
Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality - chmaynard
http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-uncovers-grim-correlation-violence-inequality-millennia/
======
perrick
Louis Chauvel, a french sociology professor, made a similar argument using a
Prey-Predatory model with trade union membership and income inequality over
the last 100 years :

"This article shows empirically how trade union membership and income
inequality are mutually related in twelve countries over more than 100 years.
While past research has shown that high income inequality occurs alongside low
trade union membership, we show that past income inequality actually increases
trade union membership with a time lag, as trade unions recruit more members
after inequality has been high. But we also show that strengthened trade
unions then fight inequality, thereby destroying what helped them to recruit
new members in the past. As trade union density decreases, inequality
increases and eventually re-incentivises workers to join unions again. By
showing this empirically, we reconceptualise the relationship between
inequality and union density as a prey and predator model, where predators eat
prey – unions destroy inequality, but thereby also destroy their own basis for
survival. By empirically showing that trade union density and social
inequality influence each other in this way over long periods, this article
contributes to a dynamic approach on how social problems and social movements
interact."

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/kykl.12128/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/kykl.12128/full)

~~~
PaulRobinson
I think this is really interesting, especially as how it has played out in
recent years - right up to the last few months - in the UK.

I used to know a guy who worked for a trade union who was bemoaning its
demise. In 1997 when Labour came to power in the UK for the first time in
nearly 20 years, they strengthened employment laws so well, the need for trade
union was perceived as lesser by much of the membership. This meant the trade
union struggled to survive.

It's interesting to me that the campaigns they fought on and won around
employment rights, was perhaps at the detriment at overall income inequality.

We now have zero-hour contracts (utterly horrific for those at the lower end
of the skills spectrum), and CEOs earning many hundreds of times the lowest
paid in their workforces.

Brexit was caused by income inequality for the most part. The perception by
many is that immigration was causing a drag down on wages, but all the data
suggests in fact immigration is net benefit to a population, and its the top
rising away faster at the top and under-investment in public services that's
actually the cause of the country's ills. Fixing this is a big thing, and
whoever does it is likely to be long remembered.

In recent weeks, the leader of the Labour Party who is being roundly
criticised for ineffectiveness (amongst other things) by those both inside and
outside the party had his first bit of good press in some time: he suggested a
wage cap inside companies linked to the lowest paid member of staff.

If you set this to say 50x gearing a company that is only paying its cleaners
£10,000/year can only pay it's CEO £500,000. If the CEO feels he deserves
£4m/year, he'd have to raise cleaners' salaries to £80,000/year - about 4
times the national average wage.

The hope is this will push down CEO wages reducing the race at the top of the
pile, but also raise the lower wages a little, thereby improving quality of
life for lower-skilled workers. Cleaners get £15,000, CEO gets £750,000. And
so on. Net result: income inequality is reduced.

But how do you do that in a free market economy? His answer is surprisingly
simple: government contracts that go out to tender should have this as a
stipulation in order for the contract to be awarded.

If you are a train operator, eduction or health care provider, etc. and you're
only paying your staff minimum wage (£6.70/hour for those aged 25 and over),
you don't get the contract if your Chief Exec is earning more than the
equivalent of £335/hour (a little shy of £700k/year).

There are a lot of firms who do nothing but government contracts whose CEOs
are paid a considerable amount more than this.

Some will argue that this will lead to a situation where these firms can't
hire "the best", or that they'll game it by making remuneration more geared to
shares/dividends instead of salary/bonuses, but I think that's unlikely to
bear out in reality: there is a steady queue of capable people more than
willing to work for £335/hour running service companies.

Brilliantly, it even defeats one of the big scares going on at the moment
around Brexit reactions and the touted UK/US trade deal being discussed: there
is worry that US healthcare companies might start bidding and getting
contracts for parts of the NHS.

Critics are worried that these companies are outright profiteering
enterprises, evidenced, they say, by the state of US healthcare. This would
either stall them from bidding/winning, or promote this policy across the
Atlantic into those companies.

And if the remuneration balance _does_ move to shares and dividends, I think
that the Left will have won a major goal: they can promise low income taxes
and raise taxes on dividends, knowing that this will be popular with very,
very large parts of the population. Meanwhile, it'll redistribute wealth and
normalise income distribution, all without having to scare the middle classes
who mostly end up net winners.

Will it ever happen? Probably not with Mr Corbyn at the helm (his poll ratings
are very poor and stagnating even long after last Summer's dramas), however he
had party support from all factions, and across the benches. I can see it
gaining traction before the next General Election.

Will it happen in the US? Well, if you elect a billionaire who appoints
billionaires to his cabinet to perpetuate a system that made them
billionaires, it's unlikely they'll nix it. But who knows - it could work.

