Stanford: A grim correlation between violence and inequality | Hacker News Reader

Stanford: A grim correlation between violence and inequality

news.stanford.edu

13 pointsotagekki22 comments

Is there any evidence that a society can function without inequality? Equality would have to be enforced, and unless that enforcement was done by self-maintaining automatons, I don't see how it persists. Perhaps a cycle of catastrophe and rebuilding is necessary to maintain a functioning society, in which case, the question of what constitutes a minimal viable catastrophe that accomplishes that goal becomes interesting.

I believe primitive agrarian societies had very little inequality but I could be wrong.

Even in the smallest unit of a society, a family, the most physically dominant, fearsome family member must enforce order, fairness, etc. Either a patriarch or a matriarch. As multiple families join to become a tribe, the respective family leaders arrive at a consensus as to whom the ultimate leader will be. Said leader's mandate is likely not absolute, but rather is driven by continued competence. It seems to me that as soon as that leader settles a dispute for other members of their tribe, inequality begins increasing until catastrophe returns that society to its most primitive form.

Arguably a society can't function with inequality either seeing as they've all imploded.

Most societies have however been more prosperous post-collapse when inequality is lower, although arguable cause/effect.

Perhaps a society can't function forever in a state of extreme inequality, but isn't it true that it cannot exist for even a moment in a state of absolute equality? So long as humans differ in competence, inequality is inherent in their interactions. As for prosperity, I suppose it depends on how one measures it. One way to do it is the kardaschev scale (0), which would suggest that society has never been more prosperous than it is today, when inequality is arguably the highest it has ever been. How would you measure prosperity?

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale "The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964"

> Perhaps a society can't function forever in a state of extreme inequality, but isn't it true that it cannot exist for even a moment in a state of absolute equality?

I would consider that a false dichotomy. And I think "absolute" anything is rarely the answer.

The fastest way to use the most energy is probably to light it on fire. And no, I don't think that's a good measure of prosperity.

Percieved general happiness?

https://hbr.org/2016/01/income-inequality-makes-whole-countr...

https://countryeconomy.com/demography/world-happiness-index

Judging by the comments the sentiment appears to be " In other news the sky is blue", but creating a narrative that's proven, conclusive, and thorough and reinforces what we already knew has substantial value for those of us that don't rely on generalities of the human condition.

This book serves as a canary in the coal mine if drastic action isn't taken at a global scale to reduce inequality.

Given the advancement of technology as it relates to war, WWIII has the potential to be catastrophic to the human race.

This phenomenon has been known and crystallised in research for a long time, but also has been talked about for even longer. At this point what is true as anything is that it doesn't really matter how accurate your results are, the economic system not changing has nothing to do with a lack of a correct answer.

Drastic action needed..... Such as?

“It is almost universally true that violence has been necessary to ensure the redistribution of wealth at any point in time,”

It sounds like Stanford just justified wars and empire building as necessary?

EDIT: I may have commented too quickly. Clearly this is a professor and not Stanford. It's hard to read "violence is necessary" as anything other than a call for violence though.

However, if the claim is that violence is necessary for redistribution of wealth which the article claims it seems disingenuous to choose “revolutionary” violence as the way you see it but not all of the other. It’s a rose colored glasses view that would say “this violence was okay but that violence over there was not.”

The ultimate issue is that people continue to use the metric of inequality where the poorest are compared to the wealthiest when it is a gamed metric from the start. It only exists for political reasons and is overall nonsensical. Comparing poor to middle class numbers is a much better indicator of overall inequality since it is a better reflection of general standard of living for the bulk of the population and not some idea that going from $10 to $15 an hour will suddenly make a person more comparable to Jeff Bezos. It’s a political statistic that should be outright ignored in favor of something more useful.

That's a very interesting reading of the sentence.

First, "violence has been necessary to ensure the redistribution of wealth" is generally the violence of revolutions and empire collapses, not wars and empire building;

Second, "A is neccessary to get B" does not imply "A is neccesary", you can't make that simplification. It can (and often does) mean "we won't or shouldn't get B, because these ends don't justify the neccessary means".

Third, this does not imply "justifying" anything, it's a factual observation about events in the past, not a value judgement. "is" vs "ought". Blaming the messenger is counterproductive; if you think that the statement is not true (I think it's not entirely solid, but need more review before asserting anything strongly), then it's appropriate to discuss why it's not true, but the fact that the conclusion is unpleasant and yucky does not discredit the argument in any way.

Fourth, a Stanford professor writing a book does not imply any endorsement by Stanford, making this attribution is not appropriate (the HN headline also makes this attribution, but the original article does not) - professors are supposed to have academic freedom and publish their individual opinions, no matter what the instutition in aggregate thinks.

They may not be strictly speaking necessary, but they may very well be inevitable. And if we come to the conclusion that they are inevitable that means we will at some point run out of options to avoid them unless we manage to redistribute wealth through some other means.

Check out this short article for an idea how big that gap between poor and 'normal' and the 1% now is:

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...

Likely we will see a trillionaire within the next two decades or so. Do we actually need such a person? Do we actually need people with 10's of billions?

In essence, the argument is that when half of the population die, leaving their possessions, then inequality reduces. It's not surprising.

But to prove that there is a strong correlation we need to show that peacetime leads to greater inequality. And I don't think it's true.

In all seriousness, can you name one system that exist in absolute equilibrium. I propose that a system must have inequality to exist.

Basic income is the only way to break this cycle perhaps?

Maybe. But for a country the size of the U.S. this would cost the entire country an additional $2.4 trillion. One of its primary effect in developed countries might be on rent, especially in rural areas.

How unexpected.

To summarize, inequality is reduced when labor becomes more valuable or when everyone becomes poor.

A good argument for why reducing inequality has problems as an objective.

That's quite a poor summary.

What would you add?

Personally there's nothing I could add that would fix this, it has to be scrapped. Financial equality is not about making everyone poorer (more realistically it just makes a small group poorer), and also labour becoming less valuable is a consequence that can simply be fixed by distributing wealth to those who lost their jobs, not by trying to force labour to become more valuable.

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