It’s so intuitive to me that it’s hard to explain why economic diversity is a sign of a healthy economic system.
The best I can do is give examples. I’ve been to Disney World, and it was very fun and nice, and there were no homeless people asking me for money, and it was clean, and the windows weren’t broken… but it was also obvious that it wasn’t a healthy economy. I was paying an unsustainable price for that, those who couldn’t afford it were excluded, etc.
I’ve also been to somewhere in south america and (where I was) it was largely the opposite. There were people aggressively selling / begging, everything was dirty, buildings were in disrepair. This also wasn’t healthy. Everyone I saw was poor. That wasn’t diverse either.
Parts of Europe were largely a toned-down Disney World. There were nice areas with a fair degree of economic diversity and an absence of the very worst poverty… but then there were places I was cautioned to not go, places were the symptoms of an unhealthy economy existed and were hidden from public view. It was still fairly healthy. There was a lot of diversity. I saw a couple supercars, a bunch of neat European beaters, and a fair number of cars that I’d say were fairly average in the US but were clearly fairly to do.
Meanwhile theres virtually nowhere in the US that I cannot freely go in relative safety. I routinely see people from every walk of life… and the US is the strongest economy in the world.
Eliminating the diversity may be good for some people individually, but it’d hurt the whole. Of course I’m not saying that it can’t be too extreme, but people pursing an utter absence of poverty or utter absence of extreme wealth don’t know what they’re talking about.
Economic diversity helps. It means there are people with means, others with motivation, others with a mixture, etc. It creates a economic system where systemic needs are most likely to meet a person who can recognize and fulfill the role.
> The best I can do is give examples. I’ve been to Disney World, and it was very fun and nice, and there were no homeless people asking me for money, and it was clean, and the windows weren’t broken… but it was also obvious that it wasn’t a healthy economy. I was paying an unsustainable price for that, those who couldn’t afford it were excluded, etc.
I'm sorry, but in what way is Disney World an economy? You know that it's a fake place run by a single corporate entity, right?
> I’ve also been to somewhere in south america and (where I was) it was largely the opposite. There were people aggressively selling / begging, everything was dirty, buildings were in disrepair. This also wasn’t healthy. Everyone I saw was poor. That wasn’t diverse either.
Why do you think any of this is due to missing "economic diversity" instead of simply missing money due to geopolitical and historical reasons?
> Parts of Europe were largely a toned-down Disney World. There were nice areas with a fair degree of economic diversity and an absence of the very worst poverty… but then there were places I was cautioned to not go, places were the symptoms of an unhealthy economy existed and were hidden from public view. It was still fairly healthy. There was a lot of diversity. I saw a couple supercars, a bunch of neat European beaters, and a fair number of cars that I’d say were fairly average in the US but were clearly fairly to do.
And Europe is on average much safer than the US is, people are happier, fewer people die of preventable reasons. Seems like they are doing something right?
> Meanwhile theres virtually nowhere in the US that I cannot freely go in relative safety. I routinely see people from every walk of life… and the US is the strongest economy in the world.
Well, except literally all of the US.
> Eliminating the diversity may be good for some people individually, but it’d hurt the whole. Of course I’m not saying that it can’t be too extreme, but people pursing an utter absence of poverty or utter absence of extreme wealth don’t know what they’re talking about.
You haven't shown that ANY of what you wrote is due to missing "economic diversity". You've compared a bunch of places that have very different economic histories, and you just decide that all the differences are due to "economic diversity".
> Economic diversity helps. It means there are people with means, others with motivation, others with a mixture, etc. It creates a economic system where systemic needs are most likely to meet a person who can recognize and fulfill the role.
And now please explain how and why economic diversity helps. Why is it good if there are poor people? Why do you like it better when there are people dying of preventable reasons due to their economic status (US) compared to places where this doesn't happen (EU)?
> I'm sorry, but in what way is Disney World an economy? You know that it's a fake place run by a single corporate entity, right?
People buy and sell stuff. Disney is paying workers. I’m paying Disney. It’s all orchestrated by one controlling entity, but that also describes communism which I’d argue has operated a number of equally fake (albeit less successful) economies.
> Why do you think any of this is due to missing "economic diversity" instead of simply missing money due to geopolitical and historical reasons?
Yeah, their problem appeared to be a lack of wealth, and a lack of a middle class. There was plenty of poverty, but diversity isn’t code for poor. Diversity means some poor, some middle, some wealthy and they didn’t have much of the latter.
> And Europe is on average much safer than the US is, people are happier, fewer people die of preventable reasons. Seems like they are doing something right?
Hey, sometimes you don’t want to have the strongest economy. To use an analogy a race car is very high performance, fast, can turn quickly, etc. However a luxury car is more comfortable. Europe seems to prefer a nice balance where their economic system isn’t as resilient or productive, but it’s more pleasant for more people (while things are good). My concern is Europe’s ability to make it through severe economic / military hardships. Frankly they’ve enjoyed this comfort for the past 100 years because the US is doing the hard work of being the economic backstop of the world.
> You haven't shown that ANY of what you wrote is due to missing "economic diversity". You've compared a bunch of places that have very different economic histories, and you just decide that all the differences are due to "economic diversity".
