The simple math of the Yard-Sale Model shows that if everybody started out with equal money in a fair economy, the outcome tends toward one person holding all of the money. The cool graphical simulations on this page demonstrate why.
Super slick web experience on mobile. One of the best I’ve seen in a while.
In light of the pedofile parasite class raping and killing children and funneling all of our money to Israel I think it’s pretty obvious that the system needs to come down
Capitalism is working exactly as intended, which is the reason why it needs to be totally dismantled.
Note: I said capitalism, and not the free market. The two are not the same thing. You could have a completely free market under socialism and even communism, as those are economic systems that ensure workers actually earn the value they produce. Neither system says anything about command economies - that’s an Authoritarian shtick.
The title of the post is a little misleading. The model presented here does not require many parts of a capitalist system. If you can own stuff and have a free market this model predicts extreme wealth inequality. This happens by pure chance.
The model is not a good argument against capitalism. It can be used as an argument for taxing rich folks and against the “trickle down” idea.
Cool website :3
Winning 60% of the rounds, and you still haven’t more money than the player who started with more. Is that not proof of the concept?
Also, yes, this game tickles in a good way.
That people in the middle and bottom support it and consider it normal is the problem.
In this thread: I don’t like this article and it’s stupid. I can’t tell you why, but it is, and anyone that disagrees with me is stupid too.
QED
Hard work does not create wealth. The only thing that creates wealth is wealth, and we have it, and you don’t.
This quote from Horrible Bosses 2 always stood out to me.
Wealth is not the same as power. Wealth is owning money. Power is owning souls.
House of Cards… Paraphrasing Frank.
But one seems to always grant the other. You don’t get just the power, or just the money.
Yup! That is why salary increase always is in percentage; the more you have, the more you get! 😡
This is why you want fewer ultra rich people in your country.
Yard-Sale model also explains the Network Effect: People will flock to where the masses are because they will have a higher access to interact with folks than in isolated networks. Thus silos will eventually emerge: See Meta+Discord, etc…
Another simulation… that’s mainstream in american society… Landlords Game – IE what’s now Monopoly. By definition everyone starts with the same amount of money, and it ends with one person massively ahead and everyone else going bankrupt.
It’s even more realistic when the banker is stealing money!
True, but the point of the simulations is basically debunking the idea that even when capitalism “works”. IE the hypothetical perfect scenereo where everyone starts off with the same, has the same chances of getting good and bad opprotunities, that the the fairness systematically fades out of the system the longer the game runs.
I recall an economics class once where they started out playing monopoly, but giving everyone different starting amounts of money… and basically demonstrating that well over 90% of the time… the advantages basically determined the game.
Realistically the everyone starts at a different value, is far more realistic to life… but even when you remove that realism, it still ends the same way, one person starts taking a lead… and that that inequality only grows the longer the game continues.
Well yes, but have you tried just throwing the board across the room when that one person gets massively ahead and you land on Pacific avenue with a hotel on it?
I know. Now what?
Make choices that support the alternative economy. Find a CSA, use a credit union, use the library, support local businesses. Better yet, put money into things like the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast https://cooperativefund.org/
There are a lot of people out there who still believe in trickle-down, Galtism, or the primacy of hard work. Idiots, dupes, or both, we still need to recruit them, or at least stop blocking change. Easily-digestible information like this needs to become widespread.
Yes, if you make your economy “people with money gain more money” then this is the endgame
I think the fact is most people wouldn’t do certain work if they were wealthy enough to have a choice in the matter. The system relies on extreme poverty in order to coerce people into taking jobs they otherwise wouldn’t.
Any work that wouldn’t be done if we had a UBI should either be automated away or sufficiently well-paid that it would find workers even without the threat of poverty.
We don’t need to ritually kill a homeless person just so someone will pick up our trash any more than we need to do so for someone to tended to our elders dying of cancer.
Not a fact, an assumption based on an assumption baked into this economic system.
If I could live on the salary, I would prefer a manual labor job.
If I could live on the salary, I would prefer a manual labor job.
Wouldn’t your anecdote then be supporting the premise?
That means you’re doing your current job out of economic necessity. The fact you make more with your current role means free market proponents have deemed it more necessary, so have you not been economically coerced into taking a job you otherwise wouldn’t?
I don’t think people should be coerced into work they otherwise wouldn’t do, but there is some level of truth to it. If nothing else the wealthy and powerful want us to be mostly effective workers, so they can have more wealth to siphon off
No, what?
The premise is “people wouldn’t choose to do certain work unless they were coerced into”. I retorted “I want that work you think I’d have to be coerced into doing”
Manual labor is undervalued, making it “one of the jobs that people have to be coerced into doing”. By stating my desire to do it above “high value, mental labor”, I undercut their assertion that there are jobs that require coercion to get performed. There are people who want to clean, cook, do manual labor, do administrative work, accounting, cleaning up shit, building, basically everything a society needs to exist. Coercion need not apply.
Nah I’m built different.
The probability of you getting 74 (or more) wins in 122 fair coin flips is ~1.16%
You’ve demonstrated exactly how the system works. Statistically a few players will be lucky and become very rich. They’ll be looked at as “built different”. All the other poor players will try to emulate them as if they can beat the system by achieving some virtue like working hard enough or having innate skill rather than realize the system is mathematically impossible to beat.
The highest highs, the lowest lows.
I’m an idiot
And you only had to win at a 60% rate. Less than I expected
The odds of that are still ~1.1%. He got very lucky
Yea, I tried quite a few times, the most I got up to was $400 before losing it all
