417 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2021
    1. Developing this argument, Bauman (2000) talks of the super-rich as the 'new cosmopolitans', suggesting that the fundamental consumption cleavage in contemporary society is between these 'fast subjects' who dwell in transnational space and those 'slow subjects' whose lives remain localised and parochial. The fast world is one consisting of airports, top level business districts, top of the line hotels and restaurants, chic boutiques, art galleries and exclusive gyms - in brief, a sort of glamour zone that is fundamentally disconnected from the life worlds of the vast majority of the world's population. Bauman thus equates power with mobility, echoing Massey's notion of unequal 'power-geometries'

      Formal, sharply defined terminology to describe this class for academic writing.

    1. Elon Musk has built not one but two world-changing companies (Tesla and SpaceX.) He clearly deserves to be wealthy. As does Jeff Bezos, who quickly regained his title as the world’s wealthiest person. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and many other billionaires changed our world and have been paid handsomely for it.

      Surprising for an egalitarian economic text to admit that, on conditions, the rich are entitled to their wealth.

    2. Until we recognize the systemic role that supermoney plays in our economy, we will never make much of a dent in inequality. Simply raising taxes is a bit like sending out firefighters with hoses spraying water while another team is spraying gasoline.

      Taxation needs a total revamp because it's inefficient, slow and the rich adapt by becoming a moving target.

    3. The tax system could and should become more dynamic rather than more predictable.

      Exactly: decide the tax for each citizen at the end of the year, by a division of the required amount.

    4. When the markets are buoyant, Fed officials claim that central bankers should never second-guess markets by declaring that there are financial bubbles that might need to be deflated. Markets on their own, they assure, will correct whatever excesses may develop.But when bubbles burst or markets spiral downward, the Fed suddenly comes around to the idea that markets aren’t so rational and self-correcting and that it is the Fed’s job to second-guess them by lending copiously when nobody else will.In essence, the Fed has adopted a strategy that works like a one-way ratchet, providing a floor for stock and bond prices but never a ceiling.

      There is a systemic reason for inequality, and the rich people are controlling the knobs and dials of it: [[too-big-to-fail]] coupled with [[quantitative easing]]

  2. Aug 2021
  3. Jul 2021
    1. In our case, a system intended to expand equality has become an enforcer of inequality. Americans are now meritocrats by birth. We know this, but because it violates our fundamental beliefs, we go to a lot of trouble not to know it.

      Class stratification helps to create not only racist policies but policies that enforce the economic stratification and prevent upward (or downward) mobility.

      I believe downward mobility is much simpler for Black Americans (find reference to OTM podcast about Obama to back this up).

      How can we create social valves (similar to those in the circulatory system of our legs) that help to push people up and maintain them at certain levels without disadvantaging those who are still at the bottom and who may neither want to move up nor have the ability?

  4. Jun 2021
    1. The impact of this exclusion itself is impossible to measure, but increasing meritocratic inequality has coincided with the opioid epidemic, a sharp increase in “deaths of despair,” and an unprecedented fall in life expectancy concentrated in poor and middle-class communities.

      Are these all actually related to meritocratic inequality? What other drivers might there be?

    2. Meritocratic inequality works like this: First, elite workers acquire super-skilled jobs, displacing middle-class labor from the center of economic production. Then, those elite workers use their massive incomes to monopolize elite education for their children, ensuring that their offspring are more qualified to dominate high-skilled industries than their middle-class counterparts. The cycle continues, generating what Markovits calls “snowball inequality”: a compounding feedback loop that amplifies economic inequality, dramatically suppresses social mobility, and creates a “time divide” between an elite class whose members work longer and longer (due to a higher demand for their talents) and an increasingly idle middle class (whose work has been made redundant).

      This all seems logical and certainly plays a part, but I still think it's more complicated. This is a feedback "engine" that has been installed since ~1970 and exacerbated by the 1980s.

      There's likely still a leisure class above this compounding the effects.

    3. This leads us to Markovits’s second critique of the aspirational view: The cycle that produces meritocratic inequality severely harms not only the middle class but the very elite who seem to benefit most from it.

      What if we look at meritocracy from a game theoretic viewpoint?

      Certainly there's an issue that there isn't a cap on meritocratic outputs, so if one wants more wealth, then one needs to "simply" work harder. As a result, in a "keeping up with the Jones'" society that (incorrectly) measures happiness in wealth, everyone is driven to work harder and faster for their piece of the pie.

