Extreme Inequality Is Not Driven by the Merit, but by Rent-Seeking and Luck — Sam Pizzigati interviews Didier Jacobs

Jacobs: Because meritocracy rates as the number one argument that defenders of inequality invoke. It is easy to make an ethical case against extreme concentrations of wealth, drawing from the perspectives of Marxism, utilitarianism, or the egalitarian liberalism of John Rawls. But going down that road requires people you’re trying to persuade to change their value systems, and that’s difficult.

Debunk the meritocratic argument on its own terms, by contrast, and all the defenders of inequality have left is libertarianism, a value system that has much less appeal among the American public than meritocracy.…

Altogether, my research traces 65 percent of the world’s billionaire wealth to the rents of cronyism, inheritance, and monopoly.

Evonomics
Extreme Inequality Is Not Driven by the Merit, but by Rent-Seeking and Luck
Sam Pizzigati interviews Didier Jacobs

Brad DeLong — Unjust Deserts

We would have a much clearer discussion of issues of inequality and distribution if we would simply stick to considerations of human wellbeing and useful incentives. The rest is meritocratic ideology; and, as the reception of Piketty’s book suggests, that ideology may now have run its course.

Project Syndicate
Unjust Deserts
J. Bradford DeLong | Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research

Amazingly, Dark Money Appears To Be Just As Dumb As No Money!

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Have you seen this essay about "dark art" of politics?

The Dark Money Man: How Sean Noble Moved the Kochs’ Cash into Politics and Made Millions

Amazingly, Dark Money appears to be just as dumb as no money!

(Since neither of the last 2 election cycles got as much bang as the big-spending buckaroos expected.)

Humans. Ya gotta love 'em.

Dumb enough to be resistant to their own stupidity.

Is there something awe inspiring hiding in all that stupidity?

Or is it just more dumb luck, eventually expressed on a yet greater scale? :)