The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/upshot/the-formula-for-a-richer-world-equality-liberty-justice.html

by known • 10 years ago

50 73 10 years ago

nytimes.com

erkose• 10 years ago

While I'm not arguing with the article, I thought liberty is freedom bound by justice.

nickff6• 10 years ago

That phrase is laden with subjective meanings:

Liberty: positive or negative liberty?

Freedom: freedom from or for what? Obligation, morality, ethics, work, or responsibility?

Justice: is this rule of law, or some type of social justice?

lutusp3• 10 years ago

The article fails to mention a key element in eliminating poverty -- free and affordable access to fertility control measures for women, as well as an absolute sovereign right for women to choose when and whether to have children.

mamon2• 10 years ago

There's one huge downside to this: eliminating poverty by reducing population leads to aging society, which leads to shitty pensions for retired workers, higher taxation, higher public debt, etc, which in turn leads back to population reduce.

Basically, birth control leads to a slow death of civilization. The most tragic thing about it is that you can't do anything about it, as denying women the choice would be violation of their human rights.

Therefore, advanced societies are doomed to die out and be replaced by more primitive ones. Which happened few times in history (e.g. Roman Empire) and is already happening again in some part of the world (e.g. EU immigration crisis)

scalio3• 10 years ago

China disagrees. They're still growing, in spite of a bloody ruthless birth control system (though I seem to remember that they've loosened it a bit, not sure).

Also, the Romans died out because they fell into decadence, which is exactly what the west is doing right now.

grey-area• 10 years ago

The fall of the Roman empire was due to birth control?

nl• 10 years ago

For people reading this, I'm pretty sure it is troll. Outrageous claim, no citations. Hmm.

Don't feed the trolls

lutusp3• 10 years ago

Basically, birth control leads to a slow death of civilization.

So does overpopulation. Your argument applies to a society that requires and assumes constant growth, for which it's certainly true, but that model has its own innate limitations, like overpopulation outstripping available land and resources.

The most tragic thing about it is that you can't do anything about it, as denying women the choice would be violation of their human rights.

There's a myth implicit in this argument, that women would have more children if they could. But surveys reveal that women want to be able to choose, and if they could choose, they would have fewer children.

thr88923• 10 years ago

Not necessary. Men still do not have those rights, but society is doing just fine.

lutusp3• 10 years ago

Men still do not have those rights ...

Wait ... men don't have the sovereign right not to get pregnant? I'm not sure that's a persuasive argument for or against anything.

... but society is doing just fine.

Yes, all except the part about being way overpopulated.

Animats• 10 years ago

China officially disagrees.

Anyway, the big improvements in the standard of living came from the industrial revolution, not the Reformation.

MarcScott• 10 years ago

The industrial revolution would most likely have never occurred in Britain without such reforms as intellectual property and land rights.

scalio3• 10 years ago

Enrichment from market-tested betterment will go on and on and, over the next century or so, will bring comfort in essentials to virtually everyone on the planet

That smells strongly of the same kind of delusion that fuels capitalism, infinite growth.

What, then, caused this Great Enrichment? Not exploitation of the poor,

Apparently, none of our clothes or electronics are being fabricated by (economic) slaves.

While I do mostly agree with the article's conclusion,

But the modern world came from treating more and more people with respect.

it all looks terribly cherry-picked to me in order to make a certain point: "The current system is fine, we can all feel good" or thereabouts.

berntb2• 10 years ago

> Apparently, none of our clothes or electronics are being fabricated by (economic) slaves.

You know the full argument as well as I do, I'd think?

For a country to get rich, it walks up a staircase. It starts with simple industry, investments in education and at the top after two-three generations are Japan or South Korea? What to do to walk the staircase is known today, there are examples. It mainly needs lack of conflicts, little corruption and good (capitalist) governance.

If you have good counter arguments, other than that China has one generation left of stairclimbing, I'm interested?

This was what changed my world view regarding this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...

scalio3• 10 years ago

Thank you for that link, and for changing my view on the subject.

