Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor(qz.com)
qz.com
Humans want equality – as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
https://qz.com/1026390/humans-want-equality-researchers-found-as-long-as-the-rich-stay-rich-and-the-poor-stay-poor/
22 comments
If the world actually equitably shared wealth, the western would have an absolutely astounding drop in our incomes and quality of life. Few would accept this. The average person in the first world has a massively higher quality of life than developing countries.
This is why the only long term answer is technological development, without which we would all still be subsistence farming (and all poor). It would be nice if we had more social advances coupled with this, but that is predicated on human nature taking a different turn than it has historically acted.
This is why the only long term answer is technological development, without which we would all still be subsistence farming (and all poor). It would be nice if we had more social advances coupled with this, but that is predicated on human nature taking a different turn than it has historically acted.
There is a correlation between having wealth, and being able to make the best of it.
If there was a wealth sharing event, a vast amount would be lost, and inequality would rise again. monetary equality without equality of personal value (skills, qualifications) and motivation (behavior, habits) is moot.
Also, for some, the lack of equality of those fronts might be spent, instead, on criminal enterprises - money is power after all, and power corrupts. Then there would be more crooks among the wealthy.
If there was a wealth sharing event, a vast amount would be lost, and inequality would rise again. monetary equality without equality of personal value (skills, qualifications) and motivation (behavior, habits) is moot.
Also, for some, the lack of equality of those fronts might be spent, instead, on criminal enterprises - money is power after all, and power corrupts. Then there would be more crooks among the wealthy.
this, tech is lifting more and more people out of poverty. It's still not great but compared to feudal times where basically everyone were peasants except for a small nobility we are doing well and it will get better with time.
This is also why I don't really support universal health care. UHC doesn't fix the supply/demand problem, but I think that AI/ML and other tech will, making health care affordable for everyone in time. I would rather the government invest trillions in R&D to actually solve the problem as opposed to a stop gap like UHC.
This is also why I don't really support universal health care. UHC doesn't fix the supply/demand problem, but I think that AI/ML and other tech will, making health care affordable for everyone in time. I would rather the government invest trillions in R&D to actually solve the problem as opposed to a stop gap like UHC.
While the average quality of life in the western world is still currently higher than the global average, there have been recent data points in the US that globalization has drug certain subsets of the US down to 3rd-world levels of life quality[1][2]. Globalization is desirable on many levels and happening, and it is already beginning to pull down on the bottom end of western society (and similarly, pull upwards on the bottom end of non-western societies).
What we're getting is globalization (which essentially causes equalization across geographic/national boundaries) without wealth redistribution (within national legal boundaries), which means that while the global average scales are slowly equalizing, there will continue to be a vast split between the rich and poor everywhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDowell_County,_West_Virginia... [2] https://www.sanders.senate.gov/life-in-mcdowell-county - "Men in McDowell County have the same life expectancy as men in Namibia"
What we're getting is globalization (which essentially causes equalization across geographic/national boundaries) without wealth redistribution (within national legal boundaries), which means that while the global average scales are slowly equalizing, there will continue to be a vast split between the rich and poor everywhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDowell_County,_West_Virginia... [2] https://www.sanders.senate.gov/life-in-mcdowell-county - "Men in McDowell County have the same life expectancy as men in Namibia"
It's easy to fall into this trap of thinking that we need to hold out our hands and ask (beg?) for wealth distribution. But this mentality of expecting someone else to come to the rescue is why we remain "poorer" than these other people. Especially now that we all have access to the world's information - it should be easier than ever to take care of ourselves and even coordinate boycotts of useless goods and services that the rich rent-collectors use to reap the harvest of proletarian dollars.
The founders of places like America and Rome were self-sufficient agrarians. The appeal of these places was that they were new and independent of other powers. The people that settled there were escaping the rich city folk in cultures that had already been developed.
But a century of rapid industrialization has yielded less capable, reliant people that have gradually lost their way of providing for themselves. Media has poisoned the minds of economic participants, from a young age, to desire more/bigger things than their neighbor, and that is a primary factor in the simple desire to be "rich".
