Answering questions
Dr. Peterson, I am inquiring about answering of questions. Will you be able, amongst your critically important work and obviously busy schedule, to be able to post when you will be answering Supercast AMA questions? Much appreciated and godspeed. (And if I have missed answers posted already, my apology...)
democracy and capitalism as opposing and complementary ideas
In democratic capitalism, for simplicity, we have a democracy, where every person of a certain age, is able to cast one vote for an elected official that will represent them in government. In capitalism, we have a different type of vote. We call it fiat currency, or, legal tender, which imparts upon the owner, essentially, voting rights. The difference being, these voting rights are not for political markets, rather, for all other markets. Furthermore, the design of these votes tends to result in its concentration into the hands of a small number of people. Mathematically, these two legal constructions have two different distributions in the population. Democratic votes, being uniformly distributed across all people, and renewed when the political market reopens every election. Fiat currency, which follows a Pareto distribution among investors, and with supply that inflates primarily through government deficits and credit creation by commercial banks. As provided by simulations shown in your own lectures, and empirical evidence analyzed by well cited studies, there is a third distribution. Wage earners, who’s distribution of inequality follows what is known as a “Boltzmann-Gibbs” distribution. Empirically, there is inequality among wage earners as well, but no where near as extreme when compared to inequality within the investor class. Perhaps, because time is scarce, and wage earners ultimately trade time for money, the degree of inequality among wage earners is constrained to a greater degree. That is, no wage earner will ever become a billionaire through their wages. Investors are able to become billionaires because they are less impeded by time. They are able to use a technology, that is, gain access to other people’s money, either as bank credit or investor equity, and get back an amount of money proportional to their original investment. As Keynes’ put it, “The interposition of this veil of money between the real asset and the wealth owner is an especially marked characteristic of the modern world.” So, it seems, in our current system, we have three distinct distributions of “votes”. Uniform distribution of votes among all citizens. Pareto distribution of votes (fiat currency) among the investor class. And a Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution of votes (fiat currency) among wage earners, which is neither as unequal as a Pareto distribution nor equal as a uniform distribution. Could you share your thoughts on the juxtaposition of these three types of distributions, the impact each has on individual psychology, especially as the system evolves over time. Further, due to the significant psychological component of any social contract intended to facilitate exchange, what features or principles would you consider in an incremental or radical change to systems of exchange between people. Last, do you think it’s wise to somehow constrain our system to real world constraints experienced by humans directly, such as with time? Or, in contrast, do you think specific people with legal rights to control exponentially improving technology, such as fiat currency, computers, or some other asset, should also accrue exponentially increasing economic surplus? What could be the psychological consequences for the individual in either case?
Say Yes!
Take two seconds and look at the sheer dimensions of the questions that have been asked here (…in some you’re basically being asked questions that could fill an entire university-level program…and in others we have people who are effectively seeking life-changing levels of intervention [and that is NOT an exaggeration]). Quite obviously…people simply do not realize the dimensions of what they are asking (the ‘why’ of that would be an interesting subject all by itself). If there were ten of you it would still not be possible to appropriately respond to the demands being placed on you! THAT… is precisely why you need to establish a forum. It’s not your responsibility of course…but in a way you created this community. A forum would give it some opportunity to not only take care of itself but also evolve.