Who are the 1%?
I'd like to gather some perspectives on the issue of wealth inequality in this country. There's always much talk about the 1%, and I wonder if anyone has read or researched extensively who exactly these people are and if there are trends in their philosophies or religious outlooks.
I think it's often forgotten that behind major corporations there are real people making the major decisions, with real thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values. Since they're the "masters of the universe," it's worth understanding exactly who they are.
I think it's often forgotten that behind major corporations there are real people making the major decisions, with real thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values. Since they're the "masters of the universe," it's worth understanding exactly who they are.
Comments (427)
The general trend is the 1% aren't self-made but inherit their wealth and social advantage. So personal qualities or broader outlooks are pretty irrelevant. Better off considering the accidents of their birth.
In the 1% you certainly have successful people but I'd hardly call someone with a net worth of $10MM one of the "masters of the universe." IMO there's no a huge difference between someone with a net worth of like $3-5MM and one with a net worth of like $10MM. 1%ers often have like 3 homes across the country.
At 9 figures I'd imagine things get pretty insane.
I grew up in the top 10%. I know some 1%ers. I certainly don't know anyone beyond that.
Obviously @StreetlightX.
But then....
I've long felt that this view of the American dream is kind of a straw-man. I don't know anyone in their right mind who'd believe that every child has an equal chance of economic and social mobility. I mean maybe in the abstract everyone has some chance, but an equal chance? In any case it's easy to argue against such fantastical positions.
That's an interesting chart, but honestly comparing America to Denmark is a little silly. Denmark is a largely homogenous country of around 5 million. I live in one of the smallest states in the country and our population is 6 million.
Sure. With another reasonable person. :up:
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
So good political structure doesn't scale? You could fix the comparison by combining all the Scandinavian-style social democracies and maybe subsetting that against a matching sample of the most go-getting individualist US states.
It is not that economic meritocracy doesn't exist in the US. The argument is that the US has allowed itself to become a lot less meritocratic than is its publicly-avowed aim.
The system is not delivering that equality of opportunity as a good which would balance its "success" at also delivering vast income inequality – and indeed, declining financial expectations - for its 99 per cent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F68RLLXSJLU&feature=youtu.be
Zeihan say it starts with the US owning the world’s best chunk of geography – the largest expanse of good agricultural land with an ideal range of growing climates. And its continentally isolated location means it has never had to fear invasion.
The US has its huge demographic power too. A population of 330 million that isn’t greying like Germany, Japan, China and Russia.
It now even has its shale oil and gas revolution. Coming out of nowhere since 2010, the US now boasts of being energy independent.
The US is lucky in that it is born to so much wealth in the form of geographic advantage that it will take more than political dysfunction to turn it downwardly socially mobile within the larger world system.
Just to add to what I was saying earlier: Even in an absolutely perfect society there wouldn't be equality of opportunity. I mean what are we suppose to do, get rid of all the children with learning disabilities? What about the people who are naturally less ambitious and prefer to live a more relaxed lifestyle? Are we just suppose to expect everyone to be type-A perfectionists who strive to maximize income at virtually any cost? Even if society were perfectly fair and generous we could be seeing vast inequality.
Social mobility is a tough topic. I prefer studies which track individuals over, say, a 30 year period rather than just taking a snap-shot in time. I think when you look to these types of studies the picture is a little less bleak.
I see what you mean. If perfection is impossible, just give up. In fact even to try can be equated to fanatical Nazi euthanasia. Sounds legit.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Hey, that's me. That's any normal person. That's who society ought to be built around ... in my selfish view.
Who in their right mind votes for neoliberal purism? Who would vote to construct life as a rat race?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Something went wrong between the first and second sentence there.
The question is why would we even seek to maximise "at any cost" striving as a social good?
And if we indeed were, then the measurable socioeconomic lack of an equality of opportunity ought to be a prime issue for that curiously-motivated country.
So yes. I would be the first to say that inequality - a long-tail distribution of wealth - is precisely what a growth-based economics would predict. It has to be the outcome of making growth the central system goal.
But capital comes in various forms - social as well as financial. Politics is actually more complicated than that which is measured by GDP.
A growth in generosity might beat a growth in monied power. Or at least, the two could be held co-equal if they are in fact complementary.
The problem with neo-liberalism as an engine of growth is its lack of balance. And this is why social democracies are to be preferred. At least by me.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
You prefer data that fits your prejudices? Sure.
But the longitudinal data is what is showing that US equality of opportunity and equality of outcome were a rather fleeting 1950s post-war thing. Back when US politics was also remarkably federalist and corporatist by any neoliberal measure.
But in the world we have today, someone like me — who is, according to all the aptitude tests of every kind I’ve ever taken, in the top 0.1% of ability — can just barely manage to keep up with the average (mean, not median) of financing outcomes, if they’re born into poverty like I was.
The usual responses I see to this is to say that my ability must not really be so great, that tests like that don’t really measure real-world ability, that the only way to measure someone’s actual ability is by their actual outcomes, so if you’re not rich then you simply must not actually be so smart or hard-working etc, because if you were then you would be rich. But that begs the question, since outcome is only a measure of ability IF opportunity is equal, which is exactly the point at issue.
Talking about a "distribution of opportunity" honestly confuses me.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Did you get straight As in school? Any college scholarships? I'm not going to doubt you here, if I could remember I think we've already delved into your personal situation a bit and I recommended getting out of California. We've already had this talk, I know. In some cities someone could be pulling 6 figures and still struggling. This isn't just a "you" thing - plenty of people are moving out of California because the state is ridiculously expensive and moving over to Texas where they can buy a house at a 1/4 the cost.
I know the American system isn't perfect and there's plenty of changes that I would make to it if given the opportunity. I don't just blindly endorse the status quo.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I would certainly never argue this.
It’s just a way of speaking in terms of statistics, exactly like distribution of ability. A uniform distribution means the quantity in question is equal for everyone, a normal distribution means the quantity in question follows a gaussian curve across the population, etc.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I got straight As / 4.0 on my first degree and almost straight (besides one B) / 3.9 on my second. And full state and federal grants, except for my last term where I was over the age to qualify for state grants.
The way that poverty affected my opportunity was creating an unstable home life and leaving me nowhere to fall back on, forcing me to work close to full time to support myself while going through school, handling all my own crisis expenses like car breakdowns, living in shitty crowded shared housing (which is what got me that one B: housemates kept me awake all night right before a final) while being terrified of eviction or rent increases because I would just be homeless since I didn’t have family housing to fall back on, etc. Which in turn made me extremely risk-averse, kept me in shitty jobs because they were stable instead of trying for better jobs that might fall through, which kept me from learning further on the job and so has made finding better work increasingly more difficult even as I’ve gotten more stability with age that could allow me to risk trying out possibly better jobs, etc.
I can think of a few decisions I could have made differently in my early adulthood that would have made a dramatic difference in my life today, despite the poverty of my family, but not having a stable family to guide me through those decisions meant the only reason I now know I should have chosen differently is because of hindsight.
Oh and also, having to pay rent instead of just living in my family’s second or third home for free, or getting help with a big enough down payment that interest on a mortgage wouldn’t exceed rent, etc.
Quoting apokrisis
The OP is “Who are they?”
Just to begin with it would be interesting to know if this is true or not.
Bill Gates $76 USA
2 Carlos Slim Helu $72 Mexico
3 Amancio Ortega $64 Spain
4 Warren Buffett $58 USA
5 Larry Ellison $48 USA
6 Charles Koch $40 USA
7 David Koch $40 USA
8 Sheldon Adelson $38 USA
9 Christy Walton $37 USA
10 Jim Walton $35 USA
11 Liliane Bettencourt $35 France
12 Stefan Persson $34 Sweden
13 Alice Walton
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/meet-the-80-people-who-are-as-rich-as-half-the-world/
What is perfection? Complete equality of opportunity? I want you to really think on this one: Even if the US was a completely equal society, would every child have equal opportunity? Would everyone be equally capable of being an NFL football player? How about nuclear scientist? Is everyone capable of being a Picasso or a Michelangelo? How about a chess master? This isn't about "giving up" this is about acknowledging reality.
Quoting apokrisis
Do you honestly believe that society should specifically cater to those who are less ambitious? IMO, society shouldn't really "cater" to anyone - if you want to work long hours and make your job your life, that's an acceptable decision and if you prefer more time off that's acceptable too. The trade-off there is that while you get more free time you'll likely be earning less. The high-earners on the other hand often have a lot less free time. It's about the trade-offs. I do strongly reject the view that society ought to be built around the less ambitious though. Society should largely not pass judgment except in extreme cases.
I guess I just don't see opportunity as something that is "distributed." I guess in some sense it is though.
On balance, the rich have more opportunity than the poor. I'm comfortable saying that. However, when you look at the self, or any other individual, that individual is a billion different things - he may be physically gifted or not, mentally gifted or not, emotionally gifted or not, humorous, charismatic or not, etc. Also how sensitive that person is to failure plays a role in opportunity. Emotional resilience is huge.
These are all things I believe: 1) The rich, on balance, have more opportunity than the poor. 2) Even in a completely economically equal society, there would be no equality of opportunity. 3) The notion of "equality of opportunity" is a dubious one.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Thanks for sharing that. You mentioned something really important in the last paragraph - the importance of a stable family that could have guided you and given you help. I'll definitely agree that family is huge: Imagine if you had the support structure. It's definitely got to be tough without it. I'm very thankful that I have had a supportive, functional family throughout the years. If I fail, I would be able to fall back on them.
But yeah, I certainly don't like seeing anyone struggle, especially someone who is willing to work and has a desire to advance his economic position. I'm not claiming my advice is flawless here, but maybe you should reconsider the risk-averse attitude. I do think it would help considerably if you could find a better job, and sure there's some risk in that, but I've worked low wage jobs and it's just not something someone should be doing long term. If you don't take risks you're going to stay in relatively the same spot you are now.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Oh I would love to be able to do that too but unfortunately my family doesn't have 3 or even 2 homes. I am actually living at home now I separated from the military around 3 months ago and I'm looking to going back to school.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Ludicrous.
Kind of puts it in perspective.
I have become more comfortable with risk as I’ve built up a safety net and can afford to lose a bit before I start winning. (And I am looking for a new job now, since my old once ceased to exist thanks to COVID-19... seven months and almost 1300 job applications later, still no luck).
That’s a general thing I like to point out when taking risk is argued to be what makes the rich deserve their rewards. The more you have beyond your basic needs, the more you can afford to gamble smartly, accepting some short term losses as you play the odds to long term victory. E.g where I am now in life, my investments can fluctuate up or down by hundreds or sometimes even thousands of dollars a day and I can afford to just ignore that so long as overall they trend upwards, because it’s not like I’m going to need to spend that money tomorrow. (Even now that I’m without a job, because I didn’t start investing until I already had a sufficient cash safety net set aside too, for exactly that reason).
But where I was a decade ago, a downward fluctuation of a thousand dollars would immediately knock me out of the game — I wouldn’t survive to make up for it over the long term. And that’s the kind of situation that most people are always in.
What do you mean?
For me personally, I try to avoid using the term "deserve" in this context. I think "deserving" in this context is a very tricky notion.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You're talking about investing here, right? Yeah, I understand. I understand that the rich are able to invest more, and in turn take more advantage of market upturns, but at the end of the day a bullish stock market is good for you too. I mean sure we can point and laugh at the billionaires when the market tanks, but your own portfolio is liking taking a hit there too. Even if most of the benefit goes directly to the mega-rich, I'd rather see the stock market rise.
Quoting Pfhorrest
It's good to hear that your portfolio is able to withstand those drops.
1. Jeff Bezos: $183bn (£137bn)
The former hedge fund manager turned online book seller started Amazon in his garage in 1994. Bezos has invested heavily in space technology and also owns The Washington Post newspaper.
2. Elon Musk: $136bn (£101.8bn)
Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX and also the CEO of Tesla.
3. Bill Gates: $129bn (£96.6bn)
A permanent fixture at the top end of rich list for the past 20 years, the Microsoft founder has sold or given away much of his stake in the company – he owns just 1% of Microsoft – and now focuses predominantly on his philanthropic work.
4. Mark Zuckerberg: $105bn (£78.6bn)
Zuckerberg famously started Facebook in 2004 at the age of 19 and now is among the top five richest men in the world.
5. Bernard Arnault & family: $105bn (£78.6bn)
Arnault is the wealthiest European on the list. The Frenchman oversees an empire of more than 60 brands including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.
6. Warren Buffett: $88.4bn (£66.2bn)
Now in his ninth decade, the Berkshire Hathaway chief executive, known as the “Oracle of Omagh” is one of the most successful investors of all time. Like Gates he has pledged to give away more than 99% of his fortune to charity.
7. Larry Page: $82.7bn (£61.9bn)
Internet entrepreneur Page is one of the co-founders of Google. He stepped down as CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. in December 2019 but remains a board member.
8. Sergey Brin: $80.1bn (£60bn)
Along with Larry Page, Brin was a co-founder of Google. Until December 2019 he was president of Alphabet Inc.
9. Steve Ballmer: $77.4bn (£57.9bn)
The American was the former CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise.
10. Mukesh Ambani: $74.9bn (£56.1bn)
Indian Ambani has a 42% controlling stake in Reliance Industries, which is the owner of the world’s largest oil refining complex. He is also the owner of property worth more than $400m.
Chances are, everyone here has bought something from one of these companies or from the other 450 companies on the fortune list. The major stock owners of these companies are likely to be among the richest 1%, 5%, or 10% (United States). Of course, companies own shares in other companies. 4½% of UPS is owned by Black Rock Fund advisers (31,243,809 shares). In turn, a large hunk of Black Rock is owned by Laurence D. Fink--Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock. He is worth about $1 billion.
Jamie Dimon is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase, the largest of the big four American banks. He owns a small percentage of MorganChase and is worth 1½ billion.
Hey, let's not be sneering at people who are worth only a billion bucks. I would gladly settle for $1B!
Quoting Bitter Crank
I know they trade, but is this really how they made their wealth? And have we named them yet?
Yes, people do make money trading insubstantial derivatives. I don't really understand how this works, but a lot of money is involved. All kinds of commodities are covered by futures contracts -- everything from peanuts to platinum. People in this group trade commodity futures, currencies, credit derivatives, credit default swap insurance contracts, financial instruments--insubstantial - but real paper stuff. There is usually something of real substance underneath the speculation.
This is a short list from one small site
Bill Lipschutz - probably a Five Percenter; worth less than a billion. He was bringing in $300,000,000 a year for Salomon Brothers for a while. He was very good for Salomon, at least.
Joseph C. Lewis - worth over $4½ billion
Stanley Druckenmiller - worth over $4.7 to $4.8 billion; worked with Soros
Paul Tudor Jones - worth over $5.3 billion
George Soros - worth about $8.3 billion, but that is after transferring 20 billion dollars to the Open Society Foundation. Soros and Druckenmiller made $1B in their bank breaking bet against the Bank of England.
Bruce Kovner - worth over $5.3 - $5.5 billion
Martin Schwartz - a well known player, but his wealth figure is unknown; he's 75; he spends his time owning and racing champion horses
Andrew Krieger - unknown, but probably in the $100 million range
I'm using investing as the clearest example, but generalizing the principle to risk in general.
Someone with enough money can afford to invest in a bunch of different businesses (buy stocks) and weather the downturns in the hopes of long-term profit.
But also a person with enough to reserves to afford to fail can afford to start a small business, that will probably fail like most do, on the hope of maybe making it big as an entrepreneur. Those with even more money can afford to take even more stabs at that, and so have even better odds of eventually making it. Someone who's concerned about making sure they have enough rent on the 1st can't risk anything like that.
And a person like that can afford to take a better-paying job in a distant and more expensive city, a job which they might lose leaving them somewhere they can't afford with no social support system, because they've probably got the savings to either live there long enough to find a replacement job, or pay the cost of moving back somewhere else. Someone with no savings hoping they'll have enough for rent on the 1st can't afford that risk.
There are all kinds of risky life choices that can pay off more in the long term, that it would be unwise for people clinging to the edge of survival to attempt, because they can't survive the slightest stumble, whereas someone with plenty of money (or family with money) to fall back on can take those risks and live to try again.
Also, on the topic of ambition, and your conversation with @apokrisis: society should be structured such that an unambitious person who just wants to stay at home and tend to their little garden can do so. As it is now, it takes enormous ambition to get out there and fight like hell for decades on end just to get a little home, never mind a garden. A cutthroat capitalist society doesn't merely reward the ambitious with greater luxuries, it simply doesn't allow the unambitious to live at all.
I had real ambition when I was young. I was always told I was so smart and capable that I could do anything, and I had enormous plans for this huge multimedia franchise that I wanted to spend my entire life working on. You can see the outline of it on my website -- the mere outline is 60,000 words, so that should give you a sense of the ambition I was going for there. I tried with some friends to start a small company to get that going, all of us working for equity, trying to build a first small project (a project literally 0.4% the size of the complete franchise goal), and then sell that to fund the next one, but of course that failed.
Half a decade into my adulthood, I realized that that's just not the kind of thing that someone like me with no money can possibly accomplish. I had had multiple complete-resets of my life progress by then, due to unexpected large expenses brought on by poverty in the first place (I had to drive shitty cars, and couldn't afford routine maintenance, so they kept dying, so I had to buy lots of shitty cars). And after I had to move out of my dad's tool shed, and start paying someone else rent, I dreamed of just getting to a place in life where I could afford to go broke again without losing everything, where I could survive not being ambitious.
So with great pain and reluctance I resigned myself to an "ordinary" life. Instead of trying to achieve great things, I would aim low, just try to secure my basic necessities like a house, just the minimal level of financial security, so I wouldn't be poor and on the verge of homelessness like my parents by the time my kids (that I then expected to have some day) were adults.
Half a decade later still, as I was approaching 30, and still nowhere near even beginning to buy a house, I started looking at statistics, seeing how much things really cost, how much people really made, and realized how fucking impossible it is for anyone to achieve even that bare minimum of security: the right to sit and starve somewhere without paying someone for the privilege. It was then that I realized that I wasn't statistically poor; I had, my entire life, been making around the median income. 50% of people were more poor than me. And yet even aiming low like that, just living an unambitious boring life, I had realized, was a pipe dream.
That's when I started getting really pissed off about the state of society, once I looked at the stats and saw that I wasn't a failure, I was doing better than most; that my problems were a systemic social failure, that was failing not only me, but almost everybody.
1. The second law of thermodynamics (entropy): Money distributed should have more entropy than money accumulated but the latter is the norm rather than the exception. What offsets this reversal of entropy is anyone's guess but it would do wonders if we could discover what that is, allowing us to do something about the rich-poor gap.
2. The law of diffusion. As per this law, there should be a movement from high concentration to low concentration until that which is diffusing becomes equally distributed throughout. This is false for money - money tends to concentrate in the hands of the few rather than diffuse and achieve a homogeneous state of even wealth distribution.
It seems the two laws are related but it's nice to get different perspectives on the matter. The key point to note here is that entropy reversal comes at a cost i.e. net decrease in entropy in a system, here wealth accumulating in the hands of the few, is possible only if there's an equivalent increase in entropy...somewhere (where exactly? I have no idea). If we can figure that out, we may be able to, as Yoda say, "restore balance to the force." :lol:
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics
And especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics
Also, from a future thread of mine:
... the prescriptive analogue of the descriptive ontological concept of substance is wealth: wealth is stuff of value. And just as in my ontology I hold real objects of substance to be constituted by the things they cause to happen (ala "to be is to do"), so too I hold that the value of wealth is constituted by the purpose that it serves: a thing is of value for the good that can be done with it.
This concept of wealth can be further decomposed into concepts of capital and labor, which in turn can be further decomposed to familiar ontological categories: capital is of value for the matter and space that it provides, while labor is of value for the energy and time that it provides. And just as matter is ultimately reducible to energy, so too capital is ultimately reducible to labor: capital is the distilled product of labor, worth at least the minimal time and energy it takes to obtain or create, and no more than the maximal time and energy it can save elsewhere.
Similarly, just as physical work happens when matter and energy flow through space and time, what we might call "ethical work" happens – good gets done – when wealth flows in an economy, each kind of wealth diffusing from where it is in higher concentration to where it is in lower concentration.
The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is not only unnatural (it's a result of state intervention to protect capital and wouldn't happen in a truly free market), but it's exactly counter to the flow of wealth that does "ethical work", that makes good happen.
Quoting Xtrix
It seems to me that everyone’s done everything except address the OP.
1: They’re very hard workers
2: They’re very good a setting an objective and then making a plan to get there
3: They’re very good at projecting into the future
4: They’re very adaptable
5: Many of them are very innovative
6: They’re very good at choosing people to work with, understanding them, motivating them
7: They inspire people within their circle
8: They have a through understanding of the world they’re operating in
9: They’re very good at networking
10: They create opportunities for others
Edit: Actually ignore number ten, that’s not about who they are.
Some things about them we may not be impressed with.
1: They make decisions in a pragmatic way that may hurt others: what do I need, what don’t I need, how do I get what I want?
2: They measure all actions, all success, in terms of profits
3: They may at times bend the rules to achieve their objectives
4: They probably lie and deceive often
5: Their egos are all powerful
6: They view politics as merely a tool to achieve their objective
7: They’re never satisfied
Quoting Pfhorrest
It may be dishonest, it might be destructive, but how is it “unnatural?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes, I would agree that a free market is the closest to a natural economy. Do you think there should be government regulation?
What would a "truly" free market consist of, given that, historically, markets are state creations?
What's the source for most millionaires being self made? I know Forbes tried this once with billionaires, claiming most were self made, but the methodology was terrible. Donald Trump was labeled self made because he claimed he only received a single $1 million loan from his father. As it turns out, his father passed him the better part of a billion dollars, continuing to pump money into his failing businesses into Trump's 50s.
