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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

An underappreciated negative aspect of equality is total lack of enthusiasm and incentive.

As inequality is a guarantee - no two people are alike in any aspect and neither are their abilities as an employee - mandating (either by gun or union contract) lockstep equality in payments and job security, the highest performers are demoralized and put in the bare minimum or quit (if they can). The result is the ever-increasing shitty quality of the firm and its behavior. For modern examples see the NHS (bleeding doctors and nurses to the private sector) and American public schools in inner cities (highest global costs per student yet abysmal results).

There are valid criticisms about inequality but the pros far out way the cons.

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This is mostly a strawman, since I don't see almost anyone arguing for complete equality of pay, status or position, merely that a handful of people shouldn't be able to accumulate the wealth of small nations on the back of others.

In countries in Europe, and places in Asia, there are plenty of examples where there is less inequality and the students perform better.

Europe has many poor countries and even developed ones (UK) are having quality of life decreases due mostly to a lack of private sector success - the government eventually runs out of money without private business to fill its coffers.

Happy to be in the US especially with the global economic recession incoming

The US has many poor states. Some of which have a lower quality of life than poor EU states.

Sounds to me like we should eliminate the idea that high performance and achievement should be rewarded with wealth or being raised above others. Perhaps it would be better if people learned from a young age that achievement is its own reward? Are we such animals that we need special treats in order to do the right thing? I think it’s a childish attitude that if you don’t get more cookies than someone else that you’ll throw down your work and have a tantrum.

I work 70 hours a week and there is 0% chance I would do that without having significant upside in my firm. I get more money and I deserve it, this is a free country and I don’t want anyone’s potential capped (and certainly not my own!).

Plenty of people already have their potential capped by the current system, with no recourse.

How so? I thought achievement was its own reward. Seems like that should be adequate for people who don’t care about being economically productive.

You can wish all you like but it won't change human nature

I find that most people arguing for top-down redistribution don't seem to care about if it makes everyone poorer as long as "equality for everyone" is the modus operandi. They see it as a moral imperative, the measurable outcomes and realities of the economic systems always get second rate treatment.

It's always much, much easier to argue for 'fairness' and to rail against the rich... than it is to be realistic and accept that there will be very visible downsides but that alternatives are much worse in practice.

Ditto with free speech, censorship is almost always a greater evil, with small exceptions, but when you try to defend it they try to pretend you only care about nazis/far-right. Sometimes doing the right thing is not easy and yes - it requires plenty of effort to weed out the assholes and wrong-doers (which the courts are doing now by punishing the law firms), but it's worth it in the end.

And you don't have to tolerate the bad guys just because you didn't compromise societies freedoms and wealth to prevent them from existing in the first place. There's more ways to stop it than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

You are overlooking the "extreme" part of "extreme inequality"

Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in their companies that they have today.

> Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in their companies that they have today.

This is absolutely not a given. Not because the value changes, but because it implies they no longer own a controlling interest in the company and have to answer to a board. Musk explicitly does not want to take SpaceX public because shareholders are terrible bosses for long term visions (colonizing mars).

Musk would have more difficulty funding all those companies that have made all those advances. And there are already very few Musks out there.

One person deciding where all that money is invested is a sort of economic dictator. Trying to live on Mars is polluting our planet. If you don't agree with that use of resources, it's not a benevolent dictatorship.

It's far more democratic than that, at least insofar as people voluntarily gave the person money vs. it being collected in non-voluntary ways.

And yes, that may be non-binary in that some of Elon's money has likely come from the government where we have less choice about spending it, other money may come from voluntarily purchased Teslas and whatnot.

This. The problem is a dstribution of power most of all. If power is concentrated in government, it's as bad if it's concentrated with an individual with his own private police force. Private espionage force etc.

All this strawman about the failures of absolute equality are just slight of hand to ignore the very obvious problem with a world where a single person have the power of a state.

The state legitimacy should come from the people participation in govering themselves. Not from some psuedo meritocracy. Concentrated power without checks and balances is the problem, not specifically "the state". I wish all libertarians would wake up and see that very obvious threat to freedom.

What if the people want slavery?

Or is this vaunted flat democracy only allowed when the result aligns with your morals?

It's called tyranny of the majority

Huh? Never talked about "flat democracy" I consider a representative democracy to be a form of self governing. You really missed the whole point of my post

Can you quote where they suggested a flat democracy? Looks like you are putting words in their mouth, also known as creating a strawman.

implication and conclusions don't need to be explicitly stated.

In this case if power isn't in the government it's in the hands of the people. That's a flat democracy.

> implication and conclusions don't need to be explicitly stated.

But you would do well to ask, because you got it totally wrong.

The commenter said that they are against this type of libertarian idealism. Because the result is that it isn't a flat democracy. Instead folks like Musk end up with huge amounts of power.

Specifically you need to understand what they said here:

"If power is concentrated in government, it's as bad if it's concentrated with an individual with his own private police force."

The implication is that the commentator wants power evenly distributed. The opposite of your wrong accusation of the commenter wanting power concentrated in a majority. Nowhere was flat democracy mentioned. You invented that line of thinking.

flat democracy in this case means no power concentration and everyone votes on everything.

as opposed to what the US currently has, which is a representational democracy where power is concentrated at the government level with people electing others to represent them (and to wield more power than they, themselves, do).

----

If someone tells you power concentrated in the government is bad and power should be evenly distributed, they're talking about a flat democracy (aka direct democracy).

Which goes back to what I said initially. What if the people want slaves? What if they want segregated schools? Because at one point the majority actually did want these things.

People who argue for things like this imagine that only good will come from it. Not only is that not true, we have precedent that it's not true.

Never talked about evenly distributed power. Just not too concentrated. A power differential is not inherently bad, I can't see a system working without it. But the size of that differential should be kept to a minimum that allow the system to work.

> If someone tells you power concentrated in the government is bad and power should be evenly distributed, they're talking about a flat democracy (aka direct democracy).

You're wrongly inferring that. No need to assume stuff when you can just ask the other person.

> they're talking about a flat democracy (aka direct democracy).

That does not describe a system where power is evenly distributed. Because of the already widely known problems you mentioned. Lots of folks learn this stuff in high school.

How does one evenly distribute power without giving the same level of power to everyone?

When you answer that you cannot do so, you're admitting to asking for a direct democracy.

"Oh, but what about this adaptation that ..." puts more power into certain hands than another. Maybe it's flatter, but it's not even.

It's sort of like saying people can fly. The second you add the requirement that it be actionable (aka, grounded in reality) is the same second you conclude people need something external to assist rather than flapping their arms really fast.

you can't get around that no matter how much you'd like to.

> How does one evenly distribute power without giving the same level of power to everyone?

One attempt at this would be representational democracy.

> When you answer that you cannot do so, you're admitting to asking for a direct democracy.

No one gave that as an answer.

https://www.thoughtco.com/representative-democracy-definitio...

> The votes of elected officials in a representative democracy may not always reflect the will of the people. The officials are not bound by law to vote the way the people who elected them want them to vote.

hummm.... that sounds like more power in the hands of less people.

IOW, your argument is based in fiction. Which is cool, we need stories about people flapping their hands to fly. It's fun!

We just need to be clear earlier in the conversation on whether or not reality is part of the goal or not.

> that sounds like more power in the hands of less people.

Indeed. Fortunately the only person here that has a problem with that is the strawman you created. The strawman you continue to fight.

From the original comment, with some emphasis to help your comprehension:

"Concentrated power WITHOUT CHECKS AND BALANCES is the problem"

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