Interesting Links for 8-6-2011

[andrewducker]

• Why You Can’t Get My Book in [Insert Country Here] (Scalzi on regionalisation)
  (tags: books publishing)
• Women warriors show psychological resilience similar to men
  (tags: psychology trauma military war gender)
• Frankenstein Superstar - a rather spiffy webcomic. Not suitable for reading in work, but well worth reading at home.
  (tags: frankenstein webcomic comic funny)
• A warning to Scottish separatists. If you're not careful you'll end up like Norway!
  (tags: norway scotland independence)
• Dr Who renewed for another 14 episodes with Matt Smith.
  (tags: DrWho StevenMoffat)
• Samsung Delivers Galaxy S II to CyanogenMod Dev, Says Get to Work
  (tags: android samsung opensource awesome)
• Russian President Proposes Creative Commons-Style Rules Baked Directly Into Copyright
  (tags: copyright russia)
• Jilted ex-boyfriend puts up abortion billboard.
  (tags: privacy freespeech abortion)
• Okay. Now I want a pirate cinema. Arrrrr!
  (tags: cinema design awesome)
• 12 Unusual and Creative Home Theaters. I want the Batman one.
  (tags: design movies awesome)

Comments

Leaving aside the question of equivalence...

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Is there something inherently wrong with saying 'you can earn this much and no more', do you think?

Re: Leaving aside the question of equivalence...

[andrewducker]

I think there is. I think, generally, that it's not sometihng other people should control.

Taxes are fine - we take money from richer people to pay for essentials for people who can't afford it, and for necessary infrastructure. But caring that other people have more than you is just jealousy.

Re: Leaving aside the question of equivalence...

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Is it, though? I don't think it's that simple. For one thing, that's always money that could be used for something else (but yes, it is money that we've given up into the control of someone else by paying for something, so perhaps we lose all say when we do that?). For another, having some people earning 100x as much as others does weird things to the markets in general. And is it irrational to suspect that something's a bit off with the market if the income discrepancies in one country are several times as large as those in another country of comparable wealth?

Also, while writing this effect off as 'just jealousy' may be in some sense accurate, what do you make of the evidence that people in general tend to be much less happy if they know that other people are vastly better off than them? See e.g. 'Relative income, happiness, and utility:
An explanation for the Easterlin paradox and other puzzles'. Even if it is all down to such a base motivation, does that necessarily mean that ignoring such large-scale effects is the right thing to do?

Re: Leaving aside the question of equivalence...

[andrewducker]

The money could be used for something else - but the point here, as you rightly say, is that it's not your money. If person A gives person B some goods in exchange for services then that strikes me as being the business of those two people (insofar as it's not for illegal purposes). I don't mind a level of tax being paid on it, to fund all sorts of public goods, but saying to person A that they cannot pay person B more than X for their services strikes me as horribly infringing on their freedoms.

I do agree that some bits of the job market are horribly dysfunctional. But I'm not convinced that it's the governments job to make it more functional. I'd rather they just taxed all of the wages at a level which doesn't cause too much of an outcry (say, 50%), and used that money to fund things. Raising it to 90% seems more likely to distort things horrible, and lead to people spending lots of effort to bypassing it instead, making things even more complex.

People are definitely unhappier if there is more inequality - but a lot of that seems to come from seeing opportunities that they cannot possibly have. I'd be much more for focussing on reducing the problems in areas of high poverty by improving education and help for those people so that they have hope. That seems more productive to me.

Re: Leaving aside the question of equivalence...

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

It's good to be not jealous.

But my boss controls how much I am paid.

Re: Leaving aside the question of equivalence...

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Here's another link relevant to the question of whether we should care how rich other people are... http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105