Another guy came from the bottom because "he worked at a gas station as a teen." In reality, a solid percentage were born rich and almost all were at least upper middle class.
I went to extremely selective schools so I met a lot of people from that class. Two physician families, etc. People vary the way they always do. I think the main difference is generally more educated and nuanced views, coupled with some insularity.
That is on average. I definitely taught young adults of the 1% and worked with plenty who were pretty dumb and unmotivated. Their success seemed totally due to peer effects, wealth, and networking. Couldn't write a coherent memo but got into one of the most selective schools in the world... hmmm.
Thomas J. Stanley's The Millionaire Next Door. I think they're just asking who inherited that sum, and if you didn't you were "self-made." I know, it's not perfect but I don't know how you get perfect stats on that given how difficult the notion of "self-made" is. After all, is anyone really self-made? In any case, you'll see this 80/20 number on numerous online sources as well.
I will say though that it's certainly possible for middle class people earning a stable salary, investing in retirement funds and living frugally to become millionaires. Class mobility is still certainly a thing in this country.
I think the mobility issue now is less that people cannot move upwards from middle class, but that you're more likely to move down than up and, once down from middle class, you're unlikely to get up again.
I agree with the first part you wrote about risk: Someone with more wealth is generally speaking in better place to take on risk even if this risk doesn't always work out.
Quoting Pfhorrest
See, to me this isn't really a question of "shoulds." Lets say we're both 18 and we graduate HS together and I tell you "Hey Forrest, all I want to do now is live in an apartment or some sort of home and tend to be garden all day." Now the question is: Do I have the means or am I going to have to rely on the taxpayer - you, that is - for support? If I have the means to sit home all day and watch my garden, then that's fine; I'm not hurting you. But if I'm going to need support to that and I'm going to need you to chip in to support my habit that's a different issue.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I honestly think this is a fine, reasonable goal. This goal is quite doable on the median US income, but not in expensive areas. In much of the country you can find decent homes for around $250k or even lower.
Thanks for sharing your story, dude, and with such devastating clarity and eloquence. Alas for Mr & Mrs Average in this situation. Here in the UK, our adoption of American values has reached the point where Covid is that minor set back that has more and more folks literally going hungry and homeless. A priest on TV last night in tears as he described how as he delivered food parcels, children would literally tear it open on the doorstep to get something to eat. Yea, freedom!
If the great transformation happened tomorrow, your life wouldn't change much. You don't need to be rescued. You just need a more flexible attitude.
It's the millions of people working multiple jobs with no social network and locked into it by obligations to kids and parents. They are the ones who need to help.
You just need to move to Wyoming and get a mortgage on a cabin. A greenhouse tent costs $200. Start gardening.
Where are the stats that people are more likely to move from middle to lower class than middle to upper middle? I feel like if this were true we'd be seeing an increasingly large lower class which I don't think we're seeing. Keep in mind the "bottom 20%" of income earners is not the bottom 20% population-wise. It's actually a significantly smaller percentage.
In an ideal world, no, but you’re missing the point: I’m against “government regulation” that you’re probably in favor of, government action that benefits those who already have excess property in a way that they would not be able to benefit if it weren’t for that government action. In a truly free market we would expect capital to flow from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration: a free market should have egalitarian results. That’s what Adam Smith expected.
Quoting Echarmion
I disagree that markets are entirely state creations, although so-called “free” markets that capitalists love are full of state intervention to protect capital.
In my view the thing that makes such markets unfree is primarily the existence of rent and interest, which are only tenable institutions because of state enforcement of the contracts that create them. I think there are good deontological reasons why those kinds of contracts, as well as others, are not valid and so should not be enforced. The reaction of the market in the absence of such enforcement will then lead to significantly more egalitarian results.
Quoting Echarmion
This connects closely to my issue with rent and interest. If you own capital exactly sufficient for your needs, you don’t have to borrow but you also can’t lend or let. That is how I define middle class, and for people in that class, their mobility really is a product of their work.
But the further below that threshold you get, the greater the costs you must incur from borrowing the capital you need to live and work, so the more likely your mobility is to be downward. And the further above that thresholds, the more you can afford to lend or let out your excess for profit, and so the more your mobility will tend to be upward.
Basically, rent and interest create a pressure away from the middle class, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Absent that, there isn’t even any motive to own excess, so it would tend to be sold off to those who need it — and thus, on terms they can afford, since nobody but them are buying — so that those with excess can spend the proceeds on things of use value to them — which, since they already have sufficient capital, would be the labor of those who need more capital and are willing to labor for it.
And so in the absence of rent and interest capital would naturally dissipate from concentrations of useless excess to the places it is needed, in exchange for the labor of those who need more — exactly like early market advocates like Adam Smith expected.
But that doesn't seem related to the freedom of the market. Or, rather, since I don't really know in what sense a market could be free, the proper statement is that this seems a very specific definition of free.
What about the state not enforcing any contracts, a system where contracts are governed by trust. Such systems exist, but with some exceptions aren't usually called markets. The Islamic world of the middle ages apparently had well working markets with no state enforcement (and also strict bans on usury).
Where does entropy figure in all this?
Well, from the little I can understand, money enables us to restore/maintain a low entropy state (a necessity it seems to get any useful work done) through food and fuel we purchase with it. This low entropy state, as we do work (useful work), transitions into a high entropy state which will require energy (food and fuel) to return to a low entropy state - basically, a cyclical process made up of a low and a high entropy state made possible by food and fuel we purchase with money. In that case, money is the link between energy (food and fuel) and the low entropy state we and machines have to achieve/maintain for useful work.
However, it's not that simple. Nothing is free and just as we need money to purchase food and fuel, we need money to engage in activities - using services, buying goods, general activities we carry out everyday requires money. So, it's not only in the restoration/maintenance of a low entropy state of our bodies and machines that use up money, it's also accessing services and consuming products. Money is involved in both cases - lowering entropy and increasing entropy and this is a critical fact to keep in mind.
When it comes to using services, buying goods (food included), we have preferences - we like certain brands and a customer loyalty is a real phenomenon - and they inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth in the select few, the popular brands. This concentration of wealth is what I've described as a lowered entropy state of money and it serves the following purposes:
1. The accumulated wealth can be used to employ both humans and machines and enable the former to buy food and the latter's fuel supply can be consolidated. Put differently, it becomes possible to both create and sustain low entropy systems at a larger scale which, in turn, results in more useful work being accomplished.
We can, with immense wealth, create and sustain large scale low entropy systems.
2. How different is the useful work done when huge amounts of wealth is involved? The only thing that I can think of is improvement in quality. Quality is defined in terms of durability, safety, aesthetics, efficiency, and so on. If you take a moment to consider quality in this sense, you'll notice that, all in all, it's about preventing or delaying high entropy states i.e. the main idea is to keep a system in a state of low entropy.
Huge capital, by improving the quality of services and goods, block/delay the progression from low entropy to high entropy
It seems then that the low entropy state of money in the bank accounts of the 1% results in either restoration of a low entropy state and in the obstruction/delay of a high entropy state, both at a scale much, much larger than would be possible if the money were in a high entropy state (evenly distributed among the population).
The bottom line is the entropy-increasing selective, preferential, work/activities (goods and services brands) we engage in is being transformed into entropy-decreasing concentration of wealth in the megarich. When the immense accumulated wealth gets distributed i.e. the money enters a high entropy state, there's a concomitant block/delay in the evolution to a high entropy system which is another name for quality.
Stats for which country? That the middle class is, broadly speaking "in trouble" has been a common theme for years. Whether or not the middle class is shrinking or being "squeezed" depends on the way you calculate.
A free market is one in which all trades are uncoerced.
I consider certain kinds of contract, including those of rent and interest, to be coercive because rather than just agreeing to owe some capital or labor in exchange for some other capital or labor, they require you reflectively agree to agree to owe more, and not even in exchange for anything more, just in "exchange" for the other party allowing you to keep what they've already given you. It's in the same category as selling oneself into slavery: it's giving up not just a first-order liberty (by taking on an obligation) or claim (by transferring property), but a second-order immunity (from having new obligations placed on oneself, or one's property transferred away from oneself). You can't freely give up your freedom like that; and it's not even really a trade at all, which are entirely on a first-order level.
Quoting Echarmion
A market with no enforcement of contracts at all would be strictly freer, yes. Though I'm not sure it would be strictly better; I think some contracts are morally justifiable. Some narrow limitations on freedom are better than the alternative: I shouldn't be free to punch you in the face, for example, or to burn down your house (even if nobody's in it).
And yeah, not only the Islamic world of the middle ages but much of it today, as well as the Catholic world of the middle ages, have/had strict bans on usury, and I think that's great, except that they had a huge gaping hole: they only cared about money-lending, not any other kind of capital-lending. Renting out housing, for example, is perfectly okay by them. So there are convoluted contracts involving a combination of money lent "interest-free", property rental, and insurance, which replicate the effects of money lending at interest, and circumvent the whole ban, making the whole thing pretty toothless.
Stuff only happens when energy flows from concentrated areas out to less concentrated areas. That increases entropy, but it does work, in the physical sense. That's why doing work of any kind always increases universal entropy.
If some mechanism was in place to keep all the energy concentrated in one place, then no work would get done. Nothing would happen. Concentrated energy is potential for work to happen, but the work only happens when you let that concentration dissipate.
Of course, if you let all the energy flow out from its concentrations until it couldn't flow any more, then at the end of that you would have maximal entropy and no more work would happen, unless more energy was pumped into the system somewhere, from which it would flow to other parts of the system, doing more work along the way.
In an economy, that "energy", i.e. value, which money is representative of, flows into the system when humans do work, in the economic sense, which I called "ethical work" earlier to distinguish it from "physical work": when they create things of value. If one human does way more work than anybody else, creates a lot more value, then there will be a concentration of value around them, and that will then flow out into the rest of the economy and make more good stuff happen.
But merely concentrating pre-existing value (e.g. money) around one person doesn't make anything good happen. Rather quite the opposite. It's like how running a heat pump to pull all the heat from one area into another doesn't actually create a lower-entropy state: you (or the heat pump) are having to do work to achieve that, and wasting that work on just fighting the natural flow of energy that would otherwise power useful work.
In extremis, the physical and the ethical merge, because the source of human productivity (that is the input into the economic system that keeps new value being created and flowing around accomplishing good things) is ultimately the fuel that goes into humans themselves, food, which comes through the food web ultimately from sunlight. All our economies are in the end solar-powered, and without a source of energy like that -- and the heat sink of space to dump our waste energy into -- plants couldn't create sugars to fuel the ecosystem, and so humans couldn't create anything of value to fuel the economy.
All I know is their crap smells the same as ours and are ultimately subject to the same laws governing life and death. They can just do whatever they want at any time, or can they? I imagine it'd be something like a lifelong jail sentence. You can't go (just) anywhere or do anything and you'll never really know how other people are. Everyone you try to meet or run into on the street or anywhere will either have their best face on because of what you have/can do or their worst because of what they don't/cannot. Sure you'll be able to do and experience things here most never will ie. private island parties, yachts, exotic cars, homes that are like castles, weekend vacations that cost more than the average person makes in 2 years, but you'll never have a normal family life or be able to let your kids grow up normal. You'll walk around your whole life with a target on your back. I wouldn't care for it. Reminds me of the saying "A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."
That's a good point. I wanted to add that the more accurate figure is a tenth of 1%, but thought it was too specific. So I'm using "1%" more to signify the masters fo the universe, as in the Occupy slogan and as a shorthand. But you're right.
Excellent, as usual.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
It's not a matter of "opportunity," which is basically meaningless; it's a matter of conditions. Sure, a kid in the ghetto can become a millionaire -- plenty of examples of things like that happening.
I notice people of conservative and libertarian ideologies loves to speak about things like "opportunity" and "access" (access to healthcare, for example). Gotta watch the language. It's really a sneaky way of defending a savage variant of capitalism, in my view.
True, but still interesting. As for your list -- I was thinking more in terms of ideologies and values, not necessarily the character attributes you mention. But where do you get that list, may I ask? What makes you say that? In fact, I'm sure a significant percentage were already born into wealth. You don't have to be a hard worker or very future-oriented for that.
But regardless, even if this were true for the majority, isn't most of your list also true for many people you know?
Massive state intervention.
Also, the idea of a "free market" is often invoked as an ideal of some kind, by Rand and Friedman and others, but it's pure fantasy, as you know.
Where's the scholarship on this? I'd like to see some evidence. Because it's often claimed, and of course there are examples and thousands of anecdotes, but I have a hunch it's complete nonsense -- at least when talking about what we're discussing here, which is the 1%.
It's a lot like talk about voter fraud -- yes, it happens, but so rarely as to be imperceptible.
Quoting Pfhorrest
One of the constant problems on this forum is that a question is taken as some form of entrapment, or by asking it I’m saying I support the thing I ask about.
Just take it as a genuine question about whether you think it’s a good idea or not. Assuming I’m “ probably in favour of government action that benefits those who already have excess property” because I ask the question is very presumptive and obviously unproductive.
Quoting Xtrix
Well we have to start somewhere don’t we? How can we determine their ideologies and values unless we identify them and look at their background?
Quoting Xtrix
What do you mean?
So you have people like physicians:
A great site where you see who actually are the 1% top income by profession can be seen here.
So it goes like managers, physicians, chief executives and public administrators, lawyers, teachers...
Yes, teachers like professors in universities etc. Who people refer to with the 1% is usually more of the 0,01% or smaller...
I didn’t assume that just because of that question, but because of the impression I get from your other posts in this thread.
I was just talking about people advancing classes, not necessarily into the 1%. If someone who's lower middle makes it into the middle class I would count that as class mobility, as well as those who jumps from poor to lower middle. I'm definitely not talking about the poor jumping into the 1%. It is feasible to go from upper middle to 1% though.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Like what?
Quoting Xtrix
Actually it’s not interesting, it’s the same thing over and over.
On the basis that someone might be interested in who these people are I took one name at random.
“ Larry Ellison was born in New York City, to an unwed Jewish mother.[5][6][7][8] His biological father was an Italian-American United States Army Air Corps pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption.[8] He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48.[9]
Ellison moved to Chicago's South Shore, then a middle-class neighborhood. He remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father, who had chose the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the United States, Ellis Island. Louis Ellison was a government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression.[8]
Although Ellison was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive parents, who attended synagogue regularly, he remained a religious skeptic. Ellison states: "While I think I am religious in one sense, the particular dogmas of Judaism are not dogmas I subscribe to. I don't believe that they are real. They're interesting stories. They're interesting mythology, and I certainly respect people who believe these are literally true, but I don't. I see no evidence for this stuff." At age thirteen, Ellison refused to have a bar mitzvah celebration.[10] Ellison says that his fondness for Israel is not connected to religious sentiments, but rather due to the innovative spirit of Israelis in the technology sector.[11]
Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago[12] and later was admitted to University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and was enrolled as a premed student.[12] At Illinois, he was named science student of the year[13][14] but later withdrew without taking final exams after his sophomore year, because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending the summer of 1966 in California, he then attended the University of Chicago for one term, studying physics and mathematics.[12] He did not take any exams and at Chicago he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to Berkeley, California.” Wikiodia
This is not hard to do.
Sheldon Gary Adelson was born in 1933 and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the son of Sarah (née Tonkin) and Arthur Adelson. His father was a cab driver[10] His father's family was of Ukrainian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry.[11] His mother immigrated from England, and Adelson claimed that his grandfather was a Welsh coal miner.[12] His father drove a taxi, and his mother ran a knitting shop.[13]
An entrepreneur is born with the mentality to take risks, though there are several important characteristics: courage, faith in yourself, and above all, even when you fail, to learn from failure and get up and try again.
–Sheldon Adelson, 2013[14]
He started his business career at the age of 12, when he borrowed $200 from his uncle (or $2,740 in 2017 dollars) and purchased a license to sell newspapers in Boston.[15] Aged 16 in 1948, he then borrowed $10,000 (or $102,349 in 2017 dollars) from his uncle to start a candy-vending-machine business.[16] He attended the City College of New York, but did not graduate,[17] and attended trade school in a failed attempt to become a court reporter, then subsequently joined the army.[18]
After being discharged from the army, he established a business selling toiletry kits, then started another business named De-Ice-It which sold a chemical spray to help clear frozen windshields.[19] In the 1960s, he started a charter tours business.[10] He soon became a millionaire, although by his 30s he had built and lost his fortune twice. Over the course of his business career, Adelson has created almost 50 of his own businesses, making him a serial entrepreneur.[20] Wikipedia
“ Slim was born on January 28, 1940, in Mexico City,[10] to Julián Slim Haddad (born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz) and Linda Helú Atta, both Maronite Christians from Lebanon.[11][12][13] He decided at a young age that he wanted to be a businessman,[4][14] and received business lessons from his father, who taught him finance, management and accounting, teaching him how to read financial statements as well as the importance of keeping accurate financial records.[15]
At the age of 11, Slim invested in a government savings bond that taught him about the concept of compound interest. He eventually saved every financial and business transaction he made into a personal ledger book, which he still keeps.[16] At the age of 12, he made his first stock purchase, of shares in a Mexican bank.[17] By the age of 15, Slim had become a shareholder in Mexico's largest bank.[9] At the age of 17, he earned 200 pesos a week working for his father's company.[18] He went on to study civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he also concurrently taught algebra and linear programming.[19][20][21]
Though Slim was a civil engineering major, he also displayed an interest in economics. He took economics courses in Chile once he finished his engineering degree.[14] Graduating as a civil engineering major, Slim has stated that his mathematical ability and his background of linear programming was a key factor in helping him gain an edge in the business world, especially when reading financial statements.[15][22][23]” Wikipedia
Quoting Outlander
Well that doesn’t tell you anything, does it?
Quoting Xtrix
It might be interesting to consider Calvinism
“ The Protestant work ethic, the Calvinist work ethic,[1] or the Puritan work ethic[2] is a work ethic concept in theology, sociology, economics and history which emphasizes that hard work, discipline, and frugality[3] are a result of a person's subscription to the values espoused by the Protestant faith, particularly Calvinism.
The phrase was initially coined in 1904–1905[a] by Max Weber in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.[4] Weber asserted that Protestant ethics and values along with the Calvinist doctrine of asceticism and predestination gave birth to capitalism.” Wikipedia
The OP is about wealth rather than income.
Income is going to be largely meritocratic and deserved you would hope. But wealth goes to being part of the rentier class.
So apples and oranges.
Your general stance of seeming to think that the super-rich got there by meritocratic means would suggest a likelihood that you don’t believe that there are governmental factors systemically favoring the already-rich, and so that you are probably okay with and support the systemic factors that do in fact favor the already-rich, like the enforcement of contracts of rent and interest.
But do please let me know if I was wrong and you instead agree with my critique of rent and interest.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You need to show me instead of telling me.
I’m responding to the OP itself, which is who are the 1%?
Yes, and it's your answers in admiration of them that make me anticipate your opinions on the institutes of capitalism:
Quoting Brett
This isn’t admiration. It’s an attempt to work out what sort of people they are. I also posted the negative aspects of such people.
The question I'd ask is whether this still is a market. Common definitions of markets are very vague and generalised, but they're usually distinguished from gift economies. That is, systems of exchange where goods and services are exchanged based on non-commercial principles, according to needs and wants rather than monetary value. This would seem the quintessential form of a non-coercive economy.
In a market, where prices are set either by supply and demand, or at least some material consideration, there is always the possibility of one person being forced into a contract by circumstance, without any practical choice.
Quoting Pfhorrest
These considerations would mainly apply to compound interest though, wouldn't they? A fixed interest rate, as the Roman Interesse, is similar to the profit a trader makes on a deal. It's payment for loosing access to the good, and therefore trading opportunities.
Rent can also similarly be considered a payment for the person owning the capital to reimburse for the loss of ability to otherwise use it. This only seems a problem when it applies to your essentials for living, such as shelter, and when capital is owned for the sole purpose of renting it, at which point the above justification for rent stops working.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Well, I disagree in principle to any notion of freedom that includes the "freedom to punch someone in the face". Historically, such a conception of freedom is linked to the slave holders freedom (dominion) over slaves, and shouldn't be the basis for the relations of equals. But that is perhaps the subject for another thread.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes, I guess the holes come from the fact that renting out housing wasn't really something the religious movements first cared about, since they mostly originated outside of urban environments where such practices by and large didn't exist. The popular movements of the time were much more concerned with people loosing their freedom, becoming debt peons, due to interest bearing loans.
The philosopher did not formulate it in a metaphysical sense, where it could be answered by something like “God”, “chance”, “fatality”, but in a geopolitical sense, and came to the conclusion that it was a pity that Europe had lost its position, leading the way to Russia and the United States.
The answer seemed out of place with the question. States, nations, governments and continents do not rule. The bosses are the individuals and groups that control them. Before geo-politics comes tout court politics. And then everything gets complicated formidably. It is easy to see which states or countries prevail over others. But finding out who really rules in one state or country — and through it in others — is a more daunting intellectual challenge than the usual political analyst can imagine.
The verb “command” comes from the Latin manus dare: the commander lends his means of action (his “hand”) to others to do something he has thought. A ruler gives orders to his subordinates, but upon closer examination you will see that only very rare rulers in history — a Napoleon, a Stalin, a Reagan — were themselves the creators of the ideas they came up with. Early theorists of the modern state got it right when they invented the term “executive power”: the man of government is usually the executor
of ideas that he did not conceive of, nor would he have the ability — or the time — to conceive. And those who conceived these ideas were the same ones who gave him the means to reach the government to realize them. Who are they?
