<div dir="ltr">On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Anders Sandberg <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:anders@aleph.se" target="_blank">anders@aleph.se</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">
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<div>On 09/10/2013 21:37, Kelly Anderson
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<div dir="ltr">On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Anders Sandberg <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:anders@aleph.se" target="_blank">anders@aleph.se</a>></span>
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Whether it is a natural law is a good question, actually.
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<div>The folks at the Santa Fe Institute certainly seem to
think that it is. They are smart people, pursuing original
lines of thinking, but it makes a lot of sense to me.</div>
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</div>That is just a disguised argument from authority. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That is a really great point.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Santa Fe is great,
but remember that they also are motivated to hope for universal laws
of complexity. We need better arguments for it than that it is
popular at cool places.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Complexity is a new science. It is probably early to expect a lot of really strong results from a science this young. Nevertheless, I personally find it to be very compelling and entirely worth pursuing.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div class="im"><br><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra">
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">It
is not just that power-law tails are found in all
industrialised economies, but they seem to follow robustly
from a lot of models too (e.g. <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/condmat/0002374" target="_blank">http://arxiv.org/abs/condmat/0002374</a>
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<div>Do you happen to know what they mean by "<span>distribution
of wealth tends to be very broadly distributed when </span><span>exchanges
are limited" Anders?</span></div>
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When the interaction between agents is more limited than "everybody
trades with everybody" the distribution gets more lumpy and unequal.
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I see. Thanks. Does that happen in real economies? I guess maybe like in old Soviet Russia??? Would the lack of certain kinds of stores in American inner cities be an example of this kind of lumpiness?</div>
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<div>The question sort of comes down to this, "Is it always
a good thing when the exponent is adjusted so that the
middle class is larger?"<br>
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<div>It seems obvious, but perhaps it isn't so obvious. I'm
not entirely sure, but my gut says a healthy middle class
is a good thing.</div>
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OK, here is a utilitarian argument: wellbeing as a function of
wealth is a very convex function. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Happiness is only positively influenced by a rise out of abject poverty. Once you reach a certain level, happiness is no longer correlated with wealth. Is that what you mean when you say it is a convex function?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">So the sum total wellbeing is
maximized if the distribution of wealth is equal. <br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I kind of understand, but some people are savers, and some spenders, so even if you achieved this, there is no possible way to maintain it for any length of time. Just imagine if everyone in America had the same amount of money one day. Ten percent would blow through that money in a matter of weeks. Ten percent would serve those people and end up with twice as much money in a matter of weeks, and you would be well on your way back to a Pareto distribution in a matter of months. How would you prevent that?</div>
<div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Of course, one might counter by pointing out that (1) maybe we
cannot sum or compare individual wellbeing, (2) maybe it is not the
sum that should be maximized, and (3) reallocation schemes might be
impermissible for deontological reasons.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Well being is also not correlated to wealth, other than escaping abject poverty. So well being isn't a function of money, so using money (rather than education or therapy for example) to distribute well being is a kind of false argument, don't you suppose?</div>
<div><br></div><div>While I think you can sum or compare individual well being theoretically, it would be difficult to do so in actual practice. I prefer to let each person pursue their own well being as they see fit to do so.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The founding fathers of America famously asked for the ability to pursue happiness, not to have happiness. Equality of opportunity is not equality of outcome.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">A classical leftist argument is that wealth is power, so a more
equal distribution distributes power in society widely. The problem
is that it is not clear how power actually scales with wealth. It
could be that it is convex like sqrt(W) or concave like W^2. If it
is convex even power law tails are not too bad, while concave might
make even very equal societies look falsely egalitarian while small
coalitions rule. And a realistic view that things are a messy
combination of skill, ambition and wealth might imply that in
different domains different forms hold. <br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It is clearly a complex subject. However, I question the premise to some extent. If you and I had equal power, and you are clearly more intelligent than I, then giving us equal power could lead to a worse outcome than if you made the decisions by yourself. So one COULD argue that the best outcome would be if the most intelligent person to be found was made into the dictator of us all. However, there is limited bandwidth to one person's thinking, no matter how intelligent they are, so distributing power to the more intelligent or ambitious or even wealthy might not be a necessarily bad thing. There is a reason that we elect successful people to the office of President (the current occupant being the exception to the rule.)</div>
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What I'm seeing is that globalization, the Internet and
dematerialization are things that push the winner-take-all
paradigm to levels that it hasn't previously attained.</div>
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Yes. This is true. It also reaches the limit: it is not possible to
be more global than totally global. Once we have good translation
everybody will be in the same big domain. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Except that we still have countries with less infrastructure, with poorer educational systems, with religious domination (Iran, Utah), and other factors that will keep things unequal for quite some time.</div>
<div><br></div><div>-Kelly</div><div><br></div></div></div></div>