A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality
Perhaps I&#x27;ve been sensitized by recent reading[1], but I don&#x27;t think this response addresses the real problems with PG&#x27;s article.<p>The problem with inequality is not <i>necessarily</i> the inequality itself. The poor in America are significantly better off than the wealthy were not very long ago, in most material senses, as has been repeatedly pointed out. So what if they don&#x27;t get <i>as good</i> health care or education or whatever as some of their neighbors; it&#x27;s still better than they would have had. The problem is that relative wealth, inequality, <i>is</i> power. It always has been, and it always will be.[2] (Admittedly, in other societies, wealth isn&#x27;t the only power. But with the decline of the church and the significant lack of both feudal aristocracy and totalitarian[3] governments, wealth is really the only power left.)<p>So, here&#x27;s a question: is it proper for a vanishingly small segment of society to be able to establish and maintain power over the vast majority? Me, I&#x27;ve got no idea. Don&#x27;t really care, either. Because a better question is: is it a good idea? And I think the verdict of history there is a pretty solid Nope.<p>Are you unhappy with the Koch brothers&#x27; political views? That&#x27;s another stupid question; their specific desires are pretty much irrelevant. Much more important is how you feel about how they go about expressing and supporting their views. When reading PG&#x27;s or this article, remember that Charles&#x27; and David&#x27;s father was very much a start-up entrepreneur. Their grandfather was a Dutch immigrant and printer and Fred was <i>exactly</i> the kind of person PG is talking about in his essay. Now, you can can go on about &quot;limiting corruption in politics&quot;, but keep in mind that the Koch brothers are apparently planning on putting something like a trillion dollars into the 2016 election; it&#x27;s hard to perceive anything but that their views will always matter more than yours.<p>Inequality in wealth and power is not even a new thing in this country; I&#x27;m given to understand that the state now is at or approaching levels from the gilded age, but not exceeding them. What is new, is that for a time in this country we <i>didn&#x27;t</i> have wild inequality. Here&#x27;s what Paul has to say about that:<p>&quot;<i>I think rising economic inequality is the inevitable fate of countries that don&#x27;t choose something worse. We had a 40 year stretch in the middle of the 20th century that convinced some people otherwise. But as I explained in The Refragmentation, that was an anomaly—a unique combination of circumstances that compressed American society not just economically but culturally too.</i>&quot;<p>(Personally, I think that the cultural compression that Paul fears so much is somewhat overblown. But then, I grew up in the &#x27;70s in Amarillo, TX (not far from the Koch&#x27;s Quanah, weirdly) and rather fortunately had the library at WTSU about 45 minutes south in Canyon.)<p>The thing that bothers me most: All of those fancy technologies that PG emphasizes, those that some commentors here are happy to trade 45 years of real wage growth for, had their direct roots in that brief period of weird equality. What happens next? What happens after AirBnB puts all the hotels out of business and we&#x27;re all staying in each other&#x27;s spare bedrooms on trips? What happens after Uber has killed off all the taxi companies in the world and replaced them with spare-time drivers? Do things still keep getting better and better? Sure, my nifty new Galaxy Note is better than my old land-line, but exactly how much better is an iPhone6 compared to a 5?<p>Or, ultimately, do Larry Ellison&#x27;s sons, Charles and David, decide they don&#x27;t want to deal with all of this bullshit and start throwing their weight around Silicon Valley?<p>And when they do, what are you going to do about it?<p>[1] <i>The Story of Philosophy</i>, by Will Durant, if you&#x27;re interested. In fact, I&#x27;m in the middle of the chapter on Nietzsche; one of the best comments in this very well-written and quite good book is a footnote following a quote from Nietzsche regarding how excesses in the behavior of the übermensch will be restrained by morality: something to the effect of &quot;How did that get back in here?&quot;<p>In any case, PG&#x27;s comments like, &quot;<i>Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever their other flaws, laziness is usually not one of them</i>&quot; (<i>Laziness</i> isn&#x27;t one of the flaws of that single mother working three jobs, either.) or &quot;<i>Louis Brandeis said &#x27;We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can&#x27;t have both.&#x27; That sounds plausible. But if I have to choose between ignoring him and ignoring a polynomial curve that has been operating for thousands of years, I&#x27;ll bet on the curve</i>&quot; strike me with a certain sense of deja vu.<p>[2] In anything remotely resembling a foreseeable human society.<p>[3] &quot;Totalitarianism is best understood as any system of political ideas that is both thoroughly dictatorial and utopian.&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iep.utm.edu&#x2F;totalita&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iep.utm.edu&#x2F;totalita&#x2F;</a>)