Applying the question to the specific case of the United States, the sociologist Charles Wright Mills, one of the New Left mentors, published in 1956 the book that would become a classic: The Power Elite. The answer he found took the form of a complicated plot of groups, families, businesses, official and unofficial secret services, sects, clubs, churches, and ostentatious and discreet personal relationship circles, including lovers and call girls. The political class, which culminated in the person of the nominal
ruler, appeared there as the foam on the surface of dark waters. Mills was obviously on the right track. But he died in 1962 and did not have the opportunity to witness a phenomenon that he himself helped produce: the New Left itself became the power elite and lost all interest in “transparency.” On the contrary: it has worked its opacity to the point of having placing a complete stranger in the presidency of the most powerful country in the world and surrounding it with a protective wall that blocks every attempt to find out who it is, what it has done, who it is with, and what interests it represents. If you want an idea of what the power elite is doing in the United States, you need to look for information at the other
end of the ideological spectrum: conservatives are the current heirs to the tradition of study inaugurated by Wright Mills. It is thanks to them that today the fabian globalist elite, the living nucleus of power behind virtually all western governments, has become visible in its composition and in details of its modus operandi to the point of near obscenity, involuntarily comical the insistence of some in calling it “secret power”. Press enter on google for the words “Council on Foreign Relations”, “Bilderberg”, “Trilateral” and the like, and you will get more information than your neurons will be able to process over the next ten years — information whose level of credibility ranges from scientific evidence to
top-down invention.
By contrast, little or almost nothing is known about the deep sources of power in Russia, China, and the Islamic countries. Even the descriptions we have of the visible ruling class in these regions of the globe are schematic and superficial, without comparison to the meticulous Who’s Who of the
western elite. This is easily explained by the difference in access to information sources. It is one thing to search western archives and libraries, under the protection of democratic laws and institutions, and even in the US to break through the barrier of official ill through the Freedom of Information Act. It is completely different in trying to guess what is passing behind the impenetrable walls of the Russian-Chinese establishment. Neither the KGB nor China’s intelligence services have ever given access to
independent researchers. Even the archives of the USSR Communist Party closed again after a brief period of tolerance, motivated not by any sudden love of freedom, but by the illusory conviction, soon denied, that western researchers were mostly sympathetic to the Soviet regime.
In the Islamic world, beneath the ruling class and the clutter of terrorist groups stretches an unfathomable network of esoteric organizations, some millennials, whose power of influence is vastly varied from country to country and from time to time. These organizations, which constitute the
spiritual core of Islam, the profound assurance of its civilizational unity and, in the long run, the condition for the possibility of worldwide Islamic expansion, remain perfectly unknown to western political analysts,
journalists or even scholars. The difference in visibility between the big contending globalist schemes is
a source of catastrophic errors in describing the power conflict in the world.
Moreover, the organization of this plan was the work of a secret society composed of people from the nobility, great capitalists and a mega intellectual named Alfred Milner, who although he had no money was really the boss of the thing because he was the most intelligent. And the aim of this society was to create the conditions for the Anglo-Saxon race to dominate the world. Not only was it a mega imperialist plan, it also ushered in the era of genocide. Because in the war they waged against the boers in South Africa, despite the fact that later they wanted to agree to a surrender, just like Kitchener, the british commander in charge, an instruction came from Milner and others in the secret society that he should kill until the last, so it was evidently a war of extermination.
I suggest you reading: “Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War” by Gerry Docherty and James MacGregor, and “The Anglo-American Establishment” by Carroll Quigley (Quigley was Bill Clinton’s history professor, and wrote until then the most important book on the globalist elite that is Tragedy and Hope, in which he defends the globalist elite, he just didn’t want it to be secret)
Personal experience would show you. I can assure you, there are people who were born very rich, who have received rubber stamp degrees from prestigious universities, who hold high income positions, but whom I wouldn't trust to stack rocks correctly.
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/neighborhoods/
This has a county by county level map that shows the percentage chance that a child born in the lowest 20% of income will make it to the top 20%. Even poorly preforming counties still have 1/25 poor children making it to the top, so there is mobility, although perfect mobility would be 1/5.
Of course this is longitudinal data, so it's looking at older Millennials. In fact, social mobility has been trending downward due to a number of factors. The simplest being that exploding inequality means the difference between the top and bottom are further to travel.
Things are worse now than this map lets on.
Notably, the deeply Republican South has the absolute worst mobility. This does not change controlling for race. Whites are less socially mobile in the South.
Neither is the highly liberal coastal regions the most mobile. That tends to be the Mountain states. This is probably a mix of faster growth there, lower rents (historically, CO blew up later), a more libertarian brand of Republican rule, and less inequality overall. Ogden, Utah as a city had the lowest inequality and best mobility last time I checked, and Provo was second. It helps that Utah also leads in donations to non-profits by a huge margin, so there is more voluntary social support.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Can show me what? I have no idea what you’re referring to.
That the wealthy don't universally, or even predominantly have the positive traits you ascribed to them.
Certainly, they might embody those traits more on average, but it's probably not a huge difference between the upper middle class and the top 1%.
Aside from a necessary level of intelligence and emotional intelligence, I would say ambition is more a determing factor than conscientiousness.
If we're talking Big Five personality traits, you need a base line conscientiousness for work ethic, but too much is probably bad. Risk tolerance from low neuroticism and lower agreeability is probably more important.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I didn’t think we were talking about the wealthy. I thought it was about the so called 1%, who, yes, are wealthy, but there are lots of wealthy people out there, all very different: conscientious, lazy, deceitful, charitable and so on.
So we’re talking about a specific group of people who are so wealthy that they are regarded as beyond wealthy. I put up some of their names. I put up what I would regard as personality traits that may be behind their success, I gave some history of the lives and I also put up what are probably not the best aspects of their personalities.
Now to be that successful, whether you inherit money or not, you would need to have many of those positive traits I put up. Hard work is the one trait everyone who succeeds has. I don’t think that’s debatable.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Exactly, some of these traits are common in all successful people at all levels, from a small store to someone like Bill Gates. Having money doesn’t mean you are one of those people. Plenty of people lose their wealth.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Fine, call it ambition if you like, but don’t call it criminal.
Quoting apokrisis
The OP is actually about who these people are.
But anyway, wealth and income are not apples and oranges, they are inseparable.
Edit: actually I’ll correct myself here: “ Wealth can be contrasted to income in that wealth is a stock and income is a flow, and it can be seen in either absolute or relative terms.” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wealth.asp
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2020/06/08/scientific-study-luxury-is-not-what-motivates-rich-people-to-become-rich/?sh=7df21c33200c
“ Almost all of the interviewees, including those over the age of 70, regularly worked and devoted a significant amount of time to their professional activities. And this was despite the fact that none of them had to work for financial reasons.”
Even someone who worked in below-average-paying non-profit or service job (with or without degrees) can end up a lot wealthier than one might suppose: If they saved money consistently; if they bought a house prudently (smaller, at the bottom of the market); if they paid cash for cars (by saving over the life of the present car); having adequate health insurance; investing conservatively, if they maintained a lower-income life style, and so on. They could end up having 350,000 to 500,000 in wealth when they retired. Were they employed in better paying jobs, or well-paid jobs (but not high-paying) they could, with the steps listed, end up as millionaires.
Having children is expensive, so raising a family might deter one from achieving any accumulation of wealth till later in life.
Frugality doesn't require one to live a pinched pleasure-free lifestyle, but it does foreclose freely spending on vacations, decorating, drinking a lot (alcohol is expensive, especially when regularly consumed at a bar), smoking (especially at the average per pack price of $6.30). Over 10 years a pack a day smoker would spend a minimum of $22,920. That's a significant hunk of cash. A 2-pack a day smoker in a state with higher taxes ($8-$10 a pack) would spend close to $60,000 over a 10 year period. Regularly eating meals in restaurants (even if run of the mill or fast food) can prevent one from saving much. Pack a lunch on your way to becoming a millionaire.
OK, so a millionaire today isn't what it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago -- let alone 100 years ago, but having cash in the bank is imminently better than owning money all over town. Even if one's wealth is minimal, avoiding debt is very desirable.
Then there is earned income from work, and unearned income from investment. If you are worth $100,000,000 your earned income might be peanuts, while your unearned income could be quite high.
There are a number of studies about who these people are, and how they operate. If you want to know more (much more) about wealth and power, start with G. William Domhoff, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His four books are among the highest rated titles in sociology (OK, not the same as the best selling books on Amazon).
Who Rules America? (1967, #12)
The Higher Circles (1970, #39)
The Powers That Be (1979, #47)
Who Rules America Now? (1983, #43)
Don't be too concerned about the publication dates; the perches where the elite roost do not change very fast. Besides, he's still publishing:
More recently, he is the author of The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century: How They Won and Why Labor and Liberals Lost (2020); Diversity in the Power Elite (3rd ed., 2018, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft); Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich (7th ed., 2014); The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy: Corporate Dominance From the Great Depression to the Great Recession (2013); The New CEOs (2011, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft); Class and Power in the New Deal (2011, with Michael Webber); and The Leftmost City (2009, with Richard Gendron).
Domhoff has a good website, https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/about.html which has more information,
Depends on what country you’re referring to? In the US it would be anyone earning around 500,000 dollars a year or more.
On a global scale it would include everyone who posts here. In some countries the distribution is more skewed than in others. Historically the most powerful nations (in terms of economics) always suffer from extremes of poverty and wealth. Due to various factors - including the effects of a ‘smaller’ world because of communication and mass advertising - this common feature is probably magnified due to awareness and actual adverse effects brought about by such effects of our current revolutionary period (computer/information age, soon to be CRISPR age).
A great problem is the global community acting like ‘their country’ is the be all and end all of everything. Things are a changing though .., subtly but very, VERY quickly.
I’m just waiting for people to be less fearful. ... or rather to ‘embrace’ fear. Opportunity is a mindset not a privilege. None of us are perfect, and none of us enjoy suffering (obviously!), but it helps to fully understand the benefits of suffering to better ourselves in what small ways we can - sadly this is just something that comes with experience IF you are willing to blame yourself rather than the ‘regime’ or ‘them’.
GL HF :)
Quoting Bitter Crank
I have a bit of a problem with some posts that keep falling back on a moral position in regard to these people, not that I’m suggesting that of you. The OP as wondering about who exactly they are “and if there are trends in their philosophies or religious outlooks.”
Some have insisted that
Quoting apokrisis
or
Quoting Outlander
Well many are self made, and even if they inherited wealth what’s wrong with that?
And if their crap smells the same as ours then we’re just like them.
How can anyone make judgements about these people without understanding who they are, specially here on a philosophy forum? Why would anyone do that? Why insist that
Quoting StreetlightX
when evidence suggests that’s not always the case.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I had made a correction on my post about this as an edit. I’m never sure which is the best: an edit or a new post.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Many on this OP regard the 1% as a blight on the land, parasites and responsible for the hardships of the poorer members of the community.
So far as I can see the driving force behind these people is a powerful work ethic and ambition.
If you’re going to control these people to stop them making so much money because it’s wrong then you’re going to have to control the work ethic and ambition. How do we do that? How do we set limits and controls? Are you going to say it’s illegal to work that hard or that your ambitions are immoral so you must give up your ambitions? At what point do you cross the line into immorality? Who sets these parameters?
Yes, without understanding who they are, OR without understanding the social/political/economic milieu in which they exist.
As it happens, tax law has quite a bit to do with how well inheritance transfers wealth from one generation to the next. In times and places where inheritance tax law is quite restrictive, it is more difficult to be "born with a golden spoon in one's mouth". Where tax law is lax, it's much easier.
The organization and operation of the economy has quite a bit to do with how easily one can get rich through one's own efforts. Where investment capital is scarce, where investors are very skittish and reluctance to take chances, starting a company is much more difficult -- and the same for expansion.
How personal income and corporate income is taxed is also an important factor in getting rich by one's own efforts.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak DID NOT get Apple Computers going by buying parts from Radio Shack, building 5 computers, selling those, and using the profits to buy parts for 8 more computers; selling those, and so on until they were making first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of computers, finally seeing some real income.
What they did was get a loan to buy parts, rent space, hire some people, and then build a bunch of computers, sell them, and then show the bank that their plan was worth another loan. The banks made money, eventually Apple made money, and finally Steve & Steve got rich.
Businesses almost always require borrowing in order to operate -- even very large companies. Bankers can kill or promote a company with the denial or granting of credit. Start-ups especially require credit.
Why do banks lend money to some people and deny it to others? Well, connections matter a great deal. Backers (or guarantors) are another. Collateral helps a great deal. Some sort of track record is important. The fact is that a lot of people couldn't get a loan to get the greatest idea in the world off the ground if banks don't like their looks, background, connections, plans track record, or the astrological sign they were born under.
Of course, banks lend money to make money, and they hate losing it. Consequently, most credit seekers are going to be shown the door pretty quickly.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes and most of us do not live in that milieu. A lot of us don’t want to, a lot can’t and a lot fall before they get there. Hard work may not get you there, but lazing around certainly won’t.
Inheriting wealth; lucky for some, but still easy to lose it all through human failure. This is very Randian of course but still true. Money doesn’t mean success.
Edit: what I mean is having money doesn’t mean you’ll be successful.
We live in a capitalist country par excellence and accumulating wealth (surplus value) out of the hides of the workers is The Name of the Game. The 1% are either the most successful capitalists, or they are the children of capitalists (or grandchildren...) Capitalism is not based on any sort of equal distribution of wealth. The Uber Capitalist himself, Henry Ford, realized workers had to make enough money in his factories if any of them were to be able to buy his products. He didn't raise their wages to $5 an hour in 1914 out of the kindness of his heart. Kindness had nothing to do with it.
The existence of extremely wealthy people today, by itself, is not the critical problem. The critical problem is that in heavily concentrating wealth among one to ten percent of the population the remaining 90% are starved for wealth. Large numbers of people (I should say, large percentages of people) can not acquire the basic pieces of a comfortable life style that was available 60 years ago. States, counties, and cities have increasing difficulties financing the essential services and amenities that make a big city and a given state a nice place to live. Students have to borrow a lot of money to pay for college (because legislatures have reduced state funding to higher education). And so on and so forth.
Between 1930 and 1980 the distribution of wealth was not egalitarian by any stretch of the imagination, but it was less severely disproportionate. That more egalitarian distribution turbo-charged the post WWII recovery, which started to come to a halt in 1973 with the Arab oil boycott.
So, within a capitalist milieu, it makes no sense to prevent people from accumulating wealth. Either accept some degree of inequality, or opt for abolishing capitalism.
I think Streetlight opts for abandoning capitalism; he's kind of bitter and resentful about it. I'm in favor of getting rid of capitalism too, but despite my handle I have a sunnier disposition. Odd how that works out.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Supposedly the 90% are starved for wealth because 1% has it. But let’s assume the 1% didn't gain it, does that mean the 90% would have it instead? Where would it come from?
If Bill Gates gave his money away at Target's rate, it would take him 500 years to get rid of it all. So, Billy dear, send me... oh, 400 million. It will make life easier for both of us.
I can help too.
Correct. Here's the principle behind it:
Workers produce goods and services for which they get paid.
The value of what they produce is greater than the wages they are paid.
The owner of the company keeps the difference between wages paid and value of goods produced.
Of course, there are some other pieces -- like plant maintenance, raw materials, heating an cooling, administration, taxes, and so on. What the owner takes away after everything is paid for is called surplus value. Accumulating surplus value (in the form of money) is the goal of the capitalist. He wants to make money for himself (or herself). The more the better.
Quoting Brett
Labor ultimately produces all wealth--in any economic system.
IF there were only workers and no owners (no 1%), THEN what there would be some sort of socialist economy operating. Yes, the 90% would have it instead. Workers and their children make up the majority of the population. They would keep the value of what they produced. They would be better off because they would possess the surplus value they produced. (Obviously, they wouldn't all be filthy rich. One gets rich by accumulating surplus value, not by spreading it out evenly.).
Yep. The pandemic proved what everyone already knew - that if the 1% dropped dead tomorrow, nothing at all would change. All value comes from those who produce, not the parasitic leeches who expropriate the value of their labour.
Only because money is concentrated in so few hands (those of the banks) to begin with.
If the capital of the world was spread around more or less evenly, then borrowing from those who have control of the capital wouldn't need to be a thing.
Quoting Bitter Crank
To achieve that they would need to do what 1% did, which is build a business from scratch and produce the same wealth that so many resent the 1% having. They cannot just take over a business nor take the money from the 1% to share out. You can only take the wealth to share out once. After that you have to produce it yourself.
And if there were only workers and no owners then you would, as you say, have a socialist economy which has never worked anywhere. So that wealth would not be generated to share out.
Someone commented on what a miserable life the rich live. And it’s true, it takes a lot of man hours and focus to succeed, it’s not conducive to family life and maybe not for your own health. If the 90% want that wealth then the load will be theres.
So it seems to me you’re back at the beginning.
There are a lot of things that are wrong and unfair but I don’t see how destroying the 1%, branding them as parasites or robbing them of their wealth will change things.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This would obviously be in the form of better wages, which I would agree with, but the capital has be accumulated first. Who produces it?
The people who do the work produce it, just as they do now; they just get to keep all of what they produce, instead of some parasites siphoning it off of them because of a legal fiction that they're entitled to it. @Bitter Crank is already explaining this above (as have I, in a different aspect, in my explanation of the problems of rent and interest; I think that the workplace dysfunction is only a symptom of the greater dysfunction caused by people being born into debt, as nobody would accept the shitty wages so many are forced to if the alternative wasn't being completely denied access to the capital that they need to do the work necessary to generate what they need to live).
(And some capital is not produced by humans at at all, but just part of the natural world, to which nobody is entitled a disproportionate share).
Quoting Pfhorrest
They produce the product but they don’t produce the profit. The profit comes from the difference between production and sale price. Which means you need markets. To equal the wealth the 1% produce the product would have to be sold at the inflated price. To who? To the 99%.
The owners charging each others' workers (their customers) a profit margin doesn't magically generate more money out of nowhere, it just takes money that would have been kept either by the producers (as higher wages) or by the consumers (as lower prices), who are the same class of people either way.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No they don’t because they all have to pay the inflated price, which diminishes the value of their wages. If my maths is right they’ll end up with nothing but their hourly rate and no profit.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Same here, no profit.
They're already paying the inflated price. The inflated price is the current market price. But that money they pay now goes to someone else. If that someone else wasn't in the picture, it would go to themselves instead; or alternately, they could just not charge themselves that.
Right now, they as a class (being both the producers and the consumers) pay (X+Y+Z)% = 100% of the current market price, and receive X% of it in wages, while the owners takes Y%, and Z% go to other factors of production.
If there were no separate owners involved, and they sold at the same price it's currently sold at, then they would still pay (X+Y+Z)%, but they would receive (X+Y)% in wages, with Z% going to other factors of production. Their net gain over the status quo: Y%.
Alternatively if there were no separate owners involved, and they sold at the minimum production price of (X+Z)% its current price, then they would pay only (X+Z)% (which is Y% less than the current price), and receive X%, with Z% going to other factors of production. Their net gain over the status quo: Y%.
Well, gee whiz, Brett; I was just following Jesus on this: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the kingdom of God."
Not only that, but Jesus said to the rich young man “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor."
Upon Jesus' pretty plain advice, very few rich folk have ever made themselves poor, and if Jesus couldn't get them to give it up, I seriously doubt that they will give it up on my recommendation.
Yes your post makes sense. But I think it has be taken into account that this is theoretical. The world won’t operate that way and once again the profit motive will dominate, competition from others and inflated prices for all goods will grow.
The 1% do not have a fated moral flaw. They are not rich because they are evil. the rich are evil because they are rich. Radix malorum est cupiditas." The love of money is the root of all evil.
OK, I'll dismount from this moral high horse.
Many people are stuck trying to imagine a different way of operating a large complex economy. They just can't picture a world without rich people running the show.
The thing is, we don't need the rich or their motivation to accumulate great wealth at everyone else's expense to have a successful, productive economy. The workers have the technical know-how to produce, everything from digging up iron ore to putting the finishing touches on a car. Workers supervise the factories (they are employees, after all) and workers do the accounting, payroll, design, advertising, production planning, etc. The owners of auto companies (Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler, VW, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, et al) do not do any of the work producing cars. They are, to a large extent, what @streetlightx called them: parasites.
The work of beginning an enterprise (let's say, making chicken McNuggets from stem cells) can be done by members of the community who want to provide a sustainable supply of meat (such as stem-cell McNuggets) to other workers. The local elementary school teacher, nurse, construction worker, or mechanic need not know how to do this, because there are people who already know how to do this. The community raises the funds, contributes labor, etc., however they want to do it, to plan, build and operate the ersatz bird pieces. They sell the product to other worker organizations that buy and warehouse food, prior to distribution. Yes, cash changes hands but the intent is not to maximize profit (the capitalist model) but rather to earn enough to operate the plant, pay the workers, and set aside something for future expansion, repairs, machinery replacement, etc.
None of this requires a capitalist bent on becoming rich. Indeed, it requires NOT HAVING such a capitalist deadweight.
The biggest obstacle to success is the dead hand of the past in the form of banks, corporations, politicians, and so forth that would hate to see such a development come to pass. So it isn't likely to happen without getting rid of the dead hand of the past.
There is no cosmic rule which requires the world to meet its needs through the capitalist model.
How would you enforce this, how would you manage human behaviour?
Quoting Bitter Crank
That’s a big statement in relation to the people I listed.
Quoting Pfhorrest
So they just move into a ready made factory? Do they build a factory or buy it from someone?
