The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe | Hacker News Reader

The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe

theatlantic.com

82 pointsfraqed29 comments

It's nice to see that The Atlantic caught up with Thomas Jefferson [1], "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. " The question now before us is can we live with the inequality or destroy it without destroying ourselves?

1 - http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_tree_of_l...

- Edit: grammar

There's also the whole question of the state's total monopoly on violence being unchallengable since the mechanization of the military in late WW1 and all of WW2. Even more so with the NSA and the surveillance state we all live in.

That said, that Thomas Jefferson quote is still relevant. Bureaucracies and systems do become stagnant, grow in power to become oppressive, and occasionally need to be rebuilt or evolve to be made better. This is true in industry and is true in government too. The question is how does this change come about?

Considering the modern state of warfare this must now be viewed as "shaking the tree of established ideas and systems", rather than any form of violent revolution or coup.

I'm currently making my way through the Oxford History of the United States and the entire reason the US revolutionary army - a loose collection of poorly armed and trained militias - was even able to win against the biggest imperial army in the world was because:

- a big ocean separated US/Britian, making reinforcements and most importantly communication challenging.

- the British army and economy was largely depleted due to their long war with France, they were in no position to win a war, especially a half-hearted war

- the British crown was totally oblivious to the fact that the support for royalists was insignificant, due to their distance and distraction with France, their intel was simply awful

- France joined in to support the war at a critical time

Unless America joins another costly deeply unpopular world war or somehow becomes in financial ruin, I doubt there will ever be an internal revolution again. Even then it would be risky and probably a bad idea. Therefore an entirely non-violent peaceful shaking of the tree is the only practical option :).

Uhmm... maybe you're not there yet but we had a civil war a hundred years after the revolutionary war :).

That wasn't a revolution? And it wasn't post-mechanization of the military?

Not sure which part you are challenging.

In a similar vein Dan Carlin has repeatedly brought up in his podcasts the concept of the "historical arsonist" [1] or those great leaders/peoples who, on their rampage of murder and mayhem across their respective continents burned away the old making room for growth.

[1] https://warisboring.com/dan-carlin-explains-historical-arson...

I find this entire argument suspect. It all boils down to pointing to instances when catastrophe lowered inequality, ignoring all the instances when catastrophe increases inequality, and then claiming that's the only thing that causes inequality. The entire line of reasoning is specious. You can't prove a negative. It confuses correlation with causation.

It would have been nice to have a control group, true, but howya gonna do dat? We have to look at the evidence we have, and there is a fair bit of it, so we might as well take a look. I don't think the author is cherry-picking. There's nothing shocking about stability increasing organization and stratification that's hard to maintain during chaotic times. Power tends to concentrate, I think that was noted before Marx came along. And I've read books highlighting the phenomenon from a couple decades back that focused more on China and the east, as warlords rose and fell in three-century cycles. A better argument against this idea is that the article mentions that reductions in inequality continued a full thirty years after WWII, which doesn't fit the thesis all that well.

> It would have been nice to have a control group, true, but howya gonna do dat? We have to look at the evidence we have, and there is a fair bit of it, so we might as well take a look.

I totally get that, but that's no excuse for saying you have causation when you have only correlation. It's also no excuse for claiming to have proved a negative.

> I don't think the author is cherry-picking

Calling it cherry picking is generous: this is anecdotal evidence. You need more than a half dozen examples to prove a trend, and I'd prefer examples more precise than the events that occurred across an entire country over the course of decades.

To be clear, I don't question that catastrophe can reduce inequality, but I don't think it is the only thing.

Only if you assume the data have been fiddled do you have to worry about correlation not being causation; otherwise the law of large numbers applies thoroughly - if not coincidence, that leaves causation in this case. Why? Because present inequality can't be causing previous peace; and as for both being a downstream cause of something else ... well that just beggars my imagination - Descarte's Evil Genius or Aliens with a sense of humor are the only such upstream causes I can imagine. But if you can do better, I'm open.

