TECHONOMY

Jaron Lanier on Why Wealth Concentration Among the Few Is Unsustainable

Techonomy Video  |  January 30, 2015, 12:26 PM  |  Techonomy Exclusive

Technologist and author Jaron Lanier wants to reframe the debate about income inequality, starting with semantics. He takes exception to the notion that income equalitywould ever be a good thing. “To really make incomes equal, there would have to be some sort of force that would pound people down and say, We will all be equal!” said Lanier during a talk at Techonomy 2014 in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Rather, Lanier sees inequality as an inherent dimension of a market economy, noting that “any world of freedom is going to create variation of outcomes.” The problem, however, lies in how these outcomes are spread across society. On the one hand, said Lanier, “if you believe in agency of people, you have to believe in distribution of outcomes.” On the other hand, “an incredible concentration in a tiny minority is just not sustainable.” The reason Lanier gives for this is straightforward: “There aren’t any more customers to buy your stuff.”

Instead of focusing on income inequality, which is inevitable, Lanier wants to shift the debate to the quality of income distribution. “What we should be talking about is how we can get the economy to be a fair measurement device … which by definition should be giving us a bell curve,” said Lanier, explaining that a bell curve represents a natural distribution of outcomes, with equal numbers of high achievers and low achievers and most people in the middle. “Nothing but a bell curve can be an indicator of freedom where there’s a system with a market economy,” he concluded.