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Reducing inequality can reverse political polarisation: study
- HideousKojima 5y agoThe study sounds like a crock of horseshit: "In this model, we assume that a large population of individuals comprises two distinct identity groups. These identities are assumed fixed, and thus correspond to a fixed feature of identity such as race, religious heritage, or socioeconomic background. Although such identities are fixed in the model, the salience of the identity, and therefore its impact on behavior, varies." The model assumes only two distinct and unchangeable identity groups, and assumes that these identity groups are solely based on a few specific unchangeable traits. And that's before you get into some of the wacky assumptions in their actual math model. Also of note, they mention Charlottesville and the capitol riot as examples of political polarization, but make no mention of comparable events on the left like the BLM riots, the GOP baseball shooting, etc. Gives you a good idea of where the politics of the authors sit and suggests there may be motivated reasoning behind their arguments. "Solve political polarization by doing more of what the left has wanted to do for over a century!"
- uniqueuid 5y agoI think you're coming at the paper from a very particular angle. This is fundamentally a mathematical simulation, so it's bound to be simplified. Assuming fixed identities is not completely unreasonable, given that affective and ideological polarization in the US has been increasing over decades. Yes some people switch, but not as many as you may think.
- chinchilla2020 5y agoComplex human thought processes cannot be modeled by a simplified mathematical model
- uniqueuid 5y agoRight. But simple human behavior can often be modeled by a simplified mathematical model :) My two favorite quotes on the subject are of course George Box: > all models are wrong, but some are useful And Avery Pennarun: > almost everything produced by ML could have been produced, more cheaply, using a very dumb heuristic you coded up by hand, because mostly the ML is trained by feeding it examples of what humans did while following a very dumb heuristic.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoYou say "wanted to do for over a century" yet "the left" has been reducing inequality for several centuries now, abolishing monarchy, aristocrary, slavery and such, introducing voting and democracy and human rights and all that kind of thing. People seem to generally like it.
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- HideousKojima 5y agoSome of the earliest efforts to abolish slavery came from Catholicism, especially Catholic Spain and Portugal. Not really sure how the left can take credit for that, but whatever floats your boat
- animal_spirits 5y agoNot going to argue with what you are saying but I want to point out that modern conservative Christianity is a very very different and derived religion than the religion of the Holy Roman Empire and the ancient Catholic Church.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThe catholic church’s involvement in the slave trade is much more complicated and morally ambiguous than you’re implying here. Popes have generally been consistent about the enslavement of Christians, but have waffled back and forth about the enslavement and transport of Africans and native Americans. Never mind all those serfs the church used to have…
- sib301 5y agoNo one is taking credit, and surely you’re smart enough to understand that two distinct groups can simultaneously work to achieve similar goals.
- antifa 5y agoI'm guessing you're implying all catholics are right wing?
- praxulus 5y agoNot to defend their methodology, but your attempt to equate the GOP baseball shooting with an attempted coup says a lot more about your biases than the study authors'.
- chroem- 5y ago
- dwater 5y agoOf the 700+ people charged for their participation in the January 6th Capitol riot, 11 have been charged with seditious conspiracy. 225 people were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees. More than 75 of those were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon against police officers or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. 640 people were charged with entering a restricted federal building or its grounds. More than 75 were charged with entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon.
- chroem- 5y agoI don't believe it's fair to characterize the actions of a larger group based on those of a minority. We were repeatedly told that the summer 2020 protests were 93% peaceful, and that the fires, pipebombs, and shootings shouldn't distract from the larger message.
- rurp 5y agoIf Al Capone was a murderer why was he convicted of tax evasion?
- ModernMech 5y agoSome people were indeed just trespassing, and were charged with trespassing. Others were trespassing and also fighting with police, and they have been charged with more serious offenses. A third group went even further and was actually executing a plan to overthrow the government, and they have been charged with seditious conspiracy.
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- newbie789 5y ago
- WalterBright 5y agoThe left does indeed solve inequality, by making everyone poor. Such is the sorry history of communism.
