The Mobility Myth (2014)
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I'm unconvinced this is a terribly concerning level of mobility. Some people seem to assume an ideal level of mobility would demonstrate no advantage to those born in upper quintiles (i.e., your birth quintile plays no role in your adult quintile), but given what we know about the importance of genetics in passing along favourable human capital characteristics, matching behavior in mating markets, and the importance of social capital -- it seems very reasonable that we would see less than "perfect" mobility.
I don't think we know that at all, and as an assumption it is a terrible one. If it is wrong (and we have no reason to assume it is correct, at least not to a very high degree), you are deciding to give up on a lot of people. You're basically guessing that the poor are where they belong and as a consequence of that guess, you make no effort to help them. Moreover, even if that assumption is right, so what? Even if people are born less capable of riches, that does not mean we shouldn't do our best to help them achieve moderate levels of success, or at least to better their lot in life. This isn't all altruistic: a more egalitarian society is a more pleasant one.
In the end, it all comes to values. But I want to clarify what those values signify: financial success isn't just about how much stuff you can buy, but more importantly about power[1]. The less money you have relative to the median, the less power, and the less power you have -- the less freedom. Giving up on power equality means giving up on greater freedom to great many people.
> it seems very reasonable that we would see less than "perfect" mobility.
There's a very long way from where the US is now to perfect mobility. Americans can start with striving for European levels of mobility for a start. We know that at least that is possible.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)
Interpret his hypothesis in a broad manner; poor folks are predominantly where they belong due to hereditary traits, either genetics or behaviors taught by their parents. These traits will cause them to be poor in any system which rewards hard work, intelligence and the creation of value for other people as a means of gaining income.
Anything that provides strong evidence that no human action -- social or technological -- can possibly improve the fortune of the poor.
> either genetics or behaviors taught by their parents
Even if that were true, I see no claim that they cannot change, so I don't see why the cause matters. That people's starting positions in life are widely unequal is pretty much a given; no one disputes that. In order to make a powerful claim, the only thing that matters is not the source of their misfortune, but that it cannot be changed. Genetic, "wide" social or "close" social (family), I see no such claim being made, and if anyone were to make that claim, I think that they have no good foundation to base it on. I do see people make that (usually implied) assumption, but as I said before, this assumption is no more than a reflection of their values[1].
> These traits will cause them to be poor in any system which rewards hard work, intelligence and the creation of value for other people as a means of gaining income.
Only provided that the system doesn't do other things, too (and why can't the poor work hard? I think I work far less hard than a great many number of people far poorer than me).
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[1]: As to values, I have absolutely no problem with people holding values that say "every man to himself", and we shouldn't go out of our ways to help the poor. I do see a huge problem with people offering social structures that try to curtail whatever power the poor do have, but not the power of the rich. The rich have their money and the poor have their numbers. They can use their numbers for violence or the threat of violence, to achieve better standing, or through a more sophisticated mechanism of democracy, where they impose restrictions on the rich. As a consequence, I see no ethical problem with either a social democracy or anarchy. But I see a big ethical problems with ideologies that prohibit violence, the threat of violence, and any form of organization imposing restrictions, while at the same time placing no restrictions on the use of power that comes from money. Those people are saying, "every man to himself as long as we make sure no one with different sources of power than me can use their's against me".
Asift made this claim and you asserted it was false. What evidence (if any) would cause you to believe it to be true?
Even if that were true, I see no claim that they cannot change, so I don't see why the cause matters.
The cause matters because it affects potential solutions. If the cause of a mobility difference between the US and Sweden is economic, then the fix is probably adopting the Swedish economic system (e.g., privatizing education and adopting their sane corporate tax system). If the cause is genetic then the solution would be adopting Swedish genetics by removing from the gene pool anyone of non-Nordic descent. If the cause were close social then the solution would be preventing poor people from transmitting their harmful values and behaviors to their children.
Hypothetically, suppose I could provide adequate evidence (as per my prior question) that Ashkenazi Jews have superior intelligence and other hereditary advantages that cause them to occupy disproportionate chunks of the top rungs of society (thereby lowering mobility). Asift and myself would oppose changing this since the only solutions are violent. If one doesn't eliminate violence as a possible solution, what new avenues open up for us to solve this "Jewish problem"?
I said: any strong evidence that no human action could improve the poor's fortunes.
