It seems like you are actually agreeing with Paul Graham. You see the concentration of political power and the resulting erosion of the middle class, and you want to fix them. Great! Those are the kind of "bad" sources of inequality the original article is talking about.
Paul doesn't want to ignore these problems, he just wants to call them what they are. The only problem I see is that we don't have a good term to cover all these related concepts. Alternatives like "creeping feudalism" don't have the same ring as "inequality", even if they may be more accurate.
I agree with some of what he says. His second (? the one before this) post was pretty decent.
I disagree with what he thinks are the causes of both poverty and extreme wealth. An apt proverb is that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
Generally speaking, people do not 'become rich' through entrepreneurship, nor do they 'become poor' because they were incarcerated. We can see through actual data, that being poor makes one more likely to commit crimes, and being rich (or at least in the top whatever % of the population) makes one more likely to become an entrepreneur.
PG's goal is desirable, but that doesn't make his analysis any more correct.
Comments
It seems like you are actually agreeing with Paul Graham. You see the concentration of political power and the resulting erosion of the middle class, and you want to fix them. Great! Those are the kind of "bad" sources of inequality the original article is talking about.
Paul doesn't want to ignore these problems, he just wants to call them what they are. The only problem I see is that we don't have a good term to cover all these related concepts. Alternatives like "creeping feudalism" don't have the same ring as "inequality", even if they may be more accurate.
I agree with some of what he says. His second (? the one before this) post was pretty decent.
I disagree with what he thinks are the causes of both poverty and extreme wealth. An apt proverb is that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
Generally speaking, people do not 'become rich' through entrepreneurship, nor do they 'become poor' because they were incarcerated. We can see through actual data, that being poor makes one more likely to commit crimes, and being rich (or at least in the top whatever % of the population) makes one more likely to become an entrepreneur.
PG's goal is desirable, but that doesn't make his analysis any more correct.