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Economic stratification is not simply a natural phenomenon. Especially at the current global levels of inequality. Policies and institutions had to be built to create and sustain this level of inequality. I'm not surprised that California in your opinion has done a better job of providing opportunities for it's high schoolers to get a better education compared to Georgia. For all of California's flaws I think if you look at the data you can see that it's clear that they invest more in providing equal opportunity for their residents than Georgia does.

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> For all of California's flaws I think if you look at the data you can see that it's clear that they invest more in providing equal opportunity for their residents than Georgia does.

I'm not sure I'd blame the state. It's pretty obvious that admissions committees don't take socioeconomic factors in mind. Some states are always going to be wealthier than others -- that's just a fact of life -- but why are universities punishing (poor) students by culling opportunity? After all, a poor black kid has more in common with a poor white kid than a black one-per-center.

The parent is praising California not because of their superior admissions policies, but due to the sheer number of Universities and opportunities available to students in California because of the State investing in education/Universities.

I would assume a lot of that is due to California's initiative process allowing its residents to put more school bonds on ballots, both locally and statewide. Georgia's initiative process only allows amendments and repeals for existing laws, and only for cities and counties.

Indeed economic stratification like that is profoundly unnatural. What’s natural is either universal poverty, if you look at the world before ~5,000 years ago, or nigh on universal poverty, if you look at the world before modern economic growth began in the -1800’s. There were places and periods that were better off before that but it never lasted. The population increased until the average person was on the brink of starvation and every 5-20 years over 10% of the population would die in a famine. And there was always a small class of patricians or tradespeople and an even smaller oligarchy or aristocracy who thought themselves rich but had no medicine worth the name, lived by candlelight when it was dark and travelled by horse, cart or ship.

You’re quite right that economic stratification is not a natural phenomenon. Economic growth is profoundly unnatural. In nature we’re a slightly more successful kind of ape.

The true story of civilization was the story increasing carrying capacity, so population needn't be managed through warfare, famine or infanticide. Which through contraception, TV and the internet has now become a different story of population management.

It wouldn't look the same, but I suspect economic stratification would still happen even without the institutions that reinforce it, because small advantages compound and power laws are a thing.

I'm reminded of how scientists have elaborate protocols for eliminating bias in experiments, because just wanting to do it right isn't enough. Fairness (however you define it) doesn't happen by default.

Understanding power law distributions is a real eye opener. They're everywhere in nature.

I don't know about how other people feel, but after learning about power law distributions and then seeing them everywhere I now just think "well, thats just how nature works." That and the normal distribution.

I often meditate on people's obsession over fairness. The best I can come up with is that it is a hardball negotiating tactic to get more than you otherwise would through creating leverage by making others feeling uncomfortable and betting that they're not going to be able to tolerate the uncomfortable state. That comes from watching both Frans De Waal's Capuchin monkey experiment below and from observing my toddler.

https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg

Then you consider all of the power Laws in the universe. Almost nothing is fair. Unfairness seems to be the default. Consider the animal kingdom is full of homicidal behavior. Life is very rough. Yet we expect "everything should be fair and everyone should be nice." At some level that just isn't commensurate with reality.

I also find there is an extreme intolerance, at least if feels that way to me, maybe it's just an extreme frustration, of inefficiencies in nature. An article pointing out that some talent is being underutilized and this is a travesty! Ok, I'm in agreement it would be nice if it could be maximized, I guess. But I think it's ludicrous to expect a system that has optimize for the whole to optimize for local cases too. Imagine you have to design a system that can handle anything and work well enough under almost any circumstance. That necessarily requires some trade-offs that have kind of crappy results in a variety of conditions. The best way I have come up with describing it is "constraint-based optimization is the root of all evil"

If we expect "everything should be fair and everyone should be nice," it's because parents and schools teach this. It doesn't happen by accident.

Then when people discover ways that our society doesn't live up to that, they try to fix it.

Partly. Though where did the parents and schools learn it from? Arguably Marxist and Postmodern philosophy. But where did those philosophers get it from? We know from Frans De Waal's research (original paper linked below) that the concept of fairness is present in non-human primates. He mentions in his TED talk that the experiment has also been replicated in other animals, though I haven't confirmed that.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01963

Well, yes, and to go further, most of the famous philosophers had things to say about justice, and so do most religions. (So why single out Marxism and and Postmodernism?)

Do any of them say "power laws, what can you do?" That seems like confusing what is and what ought to be.

Only because they're some of the most recent philosophies that have had a very widespread impact and also due to them emphasizing Collectivism as opposed to Individualism. Postmodernism is born out of Marxism and Marxism pushes the equality theme hence fairness. I'd say that's a fairly valid reason to cite them?

Matthew 13:12 "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."

One could take that to be in reference to the general dynamics of power laws.

But, to reiterate my actual point, you find the same behavior related to 'fairness' in the animal kingdom, so it's not a uniquely human thing. That also makes Marx and Postmodernism irrelevant. They're almost a natural consequence that arises from some deeper, pre-existing thing.

