12/18/2023 0 Comments Diogenes allen sin![]() ![]() Scheidel is very careful to state the precision he thinks assignable in each of the scores of cases he examines, which varies widely (although he ignores the problem with Gini measures of income, that people move rapidly in and out of income brackets). A lot of this is eye-glazing Scheidel even includes a lengthy appendix on relevant measuring concepts, including theoretical maximum extraction rates and other interesting ways of looking at income and wealth distribution. In some instances, though, rough percentages of wealth held by defined segments of society can be estimated. Much less emphasis is placed on the Gini coefficient for wealth, since data on wealth is harder to obtain, both historically and still in modern times. The bulk of the technical detail revolves around the Gini coefficient for income, for which, to a greater or lesser degree in many eras of history, values can be assigned. Most of the book is endless, highly convincing, technical details about the Four Horsemen and their impact at various times in history. ![]() And even then, empirically, inequality will, soon enough, creep back into any society, vitiating the “benefit” achieved earlier. In other words-if you want to reduce inequality by any significant amount, a lot of people have to die. Changes short of these, including democracy, education, technology, and broad economic growth, have no lasting effect, and often no effect at all, on inequality. Probably not to his surprise, he discovered that the only effective mechanisms of equalization have ever been his Four Horsemen, cousins to those of Saint John: mass mobilization war Communist revolution total system collapse and pandemic disease. Scheidel took it upon himself to investigate the ebb and flow of past inequality, with an eye to how it had been ameliorated in the past. Piketty’s core point, as I understand it (like most people, I own a copy and have not read it), is that under modern capitalism rates of return to capital exceed rates of return to labor, and therefore, absent state intervention, inequality will, on average, inevitably increase. Scheidel says he was inspired to write this book by the 2013 release of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, a very lengthy attack on modern Western distributions of income and wealth. That’s probably true, but it does not tell us whether, focusing more narrowly, we can reject bad inequalities while keeping good inequalities. He merely concludes that society-wide inequality can only be reduced, and that just temporarily, by death on a massive scale. The Great Leveler is a good book, if pretty dry, but the author only offers statistics and graphs, and does not consider inequality philosophically. Little mainstream attention has been paid to the history of inequality, and here Walter Scheidel offers an exhaustive look into the past. But most of this talk is political-of economic goods today, and whether and how our society should change who owns them. Economic inequality is, and has been for several years now, the talk of the town. ![]()
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