> I mean, who said economic equality is even a goal? Do not those who make life better for others, also deserve a good life themselves? And if you don't make life better for others, you obviously still deserve to live, but do you deserve as much comfort and self-determination (in terms of economic wealth) as those who manage to offer more?
Not sure why you even went there since I said nothing about it. But imho any discussion of economic inequality that doesn’t take into account the different between inequality due to wealth creation and inequality due to wealth extraction is disingenuous and likely a smokescreen.
Inequality due to differences in ability to create wealth is absolutely fine. That’s capitalism at its best, and is the “make life better for others” you’re talking about. Silicon Valley startup ecosystem is the penultimate example, along with various manufacturing activities and energy production.
Raw materials + innovation + capital + labor + time = useful new physical things worth more than the sum of their inputs = wealth creation. I’m all for people getting filthy rich this way, it ultimately benefits all of society and is how we advance the human race (for the most part, minus our failure at dealing with some externalities like pollution).
But inequality due to wealth extraction is a problem, and becoming an increasingly bad one, in the US at least. Wealth extraction is about market failure. One or few entities corner a market, drive out competitors (or collude) and drive up prices.
Examples are the Telecoms and Internet service in the US blocking last mile alternatives, or an increasingly consolidated and powerful banking sector that can privatize profits and socialize losses, or hospital billing administrators enriching themselves by creating obfuscated pricing schedules based not on what some medical service costs to provide, but on what they can get the insurance companies to pay. Things like that.
It’s extremely important that this conversation about inequality constantly makes this distinction, lauds and exonerates wealth creators while closely scrutinizing and course correcting wealth extraction. Otherwise you get revolts like the Bolshevik Revolution, French Revolution, Occupy Wall Street, etc full of people who are just so angry, fed up, and oblivious to the difference, that they will throw out the baby with the bath water if given the chance. Then we all become worse off.
Not sure why you even went there since I said nothing about it. But imho any discussion of economic inequality that doesn’t take into account the different between inequality due to wealth creation and inequality due to wealth extraction is disingenuous and likely a smokescreen.
Inequality due to differences in ability to create wealth is absolutely fine. That’s capitalism at its best, and is the “make life better for others” you’re talking about. Silicon Valley startup ecosystem is the penultimate example, along with various manufacturing activities and energy production.
Raw materials + innovation + capital + labor + time = useful new physical things worth more than the sum of their inputs = wealth creation. I’m all for people getting filthy rich this way, it ultimately benefits all of society and is how we advance the human race (for the most part, minus our failure at dealing with some externalities like pollution).
But inequality due to wealth extraction is a problem, and becoming an increasingly bad one, in the US at least. Wealth extraction is about market failure. One or few entities corner a market, drive out competitors (or collude) and drive up prices.
Examples are the Telecoms and Internet service in the US blocking last mile alternatives, or an increasingly consolidated and powerful banking sector that can privatize profits and socialize losses, or hospital billing administrators enriching themselves by creating obfuscated pricing schedules based not on what some medical service costs to provide, but on what they can get the insurance companies to pay. Things like that.
It’s extremely important that this conversation about inequality constantly makes this distinction, lauds and exonerates wealth creators while closely scrutinizing and course correcting wealth extraction. Otherwise you get revolts like the Bolshevik Revolution, French Revolution, Occupy Wall Street, etc full of people who are just so angry, fed up, and oblivious to the difference, that they will throw out the baby with the bath water if given the chance. Then we all become worse off.