The Divide between the Poor and the Rich

[Mavorpen]

Rich's disposable income increasing by $1000 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $700.
VS
Rich's disposable income decreasing by $10000 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $0.00.

Tough choice... We could either have high tide that lifts everyone up or tsunami that reduces standard of living.
Yea, I take the first one.

Ok. How about:

Rich's disposable income decreasing by $1 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $700.00.

That's socialism.

[Great Nepal]

Rich's disposable income increasing by $1000 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $700.
VS
Rich's disposable income decreasing by $10000 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $0.00.

Tough choice... We could either have high tide that lifts everyone up or tsunami that reduces standard of living.
Yea, I take the first one.

Ok. How about:

Rich's disposable income decreasing by $1 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $700.00.

Still the first one. More people are in benefit that way.

[Dyakovo]

Ok. How about:

Rich's disposable income decreasing by $1 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $700.00.

Still the first one. More people are in benefit that way.

So you'd choose the impossible over the possible...

[Nidaria]

It would be better if everyone was richer. The wealthy class is not inherently bad, and in fact it is sometimes necessary for a functioning nation.

[The Black Forrest]

Ok. How about:

Rich's disposable income decreasing by $1 and Poor's disposable income increasing by $700.00.

Still the first one. More people are in benefit that way.

The standard of living of the wealthy class does not noticeably decline with taxes. In fact theirs would go up by simply improving the standard of living of the lower classes. Hmmmm kind of sounds like leaches......

[The Grand Duchy of Marinia]

[quote="The UK in Exile";p="11664213"][quote="The Grand Duchy of Marinia";p="11664174"][quote="The UK in Exile";p="11664061"]



athletes don't get medals for beating every challenger. [quote]

Yeah, they do. In mixed martial arts, you get a belt, in the Olympics, you get a medal, in other sports, you get a trophy, or a ring. That's how competition works.

And besides, if the rules are arbitrary, then they are made to be broken. If rules are arbitrary, then anyone can change them. If rules are arbitrary, then they have no more effect on a person's upward mobility than any other roadblock in life. My assertion is that lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, manipulating, and physical beatings are included in the model for natural human behavior, right along side hard work, diligence, dedication, intelligence, innovation and strength. They are simply two sides on the same coin (the coin being a metaphor for methods of advancement). The ends justify the means. You can set up a set of rules that say lying, cheating, etc. are not allowed as a method of personal advancement, but the rules only have as much power as you do. If someone strong enough to beat you, or smart enough to outsmart you comes along and decides to play by their own rules, who is going to stop them? When this happens, you have a clash of ideologies, and the side that can use both sides of the advancement coin effectively will win.

[The UK in Exile]

athletes don't get medals for beating every challenger.

Yeah, they do.

no they don't, they get a Medal for beating every challenger in the context of the rules.

false start? no medal for you.
take steroids? no medal for you.
magic button in your rapier that lets you score at will? no medal for you.

If someone strong enough to beat you, or smart enough to outsmart you comes along and decides to play by their own rules, who is going to stop them?

everyone else who happens to benefit from the rules, the athletes, the spectators and the sports organizers, the millions of people who don't believe in dog eat dog and have a vested interested in enforcing that vision.

your assertion that lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, manipulating, and physical beatings are included in the model for natural human behavior is wrong, because there is no "model for natural human behaviour" and the one you've advanced, athletics, is bollocks.

[Grenartia]

It would be better if everyone was richer. The wealthy class is not inherently bad, and in fact it is sometimes necessary for a functioning nation.

Wealth is a relative concept. For instance, if you moved to Somalia with $1000 (USD), I would not be surprised if you were among the richest people there, if not, the single richest person. However, here in the States, $1000 is barely even a drop in the bucket.

So is it not better for everybody to have the same amount of wealth?

[Occalgavia]

Yeah, they do.

no they don't, they get a Medal for beating every challenger in the context of the rules.

false start? no medal for you.
take steroids? no medal for you.
magic button in your rapier that lets you score at will? no medal for you.

If someone strong enough to beat you, or smart enough to outsmart you comes along and decides to play by their own rules, who is going to stop them?

everyone else who happens to benefit from the rules, the athletes, the spectators and the sports organizers, the millions of people who don't believe in dog eat dog and have a vested interested in enforcing that vision.

your assertion that lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, manipulating, and physical beatings are included in the model for natural human behavior is wrong, because there is no "model for natural human behaviour" and the one you've advanced, athletics, is bollocks.

