8 ms·
She's completely correct that it's the culture of the rich which make them rich. What she's completely wrong about is that it's their morality that makes it so
by Produce 14y ago
She's completely correct that it's the culture of the rich which make them rich.
What she's completely wrong about is that it's their morality that makes it so.
We, the rich, the middle and upper classes, are the ones who fund prisons, we are the ones who do not share our food with our neighbors, we are the ones who refuse to mix with them and share our culture.
It's like Terrence McKenna said - "Culture is not your friend". Culture is a tribal way of life - it's a gang sign, whether that sign be dressing in red or blue or wearing a suit. It's our culture which judges that those who perform certain jobs are more deserving of comfort than others. Yet without that farmer growing his crops how would you eat? Without that garbage collector removing waste, how would you stay healthy? Without that secretary, how would your business function properly? It's these value judgements which really hurt us. Someone will always need to do those jobs (until our machinery is smart enough, anyway) and, as it stands, they will always be deemed by the rest of us to be undeserving of the comfort that we have just because we do something essentially far less fundamental.
Just as power corrupts, so inequality breeds resentment and poisons society. There's a word for the solution I'm hinting at but it's too dangerous to even mention.
- eli_gottlieb 14y agoYou should realize you can actually say "socialism" on this site.
- Produce 14y agoBzzzt! Different word. Socialism does not address inequality of power.
- Jun8 14y agoI don't know what the exact unutterable "dangerous" solution you have in mind, but I can assure you, that's not it. The concept of inequality is bred into the human psyche (our hardware or software), you cannot get rid of simplistic social constructs such as communism, etc. Even if technology advances to the level of creating robots to do all menial tasks, our concepts and need for inequality will not go away (for a more pop but stronger version of this idea see Mr. Smith's monolog to Morpheus in The Matrix). Now, there is a solution that will work and is dangerous: Huxley's eugenics/genetic engineering solution described in Brave New World. And we're fast approaching that solution, I think.
- Produce 14y ago>The concept of inequality is bred into the human psyche If it's inherent then why are there examples of societies which lack it?
- Jun8 14y agoThe concept of a society with a strong form of equality is, I think, an utopia, and AFAIK, no such society exists. Even if you look at primitive societies, there are better hunters, the tribe leader has more wives than the regular guy, the shaman is revered, etc. One can say that's not what this discussion is about, i.e. it's the potential for equality, the right to be equal rather than the radical definition above, but then the discussion becomes muddled, how to measure inequality, economically (e.g. the Gini index), by asking people, etc. "Inequality" then becomes a very complicated word like "democracy" or "justice". I think it's interesting to draw a comparison with democracy: "true" democracy, i.e. radical democracy, is likewise impossible to maintain. The closest form in Athens degenerated to tyranny many times. And probably Athens was the largest collection of people where such pure democracy is feasible, i.e. it cannot be scaled up to a whole country. Judging from the lack of other examples in human history, one can see that the order of things in Athens was not the natural state of society. So, I maintain that pure forms "liberté, égalité, fraternité" are not practical and cannot be achieved. Now, one can argue back, saying "Yeah, yeah, we know that, but surely you can rank countries on how much they have achieved these, e.g. surely no one would debate that the US is more democratic than Saudi Arabia." This, of course, is true, but (i) means that we should leave behind "a brotherhood of men, and no possession, too" crap behind and (ii) leads us back to the question of measuring inequality.
- mhartl 14y agoI'm genuinely curious. Could you email me the word? My address is in my profile. I promise not to share it.
- Produce 14y agoAnarchism!
- mhartl 14y agoIndeed, that was my guess. I'm confident anarchism is not a good solution to any problem, but I fear you may yet get your wish. I doubt you'll like the result. (I'm sure I won't.)
- Produce 14y agoThere are many misconceptions about anarchism. It's not about smashing things up or living in a state of chaos. It's merely a lack of hierarchy, where everyone is truly equal. It's simply about putting no man above another. We can still organise in order to get things done. We can still have customs about what's right and wrong. The only difference is that we have true equality. I don't see what's so scary about that. The system we have now - that's scary!
- dkokelley 14y ago> Yet without that farmer growing his crops how would you eat? Without that garbage collector removing waste, how would you stay healthy? Without that secretary, how would your business function properly? It's these value judgements which really hurt us. So, our society (which may or may not be structured around our competing cultures) has a mechanism for valuing these goods. We have the principles of economics - supply and demand. The things you mentioned are all objectively good to have. They're essential, even. But we've become very good at generating these goods. We've studied crops and health to maximize the good that these things provide, and we can now generate them with fairly little skill and effort. The reason that people who perform these ESSENTIAL tasks earn so little is that the supply of people ready and willing to do them is so great compared to the amount we need them to produce. If the supply of people who could perform these jobs decreased, or the demand for the goods they produce increased, the workers could demand higher wages. I don't disagree that there are many factors that can and are used by "the rich" to keep "the poor" down, but I disagree that how society values these basic goods is really a significant source of this discrimination.