- sd8f9iu 5y agoPeacefully protesting (and yes, the vast majority of BLM protests were peaceful [1]) the extrajudicial killing of black men is not remotely on the same level of extreme political activity as the outgoing president orchestrating a coup attempt to try and stay in power. There is no equivalency between far-right and far-left violence in the US. There is a much, much greater rise in far-right violence [2]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
- Barrin92 5y agoWorth reading Robert Sapolsky on the topic of inequality here[1]. Inequality itself (not poverty, and accounted for the material disadvantages), causes about half of the difference in health and life expectancy outcomes in developed nations, makes people at a neurological level opportunistic and causes biological stress in populations which results in violence, crime, isolation, mental illness, and so forth. That's empirically backed by research and stands in stark contrast to the technocratic myth of "we just have to make everyone wealthier" that's dominated for the last 30-ish years. It's not surprising at all that a population that is running on extreme levels of stress tends towards political polarization. [1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-economic-inequality-inflicts-real-biological-harm/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-economic-ineq... edit: short video interview summarizing it because of the paywall: https://youtu.be/aNRPuBJ02MM https://youtu.be/aNRPuBJ02MM
- WalterBright 5y agoMaybe it's crime, violence, and mental illness that causes inequality.
- danShumway 5y agoHaven't we been doing "tough on crime" policy for decades now? We had the entire war on drugs, which we're really only just now collectively pulling back from and realizing was a mistake. We passed prohibition on alcohol. We did stop-and-frisk, all that crud. And our mental illness diagnoses and treatment processes are better today than they've ever been (even if the overall health care system is a mess). We know more about mental illness today than we did in the past, and we have more effective medication and psychological techniques for dealing with it. The overall reduction in violent crime over the long-term in America is a success story, we genuinely have made America safer and less violent. And yet, here we are. So my question to anyone who acts like there's a very simple causal link from violence/crime/illness to inequality is, "why isn't your strategy working then?" I think this kind of stuff is generally a lot more complicated than pointing to a single cause; I don't think that inequality is the single cause of every social problem. But if I am going to point to a single cause, it's probably not going to be based on the strategy that we aggressively targeted for multiple decades that didn't yield the results people are now promising. I get a little bit annoyed by people who keep saying, "no you don't understand, if we're even tougher on crime, then we'll see the results. We just haven't been tough enough yet." At some point, it starts to feel more like "tough on crime" is a philosophy rather than a data-driven, falsifiable theory.
- JavaBatman 5y agoPolarization is due to cultural issues, not economic ones. And no, those cultural issues don't stem from economic issues either. That's a Marxian base/superstructure analysis of the situation, which isn't accurate. Furthermore, inequality will always be with us. Pareto principle is an actual thing and is mathematically sound when it comes to economics. Generally, the top 20% will hold 80% of the wealth. Many phenomena exhibit this distribution.
- uniqueuid 5y agoHaving some experience with studies of polarization, maybe I can help clear up where this paper comes from. Basically, there are at least four distinct types of polarization that are commonly studied: * affective polarization (used in this study) measures hatred towards the outgroup. It is commonly measured with the feeling thermometer, alternatively with the gallup question "would you agree if your kid marries someone from X". This polarization has been increasing over time, and recently outparty antagonism in the US surpassed (for the first time) racial antagonism. * ideological/partisan polarization measures diverging support for the two parties, i.e. voters drifting towards the edges of the political spectrum. Note that this does not require that parties also become more extreme. * elite polarization occurs in politicians and can be identified from speeches etc., but also from co-sponsoring of bills * perceived polarization is the perception of how polarized society is Now, the interesting thing is that many of these phenomena have (at least) two distinct causes: Either sorting, i.e. people realizing which party they really want to vote for. This occurs when parties become more extreme and it therefore becomes easier to identify which party is ideologically closer. Alternatively, people themselves may (also) shift ideologically, creating a clearer gap between parties and their electorate. Most research is done on the US due to its simple two-party system, but there is still some debate regarding the true scope and causes of polarization. For example, one paper could not find a clear causal relationship between internet penetration and different forms of polarization [1]. If you're interested, some good references are listed at the end. [1] Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. (2017). Is the Internet Causing Political Polarization? Evidence from Demographics (No. w23258; p. w23258). