Monday, August 8, 2011

Evolution and egalitarianism — return on cooperation and coordination

Good summary of evolution and egalitarianism. The ability to cooperate and coordinate vastly increase the adaptive rate of humans in the evolutionary chain. Civilizations are the record of return on coordination.
Low hierarchy does not mean no hierarchy. Through ethnographic and cross-cultural studies, researchers have concluded that the basic template for human social groups is moderately but not unerringly egalitarian. They have found gradients of wealth and power among even the most nomadic groups, but such gradients tend to be mild. Ina recent analysis of five hunter-gatherer populations, Eric Aiden Smith of the University of Washington and his colleagues found the average degree of income inequality to be roughly half that seen in the United States, and close to the wealth distribution of Denmark.

Interestingly, another recent study found that when Americans were given the chance to construct their version of the optimal wealth gradient for America, both Republicans and Democrats came up with a chart that looked like Sweden’s.
Read it all at The New York Times: Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive

15 comments:

Shaun Hingston said...

I think there is an economic reason for equality. Allocative efficiency.

As the amount of resources an individual has so does the amount of allocative errors. Let each person on average have the same allocative capacity. Then to minimize the allocative errors each individual must have an equal amount of resources.

Bamm!

Elements left out(by may write about later) include specialization, environmental threats that justify disproportional allocation of resources towards specialists, and training.

shaun.hingston@hushmail.com

googleheim said...

Tonight on PBS we had Charlie Rose with :

Steve Rattner - "expert on car mfg"

Bill Sahlman - of Harvard Uni.

Nouriel Roubini - Mr. Infrastructure

Bill Gross : PIMPco

Steve Rattner rattled that the "USA owes China $2 Trillion"

It just strikes me again how stupid and out of paradigm these egg heads are.

Does the USA still owe Warren Mosler his money via some bank that it is credited in ?

Does the USA still owe Buffett his piggy bank(s)?

Does the USA still owe all American's their savings ?

NO NO NO NO and NO

They already EARNED the monies and deposited them into accounts, and for China that means a treasury bank account - it's just a special bank account.

THE FACT IS THAT THEY ARE NOT SPENDING IT AND CREATING HEAT IN THE ECONOMY.

DITTO FOR OPEC
FOR UK
FOR JAPANESE
FOR ALL THE REST OF THE HOARDERS WHO ARE SAVING AND NOT SPENDING.

WHEN WILL THIS LUNACY STOP ?

FAR*#$*&#*$&*#$ !!!!

WE DON'T OWE THEM TWICE ...

THEY DID NOT GIVE US ANYTHING ...

PRINTING MONEY ? NO ! NOT PRINTED ENOUGH TO BEGIN WITH IN ANTICIPATION OF THE GOODS ( TOXIC AND WITH LEAD ) COMING IN THE DOOR.

FOR EVERY DOLLAR WE SPEND ON THEIR CRAP, IT IS A DOLLAR INTO THEIR PIGGY BANK - THEIR TREASURY ACCOUNT.

Shaun Hingston said...

As the amount of resources an individual has so does the amount of allocative errors

*As the amount of resources an individual has increases, so does the amount of allocative errors.

Sorry

Райчо Марков said...

@Tom Hickey

Tom, something unrelated to the blog.

This morning I was thinking if all of the MMT-people around the world invest in a newly created hedge fund or whatever money management entity, which will be operated by some of the MMT stars.

I don't know how many of us are there today around the world, but I am pretty sure everybody with some money will be trilled to invest and be part of such project.

And maybe something like 50% of the returns on investments will be going directly for MMT purposes, like commercials, TV time, why not political elections. Kind of let's make MMT work for itself.

What do you think?

Tom Hickey said...

rvm: "This morning I was thinking if all of the MMT-people around the world invest in a newly created hedge fund or whatever money management entity, which will be operated by some of the MMT stars."

Sounds good to me. Any MMT hedge fund mgrs out there that are interested?

Matt Franko said...

RVM,

Or perhaps open the only "in paradigm" Primary Dealer for USTs.

Ive looked into this and Treasury requires $200M capital, (so of course I'm coming up about 199.9 short ;)

But if there is money to be made as a PD, I would think if you were the only PD in paradigm, it would have to be some sort of advantage within that segment of the industry...

Resp,

Райчо Марков said...

So hedge fund is out of question for prospective MMT investors – we aren't rich enough. :-(

http://richard-wilson.blogspot.com/2008/03/who-can-invest-in-hedge-funds.html

Any other options besides Matt's?

Matt, $200M = 40k people x $5k on average or whatever other suitable variation.

Tom Hickey said...

I have been involved in nonprofits and have seen hedge fund managers that want to support a cause, its work and its people not only donate but also run a dedicated low entry fund open only to members.

Adam2 said...

Tom or others make a post about rvm's idea. I am willing to put in money. I have been having similar thoughts. An in paradigm investment fund for the followers of MMT.

Райчо Марков said...

Tom, if you are saying it still could be done in such ways we should do it,
or at least try. I am ready to put all my energy and free time.
Maybe we have to contact Joe Firestone and let's get it done :-)

Funding is very important - we are not the federal government.

Tom Hickey said...

Some MMT'ers are hedge fund managers. I would recommend asking them what they think about the idea.

Letsgetitdone said...

rvm, Thanks for the great idea and for the hat tip. However, I'm no hedge fund manager; so I'm not sure I can get this done.

I guess the Obvious candidates are Warren and Marshall.

Райчо Марков said...

Yes, Warren, Marshall and also Cullen Roche I think. Well we should contact them.

The eventual MMT fund managers are definitely of most importance for such an endeavor, however we can't ask from them to find and organize the MMT investors-donors and here would be our role.

Райчо Марков said...

Also Mike Norman - our host.

Райчо Марков said...

I contacted Warren on his site and Cullen via email linking them here. I don't know how to reach Marshall.