- cross-posted to:
- socialism@midwest.social
- socialism@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- socialism@midwest.social
- socialism@lemmy.ml
The simple math of the Yard-Sale Model shows that if everybody started out with equal money in a fair economy, the outcome tends toward one person holding all of the money. The cool graphical simulations on this page demonstrate why.
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I don’t think this is as good a model as you or the oop seem to think it is. Nobody is under the impression that you can make even by buying and selling random things. And gambling your money against other people isn’t something people can afford to do unless they already have money to live comfortably. Real people have fixed needs they have to buy and usually a fixed value they can create to make money.
I don’t think a model that doesn’t share any similarities with the system can be used to prove that inequality is baked into the system. I don’t mean that it isn’t, but I couldn’t in good conscience claim so based on this alone. Please keep your standards for evidence high yall.
Also the article completely misses the reason why wealth accumulates in the model. It has nothing to do with compound ratios being confusing or the amount one can afford to wager. This is simply a normal distribution with flipped axes and a bottom cap of 0. Inequality arises even if you change the game so that richer people give more when they lose and receive less when they win.
Hard work does not create wealth. The only thing that creates wealth is wealth, and we have it, and you don’t.
This quote from Horrible Bosses 2 always stood out to me.
In real life people die.
But in real life inheritance exists
I know. Now what?
Yup! That is why salary increase always is in percentage; the more you have, the more you get! 😡
This is why you want fewer ultra rich people in your country.
Oh, this is very good. Thank you for this.
Theft is the reason for wealth inequality.
This article is unbelievably stupid and completely divorced from reality.
I’m not arguing theft doesn’t happen, at all, and neither is the article. In fact, it explicitly states that the yard-sale model doesn’t represent reality, and doesn’t even claim to do so. It simply shows one underlying phenomenon where wealth accumulates naturally in a random system.
Theft is also an equalizer.
I think the fact is most people wouldn’t do certain work if they were wealthy enough to have a choice in the matter. The system relies on extreme poverty in order to coerce people into taking jobs they otherwise wouldn’t.
Not a fact, an assumption based on an assumption baked into this economic system.
If I could live on the salary, I would prefer a manual labor job.
Yard-Sale model also explains the Network Effect: People will flock to where the masses are because they will have a higher access to interact with folks than in isolated networks. Thus silos will eventually emerge: See Meta+Discord, etc…
Another simulation… that’s mainstream in american society… Landlords Game – IE what’s now Monopoly. By definition everyone starts with the same amount of money, and it ends with one person massively ahead and everyone else going bankrupt.
Well yes, but have you tried just throwing the board across the room when that one person gets massively ahead and you land on Pacific avenue with a hotel on it?
Yes, if you make your economy “people with money gain more money” then this is the endgame
Nah I’m built different.
You’ve demonstrated exactly how the system works. Statistically a few players will be lucky and become very rich. They’ll be looked at as “built different”. All the other poor players will try to emulate them as if they can beat the system by achieving some virtue like working hard enough or having innate skill rather than realize the system is mathematically impossible to beat.
The highest highs, the lowest lows.
I’m an idiot
And you only had to win at a 60% rate. Less than I expected
It’s baked in because we choose capitalism
Absolutely, and the headline here isn’t that extreme wealth inequality is not the result of human nature, greed, or anything. It’s actually an emergent mathematical property of the system itself. It’s unavoidable, even if everybody acts honorably. Proof by physicists that capitalism is wack.
Hard not to keep reading with such a nicely built article! Thsnks bud :)