I doubt such evidence could be found, though. First, equality has improved a lot due to human action, so the claim needs to be "but where we are now is as good as it gets", which sounds suspiciously convenient (especially as the people making that claim believe that almost everything else can be greatly improved, and their claim is usually based on no study at all of human society, so not understanding how change has been achieved so far makes the claim that we can't take it further even more suspect). Second, we are now able to stay underwater or in space, and to fly over oceans -- things we are genetically less inclined to do -- so I seriously doubt human ingenuity stops when it comes to equality. The question is how far should we work towards equality, but that is a question of values, again.
> The cause matters because it affects potential solutions.
Of course, but we're not arguing about solutions but about whether solutions need to be sought at all.
> Asift and myself would oppose changing this, since the only solutions are violent and we both seem to prefer low violence to high mobility. If one doesn't oppose violence, what violent solutions to this hypothetical Jewish problem are acceptable?
I, too, would oppose a violent solution, and not only for egotistical reasons, but your example is a non-sequitur. In order for this problem to be a problem at all, you'll need to show that it is in fact a major cause for lowered mobility. Second, I don't see what violence has to do with it. Your entire argument sounds like, "I need to get to the top floor of that building, but as someone opposed to violence I wouldn't kill everyone in the street and climb the nice incline of the pile of bodies to get to the top; how does one who isn't categorically opposed to violence suggest to get up there?" Why, she might just take the elevator.
In other words, why would you even think that the only solution to inequality is violence?
That's not an answer, it's just a tautology. "Anything that meets the criteria of the question you asked" is not an answer. I'm asking for specific measurements. E.g., "data showing that holding economics constant, certain groups wildly underperform".
Of course, if your views are faith based then no such measurement exists. Given how carefully you avoid stating such a measurement, this is my belief.
I, too, would oppose a violent solution, and not only for egotistical reasons, but your example is a non-sequitur.
A hypothetical designed to probe the limits of your morality is hardly a non-sequitur. Similarly, the trolley problem probably never literally happened in real life. That doesn't mean it's a non-sequitur to ask.
Anyway, good to know that there is little in this discussion beyond assertions of faith and dodging the core questions. Have fun.
I don't understand. What measurement would have convinced you that it is impossible for humans to cross the Atlantic in under a day? You're making an impossibility claim and ask me to come with a measurement to verify it. I guess I could come up with a very long and boring series of experiments, each invalidating a possible approach, but nothing that you couldn't think of yourself.
> Of course, if your views are faith based then no such measurement exists.
Both of our views are largely based on values (although mine is augmented by study) but the difficulty of proving an impossibility result is not a consequence of that. Also, I'm not sure why you choose to call values "faith". Not that I mind, but "value" is the familiar philosophical (and psychological) term that is most apt here.
> Anyway, good to know that there is little in this discussion beyond assertions of faith and dodging the core questions.
As someone who implies that his views are based on measurements, you seem strangely incapable of listening and processing new input. Remember, valuable input does not have to be raw data, if, for example, it points out that your mathematical reasoning is based on unfounded assumptions. You don't "know" what you have just said any more than you did before joining the conversation. You pre-supposed that, and then didn't try to understand what I was saying. Which goes to show that mere observation doesn't change any conclusion if it is never processed by the observer.
How do you expect to have an interesting conversation if you don't make the effort to understand what the other side is actually saying? Aren't you even curious to see whether you could come up with good arguments to counter the other side's actual arguments? It's OK to accidentally talk past one another because of a misunderstanding, but it seems like you're making a conscious effort to not understand what people are saying (and not just me), and then respond to your own made-up distortion by ridiculing that made-up position. What's the point?
A reliable measurement of the speed of light (supposing of course that we still knew SR). If the result were smaller than width of atlantic / 1 day, I'd have been convinced that transatlantic travel must take > 1 day.
You pre-supposed that, and then didn't try to understand what I was saying.
True - my initial theory is that your views are faith based. I then made a measurement that could prove me wrong; I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I'd have had to change my theory.
Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don't need to change it.
As for why I don't attempt to predict your views, that's a trap. If you were arguing in bad faith then whatever measurement I proposed (and then refuted) would result in you simply accusing me of not "try[ing] to understand what I was saying".
Perfect. You're looking for a very gross upper bound. In that case, I could say that proof that human behavior is unchangeable would also convince me.
But I'd go one step further -- if low IQ was shown to be the main cause of poverty, I would change my views, too. Not on the necessity of a solution (I mean, we're also genetically incapable of flying, but that didn't stop us from building airplanes) but on the kind solution we need.
> I asked you what evidence could change your views. Had you stated concrete measurements then I'd have had to change my theory. Since my theory predicted reality perfectly I don't need to change it.