The Is-Ought problem is relevant. If we accept that the distribution of power in society and the distribution of individual contribution follow power laws (they certainly seem to) then in response to "what is" as a society we have to make a decision about "what ought to be" in terms of how we run our society. You have to make that choice but the David Hume points out with his Is-Ought problem that you cannot link the morality of what you think "ought to be" with what is.

This means that whether Marx is saying well it seems that Capitalism has some problems that eventually result in it eating itself with all this power and wealth going to the top, the middle being stripped out and the rest winding up dirt poor on the bottom, so we "ought" not to do things that way OR You say something along the lines of supporting the current capatilist paradigm, you can't compute whether or not you are making the "right" choice from a moral standpoint in either case.

My line of thinking for what "ought" to be is that if nature really does seem hell bent on organizing things a certain way, how likely is it we can do anything about that? And if going against the grain seems to produce perverse results without much benefit, than why not just go with the grain and take the good with the bad?

Going against the natural way of things is what I'd call civilization. Giving up on this is sort like saying that justice is an awful lot of work, so why bother with having police and a court system? This would be unpopular even with libertarians.

But in the end, this is all about costs versus benefit, which deserves more than a one-bit answer. There are many possible civilizations.

If you think my position is the nihilistic option of "we can't do anything,so let's throw the whole thing out" then you have gravely misunderstood.

My point isn't about the cost/benefit analysis. It's about finding and understanding the boundary conditions of the system and not trying to get to some delusional Utopia.

I'll state it another way. Freedom of Speech. Widely considered a good thing. Except for those who don't like what you're saying and want to shut you down.

Ok, so we have a lever that we can slide to different settings. Either, you're allowed to say absolutely anything with zero restrictions, or you're not allowed to criticize the regime in the slightest or the lever is set somewhere in between. The question is "where is the optimal place to set the lever?". It seems setting it to North Korean setting where everything is completely restricted doesn't produce good results. Ok, so we set it in the other direction? You can say anything. This seems to be much better. Except it has this consequence that since people can say anything they can say ridiculous things that you wish they wouldn't. And you just have to accept that. There isn't a setting where you can say whatever you like and so can everyone else and no one ever says anything you wish they wouldn't. That setting doesn't exist. This leaves you with the reality of "there's always a small amount of shittiness even in the optimal system."

That's what I mean when I say you have to go with the grain and take the good with the bad. It means learning to live with the parts you don't like, not pretending they don't exist or advocating for the levers to get set to some impossible, magical Utopia setting that isn't commensurate with reality on a fundamental level.

Unfairness is everywhere in the natural world, but cooperative structures exists throughout nature too when they provide a competitive evolutionary advantage.

Humans are deeply social animals. Fairness, altruism, and morality have allowed us to thrive as a species.

Absolutely.

I wish my mental models in Ecology were a bit more fleshed out. It's on the list of things to dive into. Regardless, it seems that things that cooperate often cooperate in order to compete against other things and that competion is often life and death in nature hence my nature is pretty brutal comment.

Though I fundamentally agree with you. I think really tricky part is that people view things as zero-sum competion with regards to human competion. And it sort of is. But if you zoom way out you realize it's actually non-zero-sum. So, my view on things is human competion is zero-sum in the short-term and non-zero sum in the long-term under a system that permits it.

The deeper idea is "what's the maximum viable amount of fairness?"

We know from medieval times and before that that most people as powerless serfs and an absolute ruler at the top isn't the optimal distribution. We're on pretty solid ground saying that. We know, though sadly it's contested by some, that the communist model pushes the lever too far in the other direction and that winds up pretty suboptimal too. So the maximum viable amount of fairness lies somewhere in the middle... and what if that is where the lever is set to right now or shortly in the future?

That's problematic because it leaves you with a lot of disaffected people and a "sorry, this is as good as it gets" which doesn't feel good. So it's like... what do you do? Well what can you do?

But things aren't static. We are on a trajectory. The last couple of hundred years have seen massive improvements globally, at least according to the late Dr Hans Rosling's book Factfulness. So, it seems to me there isn't something you can do today or tomorrow to "fix" everything. It's not even obvious the system goes into the shape that some people want to see it squished into, but it does seem that if we let the current machine run its course then eventually everyone has drinking water, electricity, schooling, health care and improving opportunities.

I guess my point is... maybe the system is in the right configuration to maximize the outcome for everyone but the timescale that plays out on is another 200 ~ 300 years?

Could be.

Also side-note: anyone who wants to support Charity Water they do pretty rad work helping chip away at the problem of getting drinkable water to the remaining ~600m that dont have it.

I think increasing economic stratification is very natural and happens often in history. It's just that historically when it gets too extreme, the poor kill the rich and start it all over again.

The rich could avoid this by getting rid of the poor, but they need the poor: historically to do the work, currently to buy the stuff that makes them rich.

Perhaps autonomous robots changes this? Even, the need for private armies, via autonomous killer drones?

Fortunately, collaboration between equals remains the greatest source of wealth creation, so anyone who doesn't do this is poorer, weaker and left behind.

Currently, also to do the work.

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