Inequality is bad for society?
Recently I was stunned a bit by a question to one of my comments.
In this comment I state something by Captain Obvious: That inequality is bad for society. (And from context is was clear we are not talking about that one professor has a 10% bigger working room than the other one.)
And the question was: Why do you think that inequality is bad for society?
I was stunned because I thought the answer for this question is something you learn somewhere around your early teens, for example in history lessons.
The answer, in short, is of course: Because it breeds bad emotions, ineffectiveness, fights, suffering and ultimately upheaval, roughly in this order.
Just take a look at the so-called “gated communities”: Do those look like a healthy society? They look petrified with their stiff rules and their exclusions of everyone who is not rich enough to buy himself in.
A society, like an ecosystem, is healthy when it is in constant change. Things that never change… biology has a word for them. Those things are called dead.
Throughout the ages, from the earliest records we have, inequality was a problem.
A slight inequality is not bad, it may even be good. But the more the rich differ from the poor, the more the society gets torn into fighting factions.
Historically the tipping point has mostly been hunger. If a big part of the people in an area starve, they have nothing to lose anymore, and even armed soldiers cannot stop the resulting plundering of palaces.
It is no coincidence that in many antique civilizations the king was also the highest priest (or god) and one of his core duties was to ensure a good harvest. There were even civilizations where a king was ritually killed when there was a drought or flooding.
Interestingly the most equal times were always the results of great catastrophes. The four apocalyptic horsemen of equality are: war, revolution, state-collapse or plague. Between those events, inequality was rising until the next “Great Leveler”[1].
But I don’t thing it is a good idea to wait for one of those to happen. We should do something against the rising inequality before.
[1] See: The Great Leveler, excerpt here
In my opinion the wish for equality comes from the wish for justice.
I think one problem is that maybe forcing people to equality is not right. So by forcing people we took parts of their freedom.
From a philosophical perspective freedom may be a antithesis to equality. So it is a hard dilemma to solve.
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There is no freedom in inequality.
Well, that is not really true, there is a certain type of freedom in it: The freedom of the starving to die. Or, as a famous saying goes:
The law in it's heavenly justice forbids everyone to steal bread and sleep under bridge - the poor and the rich alike.
Yes, of yourse equality has the roots in justice.
And there is not much justice when a nurse, who maybe saves hundreds of lives in her work, gets paid in a year what an "investment banker", who kills hundreds in his career, gets paid in a day.
As far as rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer I completely agree. There is a major issue here and it's the fact that in order to get true equality we need to be unfair at some points...
For example: True equality would mean that a sick kid in a hospital bed gets higher attention and more "valuable", at least in terms of $, than a normal, healthy kid in a wealthy family. This is obviously unfair, because one kid gets let's say 100$ in attention while another gets 2000$ in attention, but it's the "right" thing to do. In order to bring forward equality we need to pay attention to these facts.
However, there is an issue that has gone through my mind so many times I can't avoid but bringing it up... for example, my stepfather.
My stepfather is not a bad person by any means, but he consumes the money he gets, he buys beer and gets drunk and listens to music all day like the house was a disco. He gets like 200$ per month and spends all these 200$ per month on pleasuring himself. That's his right, I'm not arguing against that, but now let's look at another person.
This other person also earns 200$ per month, but spends 50$ in helping sick kids and spends 150$ giving funds to companies to help them grow and do more. Companies may decide to give back some of their growth back to him in form of dividends, so this person may earn next month 201.4$ for example...
Again, this is just HIS choice, he decided to spend his money on helping sick kids and spends part of it in earning more while giving support to companies he thinks are good for whatever reason... but this action will in turn give him increased returns until eventually he will have 400$ per month while my stepfather will still have 200$ per month. Can we blame this setting? is money at fault here? If the person X reaches 800$ and decides to start spending 500$ in beer, beer prices will increase due to increased demand, which in turn will make the 200$ earned by my stepfather less valuable... repeat that for a few hundred years and we get to the modern days where some people have several millions while others have pennies' worth.