I'm not going to enforce anything, and neither are you, Ditto for managing human behavior. Human beings are well equipped to construct society, enforce group rules, and manage the behavior of the group. We have been using these capacities since the Stone Age when we struck out as hunter-gatherer bands a 250,000 years ago. And, please note, we still do. Most of the benefits of an orderly society derive from most people's willingness to cooperate. There are not enough law enforcement personnel in the solar system to make everybody behave. Most of the time, most of us behave because we understand following group rules.
Some people misbehave. There are criminals, anti-socials, capitalist pigs, and such that require the tender, loving care of the community. That's why communities hire people to police the town, and bring the drunkards in off the streets to sober up. That's why communities have mental health engineers to deal with anti-socials and capitalist pigs who just don't know how to behave. That's why there are jails, hospitals, and pleasant preserves on isolated Aleutian Islands to which totally uncooperative persons can be sent for rest and recovery.
Quoting Bitter Crank
And what about the ambitious? The rebels, the innovators who want to do things differently?
I don’t like the state of things in terms of wages, costs and community anymore than most people. But I think you’re going to need a lot of social coercion to manage this dream.
Edit: and you and Pfhorrest have drawn me off topic.
It might depend on what one is ambitious to do. Rebels? Innovators? Society needs them. Hopefully, they will make significant contributions to a good and better world.
So, there have been several references to the lists of people who constitute the top of the 1%. However, the entire rich 1% of the population constitutes a far longer list than anyone would want to read. Hundreds of thousands of names are on that list.
Making the list would require a lot of searching in social registries, country club files, housing sales records, corporate records, tax records, property records, and the like -- some of which is, and quite of bit of which is not public.
People charging whatever they can get away with (profit motive) is fine, so long as those people are the ones actually doing the work, and not just some gatekeeper between the producers and consumers siphoning off along the way.
But competition from others tends to reduce the ability for profit. It's lack of competition, because the wealth necessary to start competing is in so few hands, that leads to the ability to profit. If everyone is charging whatever they can get away with and anyone can start competing with them whenever, the market price is expected be driven down to cost. That's markets 101. The fact that that doesn't actually happen in practice is indicative of a problem somewhere.
Quoting Brett
Either, but in either case whoever actually builds the factory should get the full payment paid for the factory.
The factory-owners in the current setup don't actually build factories themselves. They pay others to build them factories, and pay them less than what those factories are actually worth to them, because they can, because they control the wealth and the workers who need it don't have much choice but to either accept what they can get or stage a rebellion against the entire world order.
Quoting Pfhorrest
What I was getting at, which probably was not made clear enough, is that if someone or a collective of workers is going to buy or build a factory then they’re going to have to borrow money. Most likely they’ll go to a financial institution. Whose money are they borrowing that’s sitting there in the bank earning interest, where did the money come from? Why is there that excess money sitting there?
What makes you say any of the characteristics you mention?
I'm not sure you're understanding what is being called for here. I'm not interested in individual biographies.
A bit of experience, a bit of reading, a bit of reasoning. If you like you could post which ones you think are wrong or don’t make sense.
What is being called for then?
The argument was that the rich are rich because they inherited money. So I gave some examples of where that is not true.
Quoting Xtrix
Then you have to know who they are instead of just determining it from prejudices.
Yes but this is hardly research, Brett. Your list of positive or negative attributes doesn't tell us much, other than your own intuitions about the matter. Without historical or documentary evidence, etc., it's not very helpful.
I have a hunch that most of the wealthiest people, the people making the real decisions in corporations, abide by a neoliberal ideology. I suspect most of them are from the Protestant tradition, etc. But I can't prove any of this -- hence why I started this thread. I'm looking for research. Jane Mayer has done some good work on this, but in a narrower sense.
Quoting Xtrix
No, it’s a group of people with opinions discussing something.
Quoting Xtrix
Tell me where I’m wrong then.
Only if someone else has all the money, not the workers.
Why is all the money collected somewhere else that the workers need to borrow it from, instead of just pooling their own savings together?
Well tell me which ones are incorrect, just do it instead of waving your hands around.
Quoting StreetlightX
Isn’t that what’s being done here?
Pathetic response. Just delete the ones you don’t agree with.
You're giving yourself away when you talk like this. So many tacit assumptions.
Thanks for the recommendations.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Thank you -- I'll check these out. Much appreciated.
What exactly are you attributing to "human behavior"? The profit motive? Seems like the age-old argument that capitalism aligns better with human nature than socialism or other systems.
It's utter nonsense, in my view, but I'm willing to hear you out if that's not your argument.
It's not that they don't make sense -- but whether it's accurate or not, who knows? And why should I believe you? I'm looking for research and evidence -- not opinions, however educated and reasonable they may sound.
Quoting Brett
Fine -- but that's not my argument, and not the point of starting this thread.
Quoting Brett
I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of people, Brett. So clearly I'm not expecting one to go through each individual biography. I'm looking more for general statistical actions. Apparently there is scholarship out there which people (like Bitter Crank) have recommended; that's what I was looking for from people here.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
You're missing the point. I'm not saying you're wrong. But neither can you tell me *I'm* wrong if I made the claim that "the rich are sociopaths." Without evidence, what's the sense of giving opinions? I didn't ask for opinions, I asked for research.
Quoting Xtrix
Okay, my apologies for thinking about it.
Quoting StreetlightX
Like the idea that they work hard. Hardly fabricated.
In any case considering that most of the rich have their money tied up in assets which are managed by other people, there's every chance that the rich can indeed be lazy do-nothings. If we're working off lazy stereotypes, I have every confidence that my local bus driver works far harder than some trust fund baby somewhere. But that's neither here nor there, given that making shit up based on lazy preconceptions is a shit way to argue.
Quoting Xtrix
Giving myself away as what? And speaking of assumptions what about:
Quoting apokrisis
Just tell me none of this is true.
1: They’re very hard workers
2: They’re very good a setting an objective and then making a plan to get there
3: They’re very good at projecting into the future
4: They’re very adaptable
5: Many of them are very innovative
6: They’re very good at choosing people to work with, understanding them, motivating them
7: They inspire people within their circle
8: They have a through understanding of the world they’re operating in
9: They’re very good at networking
Quoting Xtrix
In none of those characteristics have I mentioned the “profit motive”. I’m talking about the nature of people to work hard, to work with like minded people, to project into the future.
Then as Banno would say “Fuck off”.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Sure they can pool their own savings, but it’s unlikely to be enough to buy a factory and machinery.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Xtrix
So you don’t yet know what the answers are, which is why you want research, but you know I’m wrong. How do you explain that?
The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide - Richard Conniff
Giants: The Global Power Elite - Peter Phillips
The 1st book is a comedic portrayal of the lives of rich people, digging out facts that make them look like interesting animals in a zoo.
The 2nd book is actually less a narrative book and more a long documented list of corporations and wealthy people, who they are, and how much money they make. And there's a summary in every chapter describing what the list is about. Data used is recent.
Because all of the wealth is held by someone else instead. Which is exactly the problem.
Consider for a moment society as a black box, with no insight into how anything is distributed inside of it. There's a certain amount of capital in use, and another amount available to be used for new things; and a certain amount of labor in use, and another amount available to be used for new things. To get a new thing done, that society needs to get some of that reserve capital out and apply some of that reserve labor to it.
Now let's peek inside that black box. As we have it now, that reserve labor is poor unemployed people, and that reserve capital is rich people's savings. To get anything new done, someone has to borrow that reserve capital from the rich, and pay some of it to the unemployed poor for their reserve of labor, but not pay too much of it to the poor workers because they need enough left over from the produce of this new activity to pay back what they borrowed from the rich owners plus interest.
There could instead be a society where that reserve labor is leisure time that all people have on their hands because they can all meet all of their needs with less labor than their maximal output (because their jobs pay them so well and their fixed expenses like rent are so low), and that reserve capital is the savings that all those people have because they're all capable of earning more than they need to get by (because their jobs pay them so well and their fixed expenses like rent are so low). So to get anything new done, you just need to get enough people to agree to pool their time and money together to make it happen.
There's the same amount of labor and capital in society in either case, and the same amount needs to be unused in reserve in order to make new ventures possible in either case. It's just the distribution of it that's different between the two scenarios.
So if there is enough reserve capital and enough reserve labor to enter into new ventures, but we don't have that idyllic scenario where everyone has leisure time and money saved up, both of which they can contribute to new ventures that they like, then that's entirely because something about the distribution of spare time and spare money is screwed up somehow. If we really can afford to enter into new ventures, then necessarily we have enough spare time and money to do that, so necessarily we could afford to have that idyllic society. And since we don't have that idyllic society, there's a lot of poor and overworked people for no reason other than that some people who get to make those decisions decided they would rather have even more leisure time and extra money at the expense of everyone else.
Or possibly it is the case that there actually isn't enough reserve capital and enough reserve labor in society altogether to really be able to afford to enter into new ventures, but we're nevertheless entering into them anyway, because some people get to make the decisions on what money gets spent on and what gets worked on, so the things they want made and done get made and done, while other things that many many other people desperately need made or done don't get made or done because those many many other people don't get any say in the direction that society's resources get used.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Who are these people working for that pay them so well that they have enough excess money to save and eventually pool their money for some other collective venture? And if their jobs pay them so well and their fixed expenses are so low why would they want to go any further, what could drive them when they already have enough.
The collective venture that they already work for, of which they are part owners. Or in other words: themselves, with nobody else siphoning all the cream off the top.
If you're wondering how to get to there from a state of affairs where everyone works for someone else (and so has no spare time or money) except for the tiny fraction of people at the top: that's a good question. That's the question of how to change from what we have now to something better.
Perhaps another question could be illustrative on answers to that: how did we get from the initial conditions, that weren't like this, to this? In the beginning there were just naked people wandering around hunting and gathering, nobody owned anything, everyone was equal, all they got was the product of their own work, and what their tribe would share with them of the product of their work, both of which were consumables, because all productive activity was about collecting food.
Then agriculture was invented, and people had to claim little plots of land for themselves to grow food on if they wanted to jump on the agriculture bandwagon. To begin with, anyone could just claim any plot of land, because nobody owned anything, and you couldn't very well stop someone from using some bit of land while also tending to your own; you could only really defend what you yourself could use.
But fast forward 11,000 years or so and somehow (that I'm sure others here will be happy to elaborate on) by then instead of everyone farming their own little bit of land, a few people with armies at their behest own all the land, and anyone who wants to farm on it has to give a share of their crop to their land-lord, or else fuck off... to some other land, where some other lord will give them the same deal. Or you can just die. Your choice.
Fast forward a few more centuries of industrial progress and now there are productive things to do besides farm, the product of which you can trade to a farmer for your food, and for a historical moment it's a bit like the dawn of agriculture, you can just do something else besides farming using other stuff that isn't all owned by the lords, which is glorious freedom in comparison.
Until a few more centuries down the road and now all of the stuff you need to do any of that stuff is also owned by a tiny handful of people, and you're back to accepting your new lords' deal or fucking off... to some other lord who will give you a similar deal. Or you can just die. Your choice.
How do we get from there back to a world where ownership is widely distributed again, and keep that from falling back into this shitty situation again? I think I know an answer to the latter, but if you're got an answer to the former I'd love to hear it. Closest thing to an answer I can think of is "convince everyone that it's possible and desirable", because when the rubber hits the road everything is a democracy, whether it's the ballot box or the ammo box the people are using. Whatever cause has the most people for it and the fewest against it wins.
Quoting Brett
You can always have even more. Maybe someone has an idea for something that will let them get the same work done in even less time. Or more work done in the same time to have more and better stuff for the same work. So long as there is still something that someone has to do that they don't want to do, or things people want to do but can't, there will be motive to try something new to make that better.
And if we do eventually get to the point where nobody wants for anything, well then we don't need to start any new ventures from there, do we?
Quoting Pfhorrest
That is my point. How does it get started?
I think home ownership for those who want it would be a good beginning. It’s an asset you have to look after, it gives you a stake in the community, and it serves a greater purpose than just being an asset.
But then people need secure, reasonable wages to manage it.
However, the irony is they need other people’s money to get started.
http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel.html
I agree completely. Inaccessibility of home ownership is my #1 economic concern, and the biggest root of pretty much all the other problems IMO.
Quoting Brett
Or we could just stop letting other people take their money.
That's the principle behind my invalidation of contracts of rent and interest. If just owning something (to lend out) can't be a source of free income, then there is no market for those things (like housing) except for the people who need it for their own use, so those who currently own more than they're using (to lend out) would have no use for it other than for its sale value, and no way of getting that sale value except by selling on terms that people who need it for its use value -- those who would otherwise be renting it -- can afford.
So, looking just at housing here though this principle applies to all capital, if contracts of rent were not valid, those who currently own rental housing would voluntarily sell it to those who would otherwise have been renting it on terms that are as affordable for them as their rent would have been, because the only alternative is taking a total loss on it.
Or looked at the other way: the validity of rental contracts gives those who already have more capital than others both means and motive to acquire more and more still, at the expense of those others, distorting what the natural free market would otherwise look like. Invalidating those contracts would restore the natural, more egalitarian equilibrium of the market, and keep it that way.
Thanks, I’ll have a read of that later.
My problem is I largely agree with you but it’s the mechanic of it that I find problematical. Because to bring and end to the renting situation as it is requires action by the government. And governments are notorious at misunderstanding or messing up these things and in the end wasting a lot of money and messing things up to the degree that they’re worse than the problem they tried to resolve.
Edit: and when a house becomes an asset, even owned by an individual not a landlord, then the market heats up.
Now at the risk of name calling I’m going to suggest that the someone who could make this happen is someone who everyone seems to despise.
Technically it requires inaction: it needs to stop doing something it already does (enforcing certain contracts). But yeah, practically speaking it should really do some kind of gradual transition from this to that, which would require doing something. And I don’t trust them enough to expect they would do it right. Nevertheless they are currently doing something wrong, so I would still like to see them try to change.
Quoting Brett
Only to the extent that there is value to that asset. If the only value you can get out of a house is your use of it, there is no value to you in owning more housing than you can use, so no motive for you to buy it, so no heating up of the market from that.
I’m not sure if you’re suggesting Trump would unmake landlords? The guy whose main business has been being a landlord?
No, but I see how you might think that.
What I’m saying is why not one of those 1% being given the challenge to fix it, even if it was a 50 year contract. Who else would have the ambition, the drive, the ability and imagination to make something so big happen if they were given a clearly measurable objective?
If one of them honestly wanted to do that, then more power to them. But I find it unlikely that someone with such immense power would voluntarily work to unmake their source of that power.
Quoting Pfhorrest
It’s a big challenge. It’s the sort of challenge someone who likes a big project might take on, someone with real ambition. Of course if you believe their raisin d’être is profit then you can’t see it happening. And governments serve short terms and new ones can mess up the plans of the previous, and even then they’re always in election mode. But where else could you turn and how else could it happen?
Yes, that is fabricated if there's no evidence to support it. When it comes to this particular idea, there's indications that the trend is toward inherited wealth. Picketty discusses this at length. So again, why should I believe your generalization over others? Where's the beef?
Quoting Brett
I never said anything about knowing you're wrong. But if you're right, you've not demonstrated it with anything other than simple assertions and statements about "reading and thinking." So again, if I said something like "the rich are generally very nice people" -- would that be something informative?
I appreciate it, thank you.
Quoting Xtrix
But I did give evidence. I put up information on the early life of Carlos Slim, Larry Ellison and Sheldon Adelson. I know that’s only three individuals out of many. But regardless you can’t say my thoughts on hard work are fabricated. And while I’m at it I notice you don’t call my list of negative traits a fabrication.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Brett
That’s my actual statement. First of all experience. You don’t have to believe me, but experience is not fabrication. Nor is reading. That’s why you asked for some reference to reading on the subject. And reasoning? Well that’s what we base a lot of our conversation here on isn’t it?
I have not said I find these people innocent or good, I’ve just commented on what appear to be traits of people who succeed.
But you said you wanted some reference on these people
Quoting Xtrix
Right. That’s where your interest lay. Not exactly quantifiable traits based on statistics are they? How are you going to measure them? At least my comments on hard work are measurable.
Somehow you went from seeking information on their “ thoughts, feelings, beliefs and values” to proof that "the rich are sociopaths."[/quote]
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think being a certain kind of person will determine just how someone becomes rich. Pablo Escobar was rich, something like 30b.
But like minded people, within reason, will associate with like minded people. But everyone does that. So I don’t think wealth itself is the reason that those people come together.
Wealth obviously can have an impact on personality, but in what way? I think the general feeling here is that wealth corrupts, if not the personality then in the effects of their actions. Which may be the same thing. But surely wealth creates many things that are good. Can wealth only contribute the bad?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Wealth is a subjective idea, don’t you think? So do you think that might apply to all people, not just the wealthy? When it comes to wealth, or just having money, people are generally susceptible to its affect, whatever the reasons, even not having money. There are many reasons people want money, where do you separate or draw the line between wealth and personality being the driving force?
Yes, I can.
Quoting Brett
Yes, I do.
Quoting Brett
Are you really not understanding this, or just arguing in an attempt to save face somehow?
You made a bunch of statements without support, and you know it. Stop wasting my time.
Quoting Xtrix
What sort of support would I need to satisfy you?
I never yet met a wealthy donkey.
Quoting Xtrix
“So what makes wealthy people different?”
1. More extroverted.
2. More conscientious.
3. More emotionally stable.
4. More self-centered.
‘The "entrepreneurial personality profile" has been described by a combination of high extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness as well as lower agreeableness and neuroticism.
This constellation is thought to address typical affordances [yep: researchers love awkward phrases] of being an entrepreneur such as acquiring new customers, managing finances, developing innovative products, negotiating with suppliers, and coping with enduring phases of uncertainty and risk.’
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-rich-people-think-differently-than-everyone-else-this-new-study-reveals-personality-traits-of-self-made-millionaires.html
Research:
The Journal of Analytical Psychology
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjop.12360
What motivates a billionaire to keep working?
Status is a very big part of it. They want to win. That’s part of the motivation. We’re all competitive in our own way. It’s part of our tribal DNA. If you think about tribal societies, the person who has the most power also has the most access to resources, and they can protect and provide for their family. The closer others are to that leader, the safer they feel. It’s the pursuit that brings them happiness — the pursuit of business goals or their passion, that is giving them joy. The money is a side effect, but it’s not what is giving them joy. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/your-money/inside-the-minds-of-the-ultrawealthy.html
That was sort of the point of my last comment about direction of causation. I expect that rich people tend to be just like anybody else would be if they were rich, because it’s not being the way that they are that made them rich, but being rich that made them the way that they are.
Quoting Pfhorrest
So you disagree with my “supporting evidence”?
I missed what this is referring to. Who's "they"?
When discussing concentrations of wealth and power (.001%), there's very probably an interaction. Once you're part of the club, you've had to have internalized certain beliefs and values - mainly about capitalism and politics. That's what the scholarship seems to suggest.
So perhaps more emphasis can be placed on your second point.
Quoting Xtrix
Can you support that statement with evidence? I mean it’s not a fabrication is it?
Quoting Xtrix
It’s odd that someone as smart as you would think the effect is behind the cause.
So someone is given a pile of cash and then they become more extroverted, and then they become conscientious, and then they become emotionally stable, and then they become more self centred.
No wonder you want to give their money to others, look what it achieves.
The two bits you posted look like they're suggesting two things:
- one, that entrepreneurs have certain personality traits
- and two, that people who have plenty of money still have motivation to do things for reasons other than to earn more money.
I believe both of those conclusions, without even reading the evidence in detail; they just sound clearly plausible to me.
Other things that need to be accounted for alongside those facts, however (and if you're not disputing these, that's great, I just think they need stating for full context):
- Nowhere close to all entrepreneurs, even those who have those personality traits, go on to become self-made millionaires, and nowhere near all millionaires (never mind the billionaires who are the real topic of the OP) are self-made. Having those personality traits may be a necessary condition of entrepreneurship (at least in our present system), and entrepreneurship may be a necessary condition of being a self-made millionaire (at least in our present system), but being self-made is not a necessary condition of being a millionaire; and even more to the point, having those personality traits is not a sufficient condition for being an entrepreneur, nor is entrepreneurship a sufficient condition for being a self-made (m|b)illionaire.
- All people have motives to do things besides just for money. It's just that for many people, their material needs, which they require money to fulfill, are so threatened that they need to focus largely on that priority. It's having that priority already taken care of that allows the ultra-wealthy to prioritize other things instead. Which is in keeping with my post you're replying to.
It's not necessarily just giving someone a pile of cash that does this, but having a long history of wealth (especially during early developmental years) that can. It's easier to be emotionally stable when your life is materially stable. It's easier to be conscientious when you're emotionally stable. It's easier to be self-centered when you're at the top of the social pyramid and everyone treats you like you're better than other people. And it's easier to be extroverted when all your interactions with other people are always full of praise like that.
But dumping a pile of cash on someone who's already spent their entire life being jerked around and treated like shit probably isn't going to miraculously make them think and act like someone who grew up wealthy, no.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quite so. Many people fall along the way, their dreams in ashes. Nor am I suggesting that the wealthy are innocent or that there are people who don’t inherit wealth (however, bear in mind that someone made it from scratch at some time).
What I’m saying is that if you want to change things then you need to know who your up against. It’s no good just saying they’re parasites or sociopaths, demonising them to justify your dislike.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I’d agree with that too. But if you read about the early life of Larry Ellison and Sheldon Adelson for instance you’ll see that’s not always the case. What I’m trying to get across is I don’t think you can generalise about these people.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No it’s not. I would suspect that even though some of these people came from hard backgrounds they came from supportive families. And I know a sharing of wealth could change that. But calling the wealthy parasites and sociopaths, threatening to take their wealth from them and refusing to consider just who they are certainly won’t.
The people who made it from scratch were the workers. Andrew Carnegie didn't make so much as a pound of steel himself.
