I’m sorry to burst some of your bubbles, but not all rich people are rich because they “earned” it and not all poor people are poor because they are lazy, stupid or immoral.
That’s right Blalron, but fortunately I haven’t seen such an argument in the thread. Note (and Guinastasia, and clairobscur as well) the difference between “all” and “at least one.” Not all poor people are stupid or lazy, but people who are stupid or lazy will tend to the lower income of the economy, while people who are smart and hardworking will tend to the higher income range.
If you don’t understand this simple fact, debate is pretty much pointless. Hence, until you eliminate stupidity and laziness (or, equally effective, eliminate smarts and work ethic–see Harrison Bergeron), there will be an income gap.
You’re forgetting the fact that the personality and behavior patterns of those who aquire and maintain wealth are calculating it against tension correlated to suicide (on a first come first serve basis); without providing a means to release that tension in the same means with which they aquire the wealth. Until that means is established, or the standardizations are changed, it is certainly much more indicitive of a pointless life to horde commodity under such conditions.
-Justhink
People who violate trust or consent issues will aquire the most wealth. Smarter people can process more efficient algorithms in an automated personality system then those who don’t have the hardware to that degree. Anyone who operates consent manually will not horde wealth. You’re also forgetting that it doesn’t require work to violate consent, the system feeds upon itself (actually others) to offer evidence of perpetual meaning. I can assure you that somebody like a Michael Jordan has not worked hard in their life. Too much drama, too much syncronicity with regards to desire fulfillment and way to much lee-way to feel a sense of entitlement. Such a being is incapable of even processing what work is in a human sense; as their sentience is being virtualized from their primary indentured system. They don’t have enough existential pressure to have noticed that manual control exists. Just a smile and “I’m not much for philosophy” type attitude; “I get things done, I work hard”
Umm… that’s not work buddy. It’s work in the sense that energy is being released in chemical reactions against speed; it’s not work in the sense of sentient beings however.
-Justhink
These hypotheticals may have relevance once, but the distribution of wealth in a moden democracy is not so stratified. More likely, you’ll have 10 people making $50 million or more; 50 people making $10 million; 200 people making $1 million; 500 people making $500,000; 2000 people making $100,000; 10,000 people making $50,000 and 50,000 people making $30,000 or less; in an overall pyramid pattern.
Since, ideally, people can move up the tiers through their own hard work and luck, and since many of them would resent any attempt to block them in their pursuit of individual wealth, communism sucks. QED.
You managed to charachterize how a plutocracy runs in an information age - the evidence of theft needs to be encrypted a few more layers back; as even autonomous indentured systems aren’t totally stupid. One needs to calculate against the radar of this system. If you think those who have wealth are doing this with manual control, you’re extremely gullible IMO; that’s how the virtualization hooks the indentured systems of others. Not that they had a choice; but it’s the equivilent of falling back in a crowd of people who don’t want to see you die, and then boom you surrender your recursiveness to natures algorithms; either you get caught ot you don’t - it’s all cake from there. Nature is not like those who abstract it, it cares about survival, it’s cares about survival efficiency and it calculates brutality in personalities that most would be fooled into believing are about as human as human gets. The actual recursion of these beings is gone - operating language and behavior in means which exploit pockets of non-transparency.
Those who explore indentured system algorithms for a living to improve the quality of life for all beings is always going to run the risk of having a sentient being who surrendered to natures automation coming in contact with their extractions; to abuse it in a means which clearly the extracor understands is self-explanitory and pointless. Those who do these extractions don’t seize on opportunism, and they actually know the difference and can detect opportunism.
One form the automated system uses is that it requires work to capitolize upon opportunism. I guess those people who abstracted the pocket just weren’t working hard enough then, right? :rolleyes:
-Justhink
I DID?! Wow! I didn’t know I had it in me!
I guess those pilates workouts are starting to show.
Murder sucks. Just because people aren’t aware of a ‘sense organ’ which detects the concept of murder; doesn’t make it any more correct. Those who complain about a ‘limit’ to their wealth, are complaining about their freedom as a human being to commit murder - and to not place the transparency with which to veiw and detect the system in real-time. People who actually do work, don’t kill people - they don’t require laws. Those who do kill people as an expression of personal freedom are very interested in laws, making sure that no Law slips in there by accident which might hold them accountable for the mindlessly addictive behavior, by hovering over the law books and making postive that transparency is not imbedded within the code of a contract.
You’ve never observed a communist society Bryan, so I hardly think you’re qualified to comment. It’s also an irrelevant comment to the degree that those informed on the subject know that communism is an impossible structure to re-create in a society which has abstracted written law.