      (How might we create a sort of "set point" to limit the unbounded meritocratic cap? Might this create a happier set point/saddle point on the larger universal graph?)

      This effect in combination with the general drive to have "power over" people instead of "power with", etc. in combination with racist policies can create some really horrific effects.

      What other compounding effects might there be? This is definitely a larger complexity-based issue.

    4. Some argue that the American elite is functionally an old-fashioned aristocracy that owes its income to nepotism and opportunism. Others argue that the elite is functionally an oligarchy that owes its rising income to a shift away from labor and toward capital. According to this view, elites don’t even need nepotism — they are using preexisting wealth and inheritance to rebuild an old-fashioned feudal class.

      So much here to unpack...

    5. Aspirational critics tend to believe that rising inequality since the 1970s is the product of insufficient meritocracy.

      It's surely not the only cause of rising inequality. What other factors are there? What proportions do they contribute? Which one is the Pareto factor?

    6. At its core, The Meritocracy Trap is a comprehensive — and rather scathing — critique of the aspirational view. Markovits argues that meritocracy itself is the problem: It produces radical inequality, stifles social mobility, and makes everyone — including the apparent winners — miserable. These are not symptoms of systemic malfunction; they are the products of a system that is working exactly as it is supposed to.
    1. Mike: I started hanging out with the wrong kind of kids. These other kids that wouldn't go to school and I noticed what type of kids I was hanging out with. I noticed the difference, because there's productive people that make you want to do better, and there's this people that just see you and they want to see you do as bad as them.Mike: So they kind of drag you down under. I felt like I just wanted to fit in kind of because all my life I felt like I wasn't equal—I don't know how to explain it. It's just I just wanted to fit in kind of, not feel like I wasn't as good as them, because I felt like I was always inferior, because I didn't have the things that they had.

      Time in the US, School, High School, Struggling/ Suspension/ Dropping out

  5. May 2021
  6. Apr 2021
  7. Mar 2021
    1. It is perhaps predictable that, instead of presenting a bulwark against stratification, technology outcomes have tracked society's growing inequality. A yawning chasm of disparities is playing out in our phones at the same time it has come to shape our economic and political lives.
    1. Preliminary results from the first year are tantalizing for anyone interested in solutions to address rising inequality in the United States, especially as they manifest along racial and gender lines. Within the first year, the study’s participants obtained jobs at twice the rate of the control group. At the beginning of the study, 28 percent of the participants had full-time employment, and after the first year, that number rose to 40 percent.

      This is what happened when 125 participants were given $500/month over two years to see what would happen.

  8. Feb 2021
    1. “In the last decade, especially with the pioneering work of Thomas Piketty and his co-authors, there has been a growing consensus that tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality,” Hope and Limberg said.
    1. Even worse, Shadow Stat's numbers show so much inflation the past 25 years that, as Jim Pethokoukis points out, it implies the economy hasn't grown at all during that time.

      Important Point

      Real economic numbers validate a 25 year period (or more) of manipulated inflation and low growth economy. INCOME INEQUALITY statistics and recent studies ALL validate fuzzy math, rosy picture for the 1% and stagnant dismal picture for average Americans. Trump based his entire campaign and Presidency on Making America Great Again

      Supporting Link

    2. So which seems likelier: that we're no better off than we were a quarter century ago, or that Shadow Stats is total bunk?

      Great Question

      This is an easy question to answer from my perspective. For me (age 62) and most of my peers, their kids and their peers, we are NO better off than we were a quarter century ago! A large part is the change from Industrial/Manufacturing to Technology and the outsourced labor and manufacturing. America has changed, this is FACT

  9. Jan 2021
    1. Johnson: Earlier I interviewed you about patrilocal residence patterns and how that alters women’s sexual choices. In contrast, matrilocal societies are more likely to be egalitarian. What are the factors that lead to the differences between these two systems?Hrdy: I think in societies where women have more say, and that does tend to be in societies that are matrilocal and with matrilineal descent or where, as it is among many small scale hunter-gatherers, you have porous social boundaries and flexible residence patterns. If I had to say what kind of residence patterns our ancestors had it would have been very flexible, what Frank Marlowe calls multilocal.