Cheating is accounted for in the rules insomuch that there are set consequences for those discovered to have been cheating. So what if they're smart enough to outsmart all those who would enforce the consequences for cheating? If you cheat well enough, then you won't be discovered, and so there will be no consequences imposed - and it would run counter to the rules to impose a penalty against somebody who had not been discovered to be cheating.

Take off the black-and-white goggles, and try considering it as a loophole. The very idea of a loophole is that it seems to run counter to the spirit of the rules, perhaps is objectionable on moral or ethical grounds, but does not actually constitute an actionable violation.

[The UK in Exile]

no they don't, they get a Medal for beating every challenger in the context of the rules.

false start? no medal for you.
take steroids? no medal for you.
magic button in your rapier that lets you score at will? no medal for you.



everyone else who happens to benefit from the rules, the athletes, the spectators and the sports organizers, the millions of people who don't believe in dog eat dog and have a vested interested in enforcing that vision.

your assertion that lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, manipulating, and physical beatings are included in the model for natural human behavior is wrong, because there is no "model for natural human behaviour" and the one you've advanced, athletics, is bollocks.

Cheating is accounted for in the rules insomuch that there are set consequences for those discovered to have been cheating. So what if they're smart enough to outsmart all those who would enforce the consequences for cheating? If you cheat well enough, then you won't be discovered, and so there will be no consequences imposed - and it would run counter to the rules to impose a penalty against somebody who had not been discovered to be cheating.

Take off the black-and-white goggles, and try considering it as a loophole. The very idea of a loophole is that it seems to run counter to the spirit of the rules, perhaps is objectionable on moral or ethical grounds, but does not actually constitute an actionable violation.

I'm not sure you understand what I'm arguing. I'm certainly not arguing that people don't sucessfully cheat (or exploit loopholes) in athletics. I'm arguing that the existence of the concept of cheating fatally undermines the arguement that athletics demonstrates how human nature is to win at any cost.

its Asshole nature to win at all costs.

[Occalgavia]

Cheating is accounted for in the rules insomuch that there are set consequences for those discovered to have been cheating. So what if they're smart enough to outsmart all those who would enforce the consequences for cheating? If you cheat well enough, then you won't be discovered, and so there will be no consequences imposed - and it would run counter to the rules to impose a penalty against somebody who had not been discovered to be cheating.

Take off the black-and-white goggles, and try considering it as a loophole. The very idea of a loophole is that it seems to run counter to the spirit of the rules, perhaps is objectionable on moral or ethical grounds, but does not actually constitute an actionable violation.

I'm not sure you understand what I'm arguing. I'm certainly not arguing that people don't sucessfully cheat (or exploit loopholes) in athletics. I'm arguing that the existence of the concept of cheating fatally undermines the arguement that athletics demonstrates how human nature is to win at any cost.

its Asshole nature to win at all costs.

I'll admit that I jumped in at that post. If that's what you're arguing, there are plenty of arguments to be made, but that one there, I don't think was one of them.

[The Grand Duchy of Marinia]

Yeah, they do.

no they don't, they get a Medal for beating every challenger in the context of the rules.

false start? no medal for you.
take steroids? no medal for you.
magic button in your rapier that lets you score at will? no medal for you.

If someone strong enough to beat you, or smart enough to outsmart you comes along and decides to play by their own rules, who is going to stop them?

everyone else who happens to benefit from the rules, the athletes, the spectators and the sports organizers, the millions of people who don't believe in dog eat dog and have a vested interested in enforcing that vision.

your assertion that lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, manipulating, and physical beatings are included in the model for natural human behavior is wrong, because there is no "model for natural human behavior" and the one you've advanced, athletics, is bollocks.

You're splitting hairs on the medal issue. The grand qualifier is whether or not you can get away with it. In order to get away with it, you have to outsmart the people who set up the rules. If you can do it, then you win.
As for there being no such thing as a model for natural human behavior...come on man, really? Do you really think all your sports heroes are as clean and shiny and honorable as they make themselves out to be? People that think they can get away with breaking the rules will break the rules. If, for example, an athlete snaps and decides his rules are to kill the judges that don't give him medals, do you really think any of those doddering old has-been's could stop him in a one on one fight? Now say that the demented athlete convinces all the other athletes to kill all the judges and re-write the rules of the games, how many armies do you think it would take to stop them? The only thing standing in between said demented athlete army and murdering all the judges are the athletes that would have won by following the old rules ( because they are invested), and by definition, there are fewer medalists than competitors. The french revolution shows how delicate that balance between civilization and anarchy is, and how easily it breaks down into a mob-run murder circus.That IS the model for natural human behavior. Everyone believes in dog-eat-dog.