Once this occurs, the written law needs to be harmonized with human purpose of being in order to serve the same function as the automated system of a communist society (communist societies being so geographically isolated that they have no pressure to abstract written law code for conformity).
The only purpose written law serves right now is to stop abstractions which collapse the necessity for it in a world of written language. This is because those charged with the law have possession of all the societies abstraction technologies, instead of releasing them into the public to collapse the resource they’re using to funnel in the wealth.
It’s kinda like someone walking up and saying to you:
“Bryan, will you grant me the permission to speak with you and visit you as a potential friend in the making? I’m asking because you seem to behaving as though I’m offending you and there has been no reciprocation to this point.”
“Oh, I’m sorry dude; I’ve just been really busy, of course you can call and stop by and stuff.”
“Oh man, this dude I know is such a freak… he’s harassing me all the time, like wants to be my friend or something, total loser.”
This exchange is very typical amongst those who are automating their indentured systems against those who aknowledge the consent violation and are looking to diffuse it before the person uses gossip weaponry against them which anybody can use against anybody if they are half aware of how to create gossip currency and how to exchange it for sexual selection amongst other things. Automated systems tend to blank this stuff out completely; the contradictions, the unecessaryness of the gossip being exchanged, the virtualization of it absent any sense of truth.
That is precisely how wealthy individuals operate in this society.
This exact pattern has most likely been used by them, variations; undoubtedly. To suggest that they have earned something, or have worked, is not indicitive of the situation as far as predictive power and explanitory power are concerned. These types of systems reveal quite readily that they have abstracted their personality to nature; and are effectively completely virtualizaing all of their emotions and opinions.
Those who can read cause and effect to this degree can read the sub-concious: "This person was angry that two females were sleeping in their bed hoping for a 3-some because it allows them to virtualize charisma to attract the female accross the street who broke up with them and cheated on them. They will subsequently walk one of the females over to the other females house of this circle of friends because the opportunity for a form of ‘intervantion’ has presented itself. The effect will be the return of the ex-girlfriend within a period no greater than 5 days, to elicit communication with the x boyfriend. The only cause of the anger was to cause this scenario. Counter-intelligent beings also have a way of critisizing those who they want back. They’re entire emotional bodies and belief systems are entirely predictable. from observing even the most scant of circumstance: Two girls sleeping in their bed (which of course only happens because the male is counter-intelligently oriented in the first place - hooking the indentured systems of others).
It’s not just an issue of wealth, it’s an issue of slavery; and that wealth and slavery are correlated to theft in an absolute sense.
-Justhink
Justhink, your arguments would make more sense if they made more sense. You’re not going to convince anybody by heaping on the incomprehensible verbiage.
In other words, you’ll have to consistantly virtualize your counter-intelligence.
—So, you think that for instance the pants you’re wearing are an intrinsic element of yourself on par, with say, your legs?—
I have no idea what you mean. Do you deny that being born to loving parents is just as arbitrary as being born to rich parents? And that it has quite a huge impact on people’s happiness, just like money? Why not equalize things via a forced redistribution?
Alternatively, suppose due to my extreme ugliness and BO, I can’t get as much sex as most people can. I didn’t deserve these detriments, anymore than you deserved your attractiveness. Should I then demand that you spread for me to equal things out? Should we alter your features to make you ugly?
—I note that you didn’t respond to my point about political power similarily not deserved but inherited.—
I wasn’t aware you had made any such point. What, then, is your point? You are the one demanding that such things be redistributed EVEN if people’s unequal political power is in check.
—But what is usually considered fair when a group of people receive something none of them particulary deserves (say parents giving a bag of candies to their children) is to share what is received equally.—
But there is no “group of people here.” Different people get different things, arbitrarily. Talking about what is “fair” in the inevitable redistribution to an arbitrary group of people simply assumes the supposed conclusion.
—And yes, I assume this wealth is the right of anyone alive, because in Shodan’s hypothetical society, there’s no reason to attribute this fixed amount of wealth to anybody in particular.—
Again, that simply gives the game away right from the start: you assume that everyone deserves a share of what exists, so… everyone deserves a share. So what? How is this claim justified?
Forgive me if other people have said similar things. I’ve just sort of skimmed the posts.
If (A) justice consists (at least partly) in according resources on the basis of desert; (B) desert stems from the application of one’s own labour and intelligence; and © government exists to enforce justice, then:
-
Logically, there ought to be 100% estate tax. My kids haven’t “earned” and don’t “deserve” a penny of my money past the age when they leave my direct dependence (that is to say, once they have entered a time of their life in which the concepts of earning and deserving things make sense).
