even if you work together to increase the size of the pie, the question of how the pie will be divided always stays pressing and relevant.
Yes, the choice between “greater part of a pie” and “part of a greater pie” is somewhat a false dilemma; some people obviously have both. And when precisely those people tell you “please focus on making the pie grow, and forget about how it is distributed; don’t worry, everything will turn out okay at the end”, yeah, it sounds quite self-serving. It is obvious how they would benefit both from you making the pie grow and you not caring how the pie is distributed.
Funny thing is, if you take the opposite perspective… if you honestly believe that people who ignore the distribution of the pie and focus on making it grow, will somehow magically end up with a large part of the pie… then, the observed facts [people having the largest parts of the growing pie telling everyone that their mindset is focusing on making the pie grow] seem to match your belief, too.
And of course, yet another explanation is survivor bias: Some people focus on making the pie grow. Some of them succeed. Some of those also accidentally succeed at capturing a large part of the value they created… and those are the ones whose opinions get amplified because they are now the important people. Yes they are sincere, but no they do not describe a realistic picture. Anecdote is filtered data.
Or perhaps this is a case of the law of equal and opposite advice: Maybe some people are naturally focused on getting the greater part of the pie… and it may be very useful for them to realize that helping the pie grow (and grabbing the part they helped grow) is a viable strategy. Meanwhile, some other people are naturally focused on helping the pie grow, and those would benefit from advice how not to let all that added value slip away from their fingers.
It seems to me that the nice-but-not-naive approach is to take care of growing the pie while also taking care that you get a certain share of it. -- Yes, this approach deserves to be called nice. A nasty one would focus exclusively on taking the larger part of the pie, assuming that most likely there are enough nice and naive people who will focus on making it grow, especially if you ask them nicely and appeal to their sense of hope, or if there are not enough such people then everything is doomed regardless of what you do.
For example, in the context of employment, clearly understand the difference between co-owners and employees. If you are an employee, your salary is the only part of the pie you will ever get. When your boss tells you “hey, if we get this project right, the company will be a fantastic success”, remember that he is talking about his part of the pie, not yours. Yes, he may become a millionaire, and he is probably a nice and hard-working guy who deserves it. None of that is going to pay your bills or feed your children, though. (Well, maybe unless you plan to marry him. But even then I’d strongly suggest to marry him before he becomes a millionaire.)
A possible solution is to make a deal about splitting the pie first, and then you can fully focus on growing it. Even that is not 100% reliable—people can have multiple projects at the same time, so after making the deal about fair share, your partner can leave most work to you, and focus on his other projects that seem to promise greater rewards per unit of effort (remember this if you happen to talk to a venture capitalist) -- but it is already a better deal than you would get in most situations. Perhaps cooperatives should be a more popular form of ownership, but coordination is hard.
I would trust Silicon Valley billionaires more if they promoted things like UBI. But looking at their anti-salary-growth cartels, I guess even the idea of paying their employees fair market wage is too futuristic for them.
Even if the status game is zero-sum, that alone doesn’t necessarily imply how much the people at bottom will suffer. There is some necessary part, like, of course, anyone would resent being at the bottom. But there are all kinds of unnecessary suffering that higher-status people are free to inflict on the lower-status, simply because it is enjoyable for the higher-status, and if you care about it too much, you signal that you are not sufficiently high-status yourself. There is an option to treat the poor with dignity; we just collectively decided not to take it, because it is more fun to poke them and laugh. (We especially like to laugh at people who happen to be both at the bottom of the social ladder, and on the opposite side of whatever political divide we perceive.)
Mostly agree with this post, but honestly, I think it’s still a bit too optimistic. Growing the pie vs. Making sure you have a larger piece of the pie aren’t equally important.
