Artigo de Chris Dillow (como de costume, o facto de eu o re-postar não significa necessariamente concordância):
Imagine a bunch of people of roughly equal wealth. Some choose to go the a casino, some gambling heavily, some lightly, whilst some stay home. And the end of the night, there'll be perhaps large inequality among them. But this won't bother me.
However, capitalist inequality is not like this, in (at least) three senses:
1. Some people lack the assets to gain access to the games that pay best returns. If you're born poor or - thanks to bad schooling, bad homes or bad genes - have inadequate human capital, your chances of success are limited.
Worse still, you can't choose games that give a decent pay-off to what qualities you have. You can't move to societies in which rewards to physical strength are high relative to intellectual strength, or to societies in which there are no capital constraints upon potential entrepreneurs, as these barely exist. And you can't insure, pre-birth, against having a bad starting position.
2. You're forced to enter the casino and gamble. Because there are inadequate mechanisms for insuring against industrial or occupational risks, some people are trapped into bad gambles: think of miners in the 1980s or unskilled workers generally in the 1990s.
3. Capitalism isn't a fair game. Some people are better than others at using company and state power to extract rents, at others' expense; I'm more bothered by the supermarket boss earning £25,000 who exploits and tyrannizes his employees than I am by Rio Ferdinand earning £100,000 a week, useless tit as he is.
It's not just bosses and state apparatchiks who have this power.
For example, hedge fund managers and equity investors who suffer losses can expect central banks to help them out. Poorer people don't get such a helping hand, despite being less responsible for their losses.
However, capitalist inequality is not like this, in (at least) three senses:
1. Some people lack the assets to gain access to the games that pay best returns. If you're born poor or - thanks to bad schooling, bad homes or bad genes - have inadequate human capital, your chances of success are limited.
Worse still, you can't choose games that give a decent pay-off to what qualities you have. You can't move to societies in which rewards to physical strength are high relative to intellectual strength, or to societies in which there are no capital constraints upon potential entrepreneurs, as these barely exist. And you can't insure, pre-birth, against having a bad starting position.
2. You're forced to enter the casino and gamble. Because there are inadequate mechanisms for insuring against industrial or occupational risks, some people are trapped into bad gambles: think of miners in the 1980s or unskilled workers generally in the 1990s.
3. Capitalism isn't a fair game. Some people are better than others at using company and state power to extract rents, at others' expense; I'm more bothered by the supermarket boss earning £25,000 who exploits and tyrannizes his employees than I am by Rio Ferdinand earning £100,000 a week, useless tit as he is.
It's not just bosses and state apparatchiks who have this power.
For example, hedge fund managers and equity investors who suffer losses can expect central banks to help them out. Poorer people don't get such a helping hand, despite being less responsible for their losses.
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