Why did workers agree to be employed by Carnegie? Because they needed work in order to earn money to live. Didn't Carnegie create the steel mills? Again, workers built the mills -- not Andrew Carnegie.
What Carnegie did was negotiate with investors and bankers to raise the capital to buy raw material. He directed the company on the macro-scale; more of his employees did the micro-managing of day-to-day production.
The pay the workers received for the millions of tons of steel they manufactured was significantly less than Carnegie's expenses. Carnegie walked away with the difference (an enormous fortune).
What goes on in a capitalist economy is exploitation and extraction of surplus value (the difference between the cost of the workers labor and the profit derived from the workers labor), It's not accidental; capitalism, and the legal systems of capitalist countries, is designed to enforce that system.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I’m aware of this. But the builders did not make it from scratch. Carnegie took the risk of borrowing to begin his venture. There was nothing before that, no steel, no jobs. Of course the workers built the mills and made the steel, and of course he paid them the minimum he could. Who’s denying this? Once again I’m not saying these people are right, I’m trying to determine who they are. I don’t know why this is so difficult.
Regardless of how the money was made, that which might be inherited by a lucky member of the elite was created from scratch by someone before him/her.
Lets see the scholarship then. I'd be interested.
$100MM net worth seems a fair cut off level here. At this level you have people from entertainment, some professional athletes, but I'd imagine the majority comes from business. While I wouldn't expect them to be Marxists, I would still expect a decent chunk of them to be Democrats, but who knows - lets bring in the studies if you have them.
As a general rule I'd expect the elite of any society to be on balance a little more interested in preserving the status quo. There are still a number of individuals at this level of wealth who'd be described as Democrats. But yeah, obviously not too many of them are talking about "abolishing billionaires" but you do see supporters of higher taxes, stronger safety nets and strong environmental regulation.
Rather than being sarcastic, you might have simply asked for the scholarship I was referring to in the preceding sentence, which you politely left out:
Quoting Xtrix
Incidentally, I fail to remember you referring to anything of the sort in your initial contribution to this thread. And yes, until you have checked my sources and been convinced by it yourself, you might consider an assertions of mine with the appropriate skepticism.
Who are you arguing against? Certainly not I; I said none of those things.
Well done. Logic at it's finest.
Quoting Pfhorrest
A very important point.
This goes to the heart of it.
So circling back to rephrase my original question: what are the people like who have benefited most from such a system?
"I got a job and house and a bank account
When I'm out, I doubt that's something you could say
And if not then I fake death like Kenneth Lay
Make money every day the world burns on its axis
While y'all struggling to pay taxes
I'm getting my money the fastest
Memos and faxes shredded-up documents
Slush funds through the corrupt continents
But they don't want me indicted
'Cause they don't want my dirty laundry aired when I fight it
Don't get my lawyers excited
'Cause what good is a law if you can't rewrite it
I got CIA traders, dictators
So fuck y'all whistle blowers and haters
I'll invest money from Al Qaeda
In the bank 911 widows go to later
Capitalism's who I pray to
Fuck the state of the world
Money talks so what the fuck I need to say to ya girl."
https://youtu.be/Pc985fd3uLE
a) What is the nature and rules of this system? (How does it work.)
b) Is it a just system? (Is it legitimate.)
I think you'll often find that those who benefit from system x will be much more likely, on average, to defend x and more often have the intellectual ability to do so; after all, those of privilege and power have access to higher quality educators (recall Aristotle and Alexander) and generally are in close alliance with other noble ranks, like the clergy and the intelligentsia.
In other words, they know very well the answers to the first question. Since they're also beneficiaries, they find sophistical, complicated ways of answering b) in the affirmative. All the while professing enlightenment or Christian ideals.
These apologetics have always been fairly successful, but it's truly amazing that in today's society you'll find millions of little apologists all around you, even and especially amongst the lowest income levels. This shows just how effective the propaganda has been, almost to 1984 levels.
Even better, the academics who justify the system are caught in an even more hyper competitive loop than the general populace. Publish or perish. I had dinner with a professor who specialized in terrorism research, mostly game theory modeling, and he explained to me how the pay and prestige for academics most closely reflects street gangs. Lots of adjuncts living near the poverty line, a very few people at the top getting prestige and huge economic benefits.
I had the occasion to test this theory asking an adjunct while working at Duke, which is one of the 10 most selective schools in the US. The salary for a full teaching load worked out to $18 an hour. You basically gambled on the name getting you future work.
I loved teaching college courses, but the grind is why a PhD never interested me.
I figure depending on whether or not I stay in my field, I could still teach in retirement. Practical experience is counting more for instructors. One of the best professors I ever had only had a BA, but had been a city manager for larger cities for decades and had a wealth of knowledge.
The 1% is not the “masters of the universe” because they do not possess the monopoly on violence. They are private citizens and are beholden to the same laws and penalties. You are more likely to lose your property or be thrown in jail by some mediocre bureaucrat than Elon Musk.
An important point to be sure. It explains why some elites prefer extractive systems. More open markets and political systems tend to produce wealthier economies. You can grow the pie, rather than taking a bigger piece. However, those at the top benefit from systems that allow them to take a larger piece, even if they stunt their nations' economies.
Take for example Gaddafi. When he died, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates were the "richest men on Earth," with around $40B. Gaddafi's personal wealth was estimated at over $200B. It pays to loot a nation. Bill Gates can't have people who displease him imprisoned or killed. He can't notice a cute girl on the street and send her an invitation she can't refuse to join him on a date. So, there is an incentive for leadership to undermine systems that promote fairness and more wealth overall.
What Thomas Piketty and others have shown, is that this move towards consolidation of privileges happens pretty inexorably in modern societies unless violence forces concessions.
Billionaires can't have you killed in the US, but there are myriad examples of them financially ruining people with law suits.
Child sex crimes are considered pretty much the most heinous thing you can do in our culture and Jeffery Epstein was allowed to make a plea covering many cases and be sent to "prison," where he was allowed to leave every day, only had to sleep there, and had his own meals sent to him. Of that's not an indictment, IDK what is.
I read somewhere that most of the gold that was ever mined -- going back 3000 years -- is still in circulation. I don't know whether that is true, but it illustrates an important point: Wealth is cumulative.
The undifferentiated wealth sloshing around in the trough in 2020 has a history. You can trace the development of wealth backwards to sometime in the medieval period, probably not much before then. There are, for instance, a few companies in the world that have been in continuous existence since 1200. Some of the wealth in England goes back to grants that William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) made after he won the battle of Hastings in 1066. Some of the valuable land in New York City is owned by descendants of Dutch settlers before New Amsterdam became New York. Land is the original wealth. From land one can extract rent, food and fiber (like wheat and wool). England accumulated a wad of wealth by exporting fine wool to manufacturers on the continent. Later, it was coal and iron. The reason the British claimed North America was to have the land from which to extract wealth. The Germans wanted Lebensraum, and came close to getting most of Europe. Land is wealth. Nations are willing to go way out of their way to get it.
Over time, starting in the late 1700s the first industrial revolution starting up, and more wealth was created. Families who owned industrial works of various kinds became rich; their wealth was passed on in the form of investments and inheritances. Of course, sometimes big piles of wealth were lost -- someone took the land away from you; the factory burned down; one's valuable ship sank; one died without heirs, war ruined the country, and so on. But a lot of wealth moved on to other people.
The secrets of technology are another source of wealth. The British tried to hold on to the secrets of manufacturing, but as luck would have it, they failed. Americans swiped several important secrets and started up manufacturing in New England -- the beginning of the American textile fortunes.
The southern economy was devastated by the Civil War, and it took roughly a century for the southern states to recover fully. The north was enriched by the same war, and the fortunes earned (by banks, mills, railroads, farms, etc.) established a springboard to greater wealth. Metal and railroads were the leading industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie was started working in 1848 at the age of 13--no huge credit to AC. Children usually were put to work early on.
Carnegie's first good job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He made enough money to invest in various industries and accumulated his first fortune. He started his investing about the time the civil war started. This was a period of huge growth in northern industries, and his (probably small) investments paid off hugely.
Carnegie had some money at just the right time. Had he first tried to invest shortly before the 'long depression' of 1873 which lasted 5 to 20 years, depending how one measures economic activity, he might have lost his nest egg and had difficulty recouping. Similarly, many of the people who lost a lost of wealth in 1929 didn't recover until WWII spurred huge government spending.
Quoting Brett
The reason you are having so much difficulty answering the "who they are" question is that you are asking the question on a philosophy forum. What you will have to do is read history. Fortunately, that is not a dreary task. There are numerous interesting books which specifically or generally cover the question of HOW and WHO accumulated wealth from the getgo down to the present.
I am confident that you greatly exceed the necessary capacity to locate good, interesting, and economically oriented histories and read them. THEN you will know who it was that got rich and how.
The state has the monopoly on violence. But they essentially own the state. To say they're subjected to the "same laws and penalties" as anyone else is naive. Yes, according to cypto-neoliberals like you, "government is the problem," and so it's no surprise that you want to divert the focus to "bureaucrats." Very typical.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I’m asking the same question Xtrix asked.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Bitter Crank
And that is not the question.
Quoting Xtrix
You haven’t supplied any.
Quoting Xtrix
Purposely obtuse. That was in relation to my thoughts that you were putting the effect before the cause, that money makes these people what they are instead of the other way around.
Quoting Xtrix
I have now. Care to respond?
Quoting Xtrix
Care to back that up, or is “essentially” your get out of jail card?
You earlier seemed to agree with my elaboration upon that thought: that it's growing up with wealth that shapes people's personalities, even if dumping wealth suddenly on an adult won't suddenly change their personality. And with my response about necessity and sufficiency regarding the entrepreneurial personality and actually attaining wealth from poverty.
Those two things together are pretty much the same point Xtrix is making. Wealthy people are the kinds of people they are because having (a history of) wealth makes people like that; while being like that is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for being wealthy.
Quoting Brett
OK, then what is your question? Who are the "who" you want to identify?
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don’t know. Ask Xtrix, it was his question.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This all beginning to get a bit messy so I’ll need to go back over our posts.
Brett denies being interested in the question "who they are"; he says it is your question. I've attempted to address what I thought was Brett's question, either who they are or how one could find out.
Here's my last attempt to explain it:
I read somewhere that most of the gold that was ever mined -- going back 3000 years -- is still in circulation. I don't know whether that is true, but it illustrates an important point: Wealth is cumulative.
The undifferentiated wealth sloshing around in the trough in 2020 has a history. You can trace the development of wealth backwards to sometime in the medieval period, probably not much before then. There are, for instance, a few companies in the world that have been in continuous existence since 1200. Some of the wealth in England goes back to grants that William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) made after he won the battle of Hastings in 1066. Some of the valuable land in New York City is owned by descendants of Dutch settlers before New Amsterdam became New York. Land is the original wealth. From land one can extract rent, food and fiber (like wheat and wool). England accumulated a wad of wealth by exporting fine wool to manufacturers on the continent. Later, it was coal and iron. The reason the British claimed North America was to have the land from which to extract wealth. The Germans wanted Lebensraum, and came close to getting most of Europe. Land is wealth. Nations are willing to go way out of their way to get it.
Over time, starting in the late 1700s the first industrial revolution starting up, and more wealth was created. Families who owned industrial works of various kinds became rich; their wealth was passed on in the form of investments and inheritances. Of course, sometimes big piles of wealth were lost -- someone took the land away from you; the factory burned down; one's valuable ship sank; one died without heirs, war ruined the country, and so on. But a lot of wealth moved on to other people.
The secrets of technology are another source of wealth. The British tried to hold on to the secrets of manufacturing, but as luck would have it, they failed. Americans swiped several important secrets and started up manufacturing in New England -- the beginning of the American textile fortunes.
The southern economy was devastated by the Civil War, and it took roughly a century for the southern states to recover fully. The north was enriched by the same war, and the fortunes earned (by banks, mills, railroads, farms, etc.) established a springboard to greater wealth. Metal and railroads were the leading industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie was started working in 1848 at the age of 13--no huge credit to AC. Children usually were put to work early on.
Carnegie's first good job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He made enough money to invest in various industries and accumulated his first fortune. He started his investing about the time the civil war started. This was a period of huge growth in northern industries, and his (probably small) investments paid off hugely.
Carnegie had some money at just the right time. Had he first tried to invest shortly before the 'long depression' of 1873 which lasted 5 to 20 years, depending how one measures economic activity, he might have lost his nest egg and had difficulty recouping. Similarly, many of the people who lost a lost of wealth in 1929 didn't recover until WWII spurred huge government spending.
I’m trying to determine who they are. I don’t know why this is so difficult.
— Brett
The reason you are having so much difficulty answering the "who they are" question is that you are asking the question on a philosophy forum. What you will have to do is read history. Fortunately, that is not a dreary task. There are numerous interesting books which specifically or generally cover the question of HOW and WHO accumulated wealth from the getgo down to the present.
I am confident that you greatly exceed the necessary capacity to locate good, interesting, and economically oriented histories and read them. THEN you will know who it was that got rich and how.
My problem with your post is that it’s about what happened, not who “they” are.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
I put up some comments about who I think these people are, that is, what drives them, why do they do it, etc.? I also put up some thoughts on what doesn’t reflect well on them.
These were ignored then finally addressed as fabrications. So I put up some research about these people. That was also ignored. Then up put up some reference to three wealthy people who did not inherit wealth but worked hard to make it. Also ignored.
I understand a lot of this, people despise these people and regard Capitalism as criminal. Fine. But it’s convenient to ignore my posts about these people to bolster their position. Which is not what you’d expect on a philosophy forum. But still that’s how it is these days. I don’t mind, but don’t expect me to accept groundless assertions based on prejudices.
I think it might be a little of both. People like Gates, Bezos, and Jack Ma were each lucky, but they certainly knew what to do with their luck.
But then I think about ex-gang members who talk about how a gang systematically transforms a normal kid into a monster. I think people on the second tier of fortune might be a little like that: trapped by their own ambition.
But if there is some similarity or blind fusion of global agenda, is it human nature or today's culture?
Wouldn't the answer to that bear on whether there's no any point in being leftist?
Quoting frank
Can you elaborate on that?
No human being alive here on Earth today really did much more than crawl out of their mother. Sure, some did so as billionaires, some average, some dirt poor. There's really nothing mysterious or conspiratorial about it.
Or... maybe there is. Perhaps they sold their soul to the devil or are aliens/inter-dimensional beings in disguise or something. *whistles X-files theme*
Quoting frank
That’s interesting. Though it might be seen by some as making excuses for the behaviour of the wealthy.
I think most of us would agree that the global scene is something that evolved naturally. We're all products of it, so in a sense we're all dependent on the 1% as much as they're dependent on us. We're each unique faces of a single global entity.
If this system is an expression of human nature, perhaps dreaming of some alternative is useless. But if it's our present culture, we might be able to change things.
What do you think?
In what context do we give a shit how it's seen by some?
Quoting frank
I think it’s possible that Capitalism has served its purpose. It pulled a lot of people out of poverty, but now it’s like some top heavy dinosaur that crashes around crushing everything underfoot. The desire for Socialism is understandable but that too has failed to offer a real alternative to Capitalism. Where do we go from here? Do we just have to wrestle with our circumstances until something workable evolves out of it, just as it has in the past? Strangely enough I do have faith in us finding a way through this.
Quoting frank
I’m not sure what you mean.
The problem here is failing to distinguish a free market from capitalism, and a command economy from socialism.
Free markets have helped pull people out of poverty. Command economies have failed. But capitalism, which has thus far always accompanied free markets, has also failed. What's left out of the combinations of those possibilities that we haven't really tried? Market socialism.
So let's try that. Free markets with no capitalism. Socialism with no command economy.
Imagine if there was a way out of this. What sort of people do you think might make it happen, maybe people who are conscientious, extroverts, innovative, more emotionally stable, and get joy in what they do.
Well there is obviously an evolutionary path there, things blossom then they die away. However I don’t see any market, even a free market, happening without a particular individual to drive it. Maybe it’s possible. But I’d like to know if you think that the free market and Capitalism evolved together at the same time or whether the free market existed first. Because if it did and Capitalism evolved from it then aren’t we destined to go in a circle again.
We will find a way. We'll respond to natural events with ingenuity and grace. Mostly.
Quoting Brett
It takes all kinds. Big events are produced by hundreds of millions of people.
With everything you do, everything you say, even everything you think, you're contributing to large scale success, or large scale disaster. Your actions are like pebbles dropped into a pond, sending ripples out through time and space.
Just one smile at someone who's hurting could set events in motion that will roll out over the world and into the future for centuries.
Quoting frank
So you have faith in human nature.
You could put it that way.
I think capitalism is the last vestiges of feudalism still clinging to the freer markets enabled by a post-agrarian economy. There has always been a struggle between freedom and authority, and I don’t think there is any teleological path that history has to go in: there have always been free markets, there have aways been people trying one way or another to seize control for themselves, and that battle can go either way depending on what we the people oppose or support.
Quoting frank
Apparently he also believes in smiling butterflies whose flapping wings cause an outbreak of lovely summer weather. An optimistic fellow. Smiling at the old woman lying in the street who just got run over by a bicycle will surely ripple out to the 24th century.
No amount of personality quirk is going to explain the accrual of wealth on that scale upwards: any even half-adequate explanation can only be [I]structural[/I], needing to account for how it is anyone at all could occupy that kind of [I]position[/I] in society. The enabling conditions of such disparity are sociological and political in the first instance, and psychological at a point at which no one should give a shit anymore other than just a just-so story. If the 1% are parasites, it is not because they have any kind of behavioural disposition of any sort: they are parasites by virtue of their occupying a structural position in society with disparity as it is. The most lovely, talented, hard-working, virtuous, kind, and giving person could belong to this class: they would [I]still[/I] be a fucking parasite insofar as their wealth would objectively be built off the backs of others.
I mostly agree. I did very much like this tendency chart that was doing the rounds a while ago though - it's from Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty, and which I found struck quite close to home:
These broad-stroke correlations of course need to be understood as an etiology that moves from social position to behavioural tendency and not the other way around.
In general? Hard to say. There are characteristics that may well apply to people who built fortunes up over time: highly motivated, focussed, maybe type A personalities; people who require large material rewards for their efforts. If they built a fortune they probably have insight into where opportunity is before it knocks on the door, or they recognize an opportunity when they see it. If they are good at it, they probably don't dither.
People who inherit a large amount of money may not resemble people who built up companies. They may or may not have entrepreneurial skills.
Are they the sort of person one would like to go drinking with? Quite likely--but don't let them get away without paying. But one impression I have of people with substantial wealth is that they tend to have their radar up for threats to their social, financial, political status quo. After all, their wealth may be threatened in the event of social turmoil, or they may at least be inconvenienced. If they feel entitled to deference, they won't take inconvenience lightly.
Quoting Pfhorrest
My posts have been made to try and demonstrate what these people might be about. I haven’t tried to say that they’re better than us, nor that they’re parasites or sociopaths, as some have done.
I didn’t pose the question I just responded to it. I did make the point that not all the wealthy inherited money, which is true and I posted evidence for that.
They’re are probably many people who have the same traits who don’t take part in the corporate world, NGO’s for instance. I’m not saying they’re the only ones who have these traits.
If you think that they have the same psychology as us and you think they’re parasites and sociopaths then I guess you would have to say that wealth turned them, because you can’t see how anyone like us could make all that money. And the answer to why we the ordinary person can’t make that money us because we weren’t lucky enough to inherit wealth, which is not always the case as I tried to show.
Of course you can’t make that sort of wealth merely by working long hours. It requires something more, which not all of us have or even care about.
So, according to you, is a "free market" an unregulated market? Is there ownership of property in your model? What does your notion of a free market look like?
The reason is that once you're that rich, accumulation of money becomes about status competition. Conspicuous consumption is a kind of addiction. Being very rich is not just bad for everyone else, it's also bad for rich people themselves. Being very rich is inherently a bad thing for human beings. It’s something that society needs to eliminate, just like a disease.
I think the economic externalities to the rest of society is the main reason why we shouldn't allow concentrated wealth to exist, but I think it's a worthwhile additional critique.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/does_wealth_reduce_compassion
https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/the-rich-drive-differently-a-study-suggests/
That said, you're still describing intra-class behaviour - what happens, as it were, once you 'get there'. I suppose that goes some way to answering the OP, but considering the capitalist tendency to isolate, atomize, and psychologize - exemplified by people like Brett - every effort should be made to foreground exactly the opposite of that.
Also, to add to your links - the rich are more likely to be narcissists: "Those with more highly educated and wealthier parents remained higher in their self-reported entitlement and narcissistic characteristics. “That would suggest that it’s not just [that] people who feel entitled are more likely to become wealthy,” says Piff. Wealth, in other words, may breed narcissistic tendencies — and wealthy people justify their excess by convincing themselves that they are more deserving of it."
https://healthland.time.com/2013/08/20/wealthy-selfies-how-being-rich-increases-narcissism/
This misses the point. Even now that they're rich, I don't expect that they're statistically very different from people who aren't rich, psychologically. It's not like being rich "turned" them. The things that they do are the same things that most ordinary people would do in their position. Even the bad things. Because people in general are not shining bastions of morality, but will exploit a situation to their benefit when given the chance, even at someone else's expense, and then try to rationalize away why what they're doing is perfectly fine.
What's bad is that we systemically, as a culture, give some people that chance, and internalize those rationalizations, and act like everything's fine.
The problem is not some people just choosing to be evil because they're bad people, not even because wealth made them bad people or anything like that. The problem is a social structure that gives some people the opportunity to live the high life at the expense of others, and gives those others almost no opportunity to escape that, and then praises or blames people for their position in that hierarchy as though they got there by choice and merit alone.
