> Who’s working on solving that?
The communists. Didn't work out well.
Edit: Don't believe me? Check out the history of communist countries.
The communists. Didn't work out well.
Edit: Don't believe me? Check out the history of communist countries.
I saw a comment on HN that actually put it wonderfully just the other day (will try and find it) -- the crux was that the real core of government policy failing is corruption, and Capitalism is the most robust to corruption socioeconomic and political structure we've seen so far, because of things like "free market" competition, etc.
Turns out if you view it with this lens, monarchies, communism and other forms of government that we've seen fail are quite easily explained at least at a basic level.
I think of capitalism like a greed/ambition driven engine. It turns greed into progress of many kinds -- we just need to tweak the inputs/gears of the engine. Clearly a certain amount of greed will lead to proletariat revolt (some people might be fine with that since at some point the proletariat probably won't be able to revolt), and clearly some amount of unchecked greed/ambition is necessary for societal advancement in aggregate.
[EDIT] I couldn't find what I was looking for, maybe it wasn't on HN -- this was the closest thing I found[0]...
Wealth disparity under the current system has fluctuated over the last 50-100 years -- it is controllable. We know some of the knobs. I just never see anyone trying explicitly to figure out what the right setting for those knobs are, it's always obscured in one way or another.
It turns out communism is a fine solution to nothing at all. Communist countries have never even managed to feed themselves - they either allow some capitalism in agriculture or import food from capitalist countries.
> the real core of government policy failing is corruption
Government policy fails even with zero corruption. It's because the incentives are all wrong. Even shooting all the corrupt people won't fix anything.
> I think of capitalism like a greed/ambition driven engine
You got that right. It turns out that harnessing peoples' self-interest works amazingly well.
Communism wasn't even suggested as a solution by me -- it was reflexively argued against by your earlier comment.
You clearly don't like communism, I get it, thank you for contributing that.
> Government policy fails even with zero corruption. It's because the incentives are all wrong. Even shooting all the corrupt people won't fix anything.
Do you know of any government-policy-free societies that have scaled and prospered?
I guess this also depends on your definition of "failure" for a society -- no idea what that is, but given how un-constructive your comments have been I'm not that excited to find out.
> You got that right. It turns out that harnessing peoples' self-interest works amazingly well.
No one said it didn't. Any thoughts on how to harness self-interest in a way that doesn't bifurcate society socio-economically quite so much?
To make things a little bit more concrete -- I know the typical argument here is that the poorest are moved forward more by rapid expansion/growth/harnessing of greed, but the problem is that we do not consider the right tail trajectory of those below.
Making life better at a rapid rate is great, but it seems to be at a tradeoff -- a cap is developing on the "better off" part (widening wealth disparity). If it always trended up then the problem would be easy (and people wouldn't be too worried). It's a problem because the graph seems to go up for the poorer cohort then level off yet continue growing for one cohort. The derivatives are the problem, essentially.
Also I'd argue that what people are seeing is a future where quality of life for the poorer cohort actually goes off a cliff and starts to go lower. Since we have no idea if/how that will happen (robots/automation most likely), the only way to ensure trajectories for the both cohorts is for both cohorts to have similar influence/power/decision making input.
[EDIT] - I should note, the current extent is not that bad. It could be much much worse, and I think that's what people should be tinkering/trying to prevent.
Communism came up when someone asked who was working on solving wealth inequality. That is what this particular thread is about.
> You clearly don't like communism
Neither do the people who've lived under it. It produces a bountiful crop of misery. That's why communists had to build walls around their countries to keep the citizens from fleeing. If you know of one that produced joy, I'd like a reference, please.
> Do you know of any government-policy-free societies that have scaled and prospered?
Government is necessary. But there should be as little of it as practical, because governments wield power and power is dangerous. It's like gasoline. I need gas to run my car and the lawnmower. But I keep as little of it around as possible. And I don't use gasoline as a household cleaner, and I try not to inhale any of it.