The thing about capitalism, though, is that it's an apparently reliable way of doing things in such situations. Apart from the odd crisis, it has worked fabulously for the west during the 20th century. With the internet, however, a lot has changed. I'm not old enough to quantify exactly how much or what, but what's certain is that it has created an entirely new ground to explore and 'colonize', and I don't think capitalism is at all well suited for stable humanist development in both the physical and the new virtual grounds.

soufron6• 10 years ago

Yeah sure... "Poverty is the problem, not inequality". That's just lobbying and self-delusion into believing that improving the riches always ends up improving the poors. John Rawls where are you? Equality does not mean having the same amount of money. That's naive and uninformed. Equality means sharing everything. It means that the nids of the riches and the poors will go to the same schools, that everybody goes to the same hospitals, etc. Of course it implies that these services must be good enough so that the riches wont look for something else. But then you can have both poors and equality.

nickff6• 10 years ago

The only problem is that Rawls was wrong; there is ample evidence showing that we have differing views on what is right even when shielded by a 'veil of ignorance'. For instance, your view of equality is not the same as mine, as I favor a 'rule of law' paradigm of equality (, and I do not mean to imply that you are 'wrong'). The author here seems to value Pareto (absolute and widespread) improvements over relative measures, which you appear to prioritize; one could even make the case that you are encouraging avarice.

soufron6• 10 years ago

Poor Pareto would be sad to hear this. Even as hé described them, he viewed Pareto improvements as unjust and broken.

physicalist• 10 years ago

There can be no such evidence because there is no such thing as a "veil of ignorance". You are fully aware of your social status. It seems likely that this knowledge informs your values.

barrkel• 10 years ago

It's natural that we think differently behind the veil because we cannot remove from ourselves our different knowledge of what lies beyond. I don't think this makes Rawls wrong; it makes some arguments from behind the veil ignorant in a different way, not an ignorance of where we end up, but an ignorance of what it's actually like across the spectrum of possibilities.

bobwaycott4• 10 years ago

You do not understand Rawls, and are suggesting as a point of opposition exactly what Rawls takes as a fundamental given in human society. Rawls makes no suggestion that everyone shares the same perspectives on either side of the veil of ignorance. In fact, he says the opposite, and it is because of this he suggests the veil of ignorance as a mediating force to minimize the vast difference of views, by way of the veil removing one's knowledge of their material place and circumstances in society on the other side of the veil. Rawls very strongly supports fidelity to and rule of law. The veil's purpose is to provide a more level playing field on which participants in a society can more fairly determine what the rules of law and order will be.

Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean when you suggest a "'rule of law' paradigm of equality"? I have no doubt you mean something specific, but this combination of words suggests nothing about this paradigm of equality, nor about what role the "rule of law" plays in or has relationship to equality.

bluetomcat2• 10 years ago

Of course it implies that these services must be good enough so that the riches wont look for something else.

Even if the services are good enough, there will always be segregation in the presence of huge income disparities between sizable portions of the population. Wealthy overambitious parents wouldn't want their kids to have any contact whatsoever with the "lower class".

soufron6• 10 years ago

Yeah? Have a look at EU social democracies... Everybody go to the same schools and the same hospitals, everybody gets the same internet, everybody go to the same sport clubs, etc. And wealthy overambitious parents tend to hide their money and live among their community.

WalterBright3• 10 years ago

Of course it implies that these services must be good enough so that the riches wont look for something else.

There can be only one best heart surgeon. How would you go about deciding who gets the best one, and who gets second best, on down to who gets the bottom of the class?

woliveirajr• 10 years ago

But then you can have both poors and equality.

Venezuela?

brador• 10 years ago

The ultimate solution is a machine that solves every need I have before I have it.

But then why live?

jondubois4• 10 years ago

I think money isn't the issue here. Freedom is the issue.

If you're a regular person:

- You have no free time because you have to work non stop just to pay the bills (especially rent)

- You have no free speech because if you say the wrong thing at work, you might get fired. Workplaces tend to severely limit individuals' ability to express themselves freely (because people have their livelihoods at stake). It's usually a very tense environment.

- For a lot of whitecollar jobs, you don't even have freedom of thought. You can't do your work while thinking about other stuff; your mind has to be focused 100% on the work (and in a lot of industries, the work is increasingly mechanical and repetitive).

The problem is not lack of money itself, it's lack of freedom. The only way to get freedom is through having a lot of money.

soufron6• 10 years ago

You can lower the importance of money by having great public services that will be paid collectively.

jondubois4• 10 years ago

Good point, but the rich don't want to lower the importance of money, they want to increase it.

visarga3• 10 years ago

What would it take for a community to "break off" the grid and not need money? Land for agriculture, solar panels, 3d-printers for parts, water filtration, AI and robots for automation (maybe the robots can build more robots, as well). What a single person can't do, maybe a hundred or a thousand can. Some technologies are converging towards independence, there might be a way to escape the system as it is now. Maybe we get to see various lifestyle experiments popping up, as long as the communities can take care of themselves, and seek independence.