In general, making sure you have a larger piece of the pie is more important in most cases because it deals with existing value vs. future value (which entails risk and might fail). If you make sure you get a larger piece of the pie, you will increase your slice even if the pie doesn’t grow while focusing on increasing the size of the pie might fail, or the pie might grow not enough to compensate you for share % drop. Increasing your slice of the pie is a more prudent strategy and can also increase your relative position in your society if we are talking about a society-wide pie (e.g., taxes)
Yes, the choice between “greater part of a pie” and “part of a greater pie” is somewhat a false dilemma; some people obviously have both. And when precisely those people tell you “please focus on making the pie grow, and forget about how it is distributed; don’t worry, everything will turn out okay at the end”, yeah, it sounds quite self-serving. It is obvious how they would benefit both from you making the pie grow and you not caring how the pie is distributed.
Funny thing is, if you take the opposite perspective… if you honestly believe that people who ignore the distribution of the pie and focus on making it grow, will somehow magically end up with a large part of the pie… then, the observed facts [people having the largest parts of the growing pie telling everyone that their mindset is focusing on making the pie grow] seem to match your belief, too.
And of course, yet another explanation is survivor bias: Some people focus on making the pie grow. Some of them succeed. Some of those also accidentally succeed at capturing a large part of the value they created… and those are the ones whose opinions get amplified because they are now the important people. Yes they are sincere, but no they do not describe a realistic picture. Anecdote is filtered data.
Or perhaps this is a case of the law of equal and opposite advice: Maybe some people are naturally focused on getting the greater part of the pie… and it may be very useful for them to realize that helping the pie grow (and grabbing the part they helped grow) is a viable strategy. Meanwhile, some other people are naturally focused on helping the pie grow, and those would benefit from advice how not to let all that added value slip away from their fingers.
It seems to me that the nice-but-not-naive approach is to take care of growing the pie while also taking care that you get a certain share of it. -- Yes, this approach deserves to be called nice. A nasty one would focus exclusively on taking the larger part of the pie, assuming that most likely there are enough nice and naive people who will focus on making it grow, especially if you ask them nicely and appeal to their sense of hope, or if there are not enough such people then everything is doomed regardless of what you do.
For example, in the context of employment, clearly understand the difference between co-owners and employees. If you are an employee, your salary is the only part of the pie you will ever get. When your boss tells you “hey, if we get this project right, the company will be a fantastic success”, remember that he is talking about his part of the pie, not yours. Yes, he may become a millionaire, and he is probably a nice and hard-working guy who deserves it. None of that is going to pay your bills or feed your children, though. (Well, maybe unless you plan to marry him. But even then I’d strongly suggest to marry him before he becomes a millionaire.)
A possible solution is to make a deal about splitting the pie first, and then you can fully focus on growing it. Even that is not 100% reliable—people can have multiple projects at the same time, so after making the deal about fair share, your partner can leave most work to you, and focus on his other projects that seem to promise greater rewards per unit of effort (remember this if you happen to talk to a venture capitalist) -- but it is already a better deal than you would get in most situations. Perhaps cooperatives should be a more popular form of ownership, but coordination is hard.
I would trust Silicon Valley billionaires more if they promoted things like UBI. But looking at their anti-salary-growth cartels, I guess even the idea of paying their employees fair market wage is too futuristic for them.
Even if the status game is zero-sum, that alone doesn’t necessarily imply how much the people at bottom will suffer. There is some necessary part, like, of course, anyone would resent being at the bottom. But there are all kinds of unnecessary suffering that higher-status people are free to inflict on the lower-status, simply because it is enjoyable for the higher-status, and if you care about it too much, you signal that you are not sufficiently high-status yourself. There is an option to treat the poor with dignity; we just collectively decided not to take it, because it is more fun to poke them and laugh. (We especially like to laugh at people who happen to be both at the bottom of the social ladder, and on the opposite side of whatever political divide we perceive.)
Mostly agree with this post, but honestly, I think it’s still a bit too optimistic. Growing the pie vs. Making sure you have a larger piece of the pie aren’t equally important.
In general, making sure you have a larger piece of the pie is more important in most cases because it deals with existing value vs. future value (which entails risk and might fail). If you make sure you get a larger piece of the pie, you will increase your slice even if the pie doesn’t grow while focusing on increasing the size of the pie might fail, or the pie might grow not enough to compensate you for share % drop. Increasing your slice of the pie is a more prudent strategy and can also increase your relative position in your society if we are talking about a society-wide pie (e.g., taxes)