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+--- Thread: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) (/thread-3871.html)
Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - C C - Jul 3, 2017
https://aeon.co/essays/are-plagues-and-wars-the-only-ways-to-reduce-inequality
EXCERPT: [...] Does this mean that history has always moved in the same direction, that inequality has been going up continuously since the dawn of civilisation? A cursory look around us makes it clear that this cannot possibly be true, otherwise there would be no broad middle class or thriving consumer culture, and everything worth having might now be owned by a handful of trillionaires. Did democracy and progressive reform save us from this unenviable fate; or was it the labour movement, or mass education? All of these developments played an important role, and yet, at best, furnish only part of the answer. For inequality had already dipped steeply on several occasions, long before any of these modern breakthroughs had begun to appear.
From time to time, it turns out, history has pushed a reset button, driving down inequality in marked, if only temporary fashion. It is only by surveying its full sweep, over thousands of years, that we can discover the dynamics that drove this process. And these dynamics turn out to be very disturbing indeed: every time the gap between rich and poor shrank substantially, it did so because of traumatic, often extremely violent shocks to the established order. Catastrophic plagues, the collapse of states and, more recently, mass-mobilisation war and transformative revolution, are the only forces that ever levelled on a grand scale. No other – and less bloody – mechanisms have even come close. In a time of rising inequality, what does this imply for our own future?
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/are-plagues-and-wars-the-only-ways-to-reduce-inequality
RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - Magical Realist - Jul 7, 2017
With global warming goin on, we are more in danger of epidemics if not even a global pandemic. Mosquitos are spreading further north where the major cities are and flooding will allow bacteria and viruses to fester more. A pandemic might have once been a great leveller. But with the selective force of the middle and upper class getting easier access to vaccines and quality health care, it may only further concentrate wealth by eliminating more of the poor.
RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - C C - Jul 8, 2017
(Jul 7, 2017 08:36 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: With global warming goin on, we are more in danger of epidemics if not even a global pandemic. Mosquitos are spreading further north where the major cities are and flooding will allow bacteria and viruses to fester more. A pandemic might have once been a great leveller. But with the selective force of the middle and upper class getting easier access to vaccines and quality health care, it may only further concentrate wealth by eliminating more of the poor.
There was some historical hypothesis bouncing around not too many years ago that claimed the poor of Europe were actually wiped-out at least once in the past (gradual starvation, disease, loss of property, etc). That the current population was largely descended from the lower-level members of the surviving wealthier stratum which incrementally had to fill the vacuum left by the depleted working classes. Supposed research which apparently never caught on; can't even find anything about it now (not that I tried very deeply).
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RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - Carol - Jul 8, 2017
I don't think I agree with that perspective about equality.
Well during the French revolution and the communist revolution in China, it was the wealthy who were taken down. Nothing has increased our quality of life more than education and technology. Today even the poor in modern cities have plumbing and in door toilets, and plenty of clothes and electronics, meaning they lead better lives then the wealthy of the past. I don't think it is a good idea to attempt to improve life by killing off our leaders and people who learned how to play the money game and succeed. But serious population control is a good idea. Turchin's book War and Peace and War is an interesting explanation of why good times lead to bad times and bad times lead to good times. Excessive population will lead to very bad times, and when there are not enough workers, they benefit and the wealthy loose.
RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - Syne - Jul 9, 2017
r/K selection theory explains why good times lead to bad...where a parental investment in offspring quality leads to an abundance which allows quantity to be prioritized over quality...until the unfit offspring make a big enough mess of things to once again lead to a parental investment in quality (fitness) over quantity. Right now welfare could be said to be prioritizing quantity over quality.
Inequality is largely only an issue for the chronically jealous...at least in free Western societies. Everyone has benefited to such an extent that the inequality of success is a silly quibble.
However, look at it a little more closely in relation to other countries. We're often told that to be poor in the US is much worse than being poor in the social democracies of Europe. And the bottom 10% in the US are indeed worse off than the bottom 10% in Sweden. But they're better off than the bottom 10% in Germany or France: places where we are told that there is indeed that social democracy.
Maybe there's something for this capitalism red in tooth and claw then: given that it does seem to improve the lives of the poor.
Take another look as well: we know that Russia is where bloated plutocrats loot everything from the country: and yet the bottom 10% in the US have, by this measure at least, better lives than the top 10% in Russia. And the top 10% in Portugal (where I live) and Mexico.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/01/astonishing-numbers-americas-poor-still-live-better-than-most-of-the-rest-of-humanity/#222d25a954ef
RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - Secular Sanity - Jul 9, 2017
There's a problem with the way we define equality
Quote:Some researchers argue that income disparity itself may not be the main problem. The issue, they say, is not the existence of a gap between rich and poor, but the existence of unfairness. Some people are treated preferentially and others unjustly – and acknowledging that both poverty and unfairness are related may be the challenge that matters more in the 21st Century.
