My last two posts described inequality in firm and city sizes, and in individual wealth. Today, firms and cities are quite unequal, following a Zipf distribution, with a tail power near one (giving a very thick tail.) Individual wealth is a bit more equal, with a bigger power of ~1.4 (and hence a thinner tail).
I have a question, kind of from left field. I just read Robert Reich's "Aftershock", from which I personally took away the concept that the trend towards increasing concentration of wealth is at the root of unpleasant trends in our society and economy. He finishes the book with a workmanlike plan to reverse the trend.
I frankly haven't studied statistics or economics deeply, so pardon the naivity of this question: is there an underlying law or set of conditions that would make Robert's goal unfeasible?
What other areas besides size/wealth do you think this might extend to, even if they can't be explicitly modeled? Knowledge comes to mind, both at the top end and expansion of "intellectual laypersons," and maybe some form of social capital...?
Otherwise, to clarify the "disinterest:" You crossed multiple fields of academics to tackle an ambiguous question prompted by exactly no one, framed your findings relevant to major issues, such as 21st century population dynamics and wealth distribution, and although all this required some serious effort and candle power, shared the most significant takeaways as concise, intriguing insights of personal interest when nearly all others in academia seem to only concerned with getting their work published.
Nobody else drops Big Knowledge like that. So please excuse the delay in processing these posts, but often my thoughts are left too incomplete at first to even "Like" them in good conscience. Unless, of course, I'd be giving a thumbs-up for Intellectual Balls, but that's why I come to this blog in the first place.
Future income inequality is likely to rise (c.p.) because of rising global wealth. Those who are best able to create and sell innovation will have a larger market to sell in to and will generate more income.
Those who do not create and sell innovation due to lack of motivation, intelligence, or government regulation will have their own limited skills cannibalized by growing technological innovation.
Robin - you are never boring, but you can be a bit intimidating at times. Maybe that's why you only got a few responses.
I continue to argue that in an AI world, the ability of AI's to modify their own software, including their moral program, rapid evolution and an arms race will quickly end up with one person destroying all others, so the world will be very unequal with that one person holding all wealth. Any AI that didn't take the approach of becoming a superparanoid power grabber, will be quickly eliminated. This explains the doomsday paradox pretty well.
With the additional premise (a pretty strong one I submit) that any intelligent race will achieve AI before interstellar travel, thus solving the Fermi paradox as well.
I may not have commented but I opened some links and read about zipf and city population distributions and so on. The post on wealth where you connect the distributino to a model of wealth increasing and decreasing... I had no idea whether the connection of the distribution to the dynamics was a necessary one, and indeed it seemed it was not. But I wasn't going to understand it until i spent some time beating the math to death, and my interest in this topic didn't extend to that kind of time commitment. (I have a day job beating other math to death as an engineer).
Then THIS post, using Zipf dynamics I don't grok or believe to talk about a theoretical world with quadrillions of ems in which I don't really believe either, what would I say? I read the post, looked for stuff I could care about or think was close enough to reality to provide useful insights, and moved on.
I can also tell you I have rarely noticed the recommendation button, probably NEVER used it, and often read your posts a few days after they are posted, this post i have not read until now.
Same here. FASCINATING, groundbreaking work. I just get to it days later when the discussion has gone cold. I particularly enjoy your post-em projections.
That is true, but aren't we in a mu > 1 situation? I believe the models in the paper, both the simple and "more realistic", have mu > 1 in the mean field. There is a wealth condensation phase transition for mu infinity, but I don't know if that is a realistic scenario (although I guess in the case of quadrillions on ems we might reach that scenario).
ps I also just noticed you linked to this paper in your previous post so you were already aware of it -- I am just back from a trip, and going through my RSS feed in reverse chronological order. Sorry for jumping in without being up to date.
I read most of what you write, vote occasionally and rarely comment. I find your blog to be the most radical and thought provoking of those I read, I hope you continue to write about that which you find most interesting.
A question: your definition of inequality differs from the continuous case of Pareto distributions; inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient which is directly related to the exponent. Given a particular exponent for the distribution, inequality (as measured by social scientists) should be constant.
As the economy grows, the human faction of wealth could become small, even as its amount stays constant or grows. Imagine if we still had ten million original immortal foragers around today - they wouldn't need to own much to have a comfortable retirement.
I have a question, kind of from left field. I just read Robert Reich's "Aftershock", from which I personally took away the concept that the trend towards increasing concentration of wealth is at the root of unpleasant trends in our society and economy. He finishes the book with a workmanlike plan to reverse the trend.
I frankly haven't studied statistics or economics deeply, so pardon the naivity of this question: is there an underlying law or set of conditions that would make Robert's goal unfeasible?
