Gates on Income Inequality.

Read this article in Fortune regarding Bill Gates view on income inequality.

True, Piketty's approach is not perhaps fine tuned enough. Some people are using their wealth to good purpose, better than government could ever re-purpose. The parble of the three servants can be seen as a long surviving anecdote regarding that. But found approach by Gates largely futile too. There needs to be at least some qualification.

What kind of business investment is "good"? An arms manufacturer or a pure commodity harvester (oil, tar sand, mining) are far less socially redeeming than something which actually directly helps or enriches people. Both jobs and output must be considered. Global direct education or communications seem to have both redeeming qualities in jobs and output... think microfinance. It is not a given that an entrepreneur is doing socially good work.

Charity is the same in reverse. A charity that promotes some sort of idealistic crusade (that squashes one group in favor of another, or promotes an idea or group without useful social output) is also not redeeming to the world at large. Again the goal has to be examined.

That consumption is bad is not always clear, even conspicuous consumption ala Veblen. Consumption for consumptions sake, of things that neither have nor produce lasting value (effectively destruction), is bad. But one could say the great projects of the New Deal or the Great Pyramids were an excellent way to consume resources - in a way that was socially "uplifting" and made a lasting mark. A car or a yacht are not (generally) lasting marks, nor is the average McMansion. BUT the mansions at Newport transcend. The great railroad empires transcend. Museums endowed (consumed) by benefactors transcend. {And it is disingenuous to call such a charity BTW}.

That the rich consume into channels of lasting value that build infrastructure and businesses is a good thing. A tax on pure capital misses the point. A progressive tax on magnitude of consumption misses the mark too. It is more about an independent social view of what is, and is not, worthwhile for society writ large. The question is how to get the capital out to something with lasting or ongoing value. Sorry not to have a good answer.

Direct voluntary giving to the poor has a better chance of working than any of the above. Shame on all of us if we know how (or have the means to know how) to give back well - yet never do.

Flow and Consumption

The most basic metrology, no matter what you are actually measuring, comes down to two basic things FLOW and CONSUMPTION. Beyond that there can be issues of qualities of what flows or is consumed. And there can be issues of the toppolgical/spatial distribution of flow/consumption. For the sharp, FLOW is just the time rate of change of CONSUMPTION (dCONSUMPTION/dt), but it is sometimes thought of inversely as CONSUMPTION being the accumulation of FLOW over time (the time integral of FLOW).

Enough generalities. Water is a good concrete thing to think about. We can measure its flow, or we can measure totals of water consumed. One can look at qualities of water too like temperature or purity/salinity.

Electricity is the omniprsent modern meterable. And it is the most often confused. One loses sight of Energy=CONSUMPTION and Power=FLOW at one's peril. Too many people lightly ask "How much Power am I using?" when they really mean Energy. Most people understand interest versus principle/capital better (which is also arcane at best), and that is part of why we have such problems getting the rational economics of energy policy right.

Natural Gas and Steam are much like water, though pressure and changes of "quality" due to the nature of the plumbing/transport system are key for gases.

Oil flow tends to be exactly analagous to water.

Then one can go to more exotic materials like printing ink in a printing plant, or grain in a feedmill, or spirits in a distillery, soda cans in a vending system, bits in a router, or even coins/bills in a cash control system.

And one can go to smaller or larger scale. It is one thing to talk about flow past a given point through a given conduit. A network of meters demands a topological analysis, and there are economies to be had through understanding detailed distribution.

Think about why people use just in time manufacturing and ask how they could do such without monitoring flow in the supply network.