Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 15 2017, @10:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the status-quo dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Human beings largely object to income inequality and are willing to correct injustice—unless, of course, it rattles their status quo.

That's the conclusion of a recent study looking at how far people would go to redistribute resources between the haves and have nots. Participants fiercely objected to "when winners become losers and losers become winners," researchers note in the paper, published in the latest issue of Nature Human Behaviour.

Researchers initially recruited Indian, American, and Chinese participants take part in an experimental game they called "the redistribution game." The gist of the game was simple: Participants were given a number of scenarios that would redistribute a fixed sum from a richer person to someone poorer. Participants were told the original standing of wealth was assigned randomly.

In the first scenario, participants had to decide if they wanted to transfer two coins from person A (who already had four coins) to person B (who had one). Researchers note the "transfer would reduce inequality," (as there's less of a gap between them), but person B would end up one coin richer than person A, reversing their status.

In the second version of game, participants were asked whether they'd transfer one coin to person B (where person A ended up with three coins and person B with two coins). Researchers ran a third and fourth scenario that allowed participants to transfer coins from person A to B, where the outcome still left person A with significantly more coins.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 16 2017, @05:04AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday July 16 2017, @05:04AM (#539800)

    You're right, about the sense of "fair," but what's wrong in this picture is when the "wealthy" haven't done anything to get that wealth - simple luck of the draw.

    If you watch how lottery payouts evolve over time, what you'll see is that the "big winner" pot gets bigger over time, at the expense of the runners up. Florida lottery payouts (last time I checked) are only 50% return to the players, the other 50% goes to the state, so the odds really suck to start with, but then the bulk of the winnings goes to the hardest "pick six" winner, while those who match 5 or 4 or 3 numbers get a relatively tiny return compared to the odds of how hard it was to hit the match they made.

    So, if you have such a system where everybody pays in a dollar a week - do you prefer a game where everybody gets $0.50 per week back, or one where most people get nothing back, and one person a month becomes a multi-millionaire. People prefer to dream that they might be the one who wins. I actually know a coworker of my Uncle's who won $14M in a lottery, took a nice ride on his boat once... but I also know literally thousands of people like him who have played the lottery and net-lost money, never winning anything of significance.

    Personally, I think the lottery is an interesting form of entertainment, and also a potential tool for screening people for gambling addiction problems... I see no reason to abolish it, but if people are spending more than 1% of their disposable income on this form of entertainment, they should seek counselling. Similarly, I think basing the larger economy on similar schemes is lunacy, but I feel like a very significant portion of our economy is built on pointy-top pyramids that more resemble lotteries than anything resembling fairly distributed compensation for services rendered.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2