as of today, but our current political landscape is telling about how royally broken the world is soon to become.

I don't think a second American revolution is unlikely; I think it's inevitable if conditions don't change. I don't think it'll happen today, but eventually it will. Your historical examples are spot-on; every civilization in history that survives long enough eventually has all of its wealth and power vested in the hands of a small elite, and then there is a revolution that destroyed the civilization. The only long-term survivors seem to be the civilizations with strong gifting economies, or where the overall civilization is so poor that there's very little difference in wealth between the poorest member and the ruler.

Those who oppose Income Redistribution seem to think all of their wealth is going to be taken away. Very few advocates actually want that. I think most of the issues of wealth inequality could be solved if the wealthy were just a little less wealthy, and got richer a little more slowly, than they currently do. They'd still be quite wealthy, and probably wouldn't even notice the difference as far as their lifestyle and security. But everyone else would feel a lot more secure and have more opportunities, and that's what will prevent the revolution.

I hear much concern, not necessarily from you, about the effects on productivity of taking. Do you fear any effects on people's psyche, self-esteem for instance, of giving?

Beloved FDR, in his state 1935 SOTU address said "To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/his101/su35fdr.html

I worry that hundreds if not thousands of years of various types of market economics has ingrained much into our humanity, and that progressive notions like UBI and redistribution will have deleterious unintended consequences.

There's a certain pride in being able to provide for yourself and your family without depending on the charity of others. That's very ingrained in middle-class US society, and back in FDR's day that pride was strong among farmers, poor immigrants, and most others barely managing to scrape by through the Great Depression. Those are the folks I believe FDR was talking about in your quote.

But below them are poorer people, desperate people, people who are still struggling to provide for themselves but are loosing ground because the odds are against them. (eg: everything is more expensive when you're poor, opportunities pass you by, etc.) In my opinion, the goal of income redistribution should be to lift these people up enough so that their struggle to hang on is changed into a slow climb towards independence. They don't need riches for that, they just need a fair playing field and enough wealth to stay in the game. No one in this group, I believe, would be hurt by the assistance.

Now, there is a group even further down the ladder, who have given up the struggle, and who couldn't care for themselves even with adequate wealth. These are the people that opponents of various income redistribution proposals use as the examples of "freeloaders" who will "take all our wealth" to get a "free ride". It's disingenuous to highlight this group while ignoring the group I described above, but I do have to agree that this group would not be helped by income redistribution. This group needs a better version of the social safety net that we already have in place: shelters with free meals, medical care, drug addiction treatment rather than incarceration, education. These people need help learning to become productive members of society before they can benefit from directly sharing in the wealth of society and move on to helping to produce that wealth.

UBI assumes a sort-of Star Trek utopianism whereby production is severely decoupled from labor input.

It depends on whether we're pointed at "replicators" ( or some assemblage reinventing them ) and how far we get there, how fast.

And some who advocate for it are just Levellers.

> UBI assumes a sort-of Star Trek utopianism whereby production is severely decoupled from labor input.

No, it doesn't.

A mature (sufficient to live reasonably comfortably on its own) UBI probably needs a significant revolution in productivity to be sustainable, but UBI does not rely on production being decoupled from labor input (in fact, one of the arguments for it is that, compared to status quo systems and other alternatives to them that have been proposed, it provides better capacity for worker retraining and realignment of labor to meet changing needs.)

I thought "sort-of" was enough weasel to imply "significant revolution in productivity." :) See what you've done? Now I'm thinking about how you could construct a feasibility model :) In my case, probably "badly."

Hell, get all the status-seeking crap outta work and you'll probably have better results. Yeah, right :)

My position continues to be that - because of the marginal value of a "dollar" - redistribution is justifiable. Even Hayek considered being open-minded about having certain goods be considered sufficiently public goods as to be treated as public goods.

If we consider monetary velocity as a public good, then doing things to support it is... supportable.

The problem may be how we go about this.

It is just that it may not actually be possible, unless someone can show a method whereby it can be done without corrupting the agents who execute it and corrupting those who receive it.

Not having governments interfere with their finances is perfectly respectable position. It's positively rude to ask how much someone makes. SFAIK, the various versions of the income tax were designed to be fairly rude. They were, of course, initially targeted only at those with very high incomes, then we got frog-boiled into everyone having to be subject to them.

Tax rents. Not income. Then, perhaps there will be less pain.

I have a decent income (s.t. it would be measurably reduced in an income redistribution situation) and I want it for self-interest reasons as well. I would be taxed more, sure, but I wouldn't have to worry about someone robbing me because they are starving. If we could improve the stability of society by giving the less fortunate a little off the top, that is really in line with my interests.

Voluntary charity is always an option for you. Don't most people mean mandatory, state-controlled taking from you to give to someone else when discussing this subject? Would you support "measurably reducing" my income so you don't get robbed? So I don't get robbed?

Yes I (and probably the parent) mean mandatory state-controlled taxation. Yes we support measurably reducing both of our incomes so neither of us get robbed. And yes I support doing so against your wishes if a majority of society votes for it.

If you object to that, please make that argument instead of just asking rhetorical questions.

Absolutely. I had a computer and internet access growing up, now I have a high paying computer job. A lot of people did not and do not have that. I'm happy taking from someone who is making a decent income and giving it to those who are not.

A lot of my coworkers have the opinion, "Ok, you donate but don't tell me what to do with my money." They'd love to privatize roads, just live on their land and forget all else. It's silly though, we're in a society, the people at the bottom support the people at the top. The people at the bottom don't have the same opportunity as the people at the top. Give me the chance and I'd be a benevolent dictator and rather than give computer guy a chance to own a Tesla, make sure no one at the bottom knows what hunger is.

Are you presently worried about someone robbing you because they are starving? In the third-world, absolutely. In the United States anyone who's starving has ready access to SNAP, food banks, or (worse-case scenario) dumpstered groceries.

I'd be more concerned about being robbed because someone has a serious substance-abuse issue, was raised in a broken single-parent household, there's a complete lack of entry-level jobs, or something of that sort, none of which is aided (but rather is perhaps aggravated) by increased levels of income redistribution.

I'm in Baltimore, and as mediocre as it is, most of the danger one faces is just teenagers in groups being stupid teenagers (if you're not involved in drugs the crime from that world doesn't affect you as much, unless you're stuck living in one of those neighborhoods). Property crime is done more so by addicts looking to steal your gardening equipment.

So yea, hunger generally isn't what leads directly to crime, but the crime does exist because these teenagers have wants and needs that aren't being met, to the point that they would rob someone, steal their bike, etc. There are kids here who sell cold water and soda on the street corners to make money. If they're working selling drinks on their summer break, they probably know what hunger is.

Lets say we have total population P, fraction of rich q. Total wealth W, fraction of wealth possessed by rich x. Lets say we take txW and give to poor.

Share/poor : txW/P(1-q)

Fractional increase in wealth of a poor (FI) : ( txW/P(1-q) ) / ( W(1-x)/P(1-q) ) = tx/(1-x).

We assumed all poor have same wealth.

Some quick values for (t = .1 = 10%) (x, FI) (10%, 1.11%) (15%, 1.275%) (25%, 3.33%) (50%, 10%) (75%, 30%) (90%, 90%)

Lets say 1%er have 25% of all wealth then poor will see 7.5x3.33 ~ 25% increase in wealth if 75% of rich wealth is taken.

Conclusion: everyone loses in a revolution.

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