I think independence research should compliment UBI as a strategy for the automation age. Give people the necessary means of production to provide for themselves absent wages.

yummyfajitas4• 10 years ago

You work no more now than ever before.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/image.php?g=d5P

Very few people work non-stop and those folks tend to earn a lot of money (e.g. bankers), which kind of goes against your narrative.

I'm not sure what you mean by free speech, can you clarify? Are you referring to various government restrictions on commercial speech?

jondubois4• 10 years ago

A lot of people work non-stop and don't get paid much - Especially outside of the US.

A lot of software developers learn new tools outside of work to keep their skills up to date or they have side projects. Many developers (myself included) work 80 hours per week. The pay is typically good but not that good if you count it on an hourly basis.

pjc503• 10 years ago

Justice is the overlooked leg of this tripod. Societies where the law is unevenly enforced find it harder to develop.

jernfrost• 10 years ago

Way to brush over the severe problems with inequality. There were plenty of countries poorer than France during the French revolution. It was not poverty which caused it but inequality. In all societies high levels of inequality coincides with political instability. All that wealth and prosperity is easily lost if you end up with revolution and civil war. Look at America today. It has not been as unequal and politically polarized in decades.

The author champions Adam Smith, but can not possibly have read him. He did in fact speak at length about the dangers of inequality. He specifically said that poverty was not an absolute phenomenon. It is not about how many calories you get per day and the size of your dwelling. He understood hundreds of years ago that poverty is a relative phenomenon.

The author also mentioned Picketty but elegantly ignored his reasoning for why inequality is a big problem. One of the things Picketty pointed out is that with rising inequality, inherited wealth starts dominating the economy. This means the ability to get rich fast will most efficiently be accomplished with strategic marriages rather than starting your own businesses. This is what the world of Jane Austin was about. Everything came down to strategic marriage. That was the obsession of the day. A society of high inequality over a long time can not be a society of "the self made man".

That ought to be recognized as a problem.

soufron6• 10 years ago

same thing... the whole article seems so naïve...

WalterBright3• 10 years ago

As a counterpoint, there has never been an era where more people have risen to great wealth so quickly as today.

Also, 85% of American millionaires are self-made (not inherited). See the book "The Millionaire Next Door".

jondubois4• 10 years ago

I'm not worried about the past 20 years at all (those were good times). I'm worried about the next 20 years.

Before, when people thought about 'monopolies' they thought about Microsoft (there wasn't that many)... Now practically every company is a monopoly.

And taken together, they form a sort of oligopoly. Companies today are more cooperative than they are competitive (and this helps them maintain their positions).

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

That doesn't square with research on social mobility. E.g.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-...

It's easy to cherry pick a fact like "85% of millionaires are self-made" and ignore the background of those millionaires.

How many come from secure middle class homes, or grew up in families in areas which happened to benefit from a property boom?

It's a meaningless statistic unless you look at the bigger picture - which is where you find a persistent pattern of research proving that the one single most significant factor determining the wealth of an individual is the wealth of his/her parents.

Worse, the US does far worse on objective social mobility than most other Western countries.

The fact that a few individuals can still work their way up against all the odds doesn't alter the fact it's an unreachable goal for most of the population.

yummyfajitas4• 10 years ago

It's not been as politically polarized? Let me remind you that in the 1960's (often held up as a golden age of lower inequality and strong unions), we had a multi-million member political terrorist group attacking soft targets on a regular basis. Remember Bombingham? Countering them we had a large armed separatist group.

Nowadays all we have are some internet Hitlerites who make Pepe the Frog memes and watch tentacle porn.

One of the things Picketty pointed out is that with rising inequality, inherited wealth starts dominating the economy...A society of high inequality over a long time can not be a society of "the self made man".

As the contemporary US demonstrates, this is false. We have a higher proportion of self made billionaires than ever before. For example:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...

Picketty even acknowledges that all the official statistics go against this claim, he just postulates that there are secret inherited fortunes that the statistics don't capture.

In any case, if you really believe inequality rather than poverty is the problem, I invite you to come to India. Way less inequality than the US. Granted, there's a 50% chance you won't have a flush toilet, but that's not a problem if no one else has one either, right?

esolyt2• 10 years ago

if you really believe inequality rather than poverty is the problem

Maybe they're both problems. You're arguing a straw man here.