Quoting Janus
To have a market at all requires that people have claims (first-order passive rights) to property, and powers (second-order active rights) to trade those claims with each other.
To have freedom in general requires that people have liberties (first-order active rights; limits on others' claims) and immunities (second-order passive rights; limits on others' powers).
Freedom of a market is especially about immunity against anyone else but you transferring your claims to anyone else; that's the usual sense of "unregulated" that's meant when most people talk about free markets.
The absence of such immunities is the cornerstone of a command economy, where someone else can order you to sell something and tell you what you may get in exchange for it.
Capitalism vs socialism has nothing to do with any of these kinds of rights in general, but only with how the specific instances of claims to property are distributed. When they're concentrated in few hands, you have capitalism. When they're spread across many hands, you have socialism.
Since claims are limits on others' liberties, having claims concentrated in few hands (capitalism) gives those few people vast liberties at the expense of limiting everyone else's liberties, while having claims spread across many hands (socialism) provides equal liberty to all.
The thing that I think leads to the rise of capitalism, even in a nominally "free" market, is the absence of certain immunities (and so the absence of a certain kind of freedom), or conversely the presence of certain kinds of powers, to contract; especially contracts of rent and interest.
I went into greater detail on why earlier in this very thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/476042
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/476855
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes I’d agree with you there.
The problem is that “ we systemically, as a culture, give some people that chance, and internalize those rationalizations, and act like everything's fine.” Why do we, did we, give some people that chance, and who is “we” anyway. Capitalism wasn’t introduced from another planet. Someone, maybe Merlot- Ponty, said that Capitalism succeeds because it turns part of our nature into a benefit. I guess that part of our nature he means is the desire to own things, to possess things, to buy things.
This is the problem. Not the individuals themselves, even though they may not be the most desirable people. Like I said, maybe we’ve reached the-use by date for Capitalism.
Edit: more likely Raymond Aron.
The technical language is necessary to properly understand the nuance of the situation, but I can try to dumb it down for you a little.
I'm not against people having some property. I am against people accumulating property, as in, property ending up more and more concentrated. I'm against that in the sense that that is a bad end. The question at hand is what means lead to that end. What is going wrong, deontologically, that is causing that bad outcome, consequentially?
I think the answer to that is government enforcement of certain kinds of contracts. People are free to let others use their property, and other people are free to give them money for that if they want, but in absence of a valid contract someone can't actually owe money for the use of someone's property. If they just decided to not pay, that would be legally okay, and the owner would have no recourse. As such, this would be untenable as a widespread business arrangement. Nobody would ever rent to strangers who can't be trusted and can't be legally obligated to pay them anything.
I don't think butterflies can smile. Kind of like you. :love:
I'm not too concerned with what Brett thinks given his line of discussion so far. The question is simple enough: Who are the so-called 1%? Misleading, because it's most like 0.1%, but the "masters of the universe" comment is enough to contextualize what is meant: concentrations of wealth and power in the United States.
You've already supplied sources and given concise analyses, so where the confusion lies I have no idea.
Quoting Bitter Crank
This is excellent. It's very important to know the history if we're to have any chance of fully understanding our current situation. There have always been those in power (since at least the neolithic revolution and the settling into villages), a "ruling class." Power has been taken through various means: brute force, greater numbers, the use of horses (or elephants or...), better weapons, monopolies on goods and services, an excess of capital, indebtedness, etc. etc. etc.
Our current situation, where the "ruling class" (the so-called "masters of the universe") don't take power by force but rather through their massive wealth and resources, gained through a system whose rules they've taken advantage of (and shaped in their favor) -- rules like private ownership -- and which they rely on the state to enforce, is what we are questioning.
During the neoliberal era, in reaction to the New Deal and the movements of the 60s, corporate interests have won out and we're living the results. The statistics since the late 70s onwards in areas of productivity, manufacturing, real wages, union participation, wealth inequality, etc., all tell the story. The RAND corporation estimated in a study on wealth transference that about $47 trillion has been moved from the bottom 90% of incomes to the top 10% in the last 40 years -- as just one example.
Nothing you don't know, but worth keeping in mind when asking the question about the 0.1%.
This is exactly right.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm not so sure about this. I don't think they're genetic mutants or that the quality of their brains are somehow different -- so maybe "psychology" isn't right. To put it simplistically, I wonder about their philosophy. As I said earlier, my hunch would be that most are neoliberal capitalists, with a good portion Christian or otherwise secularists.
Why should we care about their beliefs, moralities, attitudes, etc? Because they're the ones making the major decisions that will influence the course of human history. Taking climate change, if most of the people responsible for rising emissions are motivated by personal gain and greed, disregarding the future consequences because God told Noah there wouldn't be another flood -- that's relevant. So their demographics are especially worth looking into.
My only contention is that the so-called 1% are not your masters. Elon Musk is unable to assert any control over you, and if he did, he would be subject to legal penalty. So if a person of this evil, (and in the last analysis) psychopathic class is unable to assert control over you, how is he at the same time your master?
At any rate, I become suspicious of hatred when it becomes indistinguishable from envy.
Sure, it’s easier to purchase favor from those in power when one is wealthy. But it is impossible to purchase favor when favor isn’t for sale. The reason the so-called 1% are able to seek their advantage from those in power is because those in power give it to them.
I would rather live under robber barons than under the consistent bureaucratic scrutiny of moral busybodies. The moral busybodies rule over us for our own good and with the approval of their conscience.
I think you've hit on something that simply has to be true once you've gained real power. Otherwise i's like being part of the board of directors and not caring about stock value. But this trait is an interesting one, because then the question becomes: which way would you prefer trends to go? Where are you going to put your power and resources? To a movement that challenges the status quo (which is working for you) or a countermovement? Fairly obvious, to me.
Quoting Saphsin
Externalities -- a VERY important point, yes.
This isn't quite what I was looking for in terms of differences in psychology -- I meant more their philosophies. But regardless, it's not shocking to learn.
I think it's worth diverting the discussion a bit by discussing these rationalizations.
A criminal trying to rationalize his crimes would be laughed at in court, but with enough wealth one can afford the most complex rationalizations from the intelligentsia -- from the likes of Milton Friedman, for example...very nice person, likable, well-spoken, scholarly, etc. But a complete apologist for the ruling class. Employing the intellectuals is a very important piece of all this. It supplies the excuses they tell themselves and others, quite sincerely. So again we're in the realm of, essentially, philosophy. And we see how this propaganda tickles down to millions of people, including several on this forum.
There's overwhelming evidence for this. Excellent scholarship has been conducted. Tom Ferguson is one of my favorites. Worth checking out his "Golden Rule" book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition.
By "essentially" I mean de facto, but it's not absolute. Contradictions do exist. Government and the corporate sector aren't completely the same. But when you see who's allowing those in government to take power, through the cost of campaigning and the access to media, there's really no question who's in charge and who's beholden to whom. True, with Bernie Sanders and some others, that's beginning to change a little in terms of camping funding, but the remaining structures stand. Without the support of those in power, it's extremely hard (though not impossible) to break through. In such a system, the vast majority will be in the pockets of those who have the resources and own the needed institutions.
Even put in these deliberately ridiculous terms, yes he does. Not only by the impact he has on his workers, on the automobile industry, on the stock market, on lobbying for legislation that he deems favorable, etc. -- all that has an impact on society of which you and I are a part. In the same way of singing out Mitch McConnell and saying "He doesn't have any control over you." Sure, if you mean coming to my house and pointing a gun at my head and giving me orders. But in that sense, no one has ANY control over me. But that's an absurd way to think about political and economic power.
It's also funny that you choose Elon Musk. Why not Jeff Bezos? Does he not control our lives to a large degree? Of course he does. Same for the Waltons. Same for the boards of directors across the country. Same for the thousands of lobbyists in Washington representing the interests of these privileged people.
Quoting NOS4A2
This projecting on others of emotions of "hatred" or "envy" is also predictable and tired. I have no hatred or envy for these people. They can keep their money. What I want to understand (and change) is the system which produces such inequality of power and wealth. This is something you and other state-corporate apologists don't want to understand.
Quoting NOS4A2
Right, so once again put the blame on weak politicians and government, the one system in which we have at least some say. All the while completely ignoring the structural aspects which makes it nearly impossible to gain positions of major political power without first going through the filtration process of camping finance and major media use (both in the hands of the corporate sector). So yes, there are plenty of honest, brave politicians who refuse to accept money or give corporate-approved speeches to get a large audience, but we don't hear from them. Why? Because without conforming, they don't advance. A point people like you also conveniently ignore in favor of licking the asses of your corporate masters.
What a shocker!
I agree, but that also sounds like a good description of much of the American populace as a whole.
Quoting Xtrix
This sounds like a good explanation for the above.
No, Bezos does not control your life and is master of no one. You willingly use his services or you do not. You willingly engage with his company or not. You willingly work for him or you do not. Having an “impact on society” is not the same as being in control of other human beings, nor is it confined to the ultra-wealthy, and no amount of word-twisting can alter that. So it’s utter nonsense to suggest these people control anything beyond their own company and property.
You have less of a say in the government than you do in the market. And I doubt you know or have any say in where your tax money goes, unless of course you are living off the government’s plundered cash already. But assuming you also pay taxes instead of just fellate your master, try forgetting to submit them to your government and see how much of a say you have then.
American 1 percenters operate in a global ecosystem. Does it really make sense to think about how they reflect something uniquely American?
That depends when it comes to the neoliberal part, at least according to polls. But there is still a good percentage, I imagine. But even if it is like many others who don't have as much power, we have to the account for the special problems and issues that arise from those who do have such power -- like, as has already been pointed out, the hyper-sensitivity to threats to the status quo, etc.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Indeed. It's striking, too, that the people most ardently defending the corporate sector are the ones which are most negatively effected by their policies. That's quite an impressive feat.
Like I said, in your childish world of course not. I have no direct contact with Bezos, etc. So if we're going to absurdly restrict the definition of "control" to your level, then he has no control over my life. But then, again to you, neither does Trump. Neither does the governor. Neither does your boss at work. Etc. Just tired word games to avoid the obvious: Bezos and other powerful people have an inordinate amount of power, and they make decisions that directly impact all of our lives. And not just United States citizens, but the world community and future generations as well.
Quoting NOS4A2
Your entire worldview is so warped it should be considered a psychological pathology.
As if it's so simple as to be a matter of whether one shops on Amazon or not. What a joke.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yeah, because there's no such thing as lobbying and no such thing as externalities. Just honest, hard working innovators and businessmen who operate their businesses.
Such pleasant delusions.
Quoting NOS4A2
I was waiting for the "market" to come up, as is typical for neoliberal corporate apologists. But I never mentioned "markets" -- we're talking about the corporate sector and the government.
(1) Within corporations, you have zero say in the decisions. Zero.
(2) Within the government, you have some say, especially in local politics with direct access to town councils, state representatives, state senators, etc. When you get to the federal level, you have almost none, with the exception of voting. Not much, by any means.
But compare this to how a major corporation works. As a worker, you can willingly work or willingly quit. The rest of the major decisions is in the hands of the major shareholders (owners), the board of directors whom they vote in, and the top administrators whom they choose. None of this has anything to do with "markets."
But by all means keep defending those wonderful robber barons who you're eager to live under. I'm sure you're one of them, after all. Oh, wait.
You're a prime example of the extraordinary effectiveness of corporate propaganda. (Let me save you the time: "No, YOU'RE the one who's brainwashed by Marxism, socialism...." etc etc.) Keep trying. Go donate to Trump's election fraud fund while you're at it.
There was no need to "dumb it down"; it's a very simple idea to begin with; indeed I would say a very simplistic idea. How would it be possible to create a situation where a society had no laws in place to enforce only certain kinds of contracts? It might be possible not to enforce payment of rental of property, but then no one would rent their property. And that goes for any kind of property; vehicles, equipment of all kinds, plant and machinery not just real estate. A large part of the economy would collapse just from that act alone with unpredictable flow-on effects throughout an already fragile system.
Non-enforcement of interest would be a much greater problem still in an economy where money is literally loaned into existence. Your idea, although very nice in principle, is totally impractical; even if it were allowed that people would ever accept it, which of course they would not. A transition to such a state of affairs would seem to be practically impossible from where we are today without collapsing the entire system. It would be like asking a human to keep living without breathing. You seem to be just enamored with your idea (well not really yours since you are by no means the first to come up with it); while giving no consideration to the unforeseen, indeed unforeseeable given the complexity of the system, consequences if it were to be put in place.
There are already certain kinds of contracts that are not legally valid. You can’t sell yourself into slavery, for example.
Quoting Janus
That is the intention.
Quoting Janus
I don’t advocate just suddenly switching to my system, but transitioning there gradually using existing governmental apparatuses. Namely, an additional tax on net income from rent and interest, that goes negative for people who pay more than they earn from it. Start that tax low, then gradually ramp it up to 100%. That creates a gradually increased incentive for rentiers to sell instead of rent, to avoid the extra tax. Once the tax is ramped up to 100%, the incentive is the same as if rental contracts were just invalid (because you can’t make money from renting out in either case), so you can just switch to that.
Quoting Janus
I have given extensive consideration to the consequences, and if we weren’t already off topic for this thread I would welcomed further questions as to how I would handle any consequent you think I haven’t considered.
Yes but contractual slavery is not an institution upon which we depend.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The idea that any individual could create a system that could foresee consequences in an economy so complex no one can even come to close to understanding it, let alone predicting its outcomes is simply hubris. I think you have a greatly exaggerated assessment of your abilities if you think that is possible. And as I said before it is not "your idea"; you are not the first to realize that financialization of an economy inexorably leads to concentration of money in the hands of a few.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm not talking about foreseeable consequences, but the vastly greater number of unforeseeable consequences. Every foreseeable consequence you think you could take care of is like a hydra, that will produce another thousand unforeseeable consequences.
It makes me laugh to see people who think they can solve the world's problems from their armchair.
Apart from any of those considerations, anything like you suggest simply aint going to happen because people won't want it, so why waste your limited intellectual resources on toying with such ideas? You'd be better off getting out there and using you intellectual abilities to advocate for one simple positive practicable change you really believe in.
You’re just begging the question if you’re implying that we do depend on rent and interest, i.e. there is no possible way to have a society without it.
And contractual slavery has been a common institution in the past. We got rid of it and society didn’t collapse.
Quoting Janus
That’s why I advocate a gradual change. So that we can see the consequences as they start to emerge and react to them as needed. Even reversing course if necessary.
Quoting Janus
I know that. I’m just owning up to my own version of it being my version, and not imputing my thoughts on anyone else who might disagree with my in varying degrees.
Quoting Janus
That’s a just defeatist attitude. Let’s never try anything new even when everything old is failing all around us, because nobody will ever agree to try anything new.
How would we ever get anyone to consider trying some new idea without first talking about its merits?
There is no way to have the economy we have without rent and interest, and no foreseeable way to transition to an economy without it; that's what I'm saying. Humanity has never been captain of the ship; never been able to foresee the trajectory of the future: what makes you think it is more possible now, given how vastly more complex our situation is now?
Contractual slavery was never as central to the economy as rent and interest are today, and besides when institutional slavery was abolished, the desperate newly free could be exploited as cheap labour.
Quoting Pfhorrest
How are you going to go about convincing all the landlords and rental companies in the world to stop legally enforcing rental payments from their customers and tenants? I don't deny that making renting less and less attractive through taxation might work, if people would accept it, but any government who advocated such a move would likely not last long. And interest is a whole other can of worms since it is so central to the money system.
I'd love to see it happen, but it just ain't going to happen, because it's against the interests of so many people, and by no means just the mega-wealthy. People don't even want to give up a fraction of the lifestyles they've become accustomed to, even to ameliorate something as ominous a threat to our future as global warming. The only chance would be to greatly increase people's education and understanding of the world, but most people just don't seem to be that interested.
Quoting Janus
Watch out Janus, you’ll get cancelled.
No, I mean the whole cancel culture.
“ Canceling, today, is used like a massive, informal boycott when someone or something in the public eye offends … or when we’re just over them.”
Says who?
Just as an example, say someone wants to start a new business but doesn't have the funds; they will need to borrow money, right? Who is going to lend anyone money interest-free?
Only because plans to grant them land from the plantations they had been working were scrapped,
basically substituting chattel slavery for rent-and-wage slavery. It’s precisely the lack of ownership of capita that made them such desperate cheap labor, and that was intentional on the part of the plantation owners who wanted to keep as close to slaves as they could.
Quoting Janus
There are more renters than landlords, so if we have a real democracy then we don’t need to convince the landlords. If we don’t have a real democracy, we need to do something about that first anyway.
Quoting Janus
Like by talking to them and explaining why things like this would be good ideas worth trying? Like... what I’m doing now?
Quoting Janus
The point is to get the capital distributed enough that people don’t have to borrow in the first place. We went over that earlier in this thread already.
Like Janus I think this is just too simplistic as an alternative.
Assuming that factory X is owned by the workers and another factory, factory Y, is producing the same product and, for their own reasons, begin a price war, sacrificing their profits for more sales, driving the price down. The market responds and chooses the lower price. How does factory X respond in this market? What if their only hope is to invest in new equipment that enables them to produce the product for less? It means borrowing to invest in the long term. They need the money now, so they can’t save for it. Where do they get the capital? Who would have it?
I really can’t imagine their savings being enough to guy expensive equipment, unless they’re really loading up the price on their product to make big profits. Some of those savings would also be spent over a financial year on maintenance, unexpected downtime, price increases on the materials they use and so on. Apart from that what happens if a company runs at a loss for a year because of poor management?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Saying it twice doesn’t make it true I’m afraid. It seems to me, and a few others, that there’s a big hole
in your theory that you won’t address or can’t see.
Quoting Pfhorrest
From this I take it that:
1: they’ll be able to work less hours
2: they’ll have higher wages
3: their outgoings will be less
4: they’ll be able to save a larger portion of their wages,
5: they’ll have excess money, capital, because they get more than they need
But we don’t know what that capital amounts to. If it’s excessive then someone else is paying the price.
What would you consider a reasonable mark up on products sold to produce this capital?
Quoting Brett
Right now someone is already paying the price: the workers and consumers (who are the same class of people). Their losses go to the owners' profits.
Without (in the process of constructing this hypothetical scenario) changing the prices of anything, just who owns the businesses, those profits can be redirected (in the hypothetical world) to the new (relative to our reality) owners: the same people who are the workers and consumers.
So instead of having to ask a rich person to lend them money from the profits those owners have saved, people -- who are all owners themselves now, in this hypothetical scenario -- can spend their own money from those same profits that they've been saving, to start new businesses or improve existing ones or whatever else they might otherwise have needed to borrow for.
Quoting Brett
We know exactly what that capital amounts to: the same thing is currently amounts to. All that's different in the hypothetical scenario is who holds that capital.
Quoting Brett
This is an irrelevant question that shows exactly how you miss the point. It's nobody's place to be saying exactly what markup is or isn't reasonable. Let the market bear whatever price it will bear. Just make sure that ownership of the means of production in that marketplace is widely distributed. Then whatever profits can be made from whatever prices the market will bear go to lining everyone's pockets instead of just a few rich people.
(But note also that if the people in general are wealthier, the market will be able to bear a higher price... which is good, so long as the profits from that are coming right back around to the same class of people).
If the price is set by the market, the consumer, then it’s going to be as low as they can get it. Competition will also determine the price. If the price is low then how much is the factory going to make in profit, bearing in mind that the workers/owners are on good wages and working less hours? So the so called capital the workers build up is determined by the markup. So the question about mark up is not irrelevant. If the price is too high then the buyers, owners of other factories, lose the value of their wages. They have less to put away as capital.
Imagine you own a steel factory. You import your iron ore from another factory. The price of iron ore starts climbing. What do you do? Suck it up and watch your profit/capital shrink, or pass it on with an increase in price on the steel you sell?
Another point: would you lend your capital as a collective to another factory?
Competition is a central feature of the capitalist market economy based on profit. The struggle is to buy raw materials at the lowest possible price, pay workers the least possible amount, sell at the highest possible price, and if at all possible, monopolize the market in [whatever it is a company makes] with the end being the largest possible profit.
In a capitalist economy everybody is competing against everybody else. It may be a very "exciting" system to operate in, but it tends to be very wasteful. A few people come out on top with a lot, and a lot of people end up on the bottom with little. Capitalism doesn't 'specify this result as a requirement' it is just the natural result of a total shake-down system.
Socialism (broadly defined) replaces the total shake down system of doing business with a cooperative, planned, non-competitive system. The phrase "cooperative, planned, non-competitive" might sound soft-headed and idyllic or paradisical, but it is actually hard headed, technologically sophisticated, and (very important) possible.
VALUE, PRICE, AND PROFIT by Karl Marx is a short, popular-oriented book which explains how the capitalist system operates. You can get it here--FREE. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/value-price-profit.pdf
Quoting Bitter Crank
In the world Pfhorrest is imagining I imagine there will be more than one factory producing steel. After all we wouldn’t want a monopoly would we? How are prices determined in this world? Is everyone forced to sell at the same price?
That is already the case now, and I'm not proposing changing that.
Quoting Brett
The factory will make excatly as much in profit as it does already, because nothing that would affect its profit is changed in the hypothetical scenario. The workers have higher incomes because they get paid that profit instead of someone else besides the workers. (And they have lower expenses because they own their homes etc outright and aren't paying a landlord or bank to borrow that capital from them). And they can work less because they get paid more (and have lower expenses), so they can trade some of that extra money for extra time instead. (Someone else will have to take up the slack of their time, and they will get the difference in their money in exchange, and it all balances out).
