Throughout history it has been the case that sustained perceived inequality inevitably leads to revolution. We're nowhere near that point, but if trend lines continue and the middle class gets wiped out, it will happen. Democracy is supposed to prevent things from getting that bad, but we have seen that free elections are easily manipulated when you control the money and the message people hear, which is why these presidential elections will once again be a vote for either of two pro-super-rich candidates.
Ironically it is in the super-rich's best interest to raise taxes on themselves to stop this from getting out of hand.
Nowdays, particularly in America, there is enough wealth to go around such that nobody is really that desperate. The masses are sufficiently pacified, but not so secure that they get funny ideas or opt to drop out and become hippies. We've got them exactly where we want them. So long as no substantial portion of the population goes hungry for more than 3 days everything is cool.
There's other things that have been working well. The ongoing threat of terrorism, black people, and mass surveillance keeps people in their place. Replacing mainstreet with wal-mart, increasing secularism, and the killing off of local media outlets with the internet is very useful for destroying community cohesiveness. It all helps to cultivate the perception that if everything goes to hell, you are alone in the universe and no one will help you. Unless some unknown unkown emerges to throw this all out of balance, there won't be any meaningful pushback, and the 99% will continue to serve us as a natural resource to be exploited.
Gandhi was ultimately wrong: original exploitation was simply using tactics without psychological acceptance today's tactics have.
I'd still be interested in whatever historical points or patent differences you're talking about. I'm also assuming you're Indian as well?
Patent differences i'm talking about: The justified way India doesn't follow the western law on pharma patents.
Historical point: Up until relatively recently,India did have a closed economy, but did a lot to open their economy to foreign trade and investment(for example in the past you couldn't open a foreign subsidiary in India, Now there's even Amazon in India).
As for capitalistic tactics etc, that's definetly true. Just look at how much of the important contributions to silicon valley came from Indian people, both brain-drained and outsourced.
Cool. Always like to see you all in security or legal discussions as you have interesting perspectives. :)
"Patent differences i'm talking about: The justified way India doesn't follow the western law on pharma patents."
I didn't realize they did that. I love that as I want serious changes to pharma patents here. It's basically legalized murder and unacceptable given what U.S. top causes of death are. So, I guess they did resist in some key ways. :)
"Up until relatively recently,India did have a closed economy, but did a lot to open their economy to foreign trade and investment"
Even the U.S. was isolationist for a while. It usually fails as both capitalists and consumers want the benefits of international trade. That opens them up to concessions. From there, we look at how they fair in ratio of benefit to their country vs to foreign countries. Germany, South Korea, Japan, and China seem to be examples of winners that ensure trade is very positive for them vs major countries. India seems to be one of the losers but has potential that's untapped.
"Just look at how much of the important contributions to silicon valley came from Indian people, both brain-drained and outsourced."
I actually don't know how many did outside smart people being hired at Google, etc to build key techs. Most of the groundbreaking stuff was American with VC or defense funding. Lots of improvements and experimental stuff (eg small players) involved foreigners. Big companies like IBM have their R&D in Israel, China, whatever brain-draining the crap out of them. So, it seems like a mix to me.
I guess what I'm getting at is that American innovators often got things started, becomes stagnant a bit, and then they start boosting it with foreign innovators. Other times, it's foreign innovators straight up making a contribution either here or over there. That gets monetized somehow by big players either through feature parity or acquisition.
>> I actually don't know how many did outside smart people being hired at Google, ...
Leaving aside the entrepreneur(and the excessive hero worship around them), it's clear that startup companies highly depend on high quality employees. And the stats: Asian tech workers in Santa Clara are 50%[1].
Other stats: around 20% of US scientists and engineering are Foreign born. International students earn more than half of advanced STEM degrees in the U.S(and are probably behind half the university research). And what about second generation foreigners ?
And what about startups ? most of the successful startups in my country, which is known for startup quality, are bought before they can grow into to full form employing thousands.
And let's not forget - the effects are not linear - it's about ecosystems and power laws, things building on top of each other.
>> Germany, South Korea, Japan, and China seem to be examples of winners that ensure trade is very positive for them vs major countries. India seems to be one of the losers but has potential that's untapped.
