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Science versus the 'Horatio Alger myth'

#1
C C Offline
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/...022217.php

EXCERPT: [...] Said [Cristiano] Nisoli, "If driven by power alone, the market evolution reaches a static equilibrium characterized by the most savage inequality. Power not only concentrates wealth, but reshapes the market topology to concentrate the very opportunities to acquire wealth on only a few agents, who now amass all the wealth of the society."

This equilibrium scenario however, does not take into account personal frustration and initiative to act. If those elements are introduced, at sufficient initiative, a cyclical dynamic of three social classes emerges. "Periodically, a long 'time of inequality' is contrasted by the patient effort of the middle class to rise up, to bring down the upper class and to merge with it. When that finally happens, however, the situation proves unstable: a single egalitarian class forms for a brief time, only to be soon disrupted by the appearance of difficult-to-predict 'black swan' economic events. The power of the latter, now competing against unfrustrated and thus demotivated agents of an egalitarian class, wins easily and a new time of inequality is brought in as a new middle class emerges while the upper-class rises," Nisoli explained.

To encapsulate the concept, he said, "We learn from this analysis that in our admittedly simplified model, equality can be improved either by proper engineering of a static market topology, which seems impracticable, or by dynamic emergent reshaping of the market via sufficient individual initiative to act upon frustration."

But a successful society, with reduced frustration and improved equality, does not continue for long. "Equality is short lived, we find, as the disappearance of frustration that follows equality removes the fundamental drive toward equality. Perhaps a key element in preventing the cyclical return of inequality would be memory, which is absent from our framework. But then, is it present in a real society?"...
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#2
Syne Offline
There is no maintainable equilibrium in economics. Trends that are static will inevitably fall to entropy, and only the rising trends can hope to continue to do so or slowly become static.
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#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
Analyze it all you want. It comes down to risk and luck. In 1980 I inherited $3000 from an aunt. Being young and stupid I wasted it on booze, babes and cars. I could have bought 10 shares of Berkshire Hathaway for $290 apiece. Today those shares are worth $254,900 each. I could have had a lot more fun than I ever would have imagined and not give two shits about equality or social class..
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