> Simon wrote:

> I'm surprised how far this thread got after xeno's intellectual property thread. Classic case of "those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it."

I like the idea of giving people second chances.  Oh well. 

> Dpenguins wrote:

> theres no mention of dpenguins in the pvc

That is reason enough to say "Good job, HydroP!"

No.  It's in an elected government's mandate to serve the best interests of the society as a whole.  Recognizing only a majority requirement would de facto justify every form of minority oppression in history.

The xeno-induced headache I'm getting tells me that hoping for a real substantive discussion of the issue at hand is useless.  I'm out, and I'd suggest whoever is still bothering here join with me.

You've... gotta be kidding me.

Actually, one more argument here (one which was not addressed from previously).

How does a new technology decrease the income gap in a society?

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> First, I want to say, Zarf, that your skirting the issue here (the FACT that we have not improved, but, rather, deteriorated in our levels of egalitarian wealth distribution from ancient times) I find disingenuous.  From my perspective, since this is clearly the case, clearly we should be discussing what really matters here: how to grow the prominence of the middle class in our societies to make up for our shameful shortcomings in this regard, rather than argue about things that really don't make much difference at all. 

No, I'm not skirting the issue.  It isn't "skirting the issue" to say "your issue is unimportant," and "your method of analyzing the issue is bad."   I'm probably the person best giving your argument due justice, in that I'm considering the issue (albeit rejecting both the accuracy of your comment and the validity of it as a standard for progress).  By your same logic, if I started a thread asking for the best way to improve the world through the establishment of a new fascist order, it would be considered "skirting the issue" to say "maybe fascism's... bad?"

> "You are equating "Athens" to "Ancient Greece."

From my understanding, Athens was sometimes the more egalitarian or had the most wealth distributed among the middle class compared to other city states, and sometimes it didn't.  Some smaller states were just as wealthy per capita as Athens was and had just as prominent a middle class per capita as Athens did, and some didn't.  Perhaps Athens was at a 37 gini coefficient while Sparta was on average a 38?  Perhaps another city state - the Minoans as an example - were 30? If you'd like, you could present the gini coefficient levels for each of the city states and find the average for Ancient Greece, then?  If not, for the sake of brevity, and getting back to the important issue here: the lower than expected prominence of our middle classes.

Nuh uh.  You're definitely skirting the issue here.  V. Kemp is starting to get into the issue of living conditions in each nation.

You don't get the right to generalize one study on a microcosm of the nation you're using by example, then say "well, to make the debate simple, let's assume I'm right unless you have alternate evidence."  You are very clearly making up what the study represents, to a much greater degree than even the writer of the study.  And now you're placing the burden of proof on me to disprove not just your Athens argument (which I am willing to concede... for ATHENS), but also for the generalization of Athens as Ancient Greece, with absolutely no justification?  That's bullshit.  It's on you to prove their wealth distribution if you want to make it an argument, not me.

>  "You assume that the #1 goal of a nation is establishing a big middle class."

I don't think this is an assumption.  I think this is a fact.  Whether it is the western democracies or the communists, the fascists or the anarchists, whether it is the republican or the democrat, the socialist or conservative, the Leninist or the Maoist, they ALL claim as their main purpose to increase the standard of living of the majority - THE MIDDLE CLASS.  The problem is they tend to argue about how to go about it, have wars over it, and, ultimately, the majority never get what they were promised by any of them.  I, for one, am SICK TO DEATH of seeing it happen again and again in history, each generation, none of them, it seems, learning anything from horrors of their cyclical, seemingly endless bickering.

Oooh, oooh, I see the flaw!  "they ALL claim as their main purpose to increase the standard of living of the majority - THE MIDDLE CLASS."  This will be addressed at the end of this post... easy way to cram this stuff together.  However, note that your sentence said the claim was to increase "the standard of living" of the majority, not necessarily the wealth distribution.

> "Economists rarely argue that technology is a tool to expand the middle class."

I know economists don't think about that.  Usually it is sociologists or philosophers who do.  This doesn't make it an assumption simply because economists don't think about that.

