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Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

But the passage I'm citing isn't about inequality increasing, as you're discussing. It's about people at lower levels getting less, in an absolute sense. Which is a fallacy.

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1. You're attacking a straw man, which actually is a fallacy.

2. Even if the passage you cited were about "getting less in an absolute sense", there's still no fallacy. zafka already pointed this out in his #1 above. What's so hard to comprehend?

Please stop.

I'm not sure I see how this is a fallacy. Can you explain even anecdotally?

“Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.” -Milton Friedman

I just googled "Fixed pie fallacy" - I was assuming (probably wrongly) that most people were familiar with it. I'm not even certain Friedman was the first to identify it.

The first thing I come up with on Google is [1]. It's a decent overview.

[1] http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2006/12/fixed-pie-fallacy.html

Harvard is not fungible.

Right, but top-quality education is fungible.

Not everybody needs to go to an Ivy League, just like not everybody needs to own a 75-ft yacht.

I'm OK with that.

If the quality we're interested in is "being Harvard," then no, Harvard is not fungible. But if the quality is "providing a college education," the Harvard is extremely fungible in many cases.

People don't seek Harvard for the education only. They seek it or lots of things: access to wealth, access to knowledge and network, increased status, increased reputation.

Otherwise why would there be exceptional demand (and price) for harvard?

Sure, there's no disputing that the fixed pie fallacy exists, but you have not made a convincing argument that this situation is an instance of the fallacy.

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