If $10,000 went randomly out to 100 people, assuming no inflation, they are more likely to go to the poor than the rich.
The way to get rich isn't by making the rich poor. It's by getting the poor richer.
I don't get it, if anything wouldn't giving $10,000 to 100 random people even out the wealth, rather than widening the gap?
It's about how people feel meaning based upon how much influence and power they have in their own decisions and how socially valued they are.
If a small group of billionaires have such an outsized influence that the ideas and decisions of the poorer group are ultimately inconsequential, then their lives will start to seem pointless whatever their absolute level of wealth is.
If I can provide for my needs and some wants, why should I care that Bill Gates, a man much more innovative and ambitious than myself, is much more successful than me?
Tell that to Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
If given the choice to:
- reduce the gap and make various groups in society have a more even amount of influence and wealth, or
- increase the absolute level of wealth in society,
It is better in my opinion to even out the gap rather than increasing the absolute level.Even if someone's absolute level of comfort is quite high, their life will feel meaningless if they have no influence socially.What do you think?
Because beyond mere survival, most of people's needs and wants are based on their ability to meaningfully contribute to and influence the society they live within. Maybe you had an idea for a tech product, but Microsoft has so much leverage in that industry that they can price you out of the market, even though their product is less innovative. So instead you need to get a job sweeping the floors of a building owned by Microsoft. Maybe you can still provide your needs and some wants, and maybe your life is even more stable and comfortable than it would have been as an entrepeneur, but your life would be much less meaningful.
This is why we have banks: to loan entrepreneurs money. If you have a bad idea or bad credit history, you aren't likely to get money. Otherwise, you can. Also, those dastardly rich people you are complaining about engage in a nice little thing called venture capital, where they invest in startups. Middle class people cannot do that, but the rich can. If you get rid of the rich/big firms, which is obviously what you intend to do, venture capital may cease to exist.
So, you want to steal money from people that earned it in order to subsidize their competition?
Banks want to make money. They will loan money to people with good ideas that will likely make that money back. Also, you are completely ignoring the fact that not everyone can be Bill Gates.
If only they had some more money! They wouldn't waste it on the newest iPhone or a pair of Jordan's. Their bad saving habits and other bad life choices like not finishing high school obviously have nothing to do with their impoverished conditions, correct? It is those nasty, innovative entrepreneurs that offer cheaper, better products/services who are keeping them down!
No one is different from another person! Everyone has the exact same IQ/critical thinking abilities, creativity, and ambition! How could I have forgotten this?!?
No. It supplies everyone with $10,000 extra dollars if they are lucky enough. Why do people say income inequality is bad? If John has $1 and Mike has $3, that's better off than if both people had 50 cents because there is more overall wealth.
I'm pretty sure poor people don't want money to get more influence and power in society. They want to survive.
I don't see this happening. Poor people still value their lives. Everyone who is not suicidal values their lives.
If John and Mike were the only two people in the world, then inflation would make the 50c as valuable as the dollar.
If a poor person is employed by a more powerful company, then their wellbeing and decisions are predicated upon the judgment of that company.
If everything you contribute to the world is dictated by someone else, and all you can focus on is survival, would that not feel like a pretty meaningless life?
If a company like Microsoft has cooperated with mass surveillance or any privacy breach of their customers, then some means may be needed that go beyond taxation. For something like Faceboook, legislation could force them to make their code fully open source, and their copyright ownership could be revoked. Also, to make the internet more equitable overall, peering connections could be made illegal for any firm connected in any way to the state.
It is a question what we trust more: the judgment of some individual, or the free market. An individual investor naturally has a bias against risk: a very different, innovative idea might have a higher potential payoff, but it is a riskier investment than a derivative, predictable idea. They also have a bias against any company which would directly compete with their own company, or those they are affiliated with.