      Matrilocality, matrilinearity and egailitarianism.

  10. Dec 2020
    1. The effort of confronting that machine, day in and day out, compounded over a lifetime, leads to stress so corrosive that it physically changes bodies

      How does this highlight questions of power? Is it hard or soft power in evidence?

    1. American exceptionalism was founded on cooperation — between the rich and the poor, between the governors and the governed. From the birth of the nation, the unity across economic classes and different regions was a marvel for European observers, such as St. John de Crèvecoeur and Alexis de Tocqueville. This cooperative spirit unraveled in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to the first “Age of Discord” in American history. It was reforged during the New Deal as an unwritten but very real social contract between government, business and workers, leading to another age of prosperity and cooperation in postwar America. But since the 1970s, that contract has unraveled, in favor of a contract between government and business that has underfunded public services but generously rewarded capital gains and corporate profits.

      This misses some of the underlying factors which also drove 19th century, specifically the information revolution which combined with IP monopoly rights is the core driver of growing inequality. That could be addressed, as with 19th c robber baron capitalism, by nationalisation or serious regulation but that is yet to happen.

    1. Third, i n contrast to the equivocal ideo-logical-polarization trends among the pub-lic, politici ans and other political elites have unambiguously polarized recently on ideo-logical grounds, with Republican politicians moving further to the right than Democratic politicians have moved to the left (SM). This ide ological divergence is driven in part by ex-treme economic inequality in America today, especially in conjunction with candidates be-coming increasingly reliant on ideologically extreme donors. As polit icians chase cam-paign dollars, these extreme voices garner disproportionate influence (SM).

      Yes, the economic "substructure" matters too! Inequality is a big driver both at the level of the party "base" and the "elite" donor level.

    1. wealth persist across racial groups.

      EXAMINE THE SYSTEMS WHICH HELP TO ENFORCE THIS RACIAL INCOME DIVIDE! Most relate. Fixing these systems could help to bridge the income gap between racial groups. Even laws so ingrained in us.

    1. cradle-to-career youth programming

      This becomes where equal opportunity must start - at the beginning of a child's career - at 18, the age we otherwise use to mark the end of childhood and the beginning of childhood.

  11. Nov 2020
    1. crowd out, smaller individual contributions."

      Argument foe limits: we regulate monopolies, and think monoploies in the conomic sense are bad. By allowing unlimited money/power to flow into politics, are we allowing for monopolies on discourse? i.e. extreme or disproportionate influence in agenda setting that may crowd out smaller interests?

    2. An equality-based justification for campaign finance regulation must recognize that the modern regulatory framework can only superficially reduce the impact of economic inequality.
    1. On the other hand, donating and spending on a large scale are taxed at an everincreasing rate, which is beneficial as well. Because of this property, the rich would face arising marginal cost as they tried to exert more financial influence.

      Inequality of political voice is a bad property of a political system. But, limiting freedom of speech may violate charter rights.

    2. However, only the square root of the amount that they donate or spend, multiplied byan amount set to make the system as a whole budget-neutral, would actually be deployed.The rest of the money would enter the public Treasury. Assume, for example, that amultiplier of 10 would make the system budget-neutral. Then if a person donated $1 toBernie Sanders, his campaign would receive $10 (($1^.5)910). Similarly, if a personwanted to independently spend $10,000 to back Donald Trump (or if Trump wanted tospend $10,000 on his own candidacy), $1000 could be used on commercials, mailers, andthe like (($10,000^.5)910), and the other $9000 would go to the government.

      This is fair because it taxes political voice of larger proportional to the size of their spend and amplifies smaller donors. Equalizing the playing field.

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    Annotators

    1. Examining inequality across provinces and time has many advantages.2 Canadian provinces possess considerable comparable autonomy in administering social policy and research shows that inequality shifts are predominantly owing to provincial rather than federal transfers

      Some evidence for rolling out the program on a provincial instead of a federal level.

    1. hat effect, if any, does the extent of economic inequality in a country have upon the political engagement of its citizens?
  12. Oct 2020
    1. These changes are not, on the whole, the fault of globalisation, that scapegoat of the populist insurgency, but of technology-driven changes combined with policies that have reinforced the underlying forces of divergence.

      +1 this is precisely argument of open revolution.

