Imagine: You can distribute dollar dollar bills in a society.
Under $10 is poverty: desperation, despair, and deprivation. For each dollar, life is a little less miserable.
Between $10 and $100 is asymptotically increasing satisfaction. For each dollar, life is a little happier. That is, the dollar bills between 10 and 20 count for a lot more than 90 to 100.
Over $100, no change in satisfaction. For each dollar, there's no change in human satisfaction.
That is: The first $10 offset misery. Between ten and hundred, increasing satisfaction -- and the ten to twenty is a lot more satisfaction than the 90 to 100. And over 100, there's lifestyle changes, sure, but no changes in how happy a person is.
How do you arrange things? And please, why?
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This is additional money to what they already get from other sources of income? Or is this everyone's total personal wealth?
ReplyDeleteTotal wealth.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I understand "Limit number under 10". Does that mean there /are/ people under 10, but the amount is relatively small? Because while I would generally be in favor of a system that allowed people to get more or less based on effort as opposed to a system where everyone got the same regardless, I would prefer the "Everyone is the same" system to one that allowed people to dip into poverty.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson Yeah, limit number under 10 means to do allocate such that the minimum number of people are under 10.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I get the system you laid out, each dollar you get you gain less from it. Thus spreading it evenly maximizes total happiness.
ReplyDeletei suppose it depends what the ration of dollar bills/people is? if it's more than 10 and less than 100 i'm going to say divide it equally.
ReplyDeleteWill give my "why?" later to minimize anchoring the discussion.
ReplyDeleteIs this a one-time thing? Like, a while after you choose your distribution the world starts looking quite different, can you re-impose your distribution again?
ReplyDeleteUnpack what you're thinking please, Michael Prescott
ReplyDeleteAdam McConnaughey Can you unpack that? Under what situations would you not divide evenly?
ReplyDeleteMichel Kangro Is that a goal of yours?
ReplyDeleteOk, I'm going to be the guy who, when given a story problem about Alice and Bob riding trains in different directions, asks "Why are Alice and Bob going on trips? What do they hope to achieve?" :-)
ReplyDeleteWhat are your units of "satisfaction"? Can you give me a function for the dollar to "satisfaction" relationship? What is the size of the population? Are these real world dollars or some king of magical "dollars" that provide satisfaction through mystical means by simply possessing them instead of using them to purchase goods and services that do the actual satisfying?
Without such information, I cannot answer the question. This is putting a veneer of math over the top of something that isn't actually quantifiable, and the question is liable to mislead as much as be informative.
Nevertheless, I shall answer anyway...spread around evenly. Because I find equality aesthetically appealing.
William Nichols What else could be a goal? Happiness is the only output we get from the function you presented. We can maximize or minimize it. Its name suggest it's something good, so I'd like to maximize it.
ReplyDeleteOk, I just assumed that the absence of happiness was called "miserable".
Also, Adam McConnaughey gave me an interesting thought: If spreading it evenly means giving everyone miserability, maybe it's better to give as many people as possible 10$ and spread the rest, if any, evenly.
I refuse to continue to think of the poor, suffering souls of our thought experiment. I will need to cuddle Schrödinger's cat now, which I rescued...
William Nichols I'm assuming that after I move the money around, some folks will continue to aggressively pursue money acquisition (using whatever advantages they have), others will have other priorities. Also, some folks will have enormous involuntary expenditures (e.g. healthcare emergencies) and so on. So I'm wondering if have later opportunities to move money around again, or if it's a one-shot deal.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there appear to be two non-dollar units in the question, misery and satisfaction. Misery is a quantity that decreases from some value to zero as dollars increase to $10, and then satisfaction starts at zero with $10 and increases to a maximum at $100. As written, I think you need some kind of "exchange rate" between misery and satisfaction to truly answer the question.
ReplyDeleteAnd thus is exposed the fools errand that is utilitarian ethics. :-)
Swear words, if it's not "get as many people out of misery as possible", it's not for me. I understand the spread it around evenly angle, but hell, some folks do not need another video game system to be "happy" while other people are struggling to make rent and buy food. If I've got magic money to throw around, heck yes it's going to lift the lowest bracket first.
ReplyDeleteMichel Kangro One goal could be to make some people as happy as possible. I wonder why no one is choosing that option?
ReplyDeleteMichael Prescott Ahhh, yes. Life is unfair, and any one-shot attempt to change that will meet with the unfairness of circumstances. How do you recommend we change it?
