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Comment by sampl | Hacker News Reader

Funny, I was just reading that same example of his in his book “basic economics”, and it makes sense.

Still, couldn’t you say the same for a feudal structure? That nature has power imbalances, and the role of king only conveys that inequality?

Instead, we’ve intentionally built a more egalitarian system (and we’ve all prospered because of it), seemingly against nature.

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That's kind of his point though: that we have managed to get this far, but we shouldn't take it for granted and expect that we can just "turn up the equality dial" and get more equality. These are complex systems and barbarism is always at the gate, because that's the default state. It's not that equality isn't a laudable goal or worth pursuing, it's that it's an extremely hard goal that must be approached thoughtfully and often indirectly.

Interesting point, and well put--thanks.

Maybe there's a distinction to be drawn between "inherent part of the human condition" and the "default state", as you have described it. Attempting to change something "inherent" seems worthless, but default is merely waiting to be overwritten with something better.

For ex: death is inherent in the human condition, we cannot avoid it and must deal with it. Nakedness is only the default state, and is pretty easily solved.

Back to economics: maybe scarcity is inherent, but "social tragedy" may be merely a very solvable default.

Not the best example :). Death seems inherent on the timescales of the lifetime of the universe, but on our timescales, it's merely a default. There's nothing in physics or biology saying we can't solve that; it's just an extremely difficult challenge that we didn't solve yet. I mention it because if we classify it as default, not inherent, it means we can and should be doing something about it.

But keeping appropriate timescales in mind, I agree with the conclusion - for given constraints, there are things that are inherent and not worth attacking, and then defaults that are merely attractors for the system state.

> I mention it because if we classify it as default, not inherent, it means we can and should be doing something about it.

Should? You're assuming that mortality is a problem. Extreme longevity or immortality would certainly change the human condition, but it's purely speculative to think it would be better in some objective, widely-accepted sense. Not every "default" is something waiting to be fixed.

Eliminating the biggest cause of sadness and suffering (not to mention, economic loss) sure sounds like something that would be widely accepted as good. There's a reason why almost every religion offers some kind of afterlife.

There's a good argument to be made that the assumption of mortality is baked into so many things in our economy that it would break down if people suddenly started to live much longer on average. But that, again, is a default - some state attractor. Something we can try to work around.

I respect your point of view, but I disagree with you. I suspect that people in general would be divided on the issue -- and the 'pro-death' faction (!) have not merely accepted, sheepishly, the limits of our existence without any reflection on the matter.

As a speculative anecdote, imagine spending ten thousand years missing a child who died in an irreversible accident. (Would childbirth even be permitted in such a future? How would overpopulation be addressed?) Or the dampening economic and sociological effects caused by a millegenerian population's entrenched resistance to change. Or the possibility that longevity is only available to the wealthy, or the drudgery of being stuck in a boring job for millenia...

Longevity doesn't necessarily solve sadness, suffering, and social ills -- it just shifts the goalposts.

Why do we have to take for granted that equality is even a worthy goal? Raising quality of life for everyone would be... Like if someone making 80K today has the quality of life of a millionaire from a few hundred years ago, then isn't that notable? Why would it even be reasonable to try to get the same outcome for everyone? It's like a function that concatenates diversity - what leftists claim to love - but their principles, like equality, don't produce it!

If you’re on the receiving end of a system that, systematically, hurts/kills you, your family, your community, and culture, storming the bastille or marching on washington or whatever for equality probably will suddenly make a lot of sense.

That's also equality of opportunity - which we have. Do you have evidence that we have no equality of opportunity, or that I am simply trying to pass-off equal opportunity with equal outcome? Acting like we don't have equality of opportunity, and then promoting equality of outcome is intellectually disingenuous.

You don't have to take it for granted, although I would suggest that equality of opportunity at least is fundamental to the American conception of liberty. That said there's not any reason you have to agree with it, though, or with any broader notion of equality. My point was simply that Sowell's arguments don't exclude it as a goal for those of us who do believe some form of equality is a laudable aim.

Did you purposefully parse my words incorrectly? It is very common to confabulate equal outcome with equal opportunity. Do you understand the difference? I was certainly talking about equal outcomes.

> we’ve intentionally built a more egalitarian system

More egalitarian in the sense of opportunities, yes. But that doesn't mean it will be more egalitarian in the sense of outcomes. The disparity in wealth between the poverty line and Bill Gates, for example, is probably larger than the disparity in wealth between a serf and a king in feudal times.

We represent a lot more power as money now. In the feudal system most power imbalances were not assigned a number

> We represent a lot more power as money now.

I'm not sure that's true. While, as I said, the disparity in wealth between Bill Gates and the poverty line is much greater than that between a king and a serf in feudal times, the power disparity between Bill Gates and a person at the poverty line is a lot less. A feudal king could command all sorts of things of serfs and exert all kinds of power over their lives that Bill Gates can't command or exert over anyone. So Bill Gates' money does not represent power the way a feudal king had power.

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