[The UK in Exile]

no they don't, they get a Medal for beating every challenger in the context of the rules.

false start? no medal for you.
take steroids? no medal for you.
magic button in your rapier that lets you score at will? no medal for you.



everyone else who happens to benefit from the rules, the athletes, the spectators and the sports organizers, the millions of people who don't believe in dog eat dog and have a vested interested in enforcing that vision.

your assertion that lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting, manipulating, and physical beatings are included in the model for natural human behavior is wrong, because there is no "model for natural human behavior" and the one you've advanced, athletics, is bollocks.

You're splitting hairs on the medal issue. The grand qualifier is whether or not you can get away with it. In order to get away with it, you have to outsmart the people who set up the rules. If you can do it, then you win.
As for there being no such thing as a model for natural human behavior...come on man, really? Do you really think all your sports heroes are as clean and shiny and honorable as they make themselves out to be? People that think they can get away with breaking the rules will break the rules. If, for example, an athlete snaps and decides his rules are to kill the judges that don't give him medals, do you really think any of those doddering old has-been's could stop him in a one on one fight? Now say that the demented athlete convinces all the other athletes to kill all the judges and re-write the rules of the games, how many armies do you think it would take to stop them? The only thing standing in between said demented athlete army and murdering all the judges are the athletes that would have won by following the old rules ( because they are invested), and by definition, there are fewer medalists than competitors. The french revolution shows how delicate that balance between civilization and anarchy is, and how easily it breaks down into a mob-run murder circus.That IS the model for natural human behavior. Everyone believes in dog-eat-dog.

Dogs don't. for a start.

this post has been a very interesting trip into your psyche, however it is not desperately reflective of anything I said, anything you said, and reality.

[The Grand Duchy of Marinia]

Just out of curiosity, have you ever seen what two hungry dogs in a pit will do to each other? Just saying...

And how is the French Revolution not reflective of reality? Seeing as how it happened IN reality. Not being snarky here, I genuinely want to know how you explain that.

[The UK in Exile]

Just out of curiosity, have you ever seen what two hungry dogs in a pit will do to each other? Just saying...

And how is the French Revolution not reflective of reality? Seeing as how it happened IN reality. Not being snarky here, I genuinely want to know how you explain that.

have you ever seen two dogs starve themselves, dig a pit, climb in it, then tear each other apart?

two dogs in a pit is equally as artificial as competitive sport.

I have to confess, I got bored of your murder fantasy and skipped to the end. hence I missed the bit where you displayed a brutal mis-understanding of the french revolution. it wasn't dog v dog, it was dog V pit.

[Grenartia]

Everyone believes in dog-eat-dog.

I don't.

[Nidaria]

It would be better if everyone was richer. The wealthy class is not inherently bad, and in fact it is sometimes necessary for a functioning nation.

Wealth is a relative concept. For instance, if you moved to Somalia with $1000 (USD), I would not be surprised if you were among the richest people there, if not, the single richest person. However, here in the States, $1000 is barely even a drop in the bucket.

So is it not better for everybody to have the same amount of wealth?

Wealth is relative to some extent, but standard of living is not. Even the poorest in the United States enjoy a better standard of living than the middle-class (if there is one) in Somalia. That said, it is better if everyone enjoys an increase in standard of living, even if some get a larger increase than other.

No, it is not because some people deserve more wealth through their merits than others.

[Tmutarakhan]

Still the first one. More people are in benefit that way.

So you'd choose the impossible over the possible...

It's not even slightly impossible. In the 40's and 50's, marginal tax rates were raised beyond 90% for the highest brackets, although the "one for you, nineteen for me" rates only hit a small handful of people; by the early 60's that was starting to hit more of the wealthy, so Kennedy "cut taxes" to a top rate of 70% (just try to get that through Boehner's House!) and everybody, Republican and Democrat alike, thought this was great. The result was a long sustained economic boom (of course, I expect people to point out that America's boom years were helped in no small part by the fact that Europe and Japan had been recently flattened).

