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Just as when you have a fair race the top 1% of the competitors will have a better than double the completion time than the average. So to with a fair economy would you expect the top 1% best investors to own 50% of the market.
These aren't hallmarks of inequality, they are hallmarks of equality.
@freemo monopoly isn't a fair race, it's staying on the finish line and shooting everyone who approaches and claiming no one can beat your time.
"BAM! Well I guess he got exhausted..."
A racer does not approach a race thinking "ok how can I abuse any loopholes in the rules to my advantage", since the rules are strict and clear. The are no strict and clear rules to life, so we have to wait and see what people do and then judge them.
Finally ownership is different from performance. There is no skill in ownership.
@freemo Not sure what you are referring to. I didn't say the loophole is necessary, just that i doesn't/can't exist in racing, since the rules can be set to be strict and fair. The law can't be that strict it has to allow for freedoms and potential abuse that it needs to evolve to prevent. There was a point in time where duels to death were considered fair.
@namark in racing if everyone has the same loophole available to them then it works just fine..
Say you have a race that says everyone is allowed to take a shortcut that cuts off 100 meters of the track.. If its available to everyone then you still have a fair race.
Same is true for the economy, what you call loopholes are really intentional rules in the system to make them more fair when handling edge cases. Those "loopholes" are freely available for everyone to use, so it is still fair.
@freemo See example above: a rule of the race states whoever gets to the finish line is allowed to shoot others. How is that for a fair rule? "Works just fine!".
Are you claiming that the current system has no loopholes or problems?
"It's perfect we figured it out guys, I'm smarter than anyone else is now and will ever be".
This comparing life to sports thing is real dubious... better leave it to the fascists.
@namark We have no such rule in our economy, however. The loopholes you have access to is not contigent on if your int he top 1%, as would be the case with your example. You can use the "loopholes" regardless of if you are the first to finish or not.
there are problems, big ones, but they arent so much revolving around lack of fairness in the economy, they revolve around lack of compassion for helping those who were born into a shitty start.
To go back to the analogy, a race may be fair, but obviously the children of athletes are more likely to be in the top 1% than a child of two unhealthy overweight parents... This doesnt make the race any less fair, but it does mean that there is an ethical incentive to help people who might be struggling to adopt good habits and become a winner.
The same is true for the economy. The system is pretty fair as is, but even though it is fair I do recognize an unmet ethical obligation to those born into poverty who could use better assistance to give them a better chance.
@freemo press x to doubt
I would bring up the IP laws (as the only laws a programmer know about) but I know you love proprietary software, so that's a dead end...
@namark All the software I own and run is open source, so I wouldnt say I "love" proprietary software... but it does certainly have a right to exist.
I would somewhat agree there is an issue with IP laws in a sense.. namely that who can win in an IP lawsuit isnt usually a matter of who has the legal right but more a matter of who can afford the most lawyers. In many cases you can lose an IP lawsuit even when your int he right simply because it would bankrupt you to fight it.
So that aspect is something that needs to change for sure. But I wouldn't abolish the notion of IP, that seems like lunacy to me.
@freemo lunacy?! why I must rebut accordingly now and say that IP seems like a degeneracy to me.
@namark Yes, I would expect you to have that opinion, much as I have the opinion that abolishing all IP is lunacy. Its ok though, we dont have to agree :)
thats pretty naive to what a court battle over IP looks like. Filing the claim is not the bulk of the effort by any means.
Well clearly you are completely ignorant of the process. I highly doubt you have had anything to do with any serious IP claims in court as a defendant against a larger company.
Slander? This is in writing, it libel. Funny as a lawyer I'd expect you to not make that mistake.
But hey, I'll admit when I'm wrong. Can you share with us a legal case you won against a large corporation as a defendant? I'll check our work and happily concede the point if it checks out and you show it was you.
I said nothing of the sort. I am well aware of how intellectual property law works and have had hands on expiernce dealing with it.
So ... you have no actual expiernce to share then? Ok good to know.
I'm not trying to win anything, you made a point, im trying to consider your point.. part of that is you claimed to be a lawyer who does this.. i asked for any sort of evidence to verify your claim and you've just been on a temper tantrum ever since.
So yea, pretty much just sounds like you have nothing of value to add. Feel free to say something useful at some point if you wish.
pareto inequality already exists. there has always been a distribution of 1% superwinners, ~20% survivors and 79% failures. this goes all the way back to pareto himself going "that's fucking weird why do all the peas come from so few of the crops?"
the part that is busted is that while the 1:20:79 brackets always existed, being in the 20 bracket used to still be very comfortable.
Quality of life for those at the lower end is a very valid argument... Its a slightly different issue though as we arent saying the wealth inequality itself is an indication of unfairness.
With that said the quality of life of people in the middle class today is certainly much better than it was 100 years ago overall, its just that people tend to mess things up a bit in their comparison.
For example one thing you often hear is how a modern car costs a huge portion of peoples checks.. but modern cars are also far more feature rich than a car was in the 70s for example. Now if you want to buy a car that is built with the level of technology and features as that of a 70's care they are pretty much dirt cheap.
from what few numbers i've seen a big problem is that in one reference frame, superwinners owned mansions, winners had nice houses and nice cards, losers had plain houses and poor cars.
now superwinners own multiple mansions, winners own plain-to-decent houses and nice cars, losers rent cube hotels and have no car.
i've certainly met a lot more people this cycle who just don't even have old used cars, they just.. don't have one.
i suspect without some drastic measures, within the next couple cycles the superwinners will be the only ones who own a house at all.
it seems we cannot escape sturgeons revelation, but we have the ability to control the skew of the buckets as a whole.
Just to show this wasnt a fluke here is a picture of what the poor area of a city looked like in 1940... Go to the poorest area of any modern city and you can see in a glance that the quality of life is far better, you will even see cars parked filling the street. Notice there isnt a car in sight int he 1940 picture.
Not really an accurate description at all.
Go back just a few decades and the losers were far more destitute than today
Attached is a picture of what poverty looked like in 1940, I dont see a plain house with poor cars...
they weren't wealthy.
Building your own home might not have mde them the top 1%, but the fact that they owned land and had the money to buy the supplies to build a home, and the extra time and energy to devote into making it (thus they werent on the brink of starvation) suggests they were at least middle class.
@namark
It isnt abuse of loopholes, it is using the kaw as intended, the same law and tax breaks everyone else can get.