ReplyDeleteHans Messersmith You noticed. :-)
ReplyDeleteUT isn't the only ethical framework, but it might be the best. We're just absolutely garbage at it.
I think the reason not to divide evenly and have people under 10 might be if the even distribution is below 10. That would make everyone miserable at an equal level regardless of contribution. It's a crappy decision to make, but there can be situations where you need to ensure the basic needs of critical persons are met so they can focus on boasting resources for the entire distribution thus improving overall quality of life (i.e. hungry doctors kill patients). This wouldn't be an excuse for them to reach levels of luxury while others starved, but still this kind of imbalance can produce better gains and overall improved quality of life.
ReplyDeleteOnce everybody has reached 10, I'm in favor of a merit based distribution. I do believe hard work should be rewarded, just not at the expense of other's basic needs.
Meguey Baker Never would have guessed. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe thing that gets me is seeing my own moral failings represented here. My lifestyle isn't close to the poverty line, and I feel like I ought to earmark more funds for poverty reduction.
I am picking 'spread around evenly', but here's my caveat;
ReplyDeleteEveryone's wealth goes to 0. Everyone. Everyone. Zero. Nothing. Everyone starts over with absolutely zero wealth.
William Nichols, your question about why nobody is trying to prioritize as many happy people possible is because people in your circles tend to like sci go and know exactly how governments like in Dune, the Hunger Games, or the French Revolution end.
ReplyDeleteI voted 'limit number under 10', on the assumption that I can use an ongoing, redistributive tax/UBI to get there rather than a one-time bonus. People rise and fall. I'm not worried about maximizing happiness with a formula; people can take care of their own happiness once they're not dirt poor and suffering.
ReplyDeleteHaving read these responses I feel like I misinterpreted the setup here. I was assuming you meant this to be an ongoing systematic change, not a one time redistribution of wealth. So, I was thinking "10" would represent basic income and health care for all....
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson no misinterpretation is possible. Folks have different interpretations, based on where they are coming from.
ReplyDeleteEhhh....
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols if everyone can get more than 100, then i don't really care past guaranteeing everyone 100. and i suspect there's some societal benefit (artistic, philosophical) to be gained by having people of different experiences, as long as everyone's is fine.
ReplyDeleteif, divided evenly, nobody makes it to 10, then, since there's no difference between 0 and 9 in your system, i move to minimizing the number of people under 10, which means giving some people 0.
My reason for avoiding a "reward some essential people more than others": If I'm actually and non-incrementally in charge then any system which deliberately redistributes satisfaction and misery in the interest of social control can go suck a tailpipe. There are much better ways to organize a society.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that others here are treating these dollars as if they are real dollars in some fashion. But as I mentioned above, in the question these are magical dollars, that give satisfaction just by possessing them, instead of by using them in some fashion.
ReplyDeleteMy answer to the question is totally different if:
* The dollars are given once per time period instead of just once
* They are used to transact business of some sort
* They are not destroyed as a consequence of their use.
At the moment the question poses a zero sum game, regardless of the pool of dollars you start with (S) and the number of people in the population (P). It could be a really awesome zero sum game if S/P > 100, and it could be a very sucky zero sum game if S/P <10. But its zero sum either way.
I believe that is the most unrealistic element of the question, because real human activity is NOT a zero sum game. We are constantly creating new things, adding new resources to our interactions, etc.
Hans Messersmith You've got an assumption there that's pretty strong, and that many (if not most) people have unconsciously made in each of these little things over the past week. You spelled it out, but it is an assumption that is never stated or assumed in the problem.
ReplyDeleteWhat assumption is it?
Limit the number under $10, so as to provide a floor against misery. Exact distribution depends on the $:people ratio -- if it's close to 10, say 8 or better, scatter the destitute roughly evenly among the population. The hope is that $10 will hold as an obvious floor and people will be inspired to try and lift up the bottom, rather than isolate them. If they do move to isolate, even and wide distributions will hopefully create a wide variety of superstitions/codes explaining who deserves to be destitute and who doesn't -- again hoping that the diversity of strong gut instincts about this means that as wealth/person increases, it becomes clearer that such rules are bubkis. (Or that there's enough data to actually discover important underlying patterns -- there may be some ways that aren't stupid, and we just don't know any of them yet)
ReplyDeleteIf the $:people ratio is much under 8, you're going to have serious pockets of haves and have-nots. That's a different ballgame -- now I want solid clusters of cooperative haves (at the $10 level) in the hopes that production will take off in some clusters, and better infrastructure (in terms of institutions and markets) will lift the $:person ratio.