The only way to fix this ridiculous system is to remove money altogether from our conceptions AND to work towards individualism and self-conscience. But that would mean WAY too many other problems would rise... I'm a simple person, no complex religion or beliefs, no weird tastes, nothing like that, with a roof, some food, a computer, internet and some friends to talk and I'm happy; but there are people that can't be happy unless they're on top of the trend, unless they're cool, unless they have a Lambo, unless they have golden toilets, unless they show off their success to others, because they have high ego and pride. This is mostly caused by greedy companies who want money and make trends and brainwash people into believing that's WHAT WE should be doing when it's exactly the opposite.
I favor equality, the equality that goes by saying we're all different and we should help each other with our strengths while covering our weaknesses... we don't need to bleed each other dry, there is more than enough world (and outer space) for us. If all those wars and terrorism and wasted money worldwide went into development of space modules for colonization of planets some of us would surely enjoy some time at the moon.
I hope this world changes, I've tried doing my part, and you're doing it too, let's hope none of the horsemen come for us to fix our mistakes.
I think you mean not money, but the wealth-storing function of money. (and keep the counting to save haggling when exchanging a live chicken for a car tire)
There fans of deflationary money. And other concepts. But they all lack an important point: They are of no interest for a lot of people,. especially the important (=rich) ones. And most of those concepts would need a lot of change in society anyway.
Historically the wealth build-up has been destroyed by either the horseman or by the ruler just declaring every debt forgiven. (You can read such things even in the bible).
Yes, this post actually got me in a train of thought, specially since I'm also learning to trade stocks and other commodities. I agree it's not money itself, but the fact that it's used as a mean to determine wealth (and power). I was reading up on market capital and other theories and how money can appear out of thin air and disappear as well, it's so ridiculous it makes me wonder how we've kept such a system for so long. Then again, as you said: "They are of no interest for a lot of people,. especially the important (=rich) ones"
It's such a shame that we would need to become the rulers to even attempt to change stuff... thanks for the insightful post and reply :D
It is a difficult subject, but inequality can also manifest into ambition in some people that go on to do amazing things.
People that want to do amazing things don't do so because of inequality. They do it to do something amazing. Inequality only means most people have it harder than it should be to do amazing things.
What you probably mean is that some can show unusual fervor for earning money because they envy others.
But for every Warren Buffet there is also a Bernie Madoff.
I do think inequality is bad but that doesn't mean I also believe it shouldn't exist. It's just a natural process of life, some people have it better than others and that's it.
To say that we should erase inequality in society is a view on life that's very idealistic and utopic and we all know what happens when we think human society is perfect... Things like Communism start to appear, and how we're all supposed to be equal and no one should have more or less than the other but that's just unadaptable to human society in my opinion...
Spoken like another friend in a communist country :P We're veterans of suffering from inequality inside a "equal system"
Everyone totally equal is impossible. And also not just.
The error of the so-called "communistic" regimes was that they tried to enforce voluntary (communistic) behavior.
Ignoring the point that human that is always acting in the ideal communistic sense is likely biologically impossible, you never can educate people with force. That is only brainwashing.
In a real communistic society force would not be necessary to make people behave "good", that is the ironic point.
That's the thing! It requires everyone to commit to this almost impossible to reach system. Sure it's nice in theory, everyone having the same rights, options and liberties but that is absolutely impossible to reach in society. There's a thing called "Human Factor" which prevents it from happening. Everyone will want more for them or the people they love. Avarice is natural and impossible to avoid. We will always want more.
Where can I find that beautiful castle?
If not stated otherwise, all my pics are CCO from pixabay.com
I didn't mean where can I find the picture 😂
In which country and which city can I find that castle?
no idea. No data for this on the website, only hints in tags (that may be from the fotograph or not)
tour césar, provins, frankreich