~~~
SixSigma
Asserting that Brexit voting is based on immigration dismisses a whole swathe
of arguments in favour of an exit from the EU. I certainly didn't consider
immigration policy as a reason for my exit vote.

~~~
BEEdwards
Honest question, what did you consider then? Because beside the immigration
thing the Brexit camp seemed to be a cluster fuck of contradictory claims.

~~~
SixSigma
Daniel Hannan explains it better than I could

This has a partial transcript of his presentation at Oxford Uni

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-17/daniel-hannan-
right...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-17/daniel-hannan-right-
approach-brexit)

~~~
Tomis02
Daniel Hannan is an imbecile, and you were swayed by his "arguments".
Unbelievable. He talks about UK regaining "independence", when UK's citizens
are the least independent in the EU (mass surveillance wasn't introduced by
some European directive). He talks about how Switzerland is thriving, when the
brits and swiss have absolutely nothing in common. And people fall for this
crap. But hey, it's your vote, let's see how well you fare post-Brexit, with
businesses moving to mainland Europe. Make UK great again.

------
sigmaprimus
I love reading the comments on stories like this and consider these comments
to be a bellwether as to the current state of inequality in our society.
Unfortunately I tend to consider myself one who exists on the lower part of
the wealth distribution logarithm within the western world, globally it's a
different story. Just as anyone tweeting on their smart phone or tablet
claiming to be part of the 99% might want to rethink that in a global context,
most of us in the west are global 1% ers. Could it be that the rise in terror
incedents recently may in fact be caused by this inequality and not just
radical religious zealots? Even if this is not the case we may want to make
sure that our empathy does not diminish to the point where we suggest that the
starving people of the world eat cake if there is no bread.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Islamic-inspired terrorism draws a direct lineage from the writings of Sayyid
Qutb
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb)),
an Egyptian civil servant who studied in America and was aghast at how
consumerism subversed communal and religious virtues, and even more shocked to
see the same transformation occurring in the Arab world. He eventually drew
the conclusion that consumerism sequestered people away from reality, and so
he came to advocate for terrorist attacks on civilians specifically to force
people to look at and confront what he perceived as poisonous Western values.

To say that all those poor misguided young men just need jobs and money misses
the point entirely. The problem is with society itself. They yearn for an
alternative, but we in the West are too much a part of the system to imagine
life outside of it.

~~~
digi_owl
Note that his thinking didn't turn militant until he was jailed and tortured
by the Egyptian government. That at the time had backing of USA, and thus
trained by the CIA.

~~~
akurtzhs
His Wikipedia article disagrees with this, saying "Upset that Nasser would not
enforce a government based on Islamic ideology, Qutb and other Brotherhood
members orchestrated a plot to assassinate the Egyptian president in 1954. The
attempt was foiled and Qutb was jailed soon afterwards;"

~~~
digi_owl
I guess someone will have to take that up with Adam Curtis...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares)

------
VMG
> It is almost universally true that violence has been necessary to ensure the
> redistribution of wealth at any point in time

Strictly speaking, you don't need to redistribute wealth to lower inequality.
Destroying wealth is sufficient. Violence and war is pretty good at that.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
War does not seem to destroy wealth, but redistribute it?

~~~
jellicle
When a bomb destroys a building, to whom is the value of the building
redistributed to?

~~~
misja111
To the building company that will rebuild it.

~~~
jellicle
Oh, so the rebuilding is done for free, funded by the value of the original
building?

No. The rebuilding requires additional work/money inputs to create the new
building. The value of the original building is lost forever.