    1. James Bronterre O’Brien, told the people:‘Knaves will tell you that it is because you have no property, you are unrepresented. I tell you on the contrary, it is because you are unrepresented that you have no property …’16

      great quote

    2. A thousand years ago, the world was flat, economically speaking.

      I don't think we have to go back even this far. If I recall correctly, even 150 years ago the vast majority of the world's population were subsistence farmers. It's only been since the 20th century and the increasing spread of the industrial revolution that the situation has changed:

      Even England remained primarily an agrarian country like all tributary societies for the previous 4,000 years, with ca. 50 percent of its population employed in agriculture as late as 1759.

      --David Christian, Maps of Time (pp 401) quoting from Crafts, British Economic Growth, pp. 13–14. (See also Fig 13.1 Global Industrial Potential from the same, for a graphical indicator.

    1. This is not to say that there are not rich people and poor people in the United States, or that the gap between them has not grown in recent years. But the root causes of economic inequality do not have to do with the underlying legal and social structure of our society, which remains fundamentally egalitarian and moderately redistributionist, so much as with the cultural and social characteristics of the groups that make it up, which are in turn the historical legacy of premodern conditions.
    1. Piketty, however, sees inequality as a social phenomenon, driven by human institutions. Institutional change, in turn, reflects the ideology that dominates society: “Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political.”
    2. For Piketty, rising inequality is at root a political phenomenon. The social-democratic framework that made Western societies relatively equal for a couple of generations after World War II, he argues, was dismantled, not out of necessity, but because of the rise of a “neo-proprietarian” ideology. Indeed, this is a view shared by many, though not all, economists. These days, attributing inequality mainly to the ineluctable forces of technology and globalization is out of fashion, and there is much more emphasis on factors like the decline of unions, which has a lot to do with political decisions.
    1. Long, H., correspondentEmailEmailBioEmailFollowEmail, H. L., Dam, rew V., Fowers, rew V. D. focusing on economic dataEmailEmailBioEmailFollowEmailAlyssa, visualization, A. F. reporter focusing on data, data, analysisEmailEmailBioEmailFollowEmailLeslie S. S. reporter focusing on, & storytellingEmailEmailBioEmailFollowEmail, multimedia. (n.d.). The covid-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history. Washington Post. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-recession-equality/

  13. Sep 2020
  14. Aug 2020
  15. Jul 2020
    1. A new paper by Atif Mian of Princeton University, Ludwig Straub of Harvard University and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago expands on the idea that inequality saps demand from the economy. Just as inequality creates a need for stimulus, they argue, stimulus eventually creates more inequality. This is because it leaves economies more indebted, either because low interest rates encourage households or firms to borrow, or because the government has run deficits. Both public and private indebtedness transfer income to rich investors who own the debt, thereby depressing demand and interest rates still further.
  16. Jun 2020
  17. May 2020
    1. The pursuit of profit and greater efficiencies has led to the invention of new technologies that replace people, which has made companies run more efficiently, rewarded those who invented these technologies, and hurt those who were replaced by them. This force will accelerate over the next several years, and there is no plan to deal with it well.

      This is huge - this is the essence of open revolution. Though he phrases it as a choice. The choice is in the rules we create.

    1. criminal groups and opportunists expanding their activities, taking advantage of lockdown and diminished forest monitoring and government presence. The second is that people living in these rural areas are facing increased economic pressures and are forced to rely more heavily on nature for food and income
    1. “Our country is made up of various smaller countries,” Alves said. “When you walk through Rio de Janeiro, you go through places that have the characteristics of Switzerland to places more like the Congo, all in the same city.”

      On the geography of inequality in Brazil.

  18. Apr 2020
    1. Daniel Markovits, author of “The Meritocracy Trap,” estimates there are about one million of these workers in America today. They work really hard, are really productive and earn a lot more. In the mid-1960s, profits per partner at elite law firms were less than five times a secretary’s salary. Now, Markovits notes, they are over 40 times.

      That latter statistic is fascinating. Are top partners 8x more more productive (relatively) than secretaries? Maybe but probably not. There's more going on that the crude info economy argument of simply greater marginal productivity. I would also look at concentration of income across law firms - i bet there has been concentration towards the top firms.

    2. But here’s the situation: The information economy rains money on highly trained professionals — doctors, lawyers, corporate managers, engineers and so on.