While many people may already view inequality as unfairness, making the distinction much clearer is important: to improve the society we live in, these researchers are arguing that we need to all be on the same page as to what inequality actually is. Only then can we direct resources to the places that matter.
RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - C C - Jul 9, 2017
(Jul 9, 2017 03:31 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: There's a problem with the way we define equality
Quote:Some researchers argue that income disparity itself may not be the main problem. The issue, they say, is not the existence of a gap between rich and poor, but the existence of unfairness. Some people are treated preferentially and others unjustly – and acknowledging that both poverty and unfairness are related may be the challenge that matters more in the 21st Century.
While many people may already view inequality as unfairness, making the distinction much clearer is important: to improve the society we live in, these researchers are arguing that we need to all be on the same page as to what inequality actually is. Only then can we direct resources to the places that matter.
Would be a good shift to a broader or more fundamental perspective, prior to the affliction of special ideological and commercial interests seizing the spotlight.
But schools of thought with socialism ancestry or cross-breeding carry the historical baggage of its "egalitarian distribution of wealth" in their DNA, so they'll probably always focus on the presence of poverty or income gaps as a means to advance themselves. Rather than mitigatedly confining sameness to, say, "equal subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for any child until they reach maturity", and then they're on their own for better or worse (apart from the security of legal fairness in terms of basic human rights / protections).
Most utopian impulses and movements seem impregnated today (from consciously to only subliminally) with some degree of socialism / Marxism or sentiments. So they're anchored to that ball-and-chain fixation of placing particular emphasis on equality as measurement of property and monetary disparity. Rather than standards (fair treatment) across all classes / gender / ethnic groups.
As these researchers themselves contend, the practical masses or the non-ideological side of people really don't want to see forced uniformity or an end to distinctions, as such naturally or contingently fall out:
[...] humans – even as young children and babies – actually prefer living in a world in which inequality exists. [...] if people find themselves in a situation where everyone is equal, studies suggest that many become angry or bitter if people who work hard aren’t rewarded, or if slackers are over-rewarded. [...] Starman’s co-author Mark Sheskin, a cognitive science post-doc at Yale, puts the findings of this research succinctly: “People typically prefer fair inequality to unfair equality”. [...] “As reasonable as it sounds, people don’t typically work, create or strive without the motivation to do so,” says Bloom. “If I’m a painter, dentist or builder, why would I work for 50 hours a week if everything I’m given is free? From my own experience managing people, humans actually think it’s unreasonable for people that skive to get rewarded. When you run large teams, there is nothing that sends people mad more than lazy individuals getting the same rewards and promotions as the hard workers.”
- - -RE: Are plagues & wars the only ways to reduce inequality? (utopian community) - Syne - Jul 9, 2017
(Jul 9, 2017 05:50 PM)C C Wrote: Most utopian impulses and movements seem impregnated today (from consciously to only subliminally) with some degree of socialism / Marxism or sentiments. So they're anchored to that ball-and-chain fixation of placing particular emphasis on equality as measurement of property and monetary disparity. Rather than standards (fair treatment) across all classes / gender / ethnic groups.Yeah, there is little hope of separating socialist impulses from Marxism...or its inevitable results.
Quote:As these researchers themselves contend, the practical masses or the non-ideological side of people really don't want to see forced uniformity or an end to distinctions, as such naturally or contingently fall out:Yep, the only true equality, in the socialist sense, is for everyone to be hobbled to match the lowest common denominator. No one excels because the incentives are removed. Reminds me of the movie Serenity, where everyone just laid down and died. It would just be a societal death instead...slow at first and then very fast.
[...] humans – even as young children and babies – actually prefer living in a world in which inequality exists. [...] if people find themselves in a situation where everyone is equal, studies suggest that many become angry or bitter if people who work hard aren’t rewarded, or if slackers are over-rewarded. [...] Starman’s co-author Mark Sheskin, a cognitive science post-doc at Yale, puts the findings of this research succinctly: “People typically prefer fair inequality to unfair equality”. [...] “As reasonable as it sounds, people don’t typically work, create or strive without the motivation to do so,” says Bloom. “If I’m a painter, dentist or builder, why would I work for 50 hours a week if everything I’m given is free? From my own experience managing people, humans actually think it’s unreasonable for people that skive to get rewarded. When you run large teams, there is nothing that sends people mad more than lazy individuals getting the same rewards and promotions as the hard workers.”
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