If the $:person ratio is down below 2...recalibrate the misery baseline, try again at $5.
Some inequality is inevitable, and can be a powerful driver for change and innovation. But too big a wealth gap, and empathy seems to fall off entirely.
William Nichols do you mean that you did not intend it to be a single distribution? That is not stated, for sure, but you also provided no time frame for new distributions, nor a decay time on how long the dollars would provide the satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteOr do you mean that you did not intend the dollars to be magical, and rather that they really were being used to purchase things that satisfy or alleviate misery? Fair enough, that is not directly stated either. But transactions require people to transact with who have things you need/want. In the question as posed, the assumption is you are deciding the distribution of the entire society, so there are no outside partners to trade with. And the only "commodities" are dollars, misery, and satisfaction. There aren't different flavours of satisfaction, so there is no room for an economy WITHIN the context of your problem. I can't express a preference for, say, vanilla satisfaction and pay someone for more of that so that they can buy some chocolate satisfaction that they prefer.
I'm sure I have made assumptions, but I would argue the question is unanswerable without making some assumptions. OR, as I mentioned for my vote, making the decision on strictly aesthetic grounds.
I"m not criticizing you or your question here, by the way. It is very thought provoking as written as evidenced by all my posts. :-)
Pssst ... Hans... I see a major assumption about the shape of the satisfaction function S(x) for $x.
ReplyDeleteTerra Frank Then what's it good for?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch oooh.....ok, I see that to, I think. I am assuming the upper bound on satisfaction is a finite boundary. But given the wording of the question, satisfaction could tend towards infinity as you approach $100.
ReplyDeleteIs that what you mean? No need to whisper. I'll take my lumps if I am being dense. :-)
Hans: It is explicitly described as curving in the other direction.
ReplyDeleteAn extra dollar doesn't buy a certain amount of extra satisfaction... it buys less the more someone has.
That's not a zero-sum game. I'd love if you could unpack the thinking by which you came to assume that the game was zero-sum.
I wonder why the belief in zero-sum games is so strong?
ReplyDeleteI blame Nash.
Terra Frank It sure can buy food, housing, safe vehicles, clothing, medical care, education, access to information, legal counsel, cultural connections, diverse experiences, etc, etc, etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteActually, never mind. I'm getting lost in the weeds of the math of all this because elements of the question led me to believe this was somehow a math question. I accept that I know just enough math along these lines to be dangerously wrong on so many levels, and I'm not sure that was the right take on the question in the first place because clearly it is NOT a math question. So I withdraw from the mathematics side of it.
ReplyDeleteMy real answer is what I said above. I vote for spreading out evenly because equality is pleasing to me, and because I think the question is sufficiently divorced from reality to answer in any other meaningful way.
Point taken Tony Lower-Basch, I concede I am being troublesome and will stop.
ReplyDeleteMath geek-out: there is a single optimal outcome. The proof is analogous to the question of finding the figure of maximal volume/surface-area ratio in Euclidean space of dimension d>1.
ReplyDeleteEveryone be nice. No one is troublesome.
ReplyDeleteI think Hans took one of my comments amiss, because it was directed at a comment he thereafter rewrote (and once I spotted his edit I removed my then-differently-contextualized text). One of those "edits that pass in the night" things.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I was being troublesome, Tony was being gentle and wise. :-)
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, the best research I've seen into money shows it works something like this.
ReplyDeleteThat is, below a certain thresh hold, money buys off suffering. Above that, to a certain secondary thresh hold, it buys contentment. After that point, the returned satisfaction is essentially nil.
Granted, that's a yearly based, as many of you wanted it to be.
We don't need money to minimize suffering. In fact, if we remove money from the system entirely, we can directly work to end suffering rather than having to prioritize our own money collection vs. the needs of others. Yes, I believe that if money doesn't exist people will help one another just because they suddenly have the time and resources to do so. I think that pre-agrarian societies, or non-agrarian societies that don't have heavy contact with intensive farmers are a great example of this.
ReplyDeleteIn short - money creates more problems than it solves. It's easier to build a safety net rather than trying to figure out how to buy one.
Derrick Sanders ... Can you show me a single society with, say, vaccines and a low infant mortality rate that doesn't have something like a currency?