-
Somehow, luck must be removed from the picture. Otherwise there is no equal opportunity, and therefore no real way of determining how much is deserved.
Therefore, if you’re interested in creating a society in which people’s wealth corresponds to their desert, you’re actually introducing a hell of a lot more governmental interference in the economy than actually exists at present.
Of course, someone like Robert Nozick could go one step back and tell me that the relevant issue isn’t a reward for hard work or the application of intelligence. He argued that instead, the acquisition of a given holding implies an unlimited right to the use of that holding. It isn’t a matter of deserving. Having a given thing is morally neutral. Ayn Rand could also tell me that a good example of an immoral act would be to give a gift.
I think that the sort of society that attitude would create would be utterly sick. Considering the degree to which people don’t care about each other already, I think that Nozick’s principle, applied broadly, would lead to sheer rabid paranoia about one’s possessions, to the point that they cannot be sacrificed to help someone else out.
Look, spout these first principles and this unlimited freedom of property all you want, but society needs to be a hell of a lot more flexible than people on this thread seem to contend. My rights are important to me, your rights are important to you. But I’m willing to let them go a little bit in order to help out other people.
Beyond all this, stereotypes about what the rich and the poor are like are absolutely ludicrous. There are lazy rich people, hard-working rich people, lazy poor people, and hard-working poor people. Because society is far more complex than a rights-based analysis allows, and because every day, deontology must be balanced against consequentialism* to attempt to arrive, through creativity, realism and a scepticism of ideology, at the best decision, a single principle cannot be applied to society at large.
If there is a universal ethics, we haven’t figured it out yet. Best to be flexible until we have, and not apply our faulty conceptions of it on a universal basis without limitation.
This isn’t as clear as I’d like it to be. Maybe when I feel like it I’ll elaborate a bit more.
Ulterior
[sub]*i.e. duty or rights-based ethics vs. outcome ethics. Kant vs. Mill.[/sub]
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Apos *
It’s about the trend Apos. Look at history with a broad high resolution scope and pay attention to where innovation comes from. It comes from abstracting things which allow people greater actualization of their desire fulfillment with less and less time. When the innovators are given free-reign, they collapse resources, they don’t lock them up - that is a job for the demented who don’t realize that if they just let the innovators do their work they might not have even had to die in this lifetime.
I think it’s about demanding that people not become attractive, rather than demanding that they become ugly. The issue is that wealthy individuals have severe religious corruption in their brains and prefer to maintain any and or every illusion of glory and righteousness they can possibly afford to (which being so corrupt, they can afford to do quite a bit of this censure).
There is no need for redistribution if peoples unequal power is in check, any inequality in distribution would be a result of short sightedness of the ‘check system’ referred to here.
Aparently the idea of decision and free-will hasn’t caught up with you yet. That arbitraryness is constantly manipulated by humans who believe that they operate with intent. We’re at a point in society now, and may well have been for quite some time, where the entire concept of capitalism is outdated by our ability to bestow just about any property upon a human being they would so desire. The entire capitalistic system throws a big crowbar in serious research along the lines of collapsing these resources which you seem to want to defend to the death as being inherent, because they work better for you. Does it intimidate you if everybody selects your precise physical image to walk around with? Does that make you feel less special? Well, that sounds like something you should spend your life fighting against; as fighting against truth is always so admirable. :rolleyes:
Do you deserve a claim to me Apos? So what exactly happens to people who don’t deserve a claim of anything? Are they offered a means out of society, or is that state being used unecessarily to ensure that slavery is allowed so that capital can be horded. The entire philosophy is circular. Open up the gates for those people who don’t have a claim and then see what happens.
-Justhink
The definition of tradgedy in a historically human sense is the ignorant captain blocking the engine room from those who can repair it while the ship is going down: “I already checked it, there’s nothing we can do! We’ll just have to sink, that’s part of life, everyone settle down.”
They’re afraid of being embarassed.
You could just wake up one morning and hear on the radio:
“We solved eating, you no longer are required to eat to survive… you can still eat, but you don’t have to. Enjoy.”
A couple decades later:
“We solved external biological imaging, you’ll be recieving a package in the mail which allows you to store up to 10 different bio-images at a time, any one of which can be accessed as you so choose. Any of those ten slots can be replaced at will. Enjoy.”
Like that captain on the ship: “You can’t do that, we can’t do that, it’s not practical, I’ve already looked into it!”
