Wanting better pay as a below minimum wage employee, because that's what markets force you to want, is actually an endorsement of inequality. Thanks Robin.
(https://i.redd.it/eboqok2vww091.png)
posted on May 21, 2022 11:26 PM by
u/129499399219192930
139
u/typell89 pointsat 1653177697.000000
when you literally can’t imagine someone who wants other people’s
income to also rise
To a large extent in this specific case it kind of is a zero-sum case, however not between individual workers, but between the workers and the ultra-rich as classes.
How is it not a zero sum game? Everything in the world is finite, and we compete with each other to gain more. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be.
All material resources are 'finite', but fixed; you can't 'run out' of atoms on earth, they can only be changed to something else. Fresh water can be changed to polluted water, silicates can be transformed into glass, etc. So the only resource that is not fixed is energy, but we can keep looking for more sources of it, until the heat death of the universe, where it will eventually run out due to entropy. We found out how to use the sun, and now for all intents and purposes that energy is infinite (though maybe not as powerful as nuclear or gas).
We can have anything we want as long as we have the energy to transform it into what we want. Now, obviously if the resources are fixed, there may not be enough to distribute to everyone, but just like energy, we can keep looking for more materials on other planets.
So, my convoluted point is this: some scenarios are not zero sum, like if i invented a solar panel that is 2x the efficiency of current solar panels. Everyone benefits from that. You can't make 'more' of something from nothing, but you can make resource usage more efficient, you can find more resources, and you can find new energy, and that's what people usually mean when they say things are not zero sum. At least, on a theoretical level.
On a practical level, usually if you gain money someone loses it. This is just the norm of capitalism, it doesn't mean this happens in every scenario where someone makes money. Oftentimes employees increase the profits of a business through discovering more efficient solutions, and so the money the business owner made is not zero sum, it didn't have to be taken away from anyone else. Therefore, giving the employees a higher wage isn't necessarily zero sum like Hanson says it is. The business owner doesn't get the money, yes, but it was money he only made because of worker efficiency gains, so still ultimately zero sum because he is not 'losing' anything. It's just a different way of distributing gains.
Rare earth metals deplete but they don't disappear from the universe, is my point. I could be wrong though im not a chemist or physicist, but my understanding is they always get transformed into something else less useful but the atoms themselves never actually disappear. Like for example, we can run out of helium on earth, but it will still be somewhere in the atmosphere in a form we can't utilise. I was never very good at chemistry so I'm not sure lol.
good points tho
I appreciate your well thought out response. It did make the gears start turning, but I don’t see things the same way. I would think that if you invented a solar panel, you would gain a large amount of wealth to the detriment of other solar panel producers. If a company develops an extremely efficient process, it comes at the detriment of competing businesses’ market share. In the animal world, a gazelle taken down by a pride of lions is a gazelle lost for a pack of hyenas. If I eat a sandwich for lunch, that’s one less sandwich for anyone else to eat. Where one gains, others lose; it’s the way of nature and I don’t see it as a negative, just the natural order
Defending billionaires 😂 I’m not defending billionaires, I think billionaires should be taxed significantly more than they do. But I’m not going to deny reality. How hard does one have to stretch their emotional disdain towards those who figured out how to acquire more wealth, than to deny the obvious truth that inequality is inevitable. Equality is a delusion. If we all made the same salary, there would still be people who spend it all and get into debt; there would still be people who have major health problems and end up in massive debt; there would be those who figure out strategically how to use that salary to build massive wealth in some way.
In physics, work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. Going to a job and working is quite literally the same thing, transferring your energy towards some sort of production. Money is the physical/material representation of this and is given to those who work. It’s the law of conservation of energy ffs, read a book 😂
I’m pretty sure people who work willingly provide their labor.. it’s kinda something that humans have been doing since the dawn of civilization or did you miss school for your entire life?
It was a joke, I exaggerated because I have no desire to explain why your logic is wrong as there is no challenge in it, and Im sure you wouldnt listen anyway. Esp as you have already decided you are the rational person, and everyone else is wrong.
Ironically, you’re the one that has written me off without giving me a chance lmfao I’m always willing to change my perspective if a more compelling argument comes along. But the argument that regulation will help promote equality is a pipe dream and it’s sad to watch people fall for it.
It’s literally just an inequality-edition version of [this comic](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/036/647/Screen_Shot_2021-03-01_at_2.28.39_PM.png)
If you aren’t wearing loincloths, swinging from vines and being
raised by apes, you are living better than Tarzan, a literal movie star.
Inequality doesn’t sound so bad, now does it?
If you don’t want everyone to form a grey goo hivemind you obviously
hate equality and what you really want is monarchy. If you prefer cats
to dogs then I hope you’re prepared to personally euthanize every dog.