It kind of does.  Economists are the ones who actually know and study the fundamental economic models upon which arguments of standard of living are based.  That's kind of like going and getting a first opinion from a podiatrist for your heart medication.

> That technology should be used for the benefit of the people who use it is a given, since if it weren't for the benefit of people, it wouldn't be used.  That technology should benefit the majority of society by its use is also a given.  Philosophers would argue that it is not morally acceptable for the elite to use a technology for their advantage only.   I can see, though why you wouldn't, for if you don't see that all political systems have as their main intention to maintain and have the majority of their populations thrive, you could not see that technology should be used to maintain and / or increase the distribution of wealth to the middle class.

Okay... I'm going to hold off on this point because it's dependent on something else.  I'll get back to this, though.

> Standards of living.
For me, standards of living relate to how well Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are fulfilled in a population.  I would say that standard of living does not have anything to do with technology level.  For example, whether a home is heated by electricity or a wood-burning fireplace makes no difference.  All that's important is that there is a home.  Do you own yours outright?  Or do you have a mortgage?

Before I get into this question, I need an explanation.  How does a lower income gap increase one's ability to achieve each level of the hierarchy of needs?  You can go one level at a time or address them all together.

I should remind you that, although "bullshit" is allowed, a post which does nothing but repeat that word 400 times would still be considered spam. 

The Ancient Greece thread... when I was reading the "relative poverty" thing, I automatically thought about my most recent post addressing the idea of comparative income distributions as a definition of progress.  Sure, not a 100% copy, but enough of a similarity for me to have serious deja vu. 

Although I do have one contribution here:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pain_rating.png

Assumptions you have made:

1: You are equating "Athens" to "Ancient Greece."  Athens was the most affluent, and at times economically hegemonic of the city-states in Athens.  We're talking about a city-state that led the Greek alliance for decades, siphoning resources from other Greek city-states to fund its own academies.  The article you discussed only considers Athens.  You are the one who extrapolated this to be a representation of Greece.  That's the same thing as if I said that Silicon Valley was a proper representation of the US, Vatican City was a proper representation of Italy, or Singapore was a proper representation of East Asia.  It's just bad science.

2: You assume that the #1 goal of a nation is establishing a big middle class.  If this was true, in the most extreme example, the USSR would be the perfect society.  However, we empirically know that distribution divorced from income creates inefficiencies of production.  No, that doesn't mean the best solution is an economic free-for-all.  That being said, just judging nations solely based on income distribution is to create a judgment that isn't actually useful.  Again, bad science.

3: Economists rarely argue that technology is a tool to expand the middle class.  The size of middle classes is a question of distribution, not production.  Technology clearly has a relatively flat impact on distribution.  Why?  If I create a technology that reduces a poor person's cost of food consumption by 50%, it will generally also decrease a rich person's cost of food consumption by 50% as well.  Now, there are exceptions to this, but they generally create disproportionate benefits due to taste, a largely discretionary factor (for example, if wheat production costs were cut in half, it wouldn't help someone who was allergic to wheat).

4: Don't you find it at all odd that standards of living have absolutely no representation in your model.  I'm going to see if I can find it, but I used to have a study which used anthropology data on per-person food consumption as a measure of standard of living in Europe (with the idea being  that since food represented a significant portion of individual expenses, measuring the amount of calorie intake would be a decent analysis of how much resources an individual had to live).  The study found that consumption dropped after the fall of the Roman Empire, remaining relatively flat until about the 1500's, where it began to slowly creep up until food consumption began to really take off with the Industrial Revolution... obviously culminating in modern times, where we have an obesity crisis.

But anyway, is it really a proper determinant of well-being if we're only looking at distribution?  I mean, if a middle class person in the US is able to obtain as much utility as a rich person in Athens, that middle class person is better off regardless of their place in society because the middle class person is able to access more utility from their income than the rich person in Athens.  That's real, empirical progress.  THAT is what you're trying to achieve.

Waffles don't speak!

Do they, Waffles?