Tragically, I don’t think many individuals, particularly of wealth, quite understand what’s going on historically right now. If they would stop wasting so much time censuring intelligence that might affect their ego’s or pocketbooks momentarily, they might be suprized to find that people will naturally gravitate towards collapsing the necessity for the entire system from which the problem emeges. They might actually enjoy the other life more.
These people just shoot themselves in the foot every generation.
You’re going to somehow tell me that these are societies most intelligent people? I don’t think so.
-Justhink
On the contrary, there are advantages to living in a society where no one has to fear that chance events like illness or factory closures will prevent them from having basic needs met.
Even if I’m sure I’ll never be in that situation, what about the guy next door? If he loses his ability to earn a living, is he going to steal my TV to buy food for his family? Probably not, if he knows the taxpayers will feed him until he can support himself.
It seems that the less of a problem you have with a large gap, the less of a problem you have seeing an emaciated kid eating from a bin.
I think every reasonable person with some iota of compassion in their being would agree with the UN Charter on Human Rights. Stating that “you have no God-given right to free food” appears equivalent to “you have no God-given right not to be shot dead”: Taxation, * ie. * civilisation, exists to protect us from both starvation and murder.
This debate concerns what level above UN-defined basics is “fair”. The number of people who are content to live solely on state-handouts is dwarfed by that of people willing to work but unable to via some misfortune, and in any case there are various means of compelling these few shirkers to work.
Personally, I have as little problem with “distorting the market” by progressive taxation and upping the minimum wage as distorting it via * eg. * anti-monopolisation legislation. If that leads to a slight (and it would never be too drastic) retardation in the rate of economic growth then so be it.
—I would say it is because in your case wealth is only determined by birth.—
Height is partially determined by birth too. So is raw intelligence. So is beauty. So is what sort of family you’re born into.
The problem is, just because you don’t deserve what you are born into, doesn’t mean that other people have legitimate claims upon it.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Apos *
**
I meant that you were comparing the inequality of size, intelligence, etc…to the inequality in wealth. I told you there was a difference between a characteristic which can’t be separated from you (your intelligence) and an arbitrary characteristic like wealth which is independant from you. You argued it was the same because I could take away from you your beauty or intelligence in the same way I could take away your money. Hence my question : do you actually believe that there’s no difference in nature between something which belong to you (your pants) and something which is part of your body (your legs).
As for being born from loving parents/rich parents, it’s the same : being loving is an inherent characteristic or trait. Being rich is not.
Being king isn’t, either.
For the same reason. You can’t force people to love other people. You can easily take/give money to them
If you’re not aware I made this point , reread my post. You wrote :
*Height is partially determined by birth too. So is raw intelligence. So is beauty. So is what sort of family you’re born into.
The problem is, just because you don’t deserve what you are born into, doesn’t mean that other people have legitimate claims upon it. *
And I responded that then, you could, following this argument :
- Decide to distribute wealth according to height. The taller, the more money you get.
2)This argument also imply that inheriting political power is exactly as justified as inheriting money (“just because you don’t deserve what you’re born into, doesn’t mean that other people have a legitimatre claim on it” …then if I’m born son of the king, the fact that I don’t deserve to be an absolute ruler doesn’t give you any claim to political power)
And asked you if you think redistribution of wealth on the basic of height, or hereditary power, which both are equally valid according to the arguments you used, are OK with you.
I would have prefered not to have to write a second time my arguments. Please pay attention to what you’re responding to.
Abslutely. I conceded this point. It’s as arbitrary to say that sharing equally the candies is “fair” than to say that one child taking 4/5 of them and the other 1/5 is “fair”. I just mentionned that usually (like in : for roughly 99,9% of the population), what is considered “fair” is that the candies are shared equally between the children. Now, you might disagree, and think that both way of sharing the candies are equally arbitrary.
For the same reason I gave for the candies. Because it’s usually considered as the fair way to share something when nobody has a particular claim on it. In Shodan world, nodody has any particular reason to get more or less than anybody else. Even if you think that inheritance is the natural way to distribute the wealth (and I wouldn’t concede this point), you’re just pushing the problem one step further : the parents, in Shodan’s society didn’t have any particularily legitimate claim to the wealth, either.
Basically, we’re in a situation where we’re supposed to share a given amount of wealth between several people, none of them deserving it or having a legitimate claim on it (say, the land and the palm trees on a desert island we just discovered) . So, you can think that 50% for me, 50% for you is as arbitrary as 90% for me, 10% for you, and that both are equally fair. I just assume that most people would consider the 50/50 distribution to be fairer.