~~~
RobertoG
"The value of the original building is lost forever."

Of course, but if you are a building company, why would you care about that?.

There is this idea, that, in a society with very little scarcity, would be
almost impossible to make a profit. Your only chance would be to burn
everything and start again.

I really hope that theory is false.

~~~
njharman
Why? What is so great about profit? I would be very glad to give up profit for
no scarcity.

~~~
jacobush
The ferengi is weak in this one.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
Sorry, I cannot resist adding a reference to gold-pressed latinum.

------
snappyTertle
Inequality is not inherently a bad thing. People should be compensated for the
value they produce. Profits are a signal of how much people value what is
produced. For example, people love iPhones, it no surprise that Apple is the
most valuable company in the world.

What causes resentment between classes is lack of mobility. This, IMO, is
caused by government regulations and a banking system that hurts the middle
class and below and benefits the people at the top.

We have a banking system where the federal reserve can make money out of thin
air and inject it into banks. This shifts purchasing power to people in
finance.

Regulations like minimum wage and higher taxes on larger income make it hard
to hire the next marginal employee. Minimum wage prices out low skilled
workers, who would like to work and obtain on the job experience needed to
climb the ladder. High taxes makes it more expensive for business owners to
hire someone. I'm not talking about large businesses like Walmart (they
actually support minimum wage). Small businesses are going out of business, or
are just not able to start with increased costs of doing business.

This is a vicious cycle where government intervention leads to rich getting
richer, and the poor being more dependent on government programs and finding
it harder to move up the ladder. So to fix this people beg for more government
intervention, which worsens the problem...and on and on it goes.

~~~
skadamou
>“People should be compensated for the value they produce. Profits are a
signal of how much people value what is produced."

I’m hoping you might expand on this a little. I’ve never quite understood this
line of reasoning mostly because it seems like there is a lot of money to be
made in finance and yet I’m not sure how hedge funds “produce” anything. I
really do mean this earnestly, I don’t know a whole lot about economics so
from my laymen’s perspective it is unclear how fund managers are compensated
for the value they produce if they are just buying a selling stocks.

~~~
jpttsn
From an economist's perspective, bankers can create value. If you want to lend
money and I want to borrow, but we don't know/trust each other, a banker can
"produce" a big help to match us together and price the risk. Those are two
examples; there are tons of other services bankers provide their customers.

I believe bankers add value this way. To my eyes "bankers don't produce" is
just as unfair as "coaches don't score any goals."

------
bloomca
I don't really think that their conclusions are very honest. They provide only
extraordinary situations, which are not usual by any measure. Masses during
(and some time after, for like ~1 generation) such events are much less
demanding, and they unite to survive (I can think that a lot of damaged
countries after WWII built very successful industries, sometimes from
scratch).

What I think can really affect violence, is a level of income for lower-class
people. For example, in a lot of ex-USSR countries it is quite a problem –
people are pretty violent just in everyday life, and we don't see positive
trend in Russia, for instance. So, while super big difference between income
of top and low classes contributes to the violence, the ability to have decent
life, I think, will decrease violence drastically. Of course, it is
oversimplification, there are tons of other factors, but I feel it this way,
because violence is mostly done by people with the lowest income (and I don't
think it is mandatory to be low relative to the highest, it is relative to the
good level of life).

~~~
timthelion
I don't know if you are correct about the violence being done mostly by the
poorest. The most violent person I have ever met was the "cousin?" of a
Kyrgyzstani diplomat. Hardly a poor person. He had a gang of fellow
Kyrgystaners who beat a lot of people up at a school I went to, and they never
got punished due to his political relations. They even ruptured the testicle
of one man, which meant serious time in the hospital and potential
infertility! My feeling is that this was not caused by poverty, but rather by
a macho culture which saw violence as being something to be proud of. I think
that there is a similar thing in the US, with gun toting "pro-rancher" types
being very violent people, despite them not being poor. I do however, think
that there is a correlation between poverty and risky violence. Poor people
are more likely to commit a crime that could get them sent to jail. So the gun
toting pro-rancher type might torture an animal, or spray it with bullets from
a machine gun, they won't kill humans as often, because they don't want to
lose their wealth. A black guy from the hood, however, who is no more violent
and probably much less evil than the gun toting rancher, might commit a crime
with a gun that could get him sent to prison for life because he has so much
less to lose.

------
golemotron
In the past few weeks the idea of 'legitimatizing violence' has been
circulating heavily. On my Facebook feed most of it has centered on the idea
that it is "okay" to punch neo-nazis now. The people saying this are people
I'd never expect to. Twitter is similar. I wish I had stats on whether the
legitimatization meme is really rising. To me, it looks like the fake news
meme. Suddenly it's everywhere.