Again I’m just making observations. I’m not saying that making people poor would improve the economy any more than hurting someone will make them strong… but exercising does cause discomfort, sore muscles, and the occasional injury. I’m saying if you don’t have any discomfort, soreness, etc. then you’re likely not as healthy / resilient as someone who’s exercising to that level.
> People buy and sell stuff. Disney is paying workers. I’m paying Disney. It’s all orchestrated by one controlling entity, but that also describes communism which I’d argue has operated a number of equally fake (albeit less successful) economies.
I'm not going to comment further on this line of thought because it's too ridiculous.
> Yeah, their problem appeared to be a lack of wealth, and a lack of a middle class. There was plenty of poverty, but diversity isn’t code for poor. Diversity means some poor, some middle, some wealthy and they didn’t have much of the latter.
And now please explain: why is it better for those places if some people stay poor?
> Hey, sometimes you don’t want to have the strongest economy. To use an analogy a race car is very high performance, fast, can turn quickly, etc. However a luxury car is more comfortable. Europe seems to prefer a nice balance where their economic system isn’t as resilient or productive, but it’s more pleasant for more people (while things are good). My concern is Europe’s ability to make it through severe economic / military hardships. Frankly they’ve enjoyed this comfort for the past 100 years because the US is doing the hard work of being the economic backstop of the world.
Ah, yes. They only fare better on the metrics I described because the incredible hard work of Americans allows them to. How thankful we should all be. It can't be that the US system simply performs worse on those metrics.
> Again I’m just making observations. I’m not saying that making people poor would improve the economy any more than hurting someone will make them strong… but exercising does cause discomfort, sore muscles, and the occasional injury. I’m saying if you don’t have any discomfort, soreness, etc. then you’re likely not as healthy / resilient as someone who’s exercising to that level.
But the observations aren't grounded in data. You haven't even tried to observe what might be wrong with what you wrote. What if it's not that "economic diversity" is good for a country (as again, you haven't shown that in any way), but it's the distance to the nearest country that plants coffee beans? I'm observing that is roughly true. Does that make it true, or even useful?
> And now please explain: why is it better for those places if some people stay poor?
I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor.
If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have less opportunity to succeed.
For example, a government retirement program keeps the elderly off the street… but it also takes a percentage of their earnings while working. For many that might be the difference between being able to buy a house this year vs. waiting a couple more, or between starting a business and working for their current employer, between jumping on a good financial opportunity and missing it.
It also forces people to choose retirement over investing 100% into their children. This isn’t an argument to abolish social security, but an example of how eliminating the possibility of failure limits opportunities for success.
The key here is I think people are better judges of their financial situation than the government. If we had to solve economics problems with a computer I wouldn’t choose a mainframe with one set of rules for everything. I’d choose millions of distributed processors that were each able to evaluate their own situation and that could fail without taking down the whole system.
So, what happens when social security fails and nobody had retirement income? That’s the kind of problem that small scale poverty helps avoid. Otherwise we have a communal tendency to kick the can down the road until the problem becomes insurmountable.
> I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor.
> If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have less opportunity to succeed.
Interesting hypothesis. I have a counter-hypothesis: it is not good if people can die due to poor choices. It's not good if they can get so poor they can't escape and improve their lives. It's not good if wealth is concentrated, because this leads to worse quality of life for most people. On the contrary: you have to give people an opportunity to improve if you want them to improve, and the only way to do this is to support them so they aren't destined to stay poor.
All of these observations seem to be both obvious and historically grounded. Do you have any counter-arguments beyond your initial hypothesis?
> So, what happens when social security fails and nobody had retirement income? That’s the kind of problem that small scale poverty helps avoid. Otherwise we have a communal tendency to kick the can down the road until the problem becomes insurmountable.
Then why are there so many more poor people in the US compared to the EU? Shouldn't the US need a smaller amount of poverty for their system to function well? Why does reality not seem to line up with your hypothesis?
The best I can do is give examples. I’ve been to Disney World, and it was very fun and nice, and there were no homeless people asking me for money, and it was clean, and the windows weren’t broken… but it was also obvious that it wasn’t a healthy economy. I was paying an unsustainable price for that, those who couldn’t afford it were excluded, etc.
I’ve also been to somewhere in south america and (where I was) it was largely the opposite. There were people aggressively selling / begging, everything was dirty, buildings were in disrepair. This also wasn’t healthy. Everyone I saw was poor. That wasn’t diverse either.
Parts of Europe were largely a toned-down Disney World. There were nice areas with a fair degree of economic diversity and an absence of the very worst poverty… but then there were places I was cautioned to not go, places were the symptoms of an unhealthy economy existed and were hidden from public view. It was still fairly healthy. There was a lot of diversity. I saw a couple supercars, a bunch of neat European beaters, and a fair number of cars that I’d say were fairly average in the US but were clearly fairly to do.
Meanwhile theres virtually nowhere in the US that I cannot freely go in relative safety. I routinely see people from every walk of life… and the US is the strongest economy in the world.
Eliminating the diversity may be good for some people individually, but it’d hurt the whole. Of course I’m not saying that it can’t be too extreme, but people pursing an utter absence of poverty or utter absence of extreme wealth don’t know what they’re talking about.
Economic diversity helps. It means there are people with means, others with motivation, others with a mixture, etc. It creates a economic system where systemic needs are most likely to meet a person who can recognize and fulfill the role.