SentientMeat:
It seems to me that you’re quite wrong. Why must the economic opinion that there is nothing fundamentally immoral about a large income gap be necessarily linked to callousness and heartlessness? This reminds me of the “Are Republicans evil?” thread. Disagree with me? You must be evil.
I would say that people have a basic right to air. Why? Because there’s plenty of air just floating around. You just inhale, and there you go. People have a basic right to not be shot. Why? Because your exercising of that right doesn’t require the efforts of anyone else. Further, you have the right to sit there like a bump on a frog and drool on yourself all day.
But the situation with food is different. Food isn’t falling from the sky, just waiting to be gobbled up. In order for there to be food, someone must create it. Someone must grow the corn, or raise and slaughter the cow, or perform whatever bizarre chemical ritual it is that results in Twinkies. So your “basic right to food” implies that you also have the right to command me to make you that food. And that conflicts with my basic right to sit there in quiet bumpitude. Your “basic, God-given rights” are those which require no one else to be realized. And free food isn’t on the list, sorry.
But if you really feel that food is a right, then fine. Get your lazy ass in the kitchen and make me a pot roast.
Jeff
The police and law courts?
Sorry, I did go too far in suggesting an equivalence between the two. However, you do imply that you find it acceptable for someone who cannot produce their own means of feeding themselves to starve to death.
The police and courts are used when someone has broken a law, and true, their existence curbs those who may wish to shoot me. However, the simple act of me not getting shot does not require any outside effort. Watch, I’ll demonstrate:
wills himself to not get shot
There. I triumphantly exercised my right to not get shot, and nobody lifted a muscle. The moral: Don’t confuse the necessary framework required to protect rights with the rights themselves. If there were no police, and no courts, I would still have that right, with or without anybody around to help me protect it.
Apology accepted. And how are you defining “acceptable” there? I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that you make enough money that you could go find a homeless person, invite him into your home to live with you, and feed him (assuming your income is somewherea round average or greater). You may have to give up some luxuries, but a studio apartment and some Ramen are pretty cheap - you could get by. Since I’m assuming you don’t have a homeless person living with you, may I assume that you find the starvation and misery of that homeless person “acceptable”?
The point is, I think starvation is very unfortunate. While I admit that I don’t lie awake at night, racked by sobbing, pondering the plight of the foodless, I think the fact that people are hungry is sad. I don’t think calling it “acceptable” or “unaccepable” is really appropriate, given that it’s inevitable. There’s no conceivable way to feed everyone, so whether hunger is acceptable or not, we better get used to it.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is as follows, if you’re married to this notion of “acceptability”: Is it more unacceptable for a man to go hungry, or for me to point a gun at your head and force you to feed him?
And I’m still waiting for that pot roast to which you believe I have a God-given right.
Jeff
EJ: Why must the economic opinion that there is nothing fundamentally immoral about a large income gap be necessarily linked to callousness and heartlessness?
Well, if a large income gap causes increased deprivation and destitution, and we nonetheless insist that we see no moral problem with a large income gap, then we are pretty much condoning increased deprivation and destitution as morally acceptable, and you can see where that would strike people as callous and heartless.
The interesting question, of course, is whether a large income gap does cause increased deprivation and destitution, and if so, how large does the gap have to be before that undesirable effect kicks in?
So your “basic right to food” implies that you also have the right to command me to make you that food. And that conflicts with my basic right to sit there in quiet bumpitude.
That doesn’t invalidate it as a right, though; all individual rights are restricted in some ways because they inevitably conflict with other rights. There’s no such thing as an unlimited individual right. Just because I have a fundamental right to free speech, for example, doesn’t mean I must be permitted to recite “Jabberwocky” at the top of my lungs at a symphony concert.
Similarly, just because I have a fundamental right to sustenance doesn’t mean that I must be permitted to command free food from other people whenever I wish. All rights exist in a constant system of checks and balances where we try to defend each right as much as possible without unduly encroaching on other rights.
- Your “basic, God-given rights” are those which require no one else to be realized. And free food isn’t on the list, sorry. *
That’s the old distinction between “positive liberties” and “negative liberties”, and it doesn’t really stand up logically. The trouble is that in practice, there’s no right which “requires no one else to be realized”. The right to a speedy trial, for example, or to counsel, requires somebody else to set up and maintain a legal system and to apply it to you fairly. Even a right so seemingly independent as that of free speech cannot possibly be “realized” without a whole lot of legal machinery to defend the free speakers from those who try to suppress their speech. The “realization” of any of our rights ultimately requires somebody else to do something for us: rights to food, shelter, etc., are not unique in that respect.