The only thing changed between the real world and the hypothetical world is who owns what. (Well, and what kinds of contracts are enforcable, but that is the means to the end of changing who owns what, and keeping it from changing back to what we have now again).
I would invest my capital in companies besides my own, yes. I wouldn't just lend it for free out of the goodness of my heart, but I'd buy a stake in them. I'd buy lots of little stakes in lots of other people's companies, because that's smart investing. And I'd hope lots of people would buy little shares of my company too, finding it a good investment, and looking to diversify their risk.
Or rather, I'd probably just do as I do already and invest in an index fund that in turn passively allocates its holdings in proportion to market capitalization and so tracks overall market performance. And I'd hope everyone else would do likewise, because that's smart investing. So everyone would end up owning lots of little pieces of each other's businesses, and profiting together from their joint economic activity, as well as the profits of their own company, and their wages from their work.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Pfhorrest
If prices fall, for whatever reason, then the owners/workers lose their profit margin and therefor the capital they have for investment shrinks. They’re caught in a position of not having the money to trade out of it, or reinvest in new equipment or whatever may be needed to stop the fall in profits. This time it’s not the capitalist who takes the loss on the chin but the collective. What should they do? Do they take a wage reduction, or work more hours to produce more product or borrow money to trade out of it?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Where did they get the money to buy there homes outright?
Quoting Brett
How does your theory address this situation?
Quoting Brett
That is exactly the choice that owners of businesses today face, and there's no difference in my hypothetical world, except that the equivalent of "borrow money" would be "sell other investments for money". Or alternately, if they don't want to compete in that business anymore, sell off their investment in that company and use it to start something else, perhaps combined with some other sold-off investments. Because they shouldn't have all of their capital in just one business, but spread around. You did see this post right above yours right?
Quoting Brett
You're once again presuming that we start in a situation where everything is owned by someone else, and people have to come up with the money to buy it for themselves from nothing. The point of this thought experiment is to imagine a world where that isn't already the case, where ownership is already widely distributed, and how things would function there.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Why would someone buy a failing business and if they did it wouldn’t be for the price you want.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Well assuming you had other investments. There’s a lot of investing going on here with very little capital.
The difference now is that the CEO might plan a new direction. He/she might go to the bank with a plan to diversify and seek a loan big enough to carry out that plan over five years. In your new world you couldn’t do that. So you can’t trade out of it, unless you slash costs and wages, but you can’t do that because it’s a collective.
Quoting Pfhorrest
So it’s only a theory and wouldn’t actually work in the real world unless someone could snap their fingers and say “ Behold, I give you widely distributed ownership”. Like God creating the world.
No, you’re just asking questions about how things would work in a world that was like that, so I’m discussing a hypothetical world that is already like that. You can’t then ask how people in a world that’s already like that got to the state that people in such a hypothetical world are already in. They were born into that state, because that’s the normal state of people in their world. E.g everyone just inherited around $400k, and everyone’s annual income is around $50k. Because that’s just how things would be if the present wealth and income were only distributed more equally, with no other changes.
I’ve already earlier discussed how I think we could gradually transition to a world like that from a world like ours, but you’re not asking about that process, just about how a world like that would function once we had one.
Quoting Brett
Your competitors would be obvious candidates, since they evidently can operate a business like that more profitably than you can.
Quoting Brett
There’s the same amount of capital as in the real world, just spread over more hands.
Quoting Brett
No, but you can ask for investment either from the existing owners or new investors, either of whom would have to sell off some other investments of theirs to fund that. Basically, you can try to convince people that it’s worth risking their money on this instead of something else.
The main difference is that instead of one executive convincing another executive to lend a bunch of other people’s money (bank deposits) at another bunch of other people’s expense (interest paid out of profits, that gets passed on to customers and taken out of wages), you’ve got the joint owners of the company trying to convince each other and other potential partners that it’s a worthwhile venture to invest in.
In other words, it’s more democratic. Socialism is often described as economic democracy.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Okay, I understand where you’re coming from there. But I guess it’s clear what I think of it and to continue would just be a lot of back and forward that would end up nowhere.
On the face of it, I would not be surprised if to inherit wealth is much easier, and requires merely the luck of birth and the common sense not to antagonise the previous generation.
No kidding.
Quoting Janus
Is this really your argument? That we wouldn't have the "same" economy? Because you didn't say the "same," you said the "economy we have" -- which can imply our growth rates, distribution of wealth, general well being, productivity, etc. etc. Forgive me for believing you weren't just stating truisms.
There's no reason to believe we can't have a functional economy without rent and interest. True, that hypothetical economy -- by definition -- will not be the same as our present economy, which does have rent and interest. I'm glad you figured that out for yourself. Well done. Let's now move on to adult questions.
Yes. The capitalist system is one based on a relationship between employer and employee. A socialist system would be one where the "employees" (the workers) own and run things themselves. Very simple.
One needs to look no further than the structure and operation of corporations to see how undemocratic and exploitative it is. This is the nature of the game. A few people (the major shareholders, the board of directors, and the CEO/executives) are the people making the decisions about what to produce, how to produce it, where to produce it, and what to do with the profits from all of this work.
For those who say it's impossible or lack the imagination to picture an alternative, they already exist in the real world -- and they're very successful indeed.
I'm loath to respond if someone resorts to lame put-down attempts, but I will say this; I haven't anywhere said that it would not be possible to have an economy without rent or interest. But it would be a very different economy than the one we currently have; which in its complexity is also fragile. No one has come up with any feasible way to transition comfortably from a financial growth economy to whatever a non-growth economy might look like.
If the population continues to grow then the economy must grow with it or prosperity will decline, and there will be a lot of "collateral damage: meaning a lot of famine, disease and death. We in the affluent west could take some decline, but the poorer people's of the world aspire to our kind of level of prosperity. If you don't see the conundrum then I'll conclude you are mired in fantasies, unless you can come up with a plausible plan of action for humanity's future trajectory.
I would then ask you "do you think it is wise to follow the philosophies of these people?". Although, i'm not saying that all of these people in this category are corrupted, but that money and power may have an influence on these people that make them act in a less-than-virtuous ways.
You ever wonder why you constantly see rich and powerful in participating in scandalous activities? I would assume it is due to all the power that is influencing their thoughts and actions and makes them think they can get away with these things. There's also the fact that these people want to stay in their 1% position and will act in such ways to oppress the other 99%, in order to stay in their position.
I guess the point of this post is that their philosophies probably aren't the best ways to produce a better and happier life. Their lives just seem better and happier due to societies impression that obtaining wealth and power is the definition of success and personal fulfillment. However, I don't believe that this is the case. I would think that people who have learned that wealth and power are not needed for personal fulfillment would have the best life philosophies on how to reach personal success.
Although, this is just my opinion and is not necessarily the "right" way to think about it.
But if you split up the kingdom each generation, the royalty should eventually become paupers. Even if the oldest is the only one allowed to inherit, lazy bums will eventually spend all the money. Plus the occasional economic disaster levels things.
When you think about it, there are all sorts of entropic forces rotting wealth. What forces it to go the other way? Isn't it that in a free society, there's nothing to stop people who just put their whole souls into acquisition?
I never said anything about a "non-growth" economy. Rent and interest don't drive growth, they just extract wealth from those who already lack it for the benefit of those who already have it. Growth is driven by working more efficiently, i.e. by technology. And technology can continue to advance in a world without rent and interest.
Quoting frank
That's assuming that the wealth of the "kingdom" isn't growing faster than the "population" of it. If the wealth is compounding at around a 5% rate annually, and every couple has 2.5 kids every generation, and a generation is 20 years, then each new generation would be (1.05^20)/(2.5/2) ? 212% ? over twice as wealthy as the previous generation. So as long as they don't waste more than about half of their inherited wealth per generation, the family will keep getting richer indefinitely.
Squanderers are pretty common. Every generation has a few.
Yep, and these guys make $$$ when business goes well. If only the everyday employee could get some skin in the game.
But what happens when things go poorly? You don't just lose your pay and get fired; the company collapses and you could be on the hook for insane amounts of money - those debts don't just disappear into thin air when the company declares bankruptcy. Now you've got 18 year old employees dealing with bankruptcy lawyers.
Quoting Janus
So the first statement means: there's no way to have an economy with rent and interest without having rest and interest. Excellent insight.
Again, apologies for assuming you weren't stating the most banal of truisms.
Quoting Janus
There are plenty of plausible alternatives, for those not mired in capitalist fantasies.
What are you talking about? It's not some "skin in the game," it's a business that the workers control outright. Businesses make profits and declare bankruptcy all the time, regardless of who's running it. What's the difference?
Again, this is done in the real world. Co-ops are a good example.
When they declare bankruptcy the owners are on the hook for that. New, inexperienced employees could be permanently damaging their financial future.
For a sole proprietorship or partnership or something, yes, the owner and company are the same and the assets of the owner are the company's assets that can be repossessed or foreclosed upon when they file for bankruptcy to cover as much as possible of the outstanding debt. In an LLC or C-corp or other limited company it's different.
“Bankruptcy offers an individual or business a chance to start fresh by forgiving debts that simply cannot be paid while giving creditors a chance to obtain some measure of repayment based on the individual's or business's assets available for liquidation. In theory, the ability to file for bankruptcy benefits the overall economy by allowing people and companies a second chance to gain access to credit and by providing creditors with a portion of debt repayment. Upon the successful completion of bankruptcy proceedings, the debtor is relieved of the debt obligations that were incurred prior to filing for bankruptcy.” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bankruptcy.asp
Who said anything about "new, inexperienced employees"? The fact that your mind goes immediately to a scenario like this, where "workers control the business" equates somehow to "inexperienced employees" is very revealing, and pretty standard.
Tell the Mondragon Corporation about how it's not possible to do what they do, or how damaging it is to their financial futures. Those "inexperienced workers" will be happy to hear from you.
And then there's this:
Workers are completely capable of controlling the companies they work for; they are the companies. This doesn't mean there is no longer any division of labor or leadership, or even that all wages are equal. Nothing like that whatsoever. It simply means that it is run -- shockingly -- democratically: the managers are elected, and decisions are not confined to 20 or so major shareholders. Nothing radical about this. And no, you won't find that it all collapses without the capitalist owners. The workers are perfectly capable of running the company -- why? Because they already do it.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Pfhorrest
Is this what you mean?
Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a long and expensive process and all debts still need to be paid. You aren't off the hook for the debts just by declaring chapter 11. Even in an LLC owners can still be responsible for paying debts depending on specific actions that they take. An LLC doesn't 100% absolve the owners from any personal debts.
Quoting Xtrix
Ok, I might have misunderstood you. When you say something like 'all workers should have ownership in the company' then yeah, obviously my mind goes to all the employees having that privilege. If that's not what you're saying then feel free to clarify.
I don't have anything against co-ops either. If a company wants to do that, that's fine. If you were to force every company to be structured like that that's where I'd take issue.
Yes. Along the the rest. So when the following is said, in response to "workers should be in control":
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
the point is obvious. Or should be.
I am talking about all employees, yes. All employees run the company. How they choose to structure it, who they assign various responsibilities or leadership roles to, etc., are their business. Votes are conducted for various positions, and everything is decided democratically.
I also didn't mention "ownership."
It's not about "forcing" companies to do anything, no.
Ok, I think I understand you better now. I'll say if an owner wants to structure his corporation like that I don't have any problem with that, it's the owner's choice. I believe the socialist vision involves actual ownership by the proletariat, so all you seem to be doing here is recommending a certain corporate governance model, right? That's fine by me, when you have your own company you're free to tell your employees that they can vote whoever they want to be in charge.
When I look at it however, I see that in the country i live in, wealth survives in dynasties ofttimes for many hundreds of years. Typically, social mobility stems from revolutions, political or technological. In a stable economy, money is the best way to make money.
They control the military, they make the rules. Physical force creates stability so that money actually has meaning and value.
But the military (or police), in the name of stability, guard the status quo.
In ancient times there would be an epic tale that explains why the upper class has the blessings of the gods.
That they're ingenious and hard working is part of a protestant epic story where the hero is the self-made man?
No, you're not understanding. There is no "owner." That's exactly the point. The "owners" (if you want to call them that) are the workers themselves. The company is controlled and run democratically, by the workers themselves -- minus a bunch of major shareholders who produce exactly nothing, and whose privilege is obtained by legal maneuvering.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
It's educational to watch how difficult it is for people to even comprehend this. Might as well be speaking Swahili.
The workers already run the businesses, but don't "own" them (and don't make any of the major decisions). The proposal is simple: get rid of owners. It's not up to them to give "permission" to take over the businesses. The workers are the businesses.
I was thinking this over in relation to @Pfhorrest and his hypothetical world where we don’t have to consider the transition from here to there, that it just exists.
If everything that existed now, in terms of business, factories, etc., was collectively owned what business do you think would remain and what would go? What would survive and what wouldn’t. What would happen to Goldman Sachs for instance, or coal mines? Apart from workers owning the capital how would the landscape change?
Back to my original question then: Wouldn't all workers then be on the hook for debts in the case of bankruptcy then? Also, lets say there's 10 workers and 7 of them vote to take out a loan, do the other 3 have to chip in?
Quoting Xtrix
Sure, and the CEO just sits up in his gold suite all day with his top hat and goes swimming in piles of gold coins while the workers do all the hard work. Apparently higher level employees like the founders and CFO or CTO just don't do anything all day.
Good question. Obviously I can't say for sure, but my hunch is that a lot would change, but for the better. But not necessarily in terms of what is produced, or the daily routines. In other words, you could get rid of all the major shareholders in the country right now, and nearly everything would run exactly the same on the ground. No one would be the wiser.
Take Wal Mart. You can imagine that the Waltons disappear. What happens to Wal Mart? Does the shipping and receiving of goods change? Do the workers who provide security, stock the shelves, manage the scheduling, oversee the inventory, work as cash register, etc., stop dead in their tracks? Of course not.
Sure, maybe coal mines dramatically change. But if the workers are making the decisions, I'd imagine the working conditions, compensation, etc., would improve. If workers were in charge, would they choose to outsource jobs? Would they choose to shut a factory down because it didn't make enough profit, etc? As for Goldman Sachs -- most of these large financial institutions produce very little, and make most of their money from complex manipulations, moving money around, etc. So maybe they go under...good riddance.
Are you unaware that small businesses and co-ops exist? Are the owners of a local maintenance company not "on the hook" for bankruptcy? What happened to those "on the hook" for bankruptcy over at GM in 2009? Would the result had made much of a difference if it were worker-owned? Why not first ask that question.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
The CEOs are chosen by the board of directors, and sometimes serve as board chairs alongside CEO duties.
No one is saying "higher level" employees aren't workers. They are. And they have their own set of responsibilities based on their capacities, interests, talent, etc. Just as every state has state representatives and state senators that the people vote to send to the capital, the employees should vote for their leadership -- from the CEO on down. Their compensation should be appropriately adjusted, with certain limits (at Mondragon, I think it's no more than 8 or 10X higher than the lowest compensation). There are plenty of good supervisors, administrators, etc. Why should they be chosen based on a handful of major shareholders rather than the people who actually produce for and (essentially) run the company?
It’s very interesting as a thought experiment. I was really wondering, though I didn’t make it clear, how the business landscape would change morally. What would wither away and what would thrive? Of course I’m not expecting you to make a list but I’d like to know what others think.
In that case, as I mentioned, I think we would see drastic changes for the better. And it's not because I think the major shareholders (the owners) are evil. It's not that I think they outsource jobs, shut down factories, lay of thousands of workers, replace workers with automation, cut or cap overtime, try to keep wages down, find ways around paying benefits, agree to huge mergers, use tax havens and other loopholes to avoid taxes, etc. etc., because they're sadists. They probably hate doing it. But the very nature of the system is to maximize profit and market share, and to continually grow/expand. If you don't do that, you're not fulfilling your obligations, according to the game we're all playing.
If instead the workers get to make the decisions, almost none of those things would happen. It's better for them, better for the towns and cities they operate in, better for the environment, and so on. Now, would this mean they won't be financially successful? Not at all. I think the difference financially would be a kind of "natural" cap on how much profit is enough.
There are real world examples, too. I could get you the details if you'd like, because I don't remember many specifics, but there was a scenario within the last 30 years or so where I believe a car factory was going to be shut down because it wasn't profitable enough for Ford or whoever, and the workers of the factory offered to buy it from Ford and then run it themselves -- because it was still making a profit, just not up to Ford's standards. Ford refused to do so, and the factory was shut down.
This goes on a lot, and it demonstrates the rot in our current system. There's really no good reason for it. But it'll go on if people are not aware of alternatives and allow it to continue.
When I mentioned about how things would pan out morally I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of profits and expansion, but in actual terms of what was morally right to trade in. For instance in relation to an event like climate change how might people, workers/owners, view coal mines as a business venture? This would consequently have an impact on where people live and so on. I find it interesting to consider just how things might evolve, instead of being transformed.
It really can't be separated from talk of profits and expansion, because that's what drives the decisions of the owners, at the expense of everything else, including the environment -- local or global. Climate change is a good example fo a situation where, if it weren't for nihilistic greed and addiction to expansion/growth, we could have the situation solved already.
The system itself needs to be changed. But that's in the long run. That won't happen in our lifetimes. A step towards that, however, is a move towards the co-op model, expansion of unions, etc.
The reason I brought this issue up is because I'm trying to save the workers, especially the low level workers, in the case that a bankruptcy occurs. During a bankruptcy you can have your personal property/assets seized. There absolutely are advantages in certain cases to not being the owner, not the least of which is that you aren't responsible to attend board meetings or attend to administrative work.
Quoting Xtrix
If that's just your preference in terms of a corporate governance model that's fine. We all have our own preferences for how things ought to be ran. I personally don't believe in any one, universal perfect corporate governance model and in any case we're free to discuss the pluses and minuses of various models. As long as no one is forcing people to structure their companies this way then I'm fine with you having this preference.
I believe the point is that the present system is forcing the people who actually run the companies -- the workers -- to accept the management preferences of a small group of people who may or may not actually be doing any of the work of running the company. The alternative being presented is to cut out that undemocratic imposition and let the people who actually run the companies, the workers, vote on how to run the companies.
The board of directors are voted on by the shareholders, who certainly have a stake in the success of the company because they're funding it. There could also be workers on the board itself. The composition of the board will vary from company to company with some certainly better run than others. Ideally there'd be both workers and investors who can work cooperatively to make the company run well. Even if a worker isn't an in official high position they can still often be influential in how the company is run.
"A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.
This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation. According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.
Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy—$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure."
The 1% are parasites.
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Pfhorrest
This would be the general consensus on this OP I would think.
So if wealth has the greater impact on personality than personality has on wealth then we can assume wealth creates parasites. If that’s true then anyone is susceptible to this.
Do you think that might say something more about human nature than the wealthy themselves?
Quoting StreetlightX
I understand the point of view of Marxists and others who see human nature as the problem, that “conceives of human nature as composed of 'tendencies', 'drives', 'essential powers', and 'instincts' to act in order to satisfy 'needs' for external objectives.” (Wikipedia) and as a consequence believe we need to create a new man in order to manage his more destructive tendencies.
Quoting StreetlightX
I can think of a number of ways this could be done. But they all seem to require regulations imposed from above. And it seems to be the the more you regulate human nature the more problems arise in another form which requires more regulation.
Even now we have powerful influences in education and public life about how we should think about things, about inclusivity, gender and race, and all with the best intentions. But in fact the objective is to change how we think about things, which is always, finally, enacted with regulations that carry, as a final incentive, the threat of the law. So then more regulations.
This is where my concern lies about imposing constructed ideas about what we should be as opposed to who we are.
I was about to add that I understand those who see the only way out is to destroy the system. It can’t be changed by election or negotiation. There are those who think the answer lies with the consumer, that if they stop buying they will starve corporation to reduce prices, but that won’t happen, instead you’ll get more unemployment.
Quoting StreetlightX
It’s true that power may not have been exercised on the scale and reach that currently exists, but we experience it as individuals and from that point of view this power has been applied in equal or more brutal terms than we are experiencing it now. So it’s possible for me as an individual to see more of my rights denied for the sake of the “new man”.
I had kind of a funny thought today: What if you were to make one of those overlapping pie charts with "nazi" on one end and "radical far left" on the other: Don't you think calling certain segments of the population "parasites" would go in the overlapping middle portion? What else would go in that portion? Maybe dressing in all black? Wishing death and suffering upon those whom you disagree with politically? Assaulting journalists? In any case, labeling certain segments of the population "parasites" would certain fit the bill. At this point you might as well just move on to referring to them as "life undeserving of life."
You didn't have a funny thought. You had entirely unoriginal thought regularly regurgitated by those whose depth of political analysis starts and stops at the way people dress.
Well in all fairness you weren't exactly my target audience here. I wouldn't have expected you to be entertained.
Having noses? Your point is?
I suppose your 'target audience' is the kind who would appreciate trite pseudo-analogies that only work if you're a moron enough to not see through their cynical disingenuity. On that, I concede.
What is "extreme wealth?" What do you think about Bernie Sanders, he's a 1% last time I checked. Where is the cut off point in wealth where it becomes "excessive."
And if you're counting the US only, Bernie's not 1% although definitely in the top 10%. Don't particularly have any stake in defending him on this so if he belongs to the parasite class then so be it.
Top 1% starts at around $10mm-$11mm net worth, of which Bernie is a part of. But doesn't $10mm seem excessive? Why should anyone be allowed to have $10MM? Maybe 5 or even 1mm is excessive when you have homeless people living on the streets.
Wealth, defined as having above and beyond what is for all intents and purposes needed, is by its very nature "excessive."
Welcome to the club, comrade.
Nice, do I get one of those green caps with the red star?
In any case, I wonder if you'd extend the same line of thinking to organs: Plenty of people need organs, for example a kidney, and you don't need two kidneys to live. Could we forcibly harvest them from people if we can't find volunteers?