These days there aren't really any new areas like these aforementioned to "discover" and cultivate (perhaps Alaska, but this place is not for weak people which in turn makes it exclusive to more virtuous citizenry).
Constant growth and expansion at all costs is what cancer cells do.
"You're an entrepreneur, so you're wanting to grow your business. How do you grow?"
"I'll throw you a curve ball - we don't want to grow."
https://youtu.be/4MdFSbFlksI?t=1118
The founders of places like America and Rome were self-sufficient agrarians. The appeal of these places was that they were new and independent of other powers. The people that settled there were escaping the rich city folk in cultures that had already been developed.
But a century of rapid industrialization has yielded less capable, reliant people that have gradually lost their way of providing for themselves. Media has poisoned the minds of economic participants, from a young age, to desire more/bigger things than their neighbor, and that is a primary factor in the simple desire to be "rich".
These days there aren't really any new areas like these aforementioned to "discover" and cultivate (perhaps Alaska, but this place is not for weak people which in turn makes it exclusive to more virtuous citizenry).
Constant growth and expansion at all costs is what cancer cells do.
"You're an entrepreneur, so you're wanting to grow your business. How do you grow?"
"I'll throw you a curve ball - we don't want to grow."
https://youtu.be/4MdFSbFlksI?t=1118
Not really sure why this is surprising to anyone. In many cases the wealthy become so through "unfair" or non-merit based means such as inheritance, luck, personal connections, etc. But in many cases, wealth is also earned. A doctor probably does "deserve" to have a $500k house more than a cashier. It wouldn't make sense for the cashier to receive more than the doctor just because they were poorer to begin with. Actually justifying such a transfer doesn't even compute for me.
The author interprets this as preserving the hierarchy, but I think that's a bit of a stretch. I think people don't want to live in a system that could result in their own wealth being used to enrich others to their own detriment. Sure, taxes and redistribution schemes do that, and you could argue that that's the whole point of capitalism (in the other direction), but it seems perverse and unfair for people to take so much from the wealthiest that the poor end up richer than the wealthy were to begin with.
The author interprets this as preserving the hierarchy, but I think that's a bit of a stretch. I think people don't want to live in a system that could result in their own wealth being used to enrich others to their own detriment. Sure, taxes and redistribution schemes do that, and you could argue that that's the whole point of capitalism (in the other direction), but it seems perverse and unfair for people to take so much from the wealthiest that the poor end up richer than the wealthy were to begin with.
Why did the cashier not have a medical degree, too? If we consider only the effort of each one, we could think that the cashier was lazy? But he may also have the misfortune of being born with less intelligence or in poor social conditions, and the effort he would have to do to equate himself with the doctor would be impossible to attain. This could be a problem of the meritocracy.
The study says NOTHING about wanting the poor to stay for. What the study says is people are unwilling to make a change. This is a very different idea from wanting that someone else to stay poor.
This looks like loss aversion + empathy.
The subjects believe (correctly) that people feel worse about going down in rank than they feel would feel good about going up in rank.
The subjects believe (correctly) that people feel worse about going down in rank than they feel would feel good about going up in rank.
In other words, what humans want and what they actually do, are rather different. When made public the wanting is called virtue signalling and often provides benefits at no or minimal cost and thus it's popular. Example: https://life.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/corbynistas-believe-in-... ('corbynistas-believe-in-socialism-until-the-bill-arrives').
IMHO, better way to think about it is that humans claim they want not something they really want.
That is an interesting study, but it isn't too surprising to me. I think most people recognize that a certain level of inequality is natural, and is often driven by legitimate differences in personal character and discipline. I think the aspect of inequality in America that irritates most people is the degree of inequality combined with the fact that it's only the rich that is experiencing an improving quality of life. This on top of the fact that inequality is being driven less by differences in personal character and more by differences in the return on capital vs return on labor. There are multimillionaires who aren't any better than the rest of us, but because they have significant stores of capital, they do much better than the rest of us.