      But why does it rain money on them? And who else does that?

  19. Feb 2020
  20. Jan 2020
  21. Dec 2019
    1. Of what a strange nature is knowledge

      The Creature's story emphasizes the complex question of knowledge--how "strange" and contradictory it is to have, how "sorrow only increased with knowledge"--in ways that suggest it is drastically reductive to see in this novel only a warning against science.

  22. Nov 2019
    1. The established order should be repaired, to be sure, but not trans-formed by a blueprint. Landlords and tenants were a natural result ofthe difference in human abilities. The key function of the ruler was theselection of talent, which was to be found among the Confucian-trainedliterati.

      A classic Burkean conservative, paternalistic manifesto.

      Interesting to Contrast Wang with Sima Guang as it represents a classic political dichotomy. On the one hand, an (extreme) radical egalitarianism combined with authoritarianism (or, at least statism). On the other, a more democratic approach combined with (a justification of) inequality.

      Is it possible to have egalitarianism and democracy (or, rather autonomy)?

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    Annotators

    1. All this implies that realistic distributions of earnings by themselves, without othercomplimentary mechanisms, have di¢ culty in generating the skewed wealth distributionswe observe

      This is crucial in the debate i think. If i understand the logic here:

      If wealth "skew" and the fat tails were purely related to earnings one could make a plausible argument (though still dubious IMO) that this related to distributions of talent (and/or how talent interacts with production i.e. entrepreneurs skills are multiplied by all the people who work for them etc).

      However, if wealth skew is > earnings skew that implies some other institutional process is at work that isn't really to do with individual talent or effort.

      At a moral level this has big implications.

      Put crudely, imagine the simple random returns to capital each period and there are no difference in talent, effort etc. This generates a simple lognormal distribution or (as they explain above) the fat ones when there is a reflecting barrier (i.e. birth / death).

      In this model there is no "justification" for resulting differences in wealth -- they are purely "random".

      This is basically the policy / moral background to this whole technical paper: are wealth distributions a result (largely) of random chance (and accumulation) or talent.

      Because if the former then the resulting inequality has no moral legitimacy and no practical value. If the latter, there is, at the very least, an argument for practical value (in terms of rewarding talent / effort etc).

  23. Jun 2019
    1. inequality of exchange

      goods may be of equal value in the market place but are not equal in the minds of the traders.

  24. May 2019
    1. Gish understood the dream. 43[As] Enki[du] was sitting before the woman, 44[Her] loins(?) he embraced, her vagina(?) he opened. 45[Enkidu] forgot the place where he was born. 46Six days and seven nights 47Enkidu continued 48To cohabit with [the courtesan].

      In this older version , the translation is clear and more explicit. While in other versions these actions are cover under a bunch of metaphors and wordiness. So it looks like when we, ourselves, became more civilize the amount of censorship we created for ourselves also grew. Just think about that Inkidu and Gilgamesh were lovers, and this was not something new, other cultures also practice this. But later became taboo with the help of Christianity. It is just now that we are starting to accept that everyone does not have the same sexual preference, everyone should be free of choosing a partner regardless of sex. Uncivilized does not mean close minded. CC BY-NC-ND

    1. At the end of the day, the only hero in the story was Nina herself. Rama was a complete self absorbed jerk and Sita was completely submissive and did not think of her even once. While Nina went through modern similar faces of rejection and self worth, she came to terms with herself, and accepted the fact that her ex boyfriend was not worth her pain and that she had to move on in life. CC BY-NC-ND

    1. My sons!Father?Return to Ayodhya Palace to rule with me for eternity!But then, he wants to take Luv and Kush back,but he's still hesitant about taking her back.Sita! Well, yes, of course, Sita...All Sita has to do is prove her purity again.Another trial by fire, perhaps?