The comment you replied to simply says poverty was not the cause of French Revolution. It does not say poverty is not a problem.

hal9000xp2• 10 years ago

I feel smell of leftism from keywords "equality" and "justice".

You don't need machine learning to automatically spot social democrats (they have almost the same rhetoric as socialists), a simple python script is more than enough.

By the way, what this article is doing on HN?

jnbiche• 10 years ago

Your heuristic failed here. The writer here opposes raising taxes and even uses the favored fiscal-conservative term "expropriation" (her words: "expropriation is a one-time trick"). She exalts Adam Smith and the free market. She's no social democrat.

hal9000xp2• 10 years ago

You are probably right, may be I was wrong on this article. In particular, I agree on this:

"Raising low productivity by enabling human creativity is what has mainly worked. By contrast, taking from the rich and giving to the poor helps only a little — and anyway expropriation is a one-time trick. Enrichment from market-tested betterment will go on and on and, over the next century or so, will bring comfort in essentials to virtually everyone on the planet, and more to an expanding middle class."

Till recently, I spent time and actually read articles on NYT (or similar) even if they had some keywords in title. And almost always, I found that author is supporter of labour party or Bernie Sanders or something like this.

This time, I was probably mistaken.

esolyt2• 10 years ago

taking from the rich and giving to the poor helps only a little — and anyway expropriation is a one-time trick.

It is not explained why it helps only a little or why it has to be a one-time trick.

And why is the author talking about "expropriation" instead of "taxing"?

x0137294744532• 10 years ago

And why is the author talking about "expropriation" instead of "taxing"?

The process of expropriation usually occurs suddenly and forcefully in the name of the public interest and are focused on one specific group. Taxes on the other hand, are taken regularly and are applied to everyone (although at a different rate).

apatters2• 10 years ago

The NYT again reveals its inability to look at anything outside of its comfortable Western bubble. The global trend of the past 10 years has been a wave of efforts by entrenched rulers to suppress free elections, free press, and a rise in corruption. There is a rough consensus among most watchdog organizations that track this sort of stuff on a global level that measures of freedom are getting worse or in the best case holding steady. The majority of the world's population does not live in democracies with honest elections and justice systems that are free of corruption. Sure you can argue that maybe on some 50+ year long trend things are getting better but to write a column like this in 2016 is just tone deaf. This is why no one wants to pay for the news.

berntb2• 10 years ago

Interesting, do you have some serious references?

I've seen the argument that as the general economy increases for an industrialized society, democracy becomes a necessity?

(What seems scary is that with increasing 1984 Big Brother technological capabilities, it seems more possible for e.g. China to combine economic freedom and harsh political oppression.)

So, it is not like that?

apatters2• 10 years ago

Freedom House is probably the most relevant watchdog/measuring organization I can think of for the general case of "equality, liberty and justice" that this article's author was handwaving about. They try to assess the state of several different types of freedom in every country around the world and produce a complete index. Their view is that the world has been getting less free for about ten years now. Many other organizations monitor and rank countries by their degrees of various kinds of freedom - for instance Reporters Without Borders ranks countries based on press freedom and the Heritage Foundation ranks them based on economic freedom - the general character of the assessments of these organizations is that the world is getting less free, not more.

woodandsteel• 10 years ago

There are a lot of problems with free market capitalism. One important one is that, while living standards have skyrocketed in the developing world, in recent decades they have stagnated or declined in the developed world. Another is that the rich have a highly disproportionate influence on the political system. A third is crashes caused by the finance industry, as in our recent Great Recession.

That said, I think the overall message has a lot of truth. The reason this is so is that industrialization produces vast, orders-of-magnitude increases in the total wealth of a society, and free market regimes, over the long term, are better than any other at both producing the technological innovation involved, and also putting it into efficient use.

That is why the Soviet Union and Mao's China both stalled out in economic growth. It is also why crony capitalism economies, where the road to wealth is based on governmental connections, as in Putin's Russia and the whole Arab Middle East, don't have successful economies.

That in turn ties to democracy. If you have an authoritarian regime, then probably it is going to try to enrich its members and control the economy for its own benefit, rather than that of its citizens. With a democracy it is much more likely the market will be free enough to have real, sustained growth.

The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice

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