One thing that's forgotten, I think, is that some degree of income inequality is a natural result of giving people freedom to choose how to live their lives. Person A might say "I want to have lots of cool stuff so I'll work 12 months a year" and earn 100k. Person B might say "I want to stop and smell the roses so I'll work 6 months a year" and live off of 50k.
Sadly, this isn't really possible. By designing a system in which you more or less start life indebted, health care is tied to full time employment, and you will be forcefully removed from land that isn't "yours" (though really it was stolen a few centuries ago from a peasant or a native American for most of the world) the latter option is removed from a lot of people.
We've somehow built the worst of both worlds, I worry, with near-feudal degrees of inequality (though admittedly the baseline is higher), combined with reduced individual freedom and leisure to live the life one chooses with respect to balancing work and life.
Sometimes I wonder if more of the poor, given the choice, would prefer to live a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle like that of people thousands of years ago, if only we hadn't made it illegal via enclosure.
Sadly, this isn't really possible. By designing a system in which you more or less start life indebted, health care is tied to full time employment, and you will be forcefully removed from land that isn't "yours" (though really it was stolen a few centuries ago from a peasant or a native American for most of the world) the latter option is removed from a lot of people.
We've somehow built the worst of both worlds, I worry, with near-feudal degrees of inequality (though admittedly the baseline is higher), combined with reduced individual freedom and leisure to live the life one chooses with respect to balancing work and life.
Sometimes I wonder if more of the poor, given the choice, would prefer to live a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle like that of people thousands of years ago, if only we hadn't made it illegal via enclosure.
In my experience people want equality but only among their peers. For example even the poor living in the US are the 1% of the developing world, yet everyone would object to us taxing the poor here to send it to the Philippines.
I mean, it's interesting but a bit flawed. When you've got 5 coins total and you're saying someone has to be a loser. Why not do the experiment with 4 coins? I don't think humans want equality "as long as the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor" - that's a pretty poor summary of the findings.
What the findings DID discover, and shouldn't be surprising to anyone, is that 45% of people think it's unfair for you to take so much away from the person who "has money" that they end up with less than the person who you're supposedly helping.
What the findings DID discover, and shouldn't be surprising to anyone, is that 45% of people think it's unfair for you to take so much away from the person who "has money" that they end up with less than the person who you're supposedly helping.
I'm surprised that only 45% of people think this is unfair. That's a disappointingly low number.
Well, I think that's because the premise of how they first acquired the money is that it was "completely random".
So ya, if Bill Gates randomly started pulling names out of a hat and handing out money, I think people would tend to feel less bad about that money being redistributed than something that was actually earned.
So ya, if Bill Gates randomly started pulling names out of a hat and handing out money, I think people would tend to feel less bad about that money being redistributed than something that was actually earned.
In that circumstance, the money was earned - by Bill Gates. Why should stealing it from him make someone feel less bad than stealing it from someone else?
GP is saying the reverse: that people shouldn't feel bad if the money that Bill Gates hands out randomly is redistributed again, since none of the people he gave it to initially had earned it.
Why do you think more people should think it's unfair? The participants are explicitly told that the initial positions were assigned randomly. It doesn't seem like the reversed hierarchy is any more unfair than the original.
In this scenario:
"In the first scenario, participants had to decide if they wanted to transfer two coins from person A (who already had four coins) to person B (who had one). Researchers note the “transfer would reduce inequality,” (as there’s less of a gap between them), but person B would end up one coin richer than person A, reversing their status."
"Just 45% accepted the redistribution when it changed the hierarchy."
They have focused on changing the hierarchy, and this is where fairness comes in.
Should people who have "wealth" be forced to a redistribution mechanism, where that person ends up poorer than everyone else? - Its one thing to redistribute for to reduce or eliminate inequality, its another to make them poorer than everyone else (even if the overall equality is reduced)
So I don't think its about maintaining the hierarchy, but a sense of fairness in the redistribution