> No one said it didn't.
Leftists do.
> Any thoughts on how to harness self-interest in a way that doesn't bifurcate society socio-economically quite so much?
I don't see the mere existence of wealthy people being a problem. The fact of someone creating wealth (which is how people get wealthy in a free market) is not taking something from someone else.
I understand that point of view is unpopular.
Yeah if it only went that far then maybe it would have been a useful answer to a problem and nothing else, but so much anti-communist propaganda has been said at this point it seems more like you have an axe to grind rather than actually contributing to dialogue.
> Government is necessary. But there should be as little of it as practical, because governments wield power and power is dangerous. It's like gasoline. I need gas to run my car and the lawnmower. But I keep as little of it around as possible. And I don't use gasoline as a household cleaner, and I try not to inhale any of it.
This is too broad a statement to be accurate. You can insert many things in the place of "government' in that lawn mower analogy and sound correct.
This statement is also not very interesting because "as little of it as practical" is the whole debate, for anyone who has thought about it for more than 5 mins.
So essentially, your stance seems to be "small government good". Excellent -- but that doesn't really relate to my point, unless your stance is "small government good, so current and future wealth disparity is fine".
> I don't see the mere existence of wealthy people being a problem. The fact of someone creating wealth (which is how people get wealthy in a free market) is not taking something from someone else.
> I understand that point of view is unpopular.
I suggested we need more wealthy people with higher variance amongst them, so we can see more interesting/varied outcomes. How is this relevant to that discussion?
I'm open to any references to communist experiments that worked.
> because "as little of it as practical" is the whole debate
People look upon the government as the solution to every problem far too often. The proof is the constant accretion of ever more laws and regulations.
I don't think there are many communist experiments that worked. I also agree that government is not always the solution, as it's just another actor and can be corrupted.
But I'd argue that the original thing I was looking for -- more varied people in positions of wealth/influence/power would help solve this... But it may not be solved in a way that the small government crowd would like necessarily.
Is the only reasonable state gridlock amongst equally powered proponents on either side? It's not always the case that the right answer is in the middle, of course, but on this issue it seems the passable solutions seem to be.
I regularly ask for any examples of working communism. To date, none have been offered. To be fair, sometimes someone will post one. But investigating it shows that it didn't actually work. For example, one long-running commune appeared to be successful, but what it was successful at was recruiting a constant stream of enthusiasts to join up, but who inevitably left after 2 years.
It's almost as if communism and human nature are just incompatible. For some reason or other, humans are not bees and living in beehives doesn't work for humans.
This, I completely agree with. Self interest is natural for humans, and is a force to be harnessed.
BEES ARE COMMIES?? Good thing the pinko bastards are dying en masse, I was worried about that for a second.
Yeah, but we clearly have too little of it now. Speaking from a tech standpoint, we have a duopoly in OSes. Apple has amassed an enormous amount of power. It controls an entire market of developers. It is actually being a regulator itself on that market. So, if you let the free market play things out, you will end up with something that resembles more of a dictatorship, or perhaps a bunch of them.
Also, we almost completely lost net neutrality.
It consumes what, 40% of the GDP?
Personally, I think that living in an environment where free markets can actually exist and we can live in relative safety and security is worth far more than I pay in taxes.
Our ideas of 'greed' and 'ambition' are at least partially socially constructed, and the idea of 'societal advancement' is a value laden can of worms. Thinking of our current system as controllable diminishes the scale of our analysis. But the correct scale of analysis is one in which greed and ambition, as you say, remain relevant. Much to the chagrin of some economists, greed and ambition cannot be quantified into neat formulae, especially given that we cannot even find agreement on what they mean or the precise point in which they diverge.
