Topic: What's wrong with unequal wealth distribution? (Was: 2013-12-10 Bitcoin Proves.. - page 3. (Read 2990 times)

The rich are rich because they're profiting from the poor; this can only happen in hierarchical relationships.  The current system is in the shape of a pyramid: the bottom ranks make the most, but they're also the biggest rank, and so divided, they each make far less than the members of the topmost rank, who make the least, but divide that wealth between very few people.  A huge amount of energy is being input by the bottom ranks, while the least amount of energy is being input by the topmost rank; the discrepancy is in why, despite each individual worker providing equal amounts of time and labor, some are paid very little, while others are paid a lot.

Socialism seeks to squash this divide; in the hierarchical system, you have a small group of owners who have the wealth to employ workers who generate more wealth for them; no business owner will ever hire a worker he cannot profit from.  In the non-hierarchical system, each worker holds a stake in the company, and though they perform different jobs of varying intensity, they each get a fair cut in profits generated; if the company does well, they all become richer; if the company does poor, they all become poorer.  This doesn't change the fact that company A can do far better than company B, but it certainly fails to centralize the world's wealth into a very small group of hands: it's not "Bill and Joe profits from Jason's and Lucy's labor", it's "Bill and Jason profit together, and Joe and Lucy compete with Bill and Jason."

I don't see anything wrong with voluntary poverty, don't get me wrong; if a person wants to be impoverished, that's his own business--perhaps he is a writer, or an otaku.  My concern is for the people who work 8+ hour shifts every day and still have to look for more jobs to support themselves and their family, meanwhile those at the top of the system have more wealth than they know what to do with (usually involving empires and lobbying and such.)  I don't find this agreeable; people who input a great amount of work should get a corresponding amount of profit.

But that's the problem, most people on this planet do not have enough wealth to cover even basic living standards. The fact that billionaires even exist is a pretty f*cked up example of what's wrong with the world. The only way they could have accumulated so much wealth is by ripping off less fortunate people down the social pecking order.

YES!

And in this case, significant wealth inequality would simply be an indicator, a signal that something is wrong in the society.

It's not a root problem in and of itself that needs to be corrected. If the *real* root problems are fixed, the inequality will likewise be corrected. To try to suppress the symptom instead of curing the disease seems a waste of effort to me, and a distraction from the real issues.

Then why is that? What is the fundamental problem with significantly unequal wealth distributions? (You'll have to forgive me for replacing your adjective 'extremely' with 'significantly', since the former is pretty arbitrary and the societies with the greatest wealth disparities will always be considered 'extreme' regardless of whether they are or not, depending on how one hashes the numbers.)



I certainly hope few here believe that. It doesn't take much honest looking to recognize that most societies seem to have plenty of means by which people can become impoverished through no direct fault of their own.



I agree, and I'm all for focusing on the lack of meritocracy in societies.



I understand, but what I'm saying is that I've concluded that it IS inconsequential, at least enough that it doesn't warrant any serious focus. And it's pretty difficult to reconsider that position when the fundamental problem with wealth inequality--what it causes, or what it requires--is never brought up, and the situation is just treated as an inherently bad one on its own merits, apart from any other considerations.

It depends on what we mean by poverty. 

Is poverty being unable to meet basic needs such as housing and food?

Or is poverty being much less well off financially that the others in your society?

Your view on what is wrong with unequal wealth distribution will change depending on which definition you go for.

I tend to the view that poverty is being unable to meet basic needs such as housing and food.  Unequal wealth distribution tends to involve inefficient allocation of capital so if there are many people of good character that are having problems making ends meet that would be an issue.

I understand what you're saying.

But are we discussing distribution of wealth, or eliminating poverty? Because it sounds like you're saying the problem with unequal distributions of wealth is that "it causes poverty." (Or perhaps more accurately, that "eliminating unequal distributions of wealth can eliminate poverty.")

If the idea is that poverty can be eliminated by distributing wealth more equally, that's simply not true. True, for the moments that everyone has their state-mandated paycheck (or bill) in hand, there is equal distribution. Yes, there are societies where wealth is more equally distributed, and in many (not by any means all) of those societies there is very little poverty.

But as I pointed out, that does not mean that it was a forced (or even voluntary) redistribution of the wealth that is the cause of the lack of poverty. Rather, wealth inequality develops over time as the natural result of numerous benign and unavoidable causes--although it can also be increased by malicious forces, which shouldn't be tolerated. If a society happens to have both low poverty and more-equal wealth distributions, then those could simply have a common cause, or even be unrelated, depending on the situation.

Here's the point that I was getting at: if the poorest people in a society have adequate wealth to take care of the basics, then why does it matter if there are a few billionaires or even trillionaires around, provided they aren't causing the poorer folk to remain poorer?

If you only advocate a more equal distribution of wealth as a solution to poverty, then the issue that's really at hand is poverty, right? And if that can be fixed without worrying about wealth redistribution, then there's no need to be concerned with unequal distribution... or is there some other issue besides poverty that unequal distribution causes concern over?