If you’re under like 5’6” and not wearing 4” heels then I’m pretty sure
you don’t care about racism. I am very intelligent!
This tweet is stupid, but the real shit is in the article expanding
on it.
In it, he claims that reading more books, or getting more sexual
partners (!), or upping your IQ (!) over the average also somehow
increases inequality and proves that you’ve never, in your heart,
believed in equality.
Go ahead, Robin, tell us your thoughts about ideal unequal sexual
partner and IQ distributions.
It's an embarrasingly flawed argument meaning I'm inclined to think they don't even really believe it but think they can manipulate opinion with it. It's also a really cliche and common argument of the political right, claiming that anyone who isn't poor can't really want to help them poor (in the UK the expression champagne socialist sums this up).
Love too hypocritically increase inequality by being poly despite being an egalitarian
Surely it is unthinkable that sexual partners are not just a resource to be distributed
Robin’s point about inequality does not convince me, but here is a
slight modification of his argument: the GDP per capita of the world, in
int$, is 8,000 dollars. That translates to about half of the purchasing
power of the median American, meaning absolute equality worldwide is
just NOT in the personal interest of most Americans. So the promise that
only the American magnates lose from international socialism is false,
as the American worker also loses wealth from it. The conclusion is that
personal incentives can’t be a “good enough” platform for the socialist
types.
This doesn’t even factor in how unsustainable the first world’s
absurdly low relative costs of living would be without the exploitation
of slavelike labor in the global South. In practice, worldwide socialism
(at least in the near-term, in case you believe it would be a net
positive in the long-term) would lower the standards of living of the
median first worlder by way more than that.
I agree with your final conclusion, but that argument is still awfully shallow. A socialist revolution wouldn’t mean pooling the world’s GDP and dividing it like a pie. It would mean spending the GDP on different things, changing our relationship to labor, and much more.
Saying it would not benefit American workers, simply because some imaginary number would go down, is reaching for a conclusion that is not supported by evidence whatsoever.
Nobody said anything about socialism. He said that people's true feelings about inequality is that they actually aren't committed to it, as demonstrated by the $1000/7500 example. And also demonstrated by the example by the commenter above, talking about 1st world people earning below national median not actually being interested in simply earning global median.
Odd how his argument never even considers the most common strategy of
reducing inequality, namely taxing the rich and redistributing their
wealth, or in his terms, changing the distribution rather than simply
seeking to increase your own standing within an otherwise-fixed
distribution. Can’t imagine why that possibility doesn’t cross his
mind.
Yeah, using the median in this case is stupid. I modified it to use the mean, estimated using the GDP per capita of the world in int$. But it does get a slightly different meaning.
What? The argument does presuppose changing distribution from haves to have-nots - taxing the rich.
The point that's being made is that the distinction we elect to care about between haves and have-nots is actually arbitrary, and it's designed to maximize returns for people within a political unit (the nation) - it's not actually designed to maximize equality.
Oh, I must not be up to date with their foundation.
They must have added a feature to the friendly AI they developed that
lets you instantly teleport to a place with a lower cost of living after
your shift ends.
The business is generating the same amount of revenue either way. You
increasing how much you are paid means the owners and stake-holders of
the business get paid less, unless you are the owner or
stake-holder.
This post just fails to understand the causes of systemic inequality.
0 material analysis. It’s not that some jobs are paid better than
others, it’s a relationship between capitalists and laborers. The
primary driver of inequality is not that different people work jobs that
earn different amounts, it’s that some people are siphoning money from
everyone else’s labor to concentrate wealth in a few people’s hands.
Raising the minimum wage effectively transfers wealth from
minimum-wage employers to their employees. The employers are richer than
the employees, even though they might both technically be rich in
global, absolute terms. Redistributing from the very rich to the someone
rich still reduces inequality, even though it would be better to
redistribute from the global rich to the global poor. It’s true,
however, that many leftists are hypocritically much less concerned about
global inequality than inequality within their own already rich
countries.
The way these people will have these just absolute bottom of the
barrel garbage takes, and build this little “smart guy has incredible
insight” performance schtick around it. There’s something kind of
impressive about it to be honest.
I think he's earnestly trying to convince his intended audience to want inequality. The worst thing about these people is that they actually think the horrible things they say.
But, what I'm struggling with is whether he actually thinks this very bad argument is valid, or if he's just gish-galloping for his intended conclusion.
Billionaires make their money from loans and dividends. A company owner often pays themselves a small notional salary with correspondingly little in payroll tax, hence the complaint that billionaires don't pay tax. So wages are the least of the problem.
No, the wage system is the problem, that's how surplus value is created in a capitalist system.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/
Some of you idiots in this thread know that you can just call this
lanyard-laden dumb motherfucker an incredibly smug piece of shit, right?
