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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
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @12:33AM (4 children)
Pressure gradients drive gas flow. Thermal gradients cause heat flow. Concentration gradients lead to ion motion. Income gradients induce human activity. Without income inequality, humanity would be even less productive by many measures than it is now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @02:18AM (1 child)
Enough of a current through a potential gradient will kill you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mth on Sunday July 16 2017, @02:29AM
Yep. I think the discussion shouldn't be about whether inequality should exist, but what levels of inequality are acceptable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @06:20AM
(Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Sunday July 16 2017, @12:55PM
I like your thinking. Keep in mind though, equally distributed capital tends to become concentrated, not the other way around. This means trying to make a buck is doing work on the system. If you want to see a real explosion of productivity, reset all debts to 0 and distribute capital equally. Then watch the system move towards its equilibrium distribution.