The Chinese govt does that with political prisoners. After they claimed they'd stopped, watchdog groups say the number of transplants taking place indicates theyre still doing it. I don't think it reflects communism, though. Does it?
So how much wealth should individuals or families be allowed to have at any given time? How do we decide that limit? What happens if they exceed that limit? Do we arrest them? Does everyone just start with the same amount?
I don't think the analogy is lazy. I think it brings up an important point about how two supposedly very different groups use similar dehumanizing and inflammatory language towards certain segments of society and then get defensive after getting called out about it.
It would be excessive if wealth was fixed and finite. If that was the case, one person’s gain means another person’s loss. But this is zero-sum thinking, a common bias, not much different in naivety than saying “immigrants take our jobs”. Wealth, work, jobs, and the factors of production are not finite, therefor any commie plundering of wealth is not only unjust, but also an indictment against their creativity and resourcefulness, the absence of which leads them to steal wealth from others instead of creating themselves.
I was putting on my leftist hat in this instance when talking with Streetlight. Sometimes when you engage your political opposition it can help to try to step into their world a little bit and navigate those straits together - see what makes sense when you change your starting assumptions. That's actually one of my favorite methods of engaging people who are politically different from me.
No you don't. If you did you would actually address what I said, instead of playing trivia host. You're point scoring, don't pretend to yourself like you're doing anything else. You don't give a shit about your own point at all.
Address what you're saying? Is that an invitation to a genuine political/philosophical discussion about our differences? How far do we get on that one, I wonder. If we're going to do that I'd be down to hear some of your core beliefs and maybe we can go from there, but right now I'm not even aware of what exactly you're advocating for.
I do give a shit about my previous point though about the language. I think it's an important one.
No, it was an invitation to address what I said. Which you still haven't. I'm sure you still think you've made a Very Important Point regardless. Maybe you want to pivot to asking about how to economically taxonomize Bernie Sanders instead. Was that an Important Point you made too? Like I said, you don't give a shit.
Ok, this is what you said:
Quoting StreetlightX
That sounds like an invitation to a full-on discussion about political or philosophical systems.
What point do you even want me to address? Your initial reply to me was literally just an insult, as usual. Unfortunately, insults don't really leave you much to respond to.
Really, don't worry your pretty head about it. If you really can't figure it out, I don't want your brain to fry from over-exertion.
This is mentally lazy, to talk about "preferences" and "perfect systems." There are no "perfect" systems, and no one is claiming there is. To try to spin the discussion into a discussion of "preferences" is like a creationist arguing for different "models" of origins: the creationist model and the "evolutionist" model. "Just two explanatory preferences, nothing more, and we can 'debate' the merits of both." Nonsense.
Why not instead simply acknowledge that you're in favor of democratizing the workplace? (As anyone who professes to care about democracy should.) And if you're not in favor of it, then be brave enough to say so.
Are you even interested in any sort of honest political/philosophical conversation with me? We've had this conversation before - in the absence of genuine political/philosophical conversation it makes sense to comment on other features of a post, such as the types of language/the use of certain terms like "parasite."
No, I am absolutely not. I am interested calling out your shitty analogies for those who might otherwise be suckered in by lazy appearence mongering. I couldn't care less about your intellectual development if I tried.
As for "parasite", it perfectly describes a class of people who feed off the work of others while allowing their hosts to effectively bleed out in destitution.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Then why did you ask me to actually engage what you said initially? Was it just to waste the time of the right-wing enemy?
To point out that you haven't, and watch on as you flail every which way with irrelavencies in meantime - including this.
I've already explained my position on this one, Xtrix.
All I believe is that businesses should be free to structure themselves however they like, with co-op included. In the US you're already free to do this, although things change when you want to bring your company public because you're now issuing securities and you're playing with the SEC.
As long as there's personal choice in this matter people are going to have different governance structures and I guess I "support" the ones that best fit the business.
The practice of harvesting organs from sometimes living prisoners is just a reflection of the genocidal, sociopathic nature of the Chinese leadership today. As much as I hate communism, I don't specifically blame communism for the organ harvesting happening today in China. I don't blame capitalism either. I blame the leadership.
I don't know. Someone once told me that to understand China, you have to know that life is cheap there, and has been for a long time.
I was resistant to believing that, but in some ways it makes sense. It makes me wonder how the Chinese takeover of Australia will turn out.
One does not have to believe that all of economics is zero-sum in order to believe that theft is possible, nor that other forms of illegitimate transfers of wealth (if those somehow don't count as theft) are possible.
Dictatorship of the prattleariat.
Of course theft happens. My point is that just because a small group of people attain extreme wealth does not imply that it was ill-gotten.
This is incoherent. What is the principle of "the 1%"? It's not a principle at all, it's a statistic.
Quoting geospiza
It has nothing to do with "resentment" -- a common accusation for those who don't want to face reality.
Quoting geospiza
Who has said that on here? Try arguing with real people instead of your self-constructed phantoms. Classic straw man.
Quoting geospiza
"ill-gotten"? That depends on what you mean. Stop talking in the clouds and be specific. Is it right or wrong for companies to use tax havens and code loopholes to avoid paying taxes? It depends. You might argue it's perfectly legal and within the rules of the game. Is it right to automate jobs or outsource them to make more money? You could argue that's perfectly "natural," given that maximizing profit and market share is a core feature of our economic system.
So yes, assuming the game we're playing is legitiamte, the 1% perhaps haven't attained their extreme wealth in an "ill-gotten" way -- no murder, no rape, no (legal) theft, etc. But that's quite an assumption, which most people (including you) fail to even question. If the game itself is a sick one, and furthermore tilted in many ways...
Give your head a shake, Xanax. Take away the profit incentive and you get stagnation. By maintaining modest corporate and personal tax rates there is less incentive to lower production or to export earnings. Stop the obsession with tax rates, and focus instead on overall tax revenues. Realize that there is a point at which higher marginal tax rates for the wealthiest income earners will negatively correlate with total tax revenue.
The top 1% did not make the rest of us poor. Poverty is the default condition.
:yawn:
Says every capitalist apologist in history. No evidence whatsoever, historical or otherwise, but nice to see you can repeat slogans.
Quoting geospiza
No one said the 1% made the rest poor. "Poverty is the default condition" is meaningless. And none of this addresses the points I raised above. But that's expected.
If you want to build straw men and/or hold conversations with yourself, an online forum isn't for you. Go read more Milton Friedman.
No evidence? :rofl:
Quoting geospiza
Yes: no evidence, historical or otherwise.
Just a childish assertion, as if "profit" is essential in human behavior. In fact it ignores the the core thrust of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts. Not to mention family, friendship, and community. I suppose in your eyes, all this operates on the basis of the "profit incentive."
What a pathological, nihilistic view of the world.
:up: Yep. One of those mythic stories, not unlike jaguar spirits in the jungle or haunted chairs in grandma's house. Unempirical trash.
Don't be a fool. There's evidence all around you of people being motivated to production by profit. Your inability to admit it is an obvious sign of a deeper ideological agenda.
Fool #2
It is a fact that there are wide disparities in outcomes of wealth/income. It doesn't follow from this that some groups have been victimized by others. In most cases the best explanation is that some people have simply outproduced others. There is nothing morally superior about those who accumulate wealth, just as there is nothing morally superior about those who don't.
Yeah I'm sure Elon Musk just works a few million percent harder and smarter than the average American.
Quoting geospiza
Sure, that conclusion doesn't follow necessarily from that fact, but lots of other more specific facts taken all together strongly suggest that something or another is amiss. There's room to debate what exactly, but dismissing all of that in favor of "probably some people just work harder/smarter/whatever than others" reeks of grinding an ideological agenda.
Ask yourself: is ANYONE really making the claim that the profit motive doesn't exist?
Again, try arguing against real people.
You're completely missing the point, and once again creating men of straw.
Go talk to scarecrows somewhere else.
Exactly. The "best explanation" doesn't apply there, I guess. Once again, no specifics, just vague, generalized, tired neoliberal slogans.
What's interesting is that it's empirically on par with those examples, yet unquestioningly believed by millions of Americans as if it's a law of physics.
That's some impressive propaganda.
Finally someone speaking some sense.
I'll agree with this like 99% with the possible caveat that if someone is capable of accumulating wealth, but instead blows it it reflects very poorly on them. Despite what some of the other commentators are saying, saving and particularly investment are absolutely essential to civilization. Leftists do not understand this point. The profit motive is absolutely central to the concept of investment, i.e. delaying gratification to reap benefits later.
Without profit on investment you are effectively losing money, even if you break even. I make this point frequently and leftists never quite seem to understand it.
And what a profound point it is. Too bad those "leftists" can't understand your very stable genius.
Why don't the two of you go have fun arguing against your straw men. When you're ready to join the real world, we'll be waiting.
Thank you! I knew we'd see eye to eye! /s
Quoting Xtrix
What straw man are you talking about? No one is saying that only profit motivates people. We are saying that the profit motive is essential to growing the economy though and particularly investment, which makes up an enormous chunk of economic activity.
I shouldn't even respond, but in case you really aren't sure:
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting geospiza
Quoting geospiza
Quoting geospiza
Quoting geospiza
Quoting geospiza
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Everything you're seeing isn't intended to be an argument or a direct rebuttal to you. We're just making our position clear. Us expressing our position isn't a "straw man." If you agree that's great, if you don't we can talk about it.
Typically how a straw man works is you'll say something and then someone else will respond by reframing that point in a much weaker sense and then respond to that instead of addressing your point.
If we really are straw manning you or some point then please directly state 1) The original point 2) How we are misinterpreting it and instead only countering a weaker version of it.
You make references to "the game" or "the system" but you're not too clear about it exactly.
Take a look at the quotes again, and then try harder to spin it. "Despite what some other commentators are saying..." This implies they're saying something other than the banality you mentioned, which you claim -- sounding like the intellectual giant that is Donald Trump -- the "leftists don't understand."
Each one is most certainly a straw man. Nothing -- not one of those claims -- are an accurate portrayal of what I'm saying or, as far as I can see, anyone else is saying either.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I think I've been pretty clear as to what I mean by that, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt: I'm talking about our economic system, which is a state capitalist system. I use "game" as an analogy. Within the context of this system, one may very well come to believe that the "profit incentive" is an essential feature of human nature. But this system, and that very belief itself, has a history. It's been beaten into our heads for generations, until it finally shows up in the warped worldview you represent. I don't expect you to see how deeply sick this attitude is. But I also won't pretend to have a rational discussion based on such an assumption.
I personally don't believe the profit motive is an essential feature of human nature. I do, however, believe that it's an essential feature of any modern, successful economy.
See? I don't even believe in the position that you're ascribing to me.
...
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting geospiza
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
What Geo said to you isn't a straw man. He was just sharing his opinion. He wasn't reframing your argument in a ridiculous manner and responding to that.
If you were to say "capitalists believe that the profit motive is a universal and inherent to human nature" that would be a straw man. It would be ascribing an unrealistic assumption to capitalism and then debunking that and viewing that debunking as a blow to capitalist ideology.
If you just say "the game is illegitimate" and someone just shares an unrelated point with you that's not a straw man. Geo didn't try to defend every aspect of the current system.
This is such a ridiculous argument, can we go back to something a little more productive?
Yes, it was. Try your spin on someone else.
Stop straw manning capitalism.
:yawn:
Sometimes a relatively small move can make a big difference. My house would cost 2 to 3 times as much just 2 hours a way over on the coast.
This seems an interesting question. One way to approach the question could be to consider that on a global scale the average American consumer is an economic elite. How we regard our wealth in regards to the very many around the world who have so much less might provide some insight in to the mindset of the American top 1%.
I grew up in relative poverty, parents grew up in orphanages, but the home life was mostly stable. Left home at 18. High school grades were crap, because I didn't care about school. I got a trade certification, lived in a shed for 10 months while paying down bills, went back to school. Worked at a strip club as a "hotdog guy" (yeah, THAT hotdog guy) to pay bills. It paid well and gave me time to study. Got a decent job. Things went sideways, went bankrupt, went back to school, another degree, a few more specialties. Now I pull in six figures, have an affordable home and vehicle, and a modest lifestyle. Totally stable. You know, until it isn't and I have to regroup and do it again.
Funny part is, all my buddies that elected the "safe route", with solid jobs early on, and secure investments, still, mostly have their jobs, and their investments, and should be mortgage free in five more years or so, they have less education than I do, less mobility, and are less secure, as if they lose their jobs they have problem. If/when I lose mine I will shrug, and get another. No worries.
I guess the point of it is: for those who want to work hard, get educated, are flexible and willing to take a risk, success is possible. For the "safe" route types, success is still possible, but perhaps less grand. However, success is in one's perspective, and I am certain that, despite how I may feel about my choices, others would be much less enthusiastic about taking my path, as I would would be with theirs. That captures the concept of equal opportunity of success to me.
I imagine it would, but then again the top 1% (and remember, here I'm really meaning the top 0.1%) are very different than the average American consumer, who (like you mentioned) themselves are already quite privileged when compared to those in the rest of the world.
The people who control the companies that control the world are human beings as well, but with a unique circumstance: they're part of a club, a tradition. This tradition is one of true power in the sense of actual control over decisions on a national and international level. This tradition has many manifestations -- there have been ruling classes and elites for millennia -- but currently it appears as the corporation. This represents big business.
I think an example is helpful: Amazon. (You could take Facebook or Google or JP Morgan or Walt Disney or one of the fortune 500 companies, they all operate basically the same way.)
As a corporation they function and have attained their status in a system of rules and rights -- e.g., the idea of private property, ownership, corporation as legal "person," private profit, etc. -- and function within this system. They not only have control over people who work for them (amounting to millions of people), but the families, friends, and communities of which these people are connected. They own the major media, have the resources to both lobby ("influence") government for favorable legislation and bribe ("contribute to") politicians.
All of this is easy to see, and right on the surface. Takes a few minutes to think it through, and I think most Americans take it for granted.
So what's the point of me reviewing the obvious? Because if these companies essentially run the world, then the people running the companies is where we should be focused -- and are the topic of this thread. They are the owners of these companies, and make all the decisions about how to run the company. They appoint the administration, from the CEO on down the executive and managerial chain, and decide what to do with the profits. Specifically, they are the major shareholders.
And here a little knowledge about how a corporation operates is important, as is a little acquaintance with how stocks work. But otherwise it's fairly obvious what group makes the important decisions in a corporation. Perhaps there's 10-20 people on the board of directors, representing these major shareholders, and a handful of others. Add them up, maybe 50-100 people run any one of these Fortune 500 companies.
Add all the companies together, and you're looking at a number in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. That's not 1% of the global population. That's not even 1% of the American population. There's about 328 million people in the United States. 1% of that is 3.2 million. We're talking about tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands tops, who control the world by controlling the corporations. 0.1% would take us to 320 thousand, which itself seems too high, but is at least closer to what one would expect -- at least in the United States.
When you start asking questions about THAT group, comparisons to average Americans just don't seem to fly.
The New American Aristocracy
Just found this article. An old thread, but relevant to the OP.
I imagined exactly that after reading that Musk, mister Tesla himself, got richer a couple of billion dollars in the blink of an eye. Try explain that to a loan slave working 12 hours a day for a small handful (the hand usually not even ful). The work is boring and kills the mind slowly, in general. Working floor circumstances are bad. About a hundred people own half money in the whole world, and 1% even more. Isn't it time for a change? Revolution? Get into arms?
What's the mentality asked for in the OP? The mentality of people like Elon Musk?
Where they came from:. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey
check it out!
Quoting Brett
But the same applies to drug dealers, mobsters, small time conmen ... and to pretty much anyone who is eager to succeed.
IIRC, it was Bill Gates who said that it is luck that plays a major role in how successful a person will be.
Often, we are told that ambition and hard work are what it takes to succeed. But this isn't all. The opportunities for success in this world are limited, at from some point on, ambition and hard work make no difference.
It seems to me that in terms of values, morality, psychologically, the 1% are actually similar or even the same as the middle class people. What makes the difference is that the 1% are operating within an entirely different socioeconomic context, which makes for vastly different results.
For example, Bill Gates' father wrote a book, Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. In terms of morality and psychology, it's nothing special, it's middle class mentality. Except that if one can do those things with the kind of socioeconomic influence that these rich people have, the results are vastly different than if an ordinary, middle class person were to do them.
That may very well be true. I'm more inclined to think that the context/conditions in which they live influences their attitudes, beliefs, and values as well -- in ways that are similar to different educational outcomes, or even health. So things like a belief in meritocracy, since it is very self-serving ("I am where I am because I deserve it/earned it"), or the usefulness of those at the very top ("they create jobs and innovate") is probably more deeply embedded than in lower classes.
Quoting baker
Seems like he grew up middle-class, so that's not a huge surprise. I wonder if someone like Paris Hilton or members of the Walton family believe similar things. Who knows. One thing seems clear enough: they're all capitalists at heart. That seems to be the church they all belong to, with varying splits and denominations.
Already read it. Time to find a new book.
https://www.amazon.com/Giants-Global-Power-Peter-Phillips/dp/1609808711/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3D30EJ0V165AY&keywords=giants+the+global+power+elite&qid=1636314271&s=books&sprefix=giants%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C138&sr=1-1
I had that book, but gave it to a friend. It's more of a kind of detective work than a straight out read. But you do get names.
It's more the .1%, technically.
Or, in the case of the first-generation rich, whether they now, when established as rich, they still have the same beliefs that made it possible for them to become rich in the first place.
For real?
The masters? The destroyers. But they don't realize, as Oppenheimer did, after he created his deadly toy. I think they won't easily come out of their gold-plated towers of ivory, but instead make these higher and higher, ever further away from the world they have their roots in, and with which they make sporadic contact to assure their base stays firm and solid. The towers grow higher and higher to the point they collapse unders their own gravity and make a destructive impact on the world below them. Probably they will have left their towers shortly before, to establish themselves in lonely heavenly domains in space, trying to live a life of computer created virtual worlds in which new towers can be built to reach infinity of the material world, not caring a moment for the misery they created down there. In that realization of their psychotic, megalomaniac, almost psychopathic ideas, they will linger in a false security awaiting the unevitable moment they fall out of the sky like burning angels of destruction, into a world already fallen prey to the same kind of psychosis that eventually led to global destruction and global doom.
Read most of that too. Great stuff.
Quoting frank
Yes. Harvey's great. Worth checking out his Anti-capitalist Chronicles, as well.
The one percent, I believe are the power elite, which makes war for corporations and is the terror of the earth. The Vietnam holocaust made a lot of millionaires, war for America is big business and the corporations keep the patterns of explotation and war working for them. America has become a world cancer. This power elite is untouchable, anonymous, and amoral.
If you narrow it down to a specific country then it is easier to look with distain upon those who have a considerable amount more than you do.
Yes, I think it’s appropriate to disdain those who have considerably more because of slave labor and cheating.
Yes. He shows how an electorate can be used like a tool in the right circumstances. He offers a really good way to see how the American people are in the same boat with most regular people in the world. And that's where leftist solidarity should be reaching, although I'm not sure how that would happen.
We're just too profoundly, belligerently stupid to take the power that's within our reach.
All the anti-American bullshit is the rattling of chains to our hateful nature.
All we can do is pay attention to the little things around us. Help a homeless person. Bring a meal to a sick person. Let the world do whatever it's going to do.
Bullshit.
Sushi,
I am not concerned with the morality of keeping up with the Jones. I was just wondering if this 1% is the power elite that runs America like an international crime family. Most Americans are not even aware of the crimes against humanity that this hidden power elite forces upon the rest of the world. At this stage, it would be funny if it was not so tragic, that most Americans do not even know their country is a hated empire, an excellent metaphor for evil in the world.
Turns out I am WRONG about this now as wages have increased dramatically so you'd need to be earning around $700,000 a year to qualify as being in the top 1%.
Even so my point was that the few at the very top are kept there by those below them. I don't for a second think they are all criminals though. I do think they have too much potential power though. The fact that lobbying is allowed in the US make the situation worse in that country.
Probably the 1% are not the evil power elite, they are too visible. I think in this dialogue however we do not have the same concerns. I am concerned about America's crimes against humanity, its true mafia-type behaviour internationally. So I'll bow out here. This one percent through, must be tied tightly to the corporate world.
There does seem to be a certain restraint exercised by Gates, Musk, Buffet, Bezos, et al. They have the money to hire the best advisors on how the game is really played, and they then seem to mind their manners.
This leads me to believe that money, while providing access to power, is not power itself. I think intelligence is power and, while money can buy some intelligence, the important intelligence is being withheld. Nation-states and the power-elite (no, not politicians; they are puppets) that control them (big oil) are where the real power is. They know something.
I've said this before, but it also seems that (with the exception of Donald Trump) every POTUS that I've ever seen walks out of the swearing-in ceremony a more docile and restrained man than when he walked in. It's not the gravity of the new responsibility finally coming home to him. I suspect someone whispers something in his ear. Trump probably got the whisper too, but he's so full of himself he didn't hear it. He probably just answers directly to Putin so the message got through that way.
I'm going to start my own version of Q if I get enough positive feedback. Send me your money. :strong: :death: :party:
Yikes! I forgot that @Xtrix don't like me spamming links. :snicker:
It has everything to do with inequality: 99 % vs 1%. It's a natural human reaction to feel stressed to see privileged snobs who inherit billions of dollars (or assets/wealth) get all the societal benefits (such excellent schooling and healthcare) based on capitalism which prioritizes money above all else. The rest of us have to struggle hard to pay for basic things: healthcare, college, rent, etc..
Excellent, but, alas, I am a poor man. The nearer to god I be - - lol!!
You're in good company.