I definitely found this thought provoking. Personally, it doesn't bother me that there are other people with more money or status than me, I'm unsure of how much of that is me being less inclined towards it (there's definitely individual variation even among people with the same income), and how much is just because I have more than enough to live on (it helps to be young, single, busy, and in a very cheap city). Since most of the examples (not all) are about being below average rather than the existence of the above average, I think a welfare state funded by progressive taxation would address a lot of them.
However, if the concern is just about the existence of a status hierarchy, that seems much harder to address, since there'd be differences in status even if we made income inequality illegal.
To clarify on my last point, my understanding of the Soviet Union is that differences in income were kept low by central planning and were fairly irrelevant since there was little to spend the roubles on anyway, but there were definitely still differences in status between the average worker and the party official.
Even in a state of total anarchy, I can't imagine there not being differences in status, some people are just going to be particularly competent, insightful, entertaining or knowledgeable and will therefore be admired and valued by people around them, even if they all have the same amount of stuff.
I believe this is backed up by anthropology, and there's no reason for this to necessarily result in income inequality (I blame food preservation for making wealth accumulation possible), but I think my point is that Simae is probably going to be unhappy in any society she's not ruling.
You're right that a lot of these differences are probably linked to the broader topic of status. So the critical question is are relative income/status effects primarily driven by rank ordering, or through some sense of the overall distance between people?
If it's rank ordering, we're stuffed. Some people will always be higher than others on at least some metric, no matter how nebulous.
If it's about distance, than arguably some societies create greater distance between people than others. Certainly this seems plausible to me. I imagine that, even a comfortable slave suffers a serious insult due to their low status, in virtue of being a slave. Abolishing slavery would therefore reduce relative status effects.
I imagine also that god-kings make others feel more insignificant than, say, presidents or prime ministers. Thus abolishing god-kings will reduce relative status effects.
If these reforms are possible in a society with god-kings and slaves, it stands to reason we have probably not come to the limits by which relative income effects and related phenomena can be reduced.
I definitely found this thought provoking. Personally, it doesn't bother me that there are other people with more money or status than me, I'm unsure of how much of that is me being less inclined towards it (there's definitely individual variation even among people with the same income), and how much is just because I have more than enough to live on (it helps to be young, single, busy, and in a very cheap city). Since most of the examples (not all) are about being below average rather than the existence of the above average, I think a welfare state funded by progressive taxation would address a lot of them.
However, if the concern is just about the existence of a status hierarchy, that seems much harder to address, since there'd be differences in status even if we made income inequality illegal.
To clarify on my last point, my understanding of the Soviet Union is that differences in income were kept low by central planning and were fairly irrelevant since there was little to spend the roubles on anyway, but there were definitely still differences in status between the average worker and the party official.
Even in a state of total anarchy, I can't imagine there not being differences in status, some people are just going to be particularly competent, insightful, entertaining or knowledgeable and will therefore be admired and valued by people around them, even if they all have the same amount of stuff.
I believe this is backed up by anthropology, and there's no reason for this to necessarily result in income inequality (I blame food preservation for making wealth accumulation possible), but I think my point is that Simae is probably going to be unhappy in any society she's not ruling.
You're right that a lot of these differences are probably linked to the broader topic of status. So the critical question is are relative income/status effects primarily driven by rank ordering, or through some sense of the overall distance between people?
If it's rank ordering, we're stuffed. Some people will always be higher than others on at least some metric, no matter how nebulous.
If it's about distance, than arguably some societies create greater distance between people than others. Certainly this seems plausible to me. I imagine that, even a comfortable slave suffers a serious insult due to their low status, in virtue of being a slave. Abolishing slavery would therefore reduce relative status effects.
I imagine also that god-kings make others feel more insignificant than, say, presidents or prime ministers. Thus abolishing god-kings will reduce relative status effects.
If these reforms are possible in a society with god-kings and slaves, it stands to reason we have probably not come to the limits by which relative income effects and related phenomena can be reduced.