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w23258 https://doi.org/10.3386/w23258 Abrams, S. J., & Fiorina, M. P. (2012). “The Big Sort” That Wasn’t: A Skeptical Reexamination. PS: Political Science & Politics, 45(2), 203–210. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096512000017 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096512000017 Fiorina, M., Abrams, S., & Pope, J. (2004). Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America. Undefined. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-War%3A-The-Myth-of-a-Polarized-America-Fiorina-Abrams/e6017cd44a3047d7d1ae7339486a309540eb63ef https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-War%3A-The-Myt... Fletcher, R., Cornia, A., & Nielsen, R. K. (2020). How Polarized Are Online and Offline News Audiences? A Comparative Analysis of Twelve Countries. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(2), 169–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219892768 https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219892768 Levy, R. (2021). Social Media, News Consumption, and Polarization: Evidence from a Field Experiment. American Economic Review, 111(3), 831–870. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20191777 https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20191777 Stroud, N. J. (2010). Polarization and Partisan Selective Exposure. Journal of Communication, 60(3), 556–576. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01497.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01497.x Tucker, J., Guess, A., Barbera, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., Stukal, D., & Nyhan, B. (2018). Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139 https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139
- lost_soul 5y agoA good place to start is "who does polarization benefit?".
- yjakecombinate 5y agoWhoever is living the good life right now, apparently
- gtsop 5y agoA good answer to this question is always "the people who benefiy from the established status quo, aka the economic elites"
- umvi 5y ago> The study says, “We see that sufficient redistribution can reduce both inequality and polarisation, although a high degree of redistribution is required to prevent polarisation.” Have they factored in the act of wealth redistribution itself being polarizing? From a statistical/theoretical perspective it checks out, but I bet practically speaking if you actually tried "a high degree of [wealth] distribution", the middle and upper classes would start screaming and it would cause even more polarization. If the key thing needed to reduce polarization is "reducing inequality", it would probably be good to investigate alternative methods of reducing inequality as well.
- Miner49er 5y agoMaybe this very thing is what is already causing polarization? Many people are already trying to reduce wealth inequality. Maybe the upper classes are fighting back in a way that causes polarization.
- tfigment 5y agoLook at housing in the US. Every home owner gate keeps and many rent seek. It is expected that value does not go down and actually increases faster than inflation. That is rational per person but net detrimental and a significant part of increasing inequity as poor and young cannot keep pace generally. Wealth begets wealth. Its also arguable if home owners are the upper class. Maybe there will be another correction but the govt will likely step in to prevent it.
- pjc50 5y agoWell, yes. There's a number of politically-active billionaires funding all sorts of weird hyper-polarizing "news" sources. I put "news" in quotes because when sued for libel these "news" outlets use the defense of "nobody could possibly have believed this was true, it's just entertainment". If a redistributionist looks like they will become popular they will get smeared into the ground.
- hotpotamus 5y agoAt what level of wealth inequality do you imagine the upper classes saying, "ok, I guess we've got enough, we can stop fighting back now"?
- johnchristopher 5y agoHard to do scapegoating when people's needs are met.
- MattGaiser 5y agoNeeds will just increase to meet the threshold for scapegoating. We are the richest and most prosperous humans to ever walk the earth. Scapegoating still exists.
- johnchristopher 5y ago> We are the richest and most prosperous humans to ever walk the earth. Nope. Inequality is increasing locally in the west. There are a lot of poor people everywhere you look. > Needs will just increase to meet the threshold for scapegoating. That goes against the submission but okay. I suppose you are also against minimal wage increases.
- tehjoker 5y agoI would note that there are centuries of political theory written on this topic with a famous document written in 1848. Unfortunately, most of this theory concludes that class war is required to create an equal society.
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoA far more informative document was written in 1894. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital
- Jensson 5y agoYet the best places to live for poor people didn't have class warfare.
- HideousKojima 5y agoAnd when it fails to do so (and leaves behind a new mountain of skulls in the process), it "wasn't real communism" that time.
- tehjoker 5y agoThat comparison always leaves out the larger mountains of skulls created created under capitalism, the Nazi regime for one, the 900k+ COVID deaths in the US, the intentional famine in Bengal [0], etc. It's a long list that is rarely considered. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church...