[Avenio]

Look, nothing works all the time. There isn't a single thing on this planet that can't be corrupted by human stupidity, which is why Social Darwinism doesn't always work.

'Corrupted by human stupidity' in this case being a euphemism for 'reality'.

Hell, Natural Selection doesn't work when you start throwing asteroids at the dinosaurs.

Well, see, natural selection doesn't even work according to the pure Darwinian principles that were originally laid out. It's not 'survival of the fittest', it's 'survival of the least inadequate', whereby luck and circumstance play an enormous role in which species are successful and which aren't.

And that's the problem here; natural selection, as it actually works, is what is at play in the real world - it's all about luck and circumstance and serendipity, about complex systems rolling a nigh-infinite number of dice to pick 'winners' and 'losers'. The tale of the heroic person pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is just that - a myth that we tell ourselves in order to try to feel better in a blindingly fast-paced and complex world that is entirely out of our control.

But the basic theory stands. Yes, rich people get rich by exploiting other people. In order to be able to exploit people, you have to have intelligence, the ability to manipulate, and you have to fight -a lot.

Or be born to someone who is rich.

As I said, the strongest wins. What I don't get is why people assume that those in power are always going to be in power. For every Ptolomy, for every George the III, there is a King Louis the VI. But on the other hand, for every insane or "mediocre" ruler there is also a William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Emperor Chin, Han Dynasty, George Washington...

No. At best, statistically, for every William the Conqueror there are four mediocre rulers like Nerva who manage, despite the apparent Darwinian forces working against them, to hold onto power for generations. The fact that the great are so outnumbered by the mediocre and poor suggests that SD is not working in any meaningful sense..

As for some of the guys on my list you don't like, yeah, some of them had advantages others don't. But had Mark Zuckerberg been a drunken frat boy instead of improving his programming skills and working on his one good idea, we would never have heard of him.

And if Zuckerberg had been just as brilliant as he is, but was born to a Zimbabwean refugee in Johannesburg, we would have never heard of him.

Bill Gates was upper middle-class, to be sure, but if he hadn't had a crazy idea and put his effort into making his idea a reality, we never would have heard of him either.

Or if his lawyer father hadn't written up such a beneficial initial contract with IBM.

Sahid Khan was given an amazing education, and he turned around and invented the single piece car bumper design that every car manufacturer on the planet uses. You are proving my point!

No, because Khan had opportunities that precious few people on the planet have.

And you seem to be forgetting that all of the guys on the list, high and low, were insanely smart. Do you really want to argue that Abe Lincoln wasn't better than everyone around him in order to rise as far as he did? How about Ben Carson? Colin Powell? Andrew Carnegie?

Yes, they were great people. I haven't contested that. The issue is that the people that rise to become great people are overwhelmingly coming from affluence - the fact that you can name only three people that rose from genuine poverty to privilege proves that. If social Darwinism worked, then there would be many, many more people that climbed the social ladder to the top - the fact that they don't, and that there are great people today who will be born, live and die in obscurity simply because of the circumstances of their birth means that the entire theory is thrown into question.

Also, don't be offended because you are poor.

When did I say I was poor?

Hell, I'm poor. I've been homeless. But I'm not sitting around, waiting for a handout and writing manifestos about how put upon the poor are. I've got student loans, I'm going to college, I study and work my ass off to get the 3.4 gpa I have. Is it tough? Yes. Getting out of poverty is hard, but not impossible. If it were easy, we would never improve. The system doesn't promise wealth, success, or happiness to anyone. The promise was that you would have a chance, and you do. Don't take it personally that I included the "sober enough" bit. If it doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you. But something on that list does. It could be intelligence, it could be motivation, it could be many things, but the onus isn't on anyone other than yourself to figure out what it is and to fix it.

The bootstrap tale is a myth - nothing more. You are a product of the circumstances of your life.

No, the socialist victimizes himself in order to get out of being responsible for improving his own life.

The socialist knows how hard others' lives are and wants to do his utmost to help them achieve success.

