5/ The answer to this question informs our moral choices and policies because if the economic growth engine stops and we have a fixed pie of useful stuff (i.e. GDP) to go around, the relatively less wealthy will not have any shot at becoming richer.
Under this zero-sum economy scenario, perhaps we should put an upper limit on how much wealth can any single individual claim ownership of.
I think you’re missing a step here. How do you get from “the total amount of value stops increasing” to “the less wealthy will not have any ability to get more of that value”?
I would expect that if we actually reached a point where growth stalled, income inequality would go down (since high income in a market-based economy mostly comes from creating more value than other people). Wealth inequality would lag that, but you can’t maintain wealth inequality long-term without income inequality.
Counter-example. For most of human history, extreme wealth inequality has been the norm. The ‘big winners’ of previous rounds set up a scenario where their direct genetic descendants enjoy the wealth they have collected. [often by taking it by force]. Kings, tribal elders, royalty, dictators—all similar patterns.
Today we have billionaires and trust funds for their children. This is functionally similar.
If growth stops, what would happen over time is very likely that the richest would use advantages over time to gradually grab a greater and greater share of the total wealth. [this is already happening even with growth]. This is because the richer you are, the more efficiencies you get at scale, and the more you can ‘cheat’ by outright manipulating governments. [the easiest cheat is to lobby for tax code arcana, and then hire a crew of accountants to exploit the rules]
But I will note as many have in this thread, wealth inequality is a negative but a future world with extreme wealth inequality...but biological immortality with near perfect personal safety for almost everyone...would still be far superior to a world with [fair wealth distribution] and [aging and death from random mishaps]
I think you might be making a different argument than the original article. I was reading the article as talking about market-based economies, not violence-based economies. I agree that people use whatever sources of power they have to extract wealth from other people, but if we’re concerned about that we’d need to look at power in-general and not just power-from-money. This matters because the most frequent argument I see in this vein is that rich people have the potential to turn their wealth into political power which they could use to choose winners and losers and benefit their tribe, but the solution is to.. preemptively increase the power of politicians to choose winners and losers and benefit their tribe.
I think you’re missing a step here. How do you get from “the total amount of value stops increasing” to “the less wealthy will not have any ability to get more of that value”?
I would expect that if we actually reached a point where growth stalled, income inequality would go down (since high income in a market-based economy mostly comes from creating more value than other people). Wealth inequality would lag that, but you can’t maintain wealth inequality long-term without income inequality.
Counter-example. For most of human history, extreme wealth inequality has been the norm. The ‘big winners’ of previous rounds set up a scenario where their direct genetic descendants enjoy the wealth they have collected. [often by taking it by force]. Kings, tribal elders, royalty, dictators—all similar patterns.
Today we have billionaires and trust funds for their children. This is functionally similar.
If growth stops, what would happen over time is very likely that the richest would use advantages over time to gradually grab a greater and greater share of the total wealth. [this is already happening even with growth]. This is because the richer you are, the more efficiencies you get at scale, and the more you can ‘cheat’ by outright manipulating governments. [the easiest cheat is to lobby for tax code arcana, and then hire a crew of accountants to exploit the rules]
Note that in the most recent era, the one bit of ‘land’ the ‘peasants’ have is being bought up and rented back to them.
But I will note as many have in this thread, wealth inequality is a negative but a future world with extreme wealth inequality...but biological immortality with near perfect personal safety for almost everyone...would still be far superior to a world with [fair wealth distribution] and [aging and death from random mishaps]
I think you might be making a different argument than the original article. I was reading the article as talking about market-based economies, not violence-based economies. I agree that people use whatever sources of power they have to extract wealth from other people, but if we’re concerned about that we’d need to look at power in-general and not just power-from-money. This matters because the most frequent argument I see in this vein is that rich people have the potential to turn their wealth into political power which they could use to choose winners and losers and benefit their tribe, but the solution is to.. preemptively increase the power of politicians to choose winners and losers and benefit their tribe.