      When Rama finds his sons by coincidence he wants to take the boy with him, but not Sita. So he suggest another trial to confirm her purity. The only reason why he seems to "Care" about his songs is because they are boy, I am sure that if they were girls Rama would not have care. But he wants a successor and now he has it. Thought out the story Sita needs to prove herself but no Rama. Sita's Value depends on how valuable Rama think she is. And right now she is garbage to him. Now that he has his songs there is no more use for her. CC BY-NC-ND

    2. Hello?Please take me back! Please please please!I'll do anything! PLEASE

      In the modern intake of Nina Paley. She is dump by her ex. His reasons: he was bored of her already. Yet, despite of being treated so badly by her boyfriend Nina insist and begs him to go back with her, just like Sita when Rama wants to take his sons with him back to the palace. CC BY-NC-ND

    3. Perfect man, perfect son, Rama's loved by everyoneAlways right, never wrong, we praise Rama in this songSing his love, sing his praiseRama set his wife ablazeGot her home, kicked her outto allay his people's doubtRama's wise, Rama's just, Rama does what Rama mustDuty first, Sita last,Rama's reign is unsurpassed!

      This song is sings by Sita and Rama's sons and it say a lot about the sexist culture in Hindu society. To everyone Rama is perfect, therefore he is never wrong. When he kicks Sita out of his kingdom because people were talking about Sita even though Rama knew she was pure and innocent. Yet, he does it "for the good of the people". When in reality his fragile and huge ego was the one to blame. Also "Duty first, Sita last" once more demonstrates the gender inequality. CC BY-NC-ND

    1. In this image we can observe the difference between man and women in Sita Sings the Blues. While Rama is being taking care of to make sure he is dry, Sita is under the rain with no protection while admiring Rama from afar. However, Rama seems to only care about himself and looks proudly forward without even looking at his wife. CC BY-NC-ND

  25. Sep 2018
    1. Oh no I’m sure any delta is brighter than an epsilon like those. That’s one of the wonderful things about being a gamma. We’re not too stupid and we’re not too bright to be a gamma is to be just right

      this part of the dialogue creates a great sense of social and class inequality in the world created by this movie. Deltas are considered wise and have greater responsibilities whereas gammas are considered somewhere in between and are in charge of more mundane matters.

  26. Oct 2017
    1. To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.

      Within the highlighted excerpt, I want to focus on the masculine articles of "he" and "his" as they depict the forms of gender discrimination and inequality that were present within the University prior to 1920. Preceding 1920, women were not legally allowed to enroll within publicly funded professional and graduate schools. Consequently, following 1920 and the legislation which allowed female enrollment, the University exercised forms of gender discrimination within its application process, thus illustrating its masculine roots. However, following a law-suit accusing the University of its discrimination, it was determined that the school could no longer exercise any forms of discrimination, "with respect to race, color, religion, national origin, or sex." Therefore, as a result of such legislation, female students now consist of 55% of the student population thus inviting the revision of masculine pronouns within the Rockfish Gap Report, thus illustrating the University's progress toward gender equality.

    2. It was the degree of centrality to the white population of the state which alone then constituted the important point of comparison

      I find the selected excerpt very profound and relevant to modern society, as it creates an aura of inequality and racism surrounding the University of Virginia, which has, as a result, been protested against within the recent months. The reality that one of the aspects considered for the location of the University was based on its, "degree of centrality to the white population," conveys the belief of white as a superior race. Furthermore, this directly correlates with the events that have transcribed within the local Charlottesville community over the past few months; not only have neo-nazis publicly illustrated their personal forms of hate and racial inequality on grounds, but students have also pushed for equality at the University by protesting its public display of such historical bias, which has led to the removal of plaques commemorating confederate soldiers from a place of public display, to a place of historical remembrance.

  27. Sep 2017
    1. , it would, but because their networks do not often cross, the gap between social connectedness of the rich and the poor continues to grow

      Yes! This is the cost of geographical, educational and social marginalization. Different economic groups travel in different circles which reproduces their current economic position.

    2. social capital offline only helps those who currently have high levels of economic and symbolic capital.

      Again, I think the theoretical point behind social capital is that all relationships can have some value but it is also to show how some connections have more value than others. Certainly, knowing your neighbor or sharing stories with the clerk at the 7-11 is helpful to those how live in poverty. But, for those who are born at the top, they know the head of the corporations so the pay off is bigger. Both pay off but one pays off more.

    1. visible is not as effective as addressing the entire system

      Sociologists use the term 'sociological imagination' which refers to our ability to 'see' below the surface of society and to understand the invisible network of norms, values, structures, institutions and systems of inequality that shape individual choice and behavior.

    1. nequality

      We will discuss how networks can produce and reproduce inequality. It is called the power law.