Most eras of history consist of anecdotal evidence; ya gotta examine and play the cards you have, not those you'd prefer. You infer that you've done a lot of reading plump with evidence contradicting this without ever offering bibliography or counterexamples; but my reading, which I mentioned, supports the thesis (for example, in the East as well) (and as it happens, supports Marx in this matter.) Please raise, call, or fold.

A current counter-example would be the Tunisian revolution[0], started because of economic inequalities, 6 years later, said inequalities are still there if not deepened.

0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Revolution

I don't think a catastrophe is sufficient, only necessary.

Doesn't qualify as a catastrophe, more of a velvet revolution.

Inequality != Injustice

Imagine a society where the poorest person had a standard-of-living on par with Warren Buffet, but where the richest person was richer than the poorest by a factor 100-times greater than we find in our world today. Does anyone argue that such a society is worse than the one we find ourselves in? Wouldn't everyone jump at the chance to live in that society, regardless of which strata they found themselves living in?

Another thought experiment: Imagine you could wave a wand today and redistribute everyone's wealth such that everyone had exactly equal wealth. Further assume you could find a set of laws which guaranteed nobody would exploit anyone else, and dictate and enforce them perfectly on this utopic society. Would you allow trades in your society? If so, how long would it take before some people had more wealth than others? Would it just never happen? If not, why not?

Inequality is no great evil to be banished. Even if it were, you couldn't do it and maintain the freedom of different people to value different goods/services at different amounts and to make trades based on their values.

Fighting Poverty is a worthy goal.

Fighting Injustice is a worthy goal.

Fighting Racism is a worthy goal.

Fighting Inequality is tilting at windmills.

Fighting poverty sometimes implies fighting inequality, such as in a zero sum resource struggle. Poor people aren't warren buffet yet.

It's hard to argue against trivial equality, the state of being reduced to zero.

But that's not what modern equality proposes.

The argument against Trump is this case, in my opinion, void.

What he is is proof of systemic weaknesses and corruptions in our beurocracies.

The right sentiment, but the argument is too reductionist.

Sort of like saying If we're all dead, we're all equally alive. Not false perse, but it's an absurdity.

Edit: coming from an active conflict zone, I often comfort my western colleagues by arguing that everything we have that's worth anything is often built on blood sacrifice, and that the west is in need of fewer conflicts, because it learns and ends up prefering peace over conflict, as will my region someday. War a d conflict are natural to us but so is peace and love of kin.

I understand the author, but it's a bit grim. That said, hope for the best, prep for the worst.

The great compression and several of the other examples in the article were times of economic growth.

Indeed, it's just how you get there that's economically catastrophic.

His premise is the issue, not its conclusion. I don't deny that peace follows war. My argument is against his premise of peace only following after war.

It bugs me when people obsess over equality, and not the standard of living. Today's poor have it better than kings in many ways. Running hot water, air conditioning, much more.

If people would stop coveting what everybody else has, society would be much better off. Instead of saying "he has more than me" say "I have enough for my needs".

There will always be someone with more. Don't be greedy be grateful, or you will never be happy.

The commies obtained "equality" but did standard of living improve? No many people starved, and millions were murdered. They depended on the west for their very food. Now China is becoming less authoritarian and is able to grow.

An interesting article and some valid points, though I'm confused as to how they ignored the MASSIVE growth of equality due to the Industrial Revolution, or was that a catastrophe? I'm sure there are some that would think so...

The trouble is the next total war will be a nuclear war.

In this case, the US decline probably started in the 1970s when they left the gold standard.

Or maybe halving the capital gains tax had something to do with it:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Federal_...

Something certainly happened around 1970-ish: https://www.mises.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/graph-1.png

Looks like 1st percentile wage growth stagnated right around 1970, but 99th percentile wage growth didn't start accelerating until around 1980 - right around when bond prices started rising again, after falling through the 70s. And they've been rising ever since.

You bet your ass something happened. I'd love to know what. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._inc...

Nixon started the war on drugs in 1971 - that's what you're looking at there.

Nixon and then Reagan's policies.

Which policies, exactly, caused the discrepancy we see in pre-tax income growth?

Or are only only referring to incarceration rates?

The free movement of capital across national borders is not helping

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