That means the task is much bigger than just thinking of capitalism as an engine. Instead, we must analyze our predicament in not only mechanistic terms, but also accounting for the vagrancies of the human condition and our culture, which creates the types of people that are greedy, ambitious, and talk about 'societal advancement' as an ontological reality that's descended from the heavens in the first place. I think by the time we get to that level of philosophizing (which is absolutely necessary in understanding inequality, suffering, and well-being), we need to drop atomistic conceptions of capitalism in favour of something much more holistic, human, and fuzzy. This amount of prudence is morally obligatory. Social engineering is not a game for white-collar bureaucrats to simply play around with. These are people's lives.
It's not extremely optimistic -- it's a statement of fact. We have history and alternate societies which grew in different ways to compare and contrast.
The idea that the system is uncontrollable/unknowable is overly pessimistic. We can take action and change how society is structured -- we know this because we've done it, and we continue to do it. We may not know the knock-on effects, we may not know the eventualities, but we can indeed change society.
In fact, it's surprisingly easy to change how 300MM autonomous people live their daily lives -- there's a system in place. Systems have knobs and systems are controllable at the very least to first-order effects, and we have knowledge because we built the system and it's inspectable to us.
> Our ideas of 'greed' and 'ambition' are at least partially socially constructed, and the idea of 'societal advancement' is a value laden can of worms. Thinking of our current system as controllable diminishes the scale of our analysis. But the correct scale of analysis is one in which greed and ambition, as you say, remain relevant. Much to the chagrin of some economists, greed and ambition cannot be quantified into neat formulae, especially given that we cannot even find agreement on what they mean or the precise point in which they diverge.
I agree -- unfortunately there are so only so many words that can convey the sentiment. It need not be quantified into a formula to be controlled.
If you agree that it is possible to control it at all, then it's a matter of degree.
The argument is not that the system is perfectly controllable and no further analysis is needed. What I was posing is that wider involvement at more powerful rungs of society is needed, precisely because the current discourse is somewhat stale.
> That means the task is much bigger than just thinking of capitalism as an engine. Instead, we must analyze our predicament in not only mechanistic terms, but also accounting for the vagrancies of the human condition and our culture, which creates the types of people that are greedy, ambitious, and talk about 'societal advancement' as an ontological reality that's descended from the heavens in the first place. I think by the time we get to that level of philosophizing (which is absolutely necessary in understanding inequality, suffering, and well-being), we need to drop atomistic conceptions of capitalism in favour of something much more holistic, human, and fuzzy. This amount of prudence is morally obligatory. Social engineering is not a game for white-collar bureaucrats to simply play around with. These are people's lives.
Sure, that sounds good -- the model of capitalism as an engine is not a complete solution to all that ails society.
>> The communists. Didn't work out well.
Just wondering why you would think your comment adds any additional context to the original post? Is that a snide at communism just because you dislike it? Or are you saying that communism is the only way to solve the problems of wealth disparity and that it has failed in the past and we can never have any semblance of equality in the world?
BTW, replying to a post by adding "all" or "only" is simply being argumentative if what you're replying to did not include those words, and so adds no value. For example:
Statement: "Humans are bipedal"
Riposte: "Not all humans are bipedal, some only have one leg!"
I can only find the history of the authoritarian communist countries, the Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, etc. I'd be happier to write off communism if there'd been more practical exploration of the libertarian communist theories.
The Israeli kibbutzen are communes, but they are only kept afloat by government funding taxed from capitalist enterprises.
The Pilgrims set up a commune their first year here, and starved. So did the Jamestown colony.
There was the "Summer of Love" commune in San Francisco in 1969 that collapsed after 3 months.
The Woodstock concert was a 3 day commune, which worked great until you consider they left behind a mountain of trash for other people to clean up. Apparently people were fine with getting free stuff, not so fine with doing work.
I thought the Plymouth Colony was successful? I don't know what system of governance it had.
Can't find a successful one. Plymouth switched to capitalism after starving for a year.
I don't agree that a working commune means communism as a political system could also work.
I'm also not saying communism can't work, though I personally like socialism with some capitalist elements better.