Lord_Griff wrote:

The year 2091, all human disease has been eradicated... even... death. Everyone lives in a Roddenberrian society, everyone has enough, replicators make any food you desire. Yoss has just been given his newly grown body, 30 yr old spec. But he is unhappy. He wants a conservatory on his cube house. Nobody else has one, his neighbour, Brooks, tells him he should be happy without one. Yoss says fuck that, pimps himself out to a local builder, One Brick man, who builds for fun, because why wouldn't you? Gets a conservatory and breaks in his new body. Two days later the futuristic net curtains of his neighbour JRPC 2.0 twitch.

Brooks wrote:

Hey I think conservatories are potentially cool, you can grow things in them, for fun even.

trippy wrote:

Fucking hell, I hope somebody can talk some compassion into you, or at least parachute you somewhere where you can see how hollow your theories are in practice.

JRPC wrote:

So I read the Oxfam summary text. I think the three mechanisms they suggest may link poverty and inequality sound very plausible to me and I can easily imagine them contributing to a failure of optimal redistribution. But they leap to the wrong conclusion when they say that a reduction in relative poverty must go hand-in-hand with a reduction in inequality (like that above quote points out).  For one thing, it’s not like if the rich controlled 2% of the total wealth instead of 8% that the problem of buying political influence would suddenly go away. What’s needed is sensible legislation that targets those specific issues - electoral reform/political influence/removing barriers to economic mobility etc.

Yossarian wrote:

Pls rd JR:

https://theconversation.com/distress-status-wars-and-immoral-behaviour-the-psychological-impacts-of-inequality-75183

JRPC wrote:

...that inequality shouldn't be confused with poverty (as it repeatedly is here).

JRPC wrote:

I'm commenting on the moral significance of inequality - that economic equality isn't intrinsically an aspect of human wellbeing and that inequality shouldn't be confused with poverty (as it repeatedly is here).

JRPC wrote:

This confusion keeps happening and some variation of this has been posted several times now. Again, what’s described in that Lancet article is not an issue of inequality but issue of poverty. 

Many people in low income countries don’t have access to simple medicines like painkillers. This is a  “medical, public health and moral failing and a travesty of justice” . Sure, absolutely.  But by framing this as an issue of inequality what’s implicit is that the reason these resources are in such short supply to so many is because elsewhere rich people have loads of them. That if only the top 5% stopped hogging all the wealth and medicine it would soon find its way into the hands of the most needy. 

This is nonsense. 

What would be the result if our access to these painkillers dropped by half in the west? Well firstly the degree of inequality would be decreased substantially. If you hold to the idea that inequality is a “tangible evil irrespective of what it means for economic poverty” then this would be a good thing. 

But of course it wouldn’t be a good thing. If you decrease the amount of painkillers available to the western world (therefore reducing inequality) then all that happens is that less people have access to painkillers. Nobody in India is going to benefit from our loss and wellbeing overall is decreased . 

Again, there’s nothing morally objectionable about inequality as this example illustrates. What’s objectionable is poverty.