First, it is a misconception to claim that, simply because someone's bad outcomes follow from their decisions, then we should not try to improve their condition. Much of the time, people under worse conditions will also make worse decisions. If you are deep in debt, you live in a bad neighbourhood, and so on, you will be more likely to be depressed, which will make you more likely to waste money, and so on. People's decisions are conditioned by their circumstances.Second, the current economy is hardly characterised by an abundance of innovative entrepeneurship. The "cheaper" products and services (Facebook, Google etc) are often "free" on the surface, but are really paid for by the data they harvest, which allows them to funnel customers into a narrow range of products and services and solidify their monopolies.
IQ is generally only a useful measure of someone's ability to succeed in following pre-established (and culturally conditioned) rulesets, but does not very accurately predict innovation, creativity and entrepeneurship. For instance, an IQ test might establish how well someone will perform when hired to work for someone else at a conventional job, but it is not at all established to predict their ability to run their own business or work independently as an entrepeneur.
In what world is it a good idea to force companies to license out their intellectual property?
Sorry, bro, but banks are part of the market.
You are very unlikely to end up in poverty if you: finish high school, have kids AFTER marriage, and you have a full-time job. If you cannot do those three easy things for yourself, no amount of stealing from the rich and redistributing wealth could ever fix your predicament. My point isn't that we shouldn't attempt to help these people's positions. We should work to bring jobs that give them the ability to climb out of their position. I don't think that giving them blank checks that they didn't earn is a good way to do that.
So, you think that Google and Facebook are just able to manipulate people into buying their products? People aren't capable of shopping around and buy anything they see an ad for? Sure there are plenty of dumb people, but to make such a broad statement is quite foolish.
And I mentioned other measures such as ambition and creativity. As soon as you realize that not everyone who paints a lot can be the next Michelangelo and every computer geek cannot become Bill Gates simply because not everyone is that intelligent and market savy, you will understand how untenable your position really is.
In the world in which they formed a monopoly and then cooperated with domestic surveillance programs to use that property to invade the privacy of users against their will.
It would be missing a big part of the picture to say "banks are part of the market" and therefore equate deliberations by banks as equivalent to purchasing decisions subject to the normal supply and demand fluctuations which would occur in other markets. Sure, even states are "part of the market" in a sense, but their decisions are not subject to market forces in the same way as an independent private firm or individual. The position of banks in the market is largely determined by state intervention.Insurance companies are "part of the market" too, but would you argue that their incentives to maximise profits are well aligned with the best interests of their customers?
It is ironic that you don't see these as related: you resent those who would take welfare, yet you defend the same system that produces welfare dependency in the first place. In other words, you defend the majority of jobs being reduced to rote tasks under the employment of some supposed genius CEO - jobs that are easily automated or replaced subject to the judgments of management. You say in the same paragraph that they should "do those things for themselves" yet also imply that the jobs don't exist for them to "climb" into.
It's not just that they hypnotise people into randomly buying their product. Rather, they invest heavily into data harvesting which allows them to precisely target users and gain an edge which is almost impossible for the competition to overcome. They then share this information with whatever government agencies request it.
If you were to argue that differences in wealth should be only proportionally as wide as differences in measures of competence such as IQ, this gap would be orders of magnitude smaller than the gap between today's elite and the majority of ordinary people. Even the highest IQ genius is not 125 billion times more competent and capable of discerning innovative, good ideas, than the average person.
We agree that monopolies and private companies colluding with government surveillance agencies is bad. That should all be rectified, but I have yet to see how essentially providing "reparations" will in any way help the problem.
Maximizing profits in no way inherently a bad thing. It can lead to bad results. Insurance companies in their states essentially have monopolies over large regions, which is why the incentive to profit is going unchecked and leading to bad results. If there was competition, they would have to rely on getting more customers to gain a larger market share. How do you steal market share from competitors? You either lower prices or raise the quality of your product/service. So, in terms of monopolies, profit maximization can be bad. In a competitive market, it is an amazing incentive that works for consumers.
It is just that, generally speaking, those with higher IQ's will be able to take on more difficult tasks that pay more because of the value they create.