That’s 100% allowed. You can literally bodily pick him up and shove him
in a locker while you’re doing it too, it’s completely legal and he
can’t sue.
Generally an able, capable person who does nothing to increase their
equity and may be responsible for a child/s is doing nothing more than
leaving someone else at a disadvantage or in a state of inequity.
So basically a person with such a mentality revolving around inequity
is creating it generationally for their own dependents. People like this
should not be taken seriously, though their lifestyle has very serious
consequences on someone who has no choice but to adjust alone to that
misfortune until they learn to use the misfortune to their advantage
later in life.
This may create many outcomes, but generally the one seen more often
here in the United States is another generation of people who have
little education, but know the miserable reality of poverty. Withing
this demographic few will ascend from it, yet they may have a much
greater appreciation for capital. Unfortunately they do not have the
education to make such capital traditionally, thus falling into the
demographic of those who are victims of inequity.
High crime and illegal means for gaining capital are seen within
these demographics, as well as the next generation of children who are
born in the turbulent environment. We see a cycle being created that’s
almost identical to the one mentioned above. In fact it is but with a
twist. The original parent’s beliefs mentioned above are not to be poor
because they are worried about inequality, but it’s to take as little
responsibility as possible distributing their equity to those they have
a responsibility for distributing it to.
As I stated above child/s, but not a spouse. The greatest inequality
is the one that parents who wish to take no responsibility create for
their children. These people generally want a great deal of money, but
prefer to obtain it either through government or illegal means.
Inequality becomes a convenient excuse for them to shield themselves
with because they have learned the topic is so abstract that most can’t
wrap their head around it, or even care to do so.
Inequality is a lifestyle, one which is very protected and profitable
for certain upper echelons; especially highly educated people who
understand it and use it as a vehicle to gain favor in politics or those
who mean to gain domination over an illegal market of some sort such as
drug distribution. Once power is gained these people become like the
parents those in the cycle never had. They distribute equity in a
equitable manner. Equitable also means limited.
If anyone actually read the article… “For everyone else, it seems you
should admit that either (A) you count for more than others, so that
your increases are more worthwhile than theirs, or (B) while reducing
inequality is a nice goal, you have judged that it is just not as worthy
a goal as just increasing these numbers in general, for anyone and
everyone.”
Which I personally think is a sensible conclusion. Rather than
further taxing the rich for the sake of reducing inequality/they have
too much money, we should further tax the rich for the sake of optimal
economic outcomes (i.e. maximizing tax revenue). The optimal tax for the
rich =/= the optimal tax for the rich that would produce the most
equality, thus inequality is not as important as prosperity.
If we take his position as true in its face, I’m fine admitting that.
It is my plan to accrue as much as I can by means of hard work and wise
investment to create a profitable present and future for my wife and
kids and, God willing, my kids’ kids. And this should be the position
for every common man/woman.
Hanson is a bloke, but I can see the confusion
On the other hand: does he have a point, or are there just some hypocrites out there and it’s a terrible argument against inequality critics to assume that’s all there is to it?
Yeah, in the article he’s just ridiculing you if you think aspiring to anything of your own is compatible with being an egalitarian so I think you ultimately make the right decision
when you literally can’t imagine someone who wants other people’s income to also rise
If you aren’t wearing loincloths, swinging from vines and being raised by apes, you are living better than Tarzan, a literal movie star. Inequality doesn’t sound so bad, now does it?
[deleted]
If you don’t want everyone to form a grey goo hivemind you obviously hate equality and what you really want is monarchy. If you prefer cats to dogs then I hope you’re prepared to personally euthanize every dog. If you’re under like 5’6” and not wearing 4” heels then I’m pretty sure you don’t care about racism. I am very intelligent!
This tweet is stupid, but the real shit is in the article expanding on it.
In it, he claims that reading more books, or getting more sexual partners (!), or upping your IQ (!) over the average also somehow increases inequality and proves that you’ve never, in your heart, believed in equality.
Go ahead, Robin, tell us your thoughts about ideal unequal sexual partner and IQ distributions.
Robin’s point about inequality does not convince me, but here is a slight modification of his argument: the GDP per capita of the world, in int$, is 8,000 dollars. That translates to about half of the purchasing power of the median American, meaning absolute equality worldwide is just NOT in the personal interest of most Americans. So the promise that only the American magnates lose from international socialism is false, as the American worker also loses wealth from it. The conclusion is that personal incentives can’t be a “good enough” platform for the socialist types.
This doesn’t even factor in how unsustainable the first world’s absurdly low relative costs of living would be without the exploitation of slavelike labor in the global South. In practice, worldwide socialism (at least in the near-term, in case you believe it would be a net positive in the long-term) would lower the standards of living of the median first worlder by way more than that.