Usually such growth path was through manufacturing, but there's some data from india hinting that china and manufacturing don't offer that path anymore, which is pretty worrying.
Why do you think this?
They don't seem to be doing so hot politically. The poor Koch brothers can't even buy a primary election anymore.
When the rules of society get out of whack, government can either help solve the issue, or double down on bad policies. When they do the latter, they eventually become chapters in history books.
Yes, certain (many) actors in government now are reinforcing the problems, but to solve many of them at scale, you need government to be involved, if not in charge.
Government is merely one component of society, (or "civil"-ization, if you want to be somewhat more colonial about your usage). Specifically, it's the axis of society where we condone the non-consensual use of physical harm (or threats thereof) for various purposes.
I guess what you are saying is that the list of purposes should be unconstrained ('whatever it takes to meaintain order'). My contention is that in general, an unconstrained mandate exacerbates social inequality because the agents of government will have self-reinforcing biases, and their unconstrained judgements can be weaseled into whatever justification they choose. Specifically to address your position, the pursuit of 'order' is ill-defined, and historically has led to very bad things like colonialism in the somewhat distant past, and things like racial profiling in more recent memory.
What constitutes 'order' is a very normative and subjective concept - for example, you might consider a group of young minorities hanging out on a stoop to be 'disorderly' and sic the police on them.
It's true that government as a group of representatives of all people is slightly different from the now self-aware monster the (U.S., insert-your-personally-experienced-representative-government-here) government has become. But it's still the single organization we all agree to work through, and so changes made across an entire society most likely have to go through that government.
Massive change has to be through a medium that is culpable and transparent. That is, in theory, a position only a government can or should hold.
US government needs thorough reform, but the mechanism of change has to be a government in the end.
Also, non-military portions of government in the US tend to be surprisingly transparent.
Everything else is just semantics, conjecture and informed or misinformed opinion.
I hope I live to see the day when the parasites of society meet their reckoning as I believe the idea of a more equal society coming about by reason as totally naive and foolhardy.
Frankly, I don't believe anything really bad happens to very rich people. A nice perk of becoming super-rich.
the mobs always went for them first and killed their hole families. it hasn't happend in over 100 years though and its likely that it won't happen again, as the rich can buy automated defense systems nowadays that could slaughter any amount of revolutionaries that come knocking on their doors
The power is outsourced to politicians.
http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/12/citigroup-plutono...
I suspect fears of this are also why 'identity politics' has become a scourge in the last few years or so. Why immigration is often used as the fear of the moment. Why so much of the media tries to paint people as bigots.
Because things were getting quite bad against the 1% beforehand, with stuff like Occupy being a good example. Getting people to turn against each other over gender, race, personal hobbies and interests, religion and minor social differences diverts the anger to targets that don't threaten them.
Claims like this are common but seem mostly to be cognitive bias. The community is divided, and people on each side of the divide perceive it as skewing the opposite way. I think it's because statements we disagree with stand out more starkly than the ones we agree with. Painful experiences are more memorable than pleasurable ones.
The problem with your reasoning, is that you have already assumed that you've won the intellectual debate and so your opponents are only acting from self-interest. But the main "reactionary" posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11796842 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11796746) contain good counterarguments to the article that you haven't addressed.
As UK Judge Lord Clyde stated 'No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue'
Top marginal income tax rates in the UK during the 60s were 98%.
The USA has a very progressive tax system. The top 20% of earners in the USA make 51% of total US income(2014) and pay 84% of total US income tax.
This data is pretty easy to find: OECD publications, see [1], WSJ see [2]
[1] http://darp.lse.ac.uk/resources/books/GrowingUnequal_OECD.pd...
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-inco...
There will be a reckoning. The world is 'unsustainably unequal' at the moment. There are huge problems on the horizon - superbugs, climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, overpopulation. These problems can only be solved when governments act in the interests of all of humankind. This will not happen when the 1% hold all the money and all the power (which is the same thing).
I hope we can reign in the rentiering, tax-avoiding, propaganda-publishing rich and reclaim democracy before Something Bad happens. Otherwise, when the SHTF, the 1% will deservedly shoulder all the blame. And that will be the reckoning.