[ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap

Tue Jun 9 20:12:09 UTC 2020

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 12:11 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: Darin Sunley <dsunley at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Acceleration of the wealth gap

>…Also, "crazy" isn't a behavioral model, it's merely an implicit confession that their behavior confuses you and you don't know how to model their behavior…

OK Darin, I will certainly admit I don’t understand how to model the behavior of driving a $300k Rolls to loot a department store.  Can you make sense of that?

Looters may imagine they are stealing from the rich, but in fact they are stealing from the poor.  The insurance premiums will go up on all businesses anywhere near where rioting took place.  This increases the prices of everything, which hits the poor the hardest.  Since their local stores are burned out and my not be rebuilt, the poor now need to travel a greater distance to do their trading.  Looters are the opposite of Robin Hood: they steal from the poor and give to themselves.

Note the comments made by the mayor of Chicago:

"I've been on calls and text messages with people all day who fought hard to bring economic development to areas of the city, only to see the Walgreens, the CVS, the grocery store, everything vanish in an eye blink.  It's going to take a Herculean effort on the part of all of us to convince businesses not to disappear, to come back. We're prepared to fight that fight."

"I haven't seen shit like this before.  The number of places all over the South and West sides in particular that have been hit today has just been off the charts. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of locations. Big stores, small stores, strip malls, many corner places, it is all over the city."

The mayor did have an uplifting comment on the local residents form a volunteer guard, hoping to protect what is left.  This is important considering the obvious new challenge: the remaining businesses are all they have left.

“The new guards are unarmed and solely in place to monitor activity on commercial corridors and notify the Chicago Police Department if any illegal activity occurs.  None of the security guards have policing powers, but are another set of eyes and ears to support efforts to deter looters. All security officers will wear visible identification.”  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, 31 May 2020

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