What other areas besides size/wealth do you think this might extend to, even if they can't be explicitly modeled? Knowledge comes to mind, both at the top end and expansion of "intellectual laypersons," and maybe some form of social capital...?
Otherwise, to clarify the "disinterest:" You crossed multiple fields of academics to tackle an ambiguous question prompted by exactly no one, framed your findings relevant to major issues, such as 21st century population dynamics and wealth distribution, and although all this required some serious effort and candle power, shared the most significant takeaways as concise, intriguing insights of personal interest when nearly all others in academia seem to only concerned with getting their work published.
Nobody else drops Big Knowledge like that. So please excuse the delay in processing these posts, but often my thoughts are left too incomplete at first to even "Like" them in good conscience. Unless, of course, I'd be giving a thumbs-up for Intellectual Balls, but that's why I come to this blog in the first place.
Arg, looks like the video was taken down. This is the official site but you have to manually jump to 2:00 in the video.
Future income inequality is likely to rise (c.p.) because of rising global wealth. Those who are best able to create and sell innovation will have a larger market to sell in to and will generate more income.
Those who do not create and sell innovation due to lack of motivation, intelligence, or government regulation will have their own limited skills cannibalized by growing technological innovation.
Robin - you are never boring, but you can be a bit intimidating at times. Maybe that's why you only got a few responses.
I continue to argue that in an AI world, the ability of AI's to modify their own software, including their moral program, rapid evolution and an arms race will quickly end up with one person destroying all others, so the world will be very unequal with that one person holding all wealth. Any AI that didn't take the approach of becoming a superparanoid power grabber, will be quickly eliminated. This explains the doomsday paradox pretty well.
With the additional premise (a pretty strong one I submit) that any intelligent race will achieve AI before interstellar travel, thus solving the Fermi paradox as well.
What a great analysis of what was part of concern #3 in our list here: http://www.33rdsquare.com/2012/01/top-five-singularity-concerns.html
"Would the "99%" enjoy their servitude while only the elites become post-human? "
Leiji Matsumoto was on to something.
I may not have commented but I opened some links and read about zipf and city population distributions and so on. The post on wealth where you connect the distributino to a model of wealth increasing and decreasing... I had no idea whether the connection of the distribution to the dynamics was a necessary one, and indeed it seemed it was not. But I wasn't going to understand it until i spent some time beating the math to death, and my interest in this topic didn't extend to that kind of time commitment. (I have a day job beating other math to death as an engineer).
Then THIS post, using Zipf dynamics I don't grok or believe to talk about a theoretical world with quadrillions of ems in which I don't really believe either, what would I say? I read the post, looked for stuff I could care about or think was close enough to reality to provide useful insights, and moved on.
I can also tell you I have rarely noticed the recommendation button, probably NEVER used it, and often read your posts a few days after they are posted, this post i have not read until now.
Same here. FASCINATING, groundbreaking work. I just get to it days later when the discussion has gone cold. I particularly enjoy your post-em projections.
This is true, assuming their currency wasn't limited in value by inflation, or depleted by parasitic legalized "raids" or "seizures."
There is a typo, "mu infinity" should be "mu < 1". (Pretty far off!)
That is true, but aren't we in a mu > 1 situation? I believe the models in the paper, both the simple and "more realistic", have mu > 1 in the mean field. There is a wealth condensation phase transition for mu infinity, but I don't know if that is a realistic scenario (although I guess in the case of quadrillions on ems we might reach that scenario).
ps I also just noticed you linked to this paper in your previous post so you were already aware of it -- I am just back from a trip, and going through my RSS feed in reverse chronological order. Sorry for jumping in without being up to date.
I read most of what you write, vote occasionally and rarely comment. I find your blog to be the most radical and thought provoking of those I read, I hope you continue to write about that which you find most interesting.
The paper you link explicitly shows that inequality is a constant as population varies only for a power greater than one.
A question: your definition of inequality differs from the continuous case of Pareto distributions; inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient which is directly related to the exponent. Given a particular exponent for the distribution, inequality (as measured by social scientists) should be constant.
Second: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-m...
In this paper, inequality (Pareto exponent/Gini coefficient) is directly related to the volatility of markets (and exchange), and not population:
exponent = 1 + exchange/market volatility
Where exchange = fraction of wealth exchanged per transactionand market volatility = variance of Gaussian distribution of returns
Of course, this is a specific model. However, it does give a mechanism for producing a Pareto distribution of wealth.
As the economy grows, the human faction of wealth could become small, even as its amount stays constant or grows. Imagine if we still had ten million original immortal foragers around today - they wouldn't need to own much to have a comfortable retirement.