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Inequality not being fundamentally unjust does not imply it isn't a huge problem for society. First of all, it makes it easy for the wealthy to lock the poor (
by JDulin 13y ago
Inequality not being fundamentally unjust does not imply it isn't a huge problem for society.
First of all, it makes it easy for the wealthy to lock the poor (and the rich) into their locations on the income graphs. The systems the wealthy can set in place are an impediment to a meritocracy by ensuring the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, whether that is through boarding schools and trust funds or the Drug War and a toothless minimum wage. If the resulting massive disparity in wages implies one thing, it's that our civilization is wasting a lot of untapped human productivity on the low end of the wealth graph.
Secondly, it creates social resentment, fragmentation, and stratification. These are just emotions and Sociology Major words, yes, but that doesn't mean they aren't real. If the people at the bottom of the ladder feel like they don't have the power to climb, a society can end very badly as its political process becomes more polarized and communities are segregated.
Finally, it creates large gaps not just in material wealth, but political. Whether you're a liberal or a conservative, you think either the Koch Brothers or George Soros are destroying America. Either way, it can be agreed that democracies are undermined by a few unelected individuals wielding huge amounts of power. Less income inequality means less political inequality.
Nothing you said is wrong, but it's unhelpful. It distracts from how important dealing with growing income inequality will be in the future by saying "The discourse... is frustrating to me, because it's not pedantically right." It might be necessary if sama was arguing against large wealth disparities in a post-poverty civilization, but that is not what we have. Like you said: Poverty is the problem. And while we have poverty, poverty and inequality are closely linked.
- haberman 13y ago> It might be necessary if sama was arguing against large wealth disparities in a post-poverty civilization, but that is not what we have. Like you said: Poverty is the problem. And while we have poverty, poverty and inequality are closely linked. This is where you lose me. Solving the problem of poverty is a matter of making sure that the poorest people have enough. Solving the "problem" of inequality is a matter of making sure that nobody has "too much."
- dllthomas 13y agoAs long as resources are finite, there is an upper bound on how much one individual can have without depriving others. I'm not convinced we're near it, though...
- haberman 13y agoThat's zero-sum thinking.
- dllthomas 13y agoWhen resources are fixed, zero-sum (in resources) thinking is appropriate.
- pdonis 13y agoResources are not fixed. Our planet, our solar system, and our universe are awash in resources. The question is, how much does it cost to extract them, compared to their value once extracted? As technology advances and human ingenuity finds new ways to do things, more and more resources become available at a cost less than their value. That's been happening all through human history, and continues to happen now. Even if particular resources (e.g., oil) turn out to be finite, we find substitutes (e.g., nuclear, solar, or even oil from algae), so that in a practical sense we never run out.
- dllthomas 13y agoThere are finite resources in our light cone. Resources are fixed. I said that I didn't expect we were nearing those limits. Quite obviously we aren't nearing that limit, but I don't rule out the possibility that there may be other, more relevant ones.
- pdonis 13y agoThere are finite resources in our light cone Actually, if the universe is spatially infinite (which it is according to our best current models), this is not true even if we equate "resources" with "quantity of matter", which is what you are implicitly assuming. However, this implicit assumption is false: what counts as a "resource", i.e., how much of what kind of matter it takes to accomplish a particular goal, is not fixed. It changes as technology and human knowledge changes. In principle there is no lower bound to how much of what kind of matter it can take to accomplish a particular goal, which means that in principle there is no upper bound to the amount of wealth that can be created with a fixed quantity of matter.
- ahomescu1 13y ago> whether that is through boarding schools and trust funds or the Drug War and a toothless minimum wage. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that the Drug War comes as much from conservatives in the middle class as from rich people (in a "think of the children" way, they want to keep their communities clean and healthy). (Not saying I agree with the Drug War, it's been a disaster so far).
- jessaustin 13y agoRich people in general don't have one unified opinion on the topic. Certain rich people are rich because of the Drug War, so they're strongly in favor of it.