by hardwaresofton | 2025-07-06 13:27:03+00:00
> I would agree if there were no billionaires in a country where people also cannot afford things such as housing, food, healthcare and basic education. With economic inequality this high, I don't think we are trying hard enough to create a more egalitarian society.

Agreed -- the ratio is a problem. The problem is not that billionaires exist, because that is a slippery slope IMO (you could say the same thing about millionaires, or people who make money WITHOUT working at all -- i.e. wealth). The problem is the ratio. We need to decide what disparity is acceptable for our society, and then enforce that.

Not full on regime change to whatever new government might be better than the current. Just a clear stating of what our values are as a nation, and some numbers.

> That scaphism is more cruel than stoning as means of execution, it does not make stoning more humane. > > I think you get my analogy.

True, but if I had to pick a way to be executed, I don't think it's a hard choice. The analogy has to imply that you have to pick a poison -- there's no utopia.

> No society collapsed directly because of use of slave labor. Many actually thrived in such a system. > > That should not be an argument in favor of slavery. > > Just because the lack of UBI does not cause society to collapse ot does not mean that a society as inequal as ours cannot be improved.

UBI was proposed as a "need". It is not a need -- it is a want, or seen as a moral imperative.

Of course society can be improved, it's a question of how, and UBI is not a convincing how, that's my problem.

I'm not really sure the comparison to slavery here is relevant. I did not imply that the lack of UBI is desirable, just that UBI is not present and not a necessity for any government that exists.

> I don't think we turned this corner. But if we did, then perhaps it's fine we head towards extinction. With no humans there will be no inequality eh?

I think we did -- even if AI stopped where it is right now we already have created a pretty insane new tool. Even if it's only use was surfacing knowledge 5x/10x/100x??? faster than current search engines can, in a way that is more natural to humans. The knock-on effects are profound and likely going to be immeasurable.

Almost completely separate from that, robotics is really progressing. We have self-driving cars, just casually running around right now. We've turned some pretty big corners.

And IMO it's not an ideal outcome to head towards extinction, but it's a possible one. It's arrogant to think that humanity will live on forever, no matter how much we want that to be true.

Very against people who explicitly want extinction though -- pretty anti-human thing to say, and I can't think of something more worthy of suspicion. We worked pretty hard to survive this far.

> I always say the same. If businesses leave, but the demand for goods and services in that society still exists, other businesses will occupy that space. Either existing businesses will seize that opportunity or new businesses will spawn.

Yup, that's an even more compelling argument. Imagine all those companies vacating the space. The absolute explosion of entrepreneurship and new innovation would be transformative, if the interim can be managed through and the right incentives put in place.

> In no small part because our current system favors capital above all else, and excessive capital concentration allows its owners to distort institutions to their will. Excessive economic inequality is a bitch.

I'd agree, except I'd replace "capital" with "power". No political/social system seems to be immune to excessive power accumulation, but IMO current representative and direct democracies are the closest we've ever gotten.

Real politik is a bitch.

> Note that I said excessive. I am not against some economic inequality. I think it's alright for a surgeon to have a nicer house and a better car than, say, a store clerk. > > I don't think it's alright for one to have a mutiple yachts and mansions on ski resorts, while the other fights starvation.

Yup, while I like leaving it up to a market to decide that, I do think markets need to be controlled/have guard rails.

Agree though, the ratio is the problem.

I often think there's a really simple solution that sounds amazing -- just cap the discrepancy between total comp of the lowest employee at a company and the highest one (including the board). Super simple solution that broadcasts values, and is relatively easy to understand.

People might argue that the "most productive" people would lose motivation, but IMO it wouldn't do a thing -- they'd keep their same motivation because the drive (put overly simply, greed) will always be there.