[ExI] Social right to have a living

[Stefano Vaj]

On 31 May 2011 15:36, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> Newly rich people being risk-propense does not mean that being
> risk-propense is a good individual gamble for becoming risk.
> Selection/survivor effects and all.

As the concept goes, risk propensity means that I am ready willing to
take a one in ten chances of getting 100 rather than a safe bet to get
10. Both may be reasonable economic and Darwinian and game theory
strategies - otherwise risk-propensity would not exist in the first
place - but of course it implies by definition that 9 out of 10 risk
takers end up with nothing, and that no risk-averse player ends up
with anything more than ten.

>> Moreover, a declining social mobility, which is the invariable mark of
>> decadence, is in Europe quite certainly in place. Even in Russia.
>
> By everything I've seen, Europe is doing better in social mobility than
> the US is.  Or at least parts of Europe are.  More small businesses and
> enterpreneurship too.

Really? Any hard data to support that? BTW, small businesses are
essentially the business of middle class, which establish them, well,
to remain middle class.

In fact, most of the social mobility we can see are very rare examples
of middle class or upper-middle class becoming upper class thank to
some business breakthrough (say, Bill Gates or Silvio Berlusconi). But
even that sounds very much like last century...

-- 
Stefano Vaj