~~~
germinalphrase
Culturally, Americans have chosen "Nazis" and zombies as default groups on
which we can assert violence without questioning our moral values or their
expression. While Richard Spencer is even saying in that clip that he isn't a
Neo Nazi (before getting punched) - a great deal of the American population
don't draw the lines as finely as he might. He's certainly said some things
that put him in that world of thought.

I share your discomfort with this in so far as we shouldn't normalize violence
in daily life.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I'm also uncomfortable with violence but I don't have an answer to the
inevitable "well what else should we do". Facts, reasonable logic, and
ridicule do not seem to work. Do you have any suggestions?

~~~
germinalphrase
Turn off the media and talk to your neighbors?

Interpersonally, I think we need to keep pushing the belief that there is more
than unites us than divides us. At the core of it, we all really want the same
sort of stuff (safety, purpose, love, fun, etc.) The more we allow ourselves
to be divided (by media, by political rhetoric, by rumor and gossip, by hate)
the less likely we will be able to hold those with real power and influence to
task - the less we will be able to shape policy and investment in such a way
that everyone in our communities benefit.

Big picture, we need to create communities in which all people - including
disaffected bigots - can feel that they are thriving (rather than merely
surviving). If we do that then these groups, and this repressible rhetoric,
will find less support and fewer fertile minds to pollute.

That's my belief anyway.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I agree that at the core most people want the same thing but there are bigoted
beliefs that are inherently difficult to be a minority around and it's harder
to handle. For example, the guy whose face has been punched often recently, he
desires an ethnic cleansing in order to accomplish safety, purpose, etc.
Should we expect the people who are targets of his rhetoric(the people he
wishes to ethnically cleanse) to feel safe talking to him or interacting with
him? I don't know, and I don't know if he'll even listen to those people. Has
it worked for you with people you've met?

------
theptip
Sounds like the other half of the thesis presented in "Forged Through Fire"
[1][2], in that case arguing that wars are directly responsible for democracy,
by virtue of reducing inequality. (Note, I've not read that text yet, just the
WSJ book review, so please correct me if I'm off-target with that summary).

The obvious follow-on question is whether inequality is actually bad in
itself, and is what produces the war. Or is inequality usually associated with
societies where the upper classes keep the lion's share of the growth, and
that is what triggers these wars?

[1]:
[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B016APOCZM/ref=kinw_myk_...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B016APOCZM/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title)
[2]: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-is-dependent-on-
war-14...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-is-dependent-on-
war-1483741787)

------
openasocket
He seems to be talking about rapid changes to inequality. But inequality has
been in steady decline for centuries (the last few decades in the US are a
blip in comparison to the overall downward trend). These general downward
trends that occur at the pace of decades or centuries can't be directly
attributed to warfare, can it?

~~~
munificent
We have certainly had no shortage of wars in the past couple of centuries.
Just in the past two hundred years, in order of largest death tolls[1], I see:

    
    
        * World War II
        * Taiping Rebellion
        * Second Sino-Japanese War
        * World War I/Great War
        * Dungan Revolt
        * Chinese Civil War
        * Russian Civil War and Foreign Intervention
        * Napoleonic Wars
        * Second Congo War/Great War of Africa
        * Shaka's conquests
        * Vietnam War/Second Indochina War
        * Biafra War
        * Mexican Revolution
        * Soviet war in Afghanistan
        * Korean War
        * Iran–Iraq War/First Persian Gulf War
        * American Civil War
        * Spanish American Wars of Independence
        * Angolan Civil War
        * Ethiopian Civil War
        * Spanish Civil War
    

All told, those are something like a couple hundred million dead. Them for
each of those human bodies, consider how many living are profoundly affected
by their death.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll)

~~~
openasocket
But the trend is generally downward, not a bunch of sharp decreases that would
indicate being caused by a specific short-term event. Also many of these wars
were pretty localized, so we should see the drops and inequality in the
immediate area and a reduced effect elsewhere.