- HideousKojima 5y agoI love how tankies seem to think the only economic system apart from communism is capitalism. We have fascism with the Nazis and mercantilism with British colonial territories, but somehow it's all capitalism because it lets them pretend to win arguments without needing to actually learn how different economic systems work.
- theknocker 5y ago
- arrakis2021 5y agoYes can confirm, in the USSR we had no political polarization. Everyone was always satisfied with the ruling party all the time. It was great joy.
- zajio1am 5y ago> Yes can confirm, in the USSR we had no political polarization. Well, yes. People in concord hated the regime.
- aivisol 5y agoYou are joking, right? And everyone was equal except some who were more equal.
- Yoofie 5y agoI think his sarcasm blew a gentle breeze over your head.
- retrac 5y agoIn practice the USSR was an extremely unequal society in terms of wealth distribution. Growing awareness of the enormous gulf in the standard of living and political power between the nomenklatura and the quasi-enslaved contributed substantially to its collapse.
- uniqueuid 5y agoVery interesting! I've skimmed the paper and what the model seems to refer to is affective polarization (i.e. hatred towards the outgroup). It gets much more complex when we begin to incorporate other forms (and potentially sources), such as elite, partisan, party and legislative polarization. As umvi mentioned, each of those may be a source or consequence of affective polarization. Or both at the same time! We really need some long-term field experiments (or natural experiments), but this paper definitely seems like a good contribution regarding the dynamics (models of which often have been way too simple).
- bell-cot 5y agoMaybe my old memory is getting fuzzy...but my recollection is that "groups who feel despised, downtrodden, and grimly insecure are far more easily swayed to polarized, extreme, and violent politics" was a "d'oh, obvious" lesson from WWII in Europe.
- olliej 5y agoThis study is not a study - they created a mathematical model that has a bunch of behavioural assumptions, given those assumptions reducing inequality improves it. It seems completely plausible that a different set of assumptions could create the opposite. A study would mean looking at actual people, and say directly reducing the inequality. Obviously such a study would be infeasible (time, money, ethics, etc), but that doesn’t mean giving this kind of “study” any credence is actually meaningful. Don’t get me wrong, there’s huge amounts of evidence int the negative outcomes in environments of extreme inequality, but bullshit papers like this aren’t going to do anything except boost the authors H index rating.
- ModernMech 5y ago> A study would mean looking at actual people, and say directly reducing the inequality. Obviously such a study would be infeasible Hence models. Your complaint boils down to "This is a model of reality, and not reality therefore it's meaningless." This is a very shallow criticism. Yes, all models come with assumptions. If you have a criticism, it should be about specific assumptions, and not the fact that this is a model.
- notahacker 5y agoSome models incorporate real world data. Some models draw analytical conclusions from [slight modifications] to relationships widely agreed to be true. And some are pretty purely abstract. With this one you can largely guess the conclusion from the stated assumptions despite the complexity of the algebra but... there isn't much reason to believe the stated assumptions approximate reality. Yes, if you model political polarization as economic interactions in which people gain more from riskier trades with people from a different race or political party, pick their political party according to these economic aspirations, and are risk averse in proportion to their income, then the logic of those assumptions is that inequality will make people more likely to sort themselves into parties which match their races and consider those important to their decisions. But I'm not sure that's really how US racial politics works, or that the complexity of the model's dynamics make it more rather than less plausible. There are better reasons to believe reducing inequality can reduce political polarisation than this model, as well as better reasons to believe it won't make much difference
- gtsop 5y agoThis just in: people get angry when facing unfair systems.
- champagnois 5y agoI thought this recent drive toward marxist / equity / wealth redistribution positions were the very source of all division and polarisation. I am an extreme skeptic of any such study if it found that appeasement through giving the radicals what they want will result in harmony. These universities today are somewhat infected with the marxist worldview and have been a major source of the polarisation. As another example of justified skepticism, I wonder what their research departments have to say about student debt forgiveness programs? I am sure they will find such programs fantastic. There is no conflict of interest involved there.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- trembonator 5y ago[dead]