    2. mainstream pundits with more legitimacy

      This is what is so hard about democracy in the modern digital age. Habermas tells us that democracy requires an open and free exchange of idea in a equally accessible public space. While the internet is not entirely open, free and equally accessible, it is very close. Yet, we have lost the ability to vet, validate and trust most information. What does that mean about democracy in the modern age?

    1. whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

      When I lecture in Intro to Socy, I spend a great deal of time on this statement to help them grasp the fundamentals of the sociological imagination. While network theory may seem like common sense, it directly challenges the ideology of individualism and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. If you accept that others influence you, then you have to begin to accept the realities of privilege and discrimination. This can often be too much cognitively, particularly for privileged students who prefer to think of their benefits as wholly earned. SNA reveals how inequality is produced and reproduced.

    1. clustering effect.

      This is also the power law; it takes links to get links. Power law is how inequality produced and reproduced in networks. Check it out!

    1. Part of the wild success of the Silicon Valley giants of today — and what makes their stocks so appealing to investors — has come from their ability to attain huge revenue and profits with relatively few workers.Apple, Alphabet (parent of Google) and Facebook generated $333 billion of revenue combined last year with 205,000 employees worldwide. In 1993, three of the most successful, technologically oriented companies based in the Northeast — Kodak, IBM and AT&T — needed more than three times as many employees, 675,000, to generate 27 percent less in inflation-adjusted revenue.The 10 most valuable tech companies have 1.5 million employees, according to calculations by Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute, compared with 2.2 million employed by the 10 biggest industrial companies in 1979. Mr. Mandel, however, notes that today’s tech industry is adding jobs much faster than the industrial companies, which took many decades to reach that scale.

      It seems like this would certainly contribute to wealth inequality, since the majority of today's tech workforce is more well-educated than the industrial employees of decades past (who then shared in their employer's rise).

  28. Jul 2017
    1. While wealthy families are embracing the potential of new technologies for learning, and investing more and more in out-of-school and connected learning, less privileged kids are being left behind. Access to specialized, interest-driven and personalized learning used to be difficult and scarce. But in today’s networked world, there’s no reason why all children should not have the opportunity to pursue connected learning.
    1. The justification of inequality

      The act of condition the citizenship to accept and expect stratification based on merit in society, thereby justifying unequal rewards (low pay, no health benefits, no control over shifts, low social status etc.)

  29. Jan 2016
    1. We have the schools we have, because people who can afford better get better. And sadly, people who can’t afford better just get less--less experienced teachers, inadequate funding and inferior facilities.

      Is this our fate? I'm afraid it might be. In other words, are we fighting to change this inequity or are we working to "innovate" within it? And what does this innovation mean really?

  30. Dec 2015
    1. Maria Anna (called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl) was – like her younger brother – a child prodigy. The children toured most of Europe (including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5) performing together as “wunderkinder”. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. Until she turned 18. A little girl could perform and tour, but a woman doing so risked her reputation.
    1. But he just continued on his way. She had to say, “That’s her book” three or four times before he finally took it in. And then, as if in a nineteenth-century novel, he went ashen. That I was indeed the author of the very important book it turned out he hadn’t read, just read about in the New York Times Book Review a few months earlier, so confused the neat categories into which his world was sorted that he was stunned speechless — for a moment, before he began holding forth again. Being women, we were politely out of earshot before we started laughing, and we’ve never really stopped.
    1. And though I was grateful to James for calling them out, I wasn’t even challenging anyone’s access to making money. I just made humorous remarks about some books and some dead writers’ characters. These guys were apparently so upset and so convinced that the existence of my opinions and voice menaced others’ rights. Guys: censorship is when the authorities repress a work of art, not when someone dislikes it.
    2. art can also help us fail at empathy if it sequesters us in the Boring Old Fortress of Magnificent Me.

      Art is powerful. It shapes minds. It thereby shapes the world -- or keeps it the same -- for good or evil.

    1. The fact that professionals prefer anecdotes from people like us over concerted efforts to understand a demographic as a whole is shameful. More importantly, it’s downright dangerous. It shapes what the tech industry builds and invests in, what gets promoted by journalists, and what gets legitimized by institutions of power. This is precisely why and how the tech industry is complicit in the increasing structural inequality that is plaguing our society.

      Danah Boyd points out that people in the tech industry are far too quick to think of themselves as "typical", and ignore millions of Americans and billions of people who have little in common with them.