It also has one of the highest levels of income inequality, which is what this article highlights.

Would you still view inequality as efficiency if you were the one whose work is deemed less valuable? It's strikes me as a very easy statement to make when you can afford not to live like the people depicted.

Efficiency is about producing more of what you like, while keeping as much of the stuff you like that has already been produced. Whenever it's brought up like you have done, it's always an ideological point to some extent, because "what we like" is not well-defined. If I define inequality as a "bad," and capital as "not necessarily a good," then an exchange of inequality for capital is not efficient.

I view inequality as providing a visceral drive to improve my lot in life. I want the things that the billionaires have, so I'm going to try my darnedest to work smart and hard and get there.

If there were no billionaires to look up to, that's a signal that I can't really improve my life much, so why try hard?

It's perfectly okay to use inequality as a personal motivator like you do, but it doesn't follow that inequality is a good thing. What you may find gives you drive might crush others, who would otherwise lead a fulfilling life in which they grow into their innate talents and enrich the life of the people they interact with.

I personally strongly disagree that one wouldn't try to improve one's life unless forced to by difficult circumstances. I think we have sufficient evidence that humans are innately curious and creative, and find self-fulfillment in pursuing their curiosity, discovering new things, and otherwise "improving."

It's actually fascinating to me that you have the view of human nature that you do. I don't think this is the right thread to discuss this, but in general I'm very eager to explore that further.

I agree that humans have an innate drive for self-improvement, and adding an economic motivator (and therefore inequality, by definition) helps focus and amplify that drive toward improvements that also efficiently increase quality of life for others. Because of the economic motivator, I want to build things that people are willing to exchange resources for -- if they're not willing to exchange resources, it's honestly hard to argue that the item was ultimately very valuable to them.

As long as there is value to humans in exchanging different types of resources, I fail to see how economic inequality is unavoidable. We can argue over the appropriate degree, but some level of inequality seems fundamental to the nature of our universe.

>> Isn't inequality a measure of efficiency, though?

There are so many weirdos living in their little political fantasy bubble that I can't even tell if your post is satire. But in case somebody comes up with an equivalent but more serious looking argument than "living in an aluminium box with no aircon and eating over my own toilet bowl? I'm kind of jealous!" or "the successful should be rich, ergo the less successful should obviously have any dignity stripped from them", let's offer some counter arguments:

What rates a society as a Third-World country is not its absence of super-rich (most countries have these) but its absence of a middle-class. So by your own reasoning Congo and Angola, with their tiny billionaire class ruling over starving millions, are "super efficient". I'm sure you'd enjoy living there and the rest of the world should be kind of jealous.

Anyway. On a more grounded note, in the realm of people who rely on data instead of sophistry, inequality is considered economically inefficient, even by historically free-market organizations like the IMF and OECD:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/06/e...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2014/12/09/income-i...

"people who rely on data instead of sophistry"

Was that a (understandable) dig at praxeology? :-)

I'm a Hong Konger, I had lived in a similar cubicle when I was a child. Your comment physically disgusts me, even if you are just trolling.

Sadly that's exactly what makes trolls happy. Judging by their comment history, ignoring them is probably the best approach.

This is one of most unbelievably naive, immature, and truly ignorant comments I've read on HN. I sincerely hope you're trolling.

Put down the Ayn Rand fantasy novels and go meet some people outside of your economic bubble. Not everyone can be a software engineer in Western society. I'd wager you're about as responsible for your lot in life as these people.

Read about the history of the industrial revolution. Tenement life in NYC. Try to empathize. Develop some humanity and real perspective for Pete's sake.

By the way, no one is stopping you from living like that if you're so jealous. But it's clear you wouldn't last a day like that, you're all talk anyway.

LMAO. I didn't even get a chance to read illegal_in_ca's reply before it got flagged. What did they even say to generate this much controversy? (Probably something really stupid).

And even aside from the obvious moral problems of extreme wealth inequality, it's not even economically efficient. You can't have a strong and growing market economy without a middle class. Hong Kong could get away with it for some time because their economy is based on international trade and finance, but that only takes you so far. Eventually you need to develop a domestic consumer base. Their current political crisis is caused by this inequality catching up to them, though the HK business and political elite conveniently pass the blame to Beijing.

I'm upvoting this not because I agree with it, but so more people can see it and feel the intense pain I felt when my head met the desk.

Those pictures show that economic freedom, a high export rate, a complex economy and a low unemployment may not be good goals to optimize for.

This is essentially the result of what happens when a country prioritizes "economic freedom" (investor supremacy).

It's actually a result of colonialism. The british and the elite hong kongers lived like kings and took the lion share of land/wealth and relegated the ordinary hong kongers to poverty.

Don't Be naive about HK's economic freedom. The monopolisation of real estate and the rigidity of the political system means actual competition to the elite families is minimal.