~~~
munificent
> But the trend is generally downward, not a bunch of sharp decreases that
> would indicate being caused by a specific short-term event.

Many of these are not short term events. You have a several years-long war,
with a rise in conflict before it and a gradual repair and rebuild afterwards.

There are enough of them that I wouldn't be surprised if the overall graph was
smooth.

> Also many of these wars were pretty localized, so we should see the drops
> and inequality in the immediate area and a reduced effect elsewhere.

In the modern world, few things are truly localized.

~~~
openasocket
That's a valid explanation for how wars could cause the trends in inequality,
but without further evidence this is a specious argument. It also doesn't
explain regional variations in income inequality. Look at the list of
countries by income inequality: there isn't really a correlation between
income inequality and "war-iness".

I think wars can increase equality, but they are far from the only cause.

~~~
munificent
Sure, I'm not arguing that all of the inequality changes are due to wars, just
that there have been enough of them to potentially explain it.

------
netman21
So the last decade's decline in violence in the US indicates a decline in
inequality?

~~~
clouddrover
Crime in general may be declining due to the reduction of lead in the
environment:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615)

~~~
dragonwriter
Yeah,that and demographic shifts out of the age group whose predominance seems
to drive crime rates seem to more-than-explain the drop in crime, violent and
otherwise, more than offsetting any effect from rising inequality.

------
RoutinePlayer
I would love to see Prof. Steven Pinker review this. He wrote "The Better
Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature)

------
lstroud
I haven't read the book, but this seems like the classic case of a solution
looking for a problem.

------
harscoat
cf. Peter Turchin [http://energyskeptic.com/2016/peter-turchin-violence-and-
soc...](http://energyskeptic.com/2016/peter-turchin-violence-and-social-
unrest-in-the-u-s-and-europe-likely-by-2020/)

------
it
The title is a bit misleading. He uncovered a correlation between violence and
equality.

------
Inconel
That was an interesting read, it definitely makes me want to read the book for
a more detailed analysis.

I've increasingly been wondering about the links between violence/social
unrest and inequality, particularly as we enter a period of time were
globalization and automation have the potential to be hugely disruptive to the
existing work force, even more so than they already have been.

This is only tangentially related, but I've been curious about the link
between violent crime in the US and general societal health. Based on much of
what I've read, and I could be mistaken here, I've seen a number of stats
cited showing that factors like income inequality, purchasing power and very
worryingly to me, social mobility, are all on a downward trend in the US. Even
harder to quantify areas, like asking parents if they think their kids will be
better off than they were, result in answers that skew unfavorably.

At the same time, it is both rather easy to own firearms or other forms of
weapons and there are plenty already in circulation, and yet, unless I'm
mistaken, violent crime has been on a steady downward trend in the US for the
last 30+ years.

I would assume, perhaps niavely, that as social markers such as decreased
mobility, inequality, pessimism about the future and distrust of the
government and politicians grew, we would see a corresponding rise in
violence. But it appears we aren't seeing that.

What could be behind this? Are we simply getting better at controlling people?
Are we distracting them? Are we incarcerating them? Are they simply killing
themselves? I know suicide rates for certain demographics have been
increasing. Or are things not really as bad as they sometimes seem?

