Comment by sp527 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sp527 | Hacker News Reader

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There's a fascinating argument in 'The Lessons of History' that suggests we simply haven't accepted, as a species, that inequality is an inherent characteristic. We are quite purposely endowed with varying capabilities.

One of the essential patterns of history is the vacillation between freedom and equality as societal ideals. A freer society is a more unequal society, and vice versa. It's a fairly paradoxical and nuanced idea because we (particularly Americans) don't tend to think of those principles as existing in tension with one another.

Furthermore, once a civilization reaches a certain threshold, it follows that a great majority of people become unproductive deadweight. Technology accelerates that deterioration.

These aren't terribly inspiring human truths, but I find they do hint at the futility of bemoaning the condition or hoping for emergent and sweeping policy solutions.

Better to empathize where possible, feel eminently thankful for our good fortune, and donate whatever surplus of time and capital we might have to a helpful cause.

Might as well give up trying to earthquake proof buildings as well because earthquakes are just an inherent fact of life.

That's doing some reductio ad absurdum on your argument but you are saying we should just give up trying to fight something that bad and give some minor help when possible, correct? We can try to do better

I'm not saying we shouldn't try. Each individual person willing to help should do so.

I'm saying more broadly that we're all probably at the mercy of an inescapable cycle that may not end until humanity is willing to cooperate perfectly at the global/species level of abstraction.

'The Lessons of History' also comments that competition is also inherent to our biological nature. There's a passage about how we usually only cooperate in order to compete at plural granularities (e.g. families, corporations, nations, religions). This has obvious implications for the tradeoff between freedom and equality.

I agree that there is a trade-off between freedom and equality but the better our technology gets the better we can draw that line. We already have decided that both extremes aren't good so you can't for instance buy someone just because you are rich, and if you become successful we don't take all of your money until you are back to the national average. We have to try and figure out what a good balance is otherwise you are just going to capitulate to whichever group pushes their viewpoint through

I'm sure that inequality is inescapable, but it's pretty obvious just by looking at a few decades of history that current levels of equality are absolutely not a given.

In this respect, I think you should look at history as a function of the maximum potential global throughput of wealth transfer as opposed to a function of time. The past few decades look more like several millennia on that scale.

Why should we look at it that way?

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