Is Inequality a Bad Thing? I don't think it is.

It seems on reading the well thought of press in this country or watching and listening to the media, that our society is ruined by the terrible curse of inequality.

I'm not so sure about what the problem is.

Inequality is a natural result of freedom because free societies try not to interfere with people and allow them to make money by legitimate means. Think back to the world of China that people of my age remember.

No one could make any money. Everything was owned and controlled by the state. People were directed to work in certain industries by state employees.

The Soviet system was pretty much the same. No one owned anything of value, unless granted special permission by the state. No one could publish or say anything, unless state sanctioned officials passed it as in the interests of the state.

This is the world of North Korea right now. Everyone is equal - all equally impoverished. There were times when Soviet State Control and Chinese State Control brought about famine and mass starvation. Millions died in pursuit of 'equality of outcome. Of course, just as in Orwell's Animal Farm, some were exempted - the Party Hierarchy. They lived much better than the rest.

In a free world - in the USA for example, people make their own living and they create enterprises.

No once stops them, unless the enterprise is clearly illegal. Making Meth for example or distributing cocaine, of defrauding people in a Ponzi Scheme. If you want to set up a business, such as building and selling electric bicycles, as long as you act within the laws regulating such products, no one will stop you and you can enjoy the profits which result. You will be taxed, but in the USA, you will be taxed lightly, by comparison to some other jurisdictions, such as the one we live in.

The fact that some people may come up with fantastic inventions and ideas, and may seek out investment to develop them, can bring vast rewards when they are successful.

In some cases, freedom allows a brilliant idea to take the market by storm. Sam Altman came up with a ground breaking business idea. He is a vast billionaire. Elon Musk too has become a massively wealth individual. Nobody stepped in and prevented them from doing what they dreamed up. They employ many people, and they pay whatever taxes the jurisdictions they operate in require.

Who uses Amazon to buy things? I had two deliveries today. Why didn't I think of starting Amazon. What was I doing when Jeff Bezos invented Amazon in 1994? What were you doing then?

So Bezos is now vastly rich because he thought of a business which allows you mostly to order goods today that will be delivered to you tomorrow. What is wrong with that? How has he harmed us?

'Ah - but they are obscenely wealthy,' cry some with nothing to offer the world but their demands for welfare spending and free money to be paid to people who don't work and never had an idea in their lives other than 'Gimmie money for nothing!!'

Why should we listen to them? What have they invented? What business did they create? What special and remarkable craft have they learned that people will pay for?

Inequality is the natural result of people being free to run their own lives and create businesses. We are FAR better off where this can happen.

What we should be far more concerned about than equality of outcome is something else - equality of opportunity. People need a fair chance to be educated and no barriers should be put in their way. Whether they waste that chance is up to them. Whether they end up poor or rich is not the issue and we certainly should not be seeking to drag down those who work hard, have ideas and make businesses work.

On the huge con of the Relative Poverty measure used by left wing think tanks, disgusting communist rags like the Guardian, and the government.

The claim that millions of children are living in poverty in the UK is a complete con.

It was used to justify increasing social security spending last week when the Chancellor Rachel Reeves removed the two child limit for sending additional money to people with large families who are on income support. This will hit the budget with an additional bill of £3Bn a year at a time when government debt is ballooning and taxes have never been higher at any time when we were not at war.

The bill will be three billion of your money sent to people who have the largest families when they can't afford to keep them. I don't suppose that many of us had children we could not afford to pay for, but 4% of the 560,000 families who will benefit have six or more children. That means that 22,000 of the families benefiting have six or more children!!!

So why do I claim the child poverty figures are a con. Simple. The figures are based on a measure that defines anyone or any family which has less than 60% of the national median income as being in relative poverty. It means that no matter how well the economy is doing, no matter how much wages rise, by definition, we will always have people defined as living in poverty, unless all wage differences are eliminated, or unless everyone else is made poorer.

The excellent economist, Evan Davies from the BBC discusses the measure here on Youtube with Sarah Montague. Well worth a watch.

If we lived in a very wealthy society in which the median income was £100,000 a year, any person who had an income of £59,999 would be defined as living in poverty, using the current relative measure. By definition, the measure always fakes poverty numbers just so left wing idiots can whinge on about poverty and inequality.

Are there poor people? Yes. We should define a basic income level at which we think the line exists between the poor and the rest of us. It should be a measure of 'absolute poverty', a defined level - not a relative measure, and we should assist people who are genuinely poor. People with mobile phones and the stuff of modern life are not poor, even though they may have less than the rest of us who go out to work and save for our old age.

Forum Discussion on Natural Selection

Jonathan Agnew said:

I think you're assuming that evolution constitutes progress. It does not. Evolution is descriptive. It describes the changes in the heritable traits of populations of living things and viruses over time. 

I think evolution does generate progress in species.

About 3.5 Bn years ago, life began as simple cells that consumed energy, and  divided. At some time about 1.7 Bn years ago, some archaic cell joined with another cell and became the first multi cellular life. It prospered. About 430 million years ago, the first creatures crawled out of the oceans and dragged themselves onto the land. About 150,000 years ago the first modern humans emerged from the previous hominid species as a distinct and new animal. I think this shows progression. It is progress.

Is progression morally superior?

Certainly not 'moral', and only superior in that species are re-shaped by random mutation and better tuned to survival - more fit for where they live. The mutations which do not increase fitness, die out.

In talking about fitness, one is talking about the survival and reproductive output of an individual, or a population in a given environment. That is all. It is not a value judgement, just a statement of fact. It works or it doesn't. The species lives and thrives, or it dies.

Jonathan Agnew said:

Given the environment in which a population finds itself constantly and abruptly change over geological time, there is no way for evolution - which lacks a mind, foresight or prophetic ability - to “plan ahead”. In what sense then can evolution be said to lead to “progress” if it has no way of “knowing” future conditions, let alone planning for them?

The history of the physical conditions and of life itself shows exactly this.

There is no disembodied mind planning changes and development. The planet changes because of physics and chemistry. There are individual species extinctions, and mass extinctions. Some forms die out, others continue, and change to suit the new conditions.

One of the earliest examples may be the extinctions of some classes of microbial life brought about by the atmospheric oxygenation about 2.4 Bn years ago. The oceans were full of menthanogens - anaerobic bacteria consuming hydrogen and co2 and producing methane like we produce co2. These were the first life forms. For them, free oxygen was deadly. It was given off by newly evolved cyanobacteria. Methanogens went from what was all of life to mostly dying out and the new aerobic strains predominated. The period is sometimes called 'The Great Oxygenation Event'. It was the first mass extinction. It was one of many.

Much nearer our own time, the woolly mammoth that had weathered ice ages in Europe and Asia, vanished as the Earth warmed into our own era. Why did this happen? Gravitational resonances caused by Jupiter and Saturn altered Earth's tilt and the plane of the planet's orbit. No plan. Just physics.

Evolution is mindless. Species suit their environment and adapt by random mutation, or they die out.

Sh|t happens. Species become tougher. They reproduce and survive, or they don't.

Coming back to my original point in this theme. Does medical intervention strengthen the species? Yes and no. On an individual basis, yes - individuals survive who would not have done. They reproduce and pass on their traits. This for the individual is a bonus.

Does it strengthen the species ability to survive in primeval circumstances? No. while we have medicine and the infrastructure to provide it, all is good. We live better healthier lives, but should the conditions of civilisation end, and they will do one day, the species will be weaker than it was before the medical revolution, because genetic traits will exist among the population that nature, red in tooth and claw, would have eliminated had it been left to do so.