I'm definitely not advocating for violence, but I do feel that violence acts
as a kind of societal last resort when a population believes they have
exhausted all other options. Again, this could be a misguided interpretation
of the situation on my part, but I would assume that violence in society would
closely follow decreases in the kind of quality of life metrics we're seeing.
I'd love to hear other posters' thoughts or if there are any good sources
exploring the topic.

~~~
CM30
Probably an insane thought, but perhaps the 'us vs them' attitudes in current
political parties and stances may be having an effect?

Maybe people are too distracted by the whole theism vs atheism/religion vs
religion arguments, the complaints about sexism/racism/transphobia/etc or
general debates about whether things like abortion should be legal or not.

Maybe people are being sidetracked too much by party politics and internet
debates to actually do anything about income inequality.

Or maybe as said before, the various other changes have decreased crime rates
so much that even an increase in it due to this inequality is barely
noticeable. If exposure to lead was really tied to crime rates, perhaps the
huge drop off there simply masked everything else.

------
Nomentatus
I've previously thought that wars OR the threat of wars, particularly of mass
armies; meant you had to treat the 99% pretty well, or they wouldn't care to
die for you. So this article makes me suspect that as drones do more of the
fighting, and then finally all of the fighting, there will in future be no
practical reason whatsoever to treat the 99% well. Drones stamping on the
human face forever...

------
andrewclunn
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." \- Thomas Jefferson

------
known
AKA
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)
AND
[http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109)

------
dforrestwilson1
Peter Turchin has done similar work. This book is a great read!

[https://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Rise-Fall-
Empires/dp/045228...](https://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Rise-Fall-
Empires/dp/0452288193)

------
edblarney
"wars, pandemics, civil unrest; only violent shocks like these have
substantially reduced inequality over the millennia."

No. The history of Anglo culture has been as violent as any other - but not in
revolutionary terms.

Same thing for Scandinavian cultures.

UK/Australia/Canada/NZ have relatively reasonable rates of inequality and
there has been no revolution.

Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland - have likely the highest degree of
'equality' and yet - there has been no revolution. Their Monarchies and State
Churches remain intact to this day.

The American revolution - though important in terms of world history - was a
pretty minor affair - the colonies were small and sparse at the time.

It's also very difficult to consider 'revolution' before recorded history as
there were no 'social movements' as we understand them, granted, studying
revolution before the common are would be worth an academic exercise.

------
known
Any type of hegemony will have awkward repercussions and collateral damage;

------
gresh
the pitchforks are coming!

------
husgfdsr3y
Singapore has one of the highest income inequalities in the world. It has one
of the lowest violence rates in the world. You can say the same about China
too and many other countries in Asia.

~~~
kbart
I don't know about Singapore, but China is known for its unofficial
millionaire/billionaire corrupt bureaucrats and party members. Also, when
government has a complete control over the media, crime statistics tends to
get underreported.

------
Proven
Socialist nonsense. If he had some common sense instead of PhD, he would have
"uncovered" the grim truth that the State is the source of most violence and
inequality.

------
tanto
How about we take away everything down to 10^6$ from the 0.0001% richest and
redistribute it to everyone. We repeat this with the 0.0001% of the richest
every year from there on. Every time someone is chosen for this honour they
get a medal.

~~~
Neliquat
Imagine for a moment you are a driven, self-made .00001%er. If you KNEW your
profits were taken at the top, would you work hard and innovate? Or would you
commit fraud and squirrel away your wealth or not bother. Im sure a few would
see it as a 'goal', but stakeholders would doubtlessly disagree. The spirit, I
agree with, but not possible to cleanly implement.

~~~
empath75
There is no amount of work a human being could do that justifies the wealth
that is in the hands of people like Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet. They seem
like decent enough people, but they have an obscene amount of wealth and
power.

~~~
leereeves
Great wealth is rewarded for placing winning bets, not for hard work.

For example, gambling on investments, as with Buffet, or on a new idea, as
with Zuckerberg. Sometimes just for gambling on Powerball.

The great rewards are balanced by great risks, and many of these gambles are
valuable to society. Where would we be without new businesses and new ideas?

~~~
cmdrfred
>The great rewards are balanced by great risks

Zuckerburgs wealth exceeds that of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of
his countrymen. Do you honestly believe that the risk he incurred was greater
than all of our nations oil rig workers, foresters, soldiers and police
combined?

Am I missing something? If Facebook goes belly up do his shareholders get to
cut off his hands?

~~~
leereeves
Imagine investing $1000 in something with a 1 in a million chance of success
(just for example). For that to be a rational bet, the payoff would need to be
a billion dollars.

Oil rig workers, foresters, soldiers and police have guaranteed pay instead of
a very small chance of very great rewards.