Odd how his argument never even considers the most common strategy of reducing inequality, namely taxing the rich and redistributing their wealth, or in his terms, changing the distribution rather than simply seeking to increase your own standing within an otherwise-fixed distribution. Can’t imagine why that possibility doesn’t cross his mind.
You want to improve society and yet you participate in society. Hmm yes, i am very smart.
Oh, I must not be up to date with their foundation.
They must have added a feature to the friendly AI they developed that lets you instantly teleport to a place with a lower cost of living after your shift ends.
The business is generating the same amount of revenue either way. You increasing how much you are paid means the owners and stake-holders of the business get paid less, unless you are the owner or stake-holder.
This post just fails to understand the causes of systemic inequality. 0 material analysis. It’s not that some jobs are paid better than others, it’s a relationship between capitalists and laborers. The primary driver of inequality is not that different people work jobs that earn different amounts, it’s that some people are siphoning money from everyone else’s labor to concentrate wealth in a few people’s hands.
Every time you eat a meal, you are trying to decrease the world food supply. So admit that you don’t think famine is such a bad thing.
Raising the minimum wage effectively transfers wealth from minimum-wage employers to their employees. The employers are richer than the employees, even though they might both technically be rich in global, absolute terms. Redistributing from the very rich to the someone rich still reduces inequality, even though it would be better to redistribute from the global rich to the global poor. It’s true, however, that many leftists are hypocritically much less concerned about global inequality than inequality within their own already rich countries.
The way these people will have these just absolute bottom of the barrel garbage takes, and build this little “smart guy has incredible insight” performance schtick around it. There’s something kind of impressive about it to be honest.
Robin you are a 62-year-old adult human man
This isn’t even how medians work!
I do sort of wonder if this is a sincere thought or just some baiting. I have to admit I think it may be the latter.
Just abolish the wage system.
Some of you idiots in this thread know that you can just call this lanyard-laden dumb motherfucker an incredibly smug piece of shit, right? That’s 100% allowed. You can literally bodily pick him up and shove him in a locker while you’re doing it too, it’s completely legal and he can’t sue.
“I am very smart”
A dumb gotcha on the level of a reddit commenter. Sad, Robin, sad.
Generally an able, capable person who does nothing to increase their equity and may be responsible for a child/s is doing nothing more than leaving someone else at a disadvantage or in a state of inequity.
So basically a person with such a mentality revolving around inequity is creating it generationally for their own dependents. People like this should not be taken seriously, though their lifestyle has very serious consequences on someone who has no choice but to adjust alone to that misfortune until they learn to use the misfortune to their advantage later in life.
This may create many outcomes, but generally the one seen more often here in the United States is another generation of people who have little education, but know the miserable reality of poverty. Withing this demographic few will ascend from it, yet they may have a much greater appreciation for capital. Unfortunately they do not have the education to make such capital traditionally, thus falling into the demographic of those who are victims of inequity.
High crime and illegal means for gaining capital are seen within these demographics, as well as the next generation of children who are born in the turbulent environment. We see a cycle being created that’s almost identical to the one mentioned above. In fact it is but with a twist. The original parent’s beliefs mentioned above are not to be poor because they are worried about inequality, but it’s to take as little responsibility as possible distributing their equity to those they have a responsibility for distributing it to.
As I stated above child/s, but not a spouse. The greatest inequality is the one that parents who wish to take no responsibility create for their children. These people generally want a great deal of money, but prefer to obtain it either through government or illegal means. Inequality becomes a convenient excuse for them to shield themselves with because they have learned the topic is so abstract that most can’t wrap their head around it, or even care to do so.
Inequality is a lifestyle, one which is very protected and profitable for certain upper echelons; especially highly educated people who understand it and use it as a vehicle to gain favor in politics or those who mean to gain domination over an illegal market of some sort such as drug distribution. Once power is gained these people become like the parents those in the cycle never had. They distribute equity in a equitable manner. Equitable also means limited.
If anyone actually read the article… “For everyone else, it seems you should admit that either (A) you count for more than others, so that your increases are more worthwhile than theirs, or (B) while reducing inequality is a nice goal, you have judged that it is just not as worthy a goal as just increasing these numbers in general, for anyone and everyone.”
Which I personally think is a sensible conclusion. Rather than further taxing the rich for the sake of reducing inequality/they have too much money, we should further tax the rich for the sake of optimal economic outcomes (i.e. maximizing tax revenue). The optimal tax for the rich =/= the optimal tax for the rich that would produce the most equality, thus inequality is not as important as prosperity.
If we take his position as true in its face, I’m fine admitting that. It is my plan to accrue as much as I can by means of hard work and wise investment to create a profitable present and future for my wife and kids and, God willing, my kids’ kids. And this should be the position for every common man/woman.
Well, she has a point. Inequality is fine for me, but not for thee.
This guy sounds unemployed and bitter.