ReplyDelete1) Pre/Non Agrarian societies don't really need vaccines, but I know that's not your point. So let's not quibble about that!
ReplyDelete2) Something like a currency in terms of what, exactly? I mean, either one of us could come up with a fairly mutable/arbitrary definition of currency, and then argue it until we're blue, but I think you know that's not my point. So let's not quibble about that, either!
Most of human existence has occurred without currency. Ditto for medical science. However, I don't believe you would try to argue that the one directly correlates to the other, or that we somehow couldn't have medical science without currency.
Derrick Sanders: Uh ... "pre/non-agrarian societies don't really need vaccines"?
ReplyDeleteJust a forinstance: I expect the Lakota in 1616 would have been glad to have vaccinated against smallpox.
... I very well might, Derrick Sanders.
ReplyDeleteEither way, you're not doing any of the work here and I don't want to dance one-sided. You seem to have merely said "not the point" to my question without actually addressing it. Please either do so, or say why it is a dumb question, or stop saying that a store of debt is unnecessary.
Terra Frank What difference do you think there is between the two?
ReplyDeleteThat is, can you unpack that a bit so I know what you mean?
Tony Lower-Basch Per my earlier post, please read that as "pre/non agrarian societies who don't have heavy contact with agrarian societies".
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I don't think it's a dumb question! I answered it, didn't I? If I didn't, or if you think I deliberately misinterpreted your question, then I'm happy to clarify.
ReplyDeleteTerra Frank You're right, of course, that transfolk have a harder time acquiring safety, etc than do cisgender folk. And that application of (moderate) amounts of_ money doesn't do it. I would suggest that staggeringly large amounts of money might due it.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course you're general point is right, and in line with my point above: money buys off a lot of misery, and above a certain level doesn't really affect satisfaction.
Either way, we see to be agreeing that those first dollar bills are really important, right?
Derrick Sanders I think avoided it, yes.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols
ReplyDeleteIf you say so...
I'll ask again, Derrick Sanders Can you show me a single society with, say, vaccines and a low infant mortality rate that doesn't have something like a currency?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols No, but the problem with that question is multi fold, as I said, the first of which is that 'something like currency' is semantic debauchery. Cha cha cha.
ReplyDeleteThe second problem I answered way up high in the thread - the despotism of colonial capitalism is designed to keep, for example, medical technology out of the hands of people with no currency. Get rid of all the money.
Derrick Sanders: Oh my goodness, what a load of rubbish.
ReplyDeleteY'know who else probably wishes they'd innoculated against whatever wiped them out? The Anasazi. But we can't really know because there was nobody with written language to document their downfall. That's a bit of a common thread on the whole issue of pre-agrarian societies that get wiped clean by plague before contact with literate outsiders ... they don't report back to notify a historian that it's happened.
We can, however, know about the repeated near-extinctions that the Fore in Papua New Guinea experienced due to kuru, both because the disease leaves markers in human remains, and because they've been wiped out frequently enough (before outside contact) that they have actually been naturally selected to have by far the highest incidence in the world of the M129V and E129V heterozygous proteins, which provide limited protection against the disease.
Thinkin' your theory that pre-agrarian lifestyle somehow grants immunity to disease is a bit daft.
Yeah. Derrick Sanders, I'm not sure what it is you are trying to claim. When I try to get my head around it, I get a great big contradiction. So, go ahead and try to explain. The burden is totally on you for this one.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'd love to know how we can be free from disease, have low childhood mortality (and perhaps of the birth giver, too!), AND not have a single means of store of debt.
I've read about societies like that, for sure. But they all had one thing in common: fictitious. And, usually, significant technological advance.
You want to point to one that actually exists, go right ahead.
Tony Lower-Basch "Thinkin' your theory that pre-agrarian lifestyle somehow grants immunity to disease is a bit daft."
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of debauchery... (where's that eyeroll .gif?). I do like your attempt at ventriloquism though...
You don't inoculate against kuru.
I didn't start an argument here. I'm out. Peace.
Derrick Sanders: On a side-note, I also seriously question whether you know what the word "debauchery" means.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch please don't prod people who've left. They've got a right to be out. :-)
ReplyDeleteFair enough. My apologies.
ReplyDeleteEvenly like in Alaska is the only fair way to distribute the monies
ReplyDeleteCan you unpack why, Aaron Linder?
ReplyDelete