Social Mobility: Things Better but Feel Worse

Created: 2020-08-25T00:19:06.402716

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• Society can be fit in to 3 buckets.
• The quality within a bucket trends upwards with peace and commerce.
• The contrast between the buckets rises sharply.

Why people say the market distribution is rigged

• Because of Pareto economics: 80% of the pea pods come from 20% of the peas.
• Taleb's Extremistan: nature distributes on a bell curve (mediocristan) which humans distribute on exponential curves; they centralize around "the best" (extremistan.)
• Octalysis Framework: 1% pay often, 20% pay once, 80% pay never.

1:20:80 brackets

Why people say quality life of the poor gets better

• Within each bracket, the quality of life of the bracket's members increases steadily.
• Therefore the poorest castes eventually trend towards ex. in-home plumbing.

Why people say income inequality gets worse

• The spread of ownership between each bucket changes.
• In some proto-tribe the highest caste (the 1 in 1:20:80) may simply have a slightly larger tent.
• Eventually the 80% owns a nicer house than the 80% in the past, but the 1% went from owning a slightly larger tent to owning multiple mansions.