As I posted before, if you think you have what it takes to be a wealthy person then you have to prove it. Athletes don't get gold medals for thinking they deserve one, they get gold medals for beating every other challenger out there.[/quote]

[Sociobiology]

Just out of curiosity, have you ever seen what two hungry dogs in a pit will do to each other?

wild dogs if even roughly equally matched will leave each other alone, only dogs conditioned to fight, fight in that circumstance.

but this really has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

[The Grand Duchy of Marinia]

hence I missed the bit where you displayed a brutal mis-understanding of the french revolution. it wasn't dog v dog, it was dog V pit.

Clever, but wrong. Oh, sure, it started that way, but once the nobles were dead or locked up, the mob turned on itself and the leaders of the revolution broke up into warring factions.

Lets shed the sports metaphors, they aren't going anywhere and they make me sad. I'm not advocating murder as a means of human advancement. I'm not a proponent of eugenics. If anything, I argue that in the absence of an absolute moral authority, the only logical law is pragmatic laissez-faire individualism, that each person should act in a way that suits their best interests, and by doing so, society at large is improved through self-reliance. Obviously, in order to have a society, there must be a few basic rules, I'm not an anarchist. But comprehensive altruism enforced by law does nothing to improve either the individual OR society; rather it enslaves the productive individual to a machine that cares for neither the individual or personal self-improvement, but concerns itself with an arbitrary baseline of "fairness". I do not ask for, nor do I receive welfare, despite my poverty, and see no reason why the fruits of my labor, such as they are, should be shared among those who labor not at all. As for the wealthiest members of society, I don't care how they got there because, whether it be by honest or nefarious means, they are doing what they can to take care of themselves. That's fine, just as long as they don't complain when someone else uses their methods against them.

[The Grand Duchy of Marinia]

Avenio, the guys I've listed are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'm using them as examples, not an exhaustive list. Now, if I were to list them all, the list would be a fairly small percentage compared to the population at large in any generation, so you have that part right. But it's a numbers game; in any given crowd of people there will be a small number of people with above-average intelligence. Of that number, even fewer will have the direction and motivation to put their intelligence to it's best use. So, out of the crowd, if one person has the combined necessary traits to rise above the rest, then that person is the "fittest". The only way this seems like a failed system (that I can come up with anyways) is if you start from the assumption that all are born with equal amounts of smarts and motivation. But it's not an either-or situation. As you put it, luck coincidence, environment, etc. play into who comes out on top as well, which is why, a lot of the time, wealth is built by generations rather than a single person. Say a man's grandfather is able to save 100 grand, and passes it on to him. If that man has a working knowledge of economics, he will invest that money and grow it over his lifetime and then pass that on to his grandson, and so on. In that case, wealth is created over time by people that aren't geniuses, but people who have educated themselves in the management of money, something even people of below-average intelligence can grasp. So even if a person isn't able to amass a fortune by himself, he can create the seed by which his family flourishes. But the bootstrap theory cannot be entirely discounted if even a single person is able to do it, and, as you mentioned, I've listed 3. So it's not impossible. It is difficult, but not impossible, and to tell someone they are wasting their time by trying is to discourage that person's potential, and it's kind of a dick move. After all, no one is so all-knowing that they can say whether a person will succeed or fail at a given thing, especially in a world where accident, luck, and environment can play a role.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems that you believe that accidents, luck and environment prove the theory wrong.

I would contend that rather than proving the theory wrong, they simply make the theory more complicated by including variables not accounted for in the past. The basic theory, call it the laboratory environment theory, is sound, but by putting it to the test in the real world you find out how many other outcomes you can have in a state of relative chaos. Sometimes you will get utter failure, sometimes you get unparalleled success. most of the time you get average.

[Caninope]

#1 is impossible, why would the Rich let Peasants have any money?

If the first option is impossible, why have standards of living increased so much over the past few millennia?

[Caninope]

Still the first one. More people are in benefit that way.

So you'd choose the impossible over the possible...

It's not impossible for everyone's living standards to increase.

It happens all the time.

[Tahar Joblis]

If the poor got richer and their living standard increased, even if the rich got richer, would that be okay with you?

OR

Would you rather the difference between the poor and the rich was less, even if the living standard of the poor didn't increase?

It would not bother me if a rising tide did indeed lift all boats.

But this is not what we have seen happen. Inflation-adjusted median income has been stagnant since Reagan was elected. Debt-to-income has increased. There is no trickle-down effect, there is no lifting all boats, unless you provide an adequate social safety net and the tools - particularly public education - necessary to insure future mobility. And the only way to pay for it without keeping the poor poor is by taxing the rich.