Ah, so let me question your powers of deduction. When I said "anything that would show that no human action would change the poor's fortunes" you assumed I was stating a tautology because you chose to interpret my words that way; that is not the only interpretation, though (and in this case, it was the wrong one). If, you had chosen to assume that I wouldn't be so stupid as to offer a tautology (which I am not), you would have realized I meant something else altogether: that proving an impossibility result is very hard, and either requires lots and lots of different kinds of evidence, or a completely irrelevant upper bound -- as in your speed of light example (and I admit that I chose that example precisely because I knew you would come up with the speed of light) -- that is known to be false in both the Atlantic-crossing argument as well as in the question on the elasticity of human behavior.
You could have assumed (correctly, if you had paid attention to what I'm saying), that questions like "but what would you say in a world with spherical cows" are of no interest to me, because the answers are obvious. If you construct an imaginary world where your conclusion is the only reasonable one, any reasonable person would reach that same conclusion. The only purpose of such questions is to test if the other side is indeed as stupid as you imagine them to be. As I am not, I see no reason in playing that game (again -- just assume that I would say the same as you) and writing the obvious answer -- it's boring. I believe that problems arise when cows aren't spherical, so questions about obvious-world are both obvious, and are nothing more than taunts.
What really happened wasn't that my behavior matched your theory -- it most certainly didn't -- but that you've chosen to imagine that it does by trying hard to not understand what I was saying. I can also surmise as to the mechanism, which I have detailed before: when someone disagrees with you on such matters you assume that they are not as smart as you, and then create an image of that reality in your mind by misinterpreting their words to match the interpretation that would be the intention of your imagined idiot.
My theory was that you always choose to interpret the other side's words in a way that would twist them to match the presumed claims of an idiot, and as a result you never actually give counter-arguments but pose teases (which you call "core questions") that do nothing to move the discussion forward (I even know how you'd respond to this). My theory was yet again proven correct, and I think that much more convincingly than yours.
And, BTW, if by "faith-based" you mean based on values, then yours are, too. The difference between us is that you fail to see that.
In fact, that might explain a lot. If you believe that your conclusions are based on pure reasoning and nothing else, then if anyone does not reach the same conclusions, their reasoning must be faulty (or they assign different probabilities than yours, but that is still perfectly in your comfort zone). You have no choice but to assume that the other side is stupid, because if they are not, then that means that your own conclusions arise from values, too.
While I can't convince you right now that that belief is wrong[1], I would suggest -- as an eye-opening exercise -- to comb your reasoning for hidden assumptions that could reasonably be false. If you can't find any, then either you are the greatest philosopher who ever lived or have a blindness to your own thought-process.
[1]: There are two problems here: 1. Is it possible to reach ethical conclusions from probabilities and reasoning alone? and 2. Is that what you're actually doing? I'm not sure I know the answer to 1, although I believe it to be false (I can answer the claims made by ethical naturalists, and believe that they don't really tackle this exact question), but so far I am very convinced that the answer to 2 is no.
Studies on criminality show a significant genetic component -- not that it is the most significant factor. The IQ studies indeed show that a much stronger correlation with the biological parents, but IQ variation has not been found to be a major cause of social inequality, AFAIK. I.e. to draw your conclusions you'd need another missing element, which is to show that low IQ is a major cause of poverty, and other causes don't play as significant a role. I am not aware of any such claims. Indeed, in the famous twin-adoption studies, heredity was found to explains only ~20% of the variation in earnings in men and ~10% in women -- certainly significant, but far from being the determining cause.
Also, that genetics may have a significant influence on future earnings does not mean that no action is possible to counter that effect -- if we choose to take it. Choosing to take it or not is a value-based choice. Genetics also prevents us from flying or some people born with deformities from walking, yet we have built airplanes and prosthetics.
So for every person who moves up, someone must move down. So here is a thought experiment, instead of thinking about improving upward mobility, rather think about improving downwards mobility. Make it difficult to occupy the top echelons, make people work for it and deserve it, instead of just inheriting a fortune and riding the advantages of passive capital working for you.
Just a thought, I have no idea where it could lead but it could perhaps provide a fresh perspective...
Standards of living and wealth are not a zero-sum game, there are plenty of situations where changes benefit everyone.
Relative mobility is a zero sum game.
Again, everyone can't be rich (relative to other people), unless you want to go the direction of communism / socialism / classless society. So as a thought experiment...
PS. Why did you downvote, seriously you downvoted a thought experiment meant to stimulate thought.
Relative wealth is zero sum. Wealth is not zero sum. You shouldn't muddle the terms like this.
-edit - I mean my original top post. You introduced the word wealth and then call me out for muddle'ing its meaning :D
>Wealth, or relative wealth...