[ExI] the formerly rich and their larvae...

[The Avantguardian]

--- "J. Andrew Rogers" <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:

> Did you read and understand the limitations of the Gini coefficient  
> with respect to predicting properties of an economy?

The Theils index and other less "limited" measures of inequality all
show the same trend.

> That
> coefficient  
> does not mean what many people interpret it to mean and it should  
> probably be higher than it is if the economy was better structured
> and  
> stronger (though I have not computed that -- I am guessing based on  
> what I know of US economic structure).

Do you have a reason to believe that other than the observation that
the U.S.'s Gini index is rather high and therefore it must be a good
thing? (The Gini index is simply the Gini coefficient multiplied by
100)If you look at Gini indices world wide, you will notice that most
Gini indices higher than the U.S., at 45.0 in 2007, occur in the
southern hemisphere in developing and third world nations. Does this
suggest that their economies are better structured than ours?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html
 
> That said, we should *expect* it to correctly and healthily slowly  
> converge on 1 in an economy where a) intelligence is an increasingly 
> 
> important market differentiator and 2) machine intelligence -- even  
> low-grade versions -- start to play a factor in the economy.   
> Intelligence, when unhindered, will strongly bias the Gini
> coefficient  
> toward the high side.

That is an interesting thought, J. Since my last post, I ran a linear
regression trend analysis on the Gini index of the U.S. and it suggests
that the United States is headed toward an economic singularity (Gini
index of 100) by the year 2252 with an R^2 (correlation) value of .938.
This may represent an upper limit on the technological Singularity as
well for reasons that you state.
 

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"Life is the sum of all your choices."  
Albert Camus


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