Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

This idea that wealth is somehow related to creating value, and these kinds of incentives are necessary in order to induce people to do this kind of work, is a deliberate marketing ploy, and a fairly recent one at that, pretty much dating back only to the 1970s or so. Before that, the kinds of professions we today associate with being "rich and famous" (as if these two things were inherently related to each other somehow) -- actors, sports players, inventors -- were not particularly well paid. Before the 19th century, there was no such thing as a professional athlete. There were professional actors, but that was considered a borderline dishonorable profession. The history of invention since the industrial revolution is chock full of people who made important technological or scientific breakthroughs who never made a dime off their work. Most early science was done by people who were already rich, mostly through inherited wealth, or people who, like today, had wealthy patrons. The truly rich were, still are, and have always been, the ones in a position and with the inclination to bend the system to their advantage by whatever means they could.

> Before the 19th century, there was no such thing as a professional athlete. There were professional actors, but that was considered a borderline dishonorable profession.

And that changed with TV (and cinema).

In the 19th century an actor can play in front of one or two hundred persons each day at most. Now a good movie can be played in front of millions of persons. The same changes applies to sports.

It’s not that different today the vast majority of actors today are not rich or even well paid. A list actors are and that hasn’t changed at all.

Historically “traveling” actors were often looked down on not that differently than say street performers or your Hollywood “acting waitresses” that gets a few gigs a year as an extra.

However the historical equivalent of A list actors would be acting groups like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chamberlain%27s_Men or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Strange%27s_Men.

And even in the 16th century many famous actors became very wealthy take the likes of Edward Alleyn and William Knell for example.

You know who else didn’t get paid in the 19th century? Computer programmers.

Things change the reason why entertainment professionals are paid more these days is because we have the ability to leverage their product through modern technology and the fact that the abundance of resources that even developing countries have today allows people to value entertainment.

And no most scientists were not rich by any means outside of a few in the UK many of them were quite poor and were often living on a stipend provided by institutions or private patrons.

And sorry to burst your bubble but A list actors historically became very wealthy in countries where entertainment was appreciated.

It's true that economic conditions change with technological advances, and that the general trend is that fewer and fewer people are required to meet the demand for any particular product. It does not follow that we as a society should adopt a policy that those who manage to capture markets are entitled to a proportionate (note that I deliberately did NOT say DISproportionate) share of society's wealth. Most of our social mores were designed under the assumption that production, not consumption, was the limiting factor in our economies. But that is starting to change. If we don't change the rules to accord with this new reality it will cause serious problems. If only 1% of the world's population is required to meet 110% of the world's demand for everything (and that could very well happen within our lifetimes), what are we going to do with the remaining 99%?

The problem is then what is proportionate and how do you estimate it?

Should Apple be taxed more than Google? Should an actor that gets paid 10 million dollars for a movie be taxed more than an actor who’s paid 5? What if the actor that is paid 10 is has 5 times more views just in less valued markets?

Should I who works as an engineer for a financial institution be taxed more than an engineer working for SpaceX or NASA?

Proportionate is easy: if you're making money in the free market, then manifestly what you are making is proportionate to the value you are providing to someone. The problem is that some people's contributions measured this way are wildly disproportionate to other people's contributions. A movie star really is providing orders of magnitude more value than a McDonalds cashier. The question is: should a movie star therefore be entitled to orders of magnitude more compensation? It's not clear that the answer to that really ought to be "yes".

Proportionate isn't clear, again don't mistake the dollar amount they pay in taxes with their tax, while we cap taxation for a good reason as progressive upto 100% is a very bad idea.

And yes it is clear to anyone who studied economics, and more importantly it's really depressing that you are using these populist arguments how about replacing the movie star with a doctor? Is it ok we pay a doctor who spent the better part of the first 30 years of their life becoming one and would spend the next 30-40 years being one more than a worker at McDonalds who's only required qualifications are to not set the building on fire and being able to say "do you want fries with that?"

The sad truth is that you wouldn't find people that are successful and do no work hard even those kardashians that you seem to adore so much.

I mean, it is still related to value in the economic sense, but not necessarily the intuitive sense. For example, the Kardashians are certainly "worth" less in cultural value than custodians, but their economic value is much higher because they're much more scarce/have much higher demand. I think that this concept is something that many people on both sides of this debate haven't really taken the time to think about. It definitely does invalidate a lot of the statements like "poor people are just lazy" and it does highlight that capitalism is an ugly system. But at the same time (roughly paraphrasing Churchill) "Capitalism is the worst form of economics, except for all the other ones"

It's true that the Kardashians are in high demand. It does not necessarily follow that we as a society should allow them as a consequence to accumulate disproportionate wealth and influence. The incentive argument in particular falls apart here. Do we really need to pay the Kardashians a boatload of money to incentivize them to do whatever it is that they do? Or would it be OK if we taxed the shit out of them and took the risk that they would quit as a result? That seems like a no-brainer to me (in every possible sense).

Anderson Cooper has a higher networth than Kim Kardashian are you ok with taxing him until he quits as well?

Absolutely. I'm OK with getting rid of anyone who is doing what they are doing solely for the money.

> Do we really need to pay the Kardashians a boatload of money to incentivize them to do whatever it is that they do?

That's a good question. I personally don't think so and don't pay them myself. But enough people in our society clearly do, and as long as they have the freedom to chose where they spend their money they should be able to chose to spend it on the Kardashians right?

The question of whether (or how much of) the money they accumulate should be taxed, I believe is a separate issue. I think we could tax the shit out of them, but I would caution against the notion of taxing them more than others on the basis that they're creating less "value" than other rich people. There are clearly plenty of people who highly value whatever it is they produce, and to tell those people otherwise seems like dangerous territory (at least it seems like non-democratic - i.e. when you have a government telling the people what to value).

Yes, I totally agree with this. But I believe there are actually very few people who are actually creating value who would stop doing what they are doing if they were taxed more. The few that do quit, I'll wager there are people willing to step in and take their place. It's a risk I'm willing to take.

This argument is simply frightening first how do you define who creates value? should we now have a citizenship score? Secondly the vast majority of people who work freaking hard jobs would quit if they would be taxed to the point where taking a lower paying, less stress simpler job would be as beneficial.

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