Re: OT: Finesse contest finalists - thanks to all!


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ufbo235v2v2tm3bqpefp7cv5mgbnt8cdfk@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 08:40:13 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:76nl23h27d4jgf39df1nb18n1b0042j1il@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:50:46 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>


"AaronJB" <aaronjb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1177193001.479865.152860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Apr 21, 6:48 pm, "Carl" <cengm...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The most disturbing part of that is that people like to get vile and
demeaning at all.

Perhaps I'm just jaded and cynical beyond my years, but to me that
just sums up most of human nature - and certainly a large section of
the population as a whole.

We are, after all, little but violent aggressive apes who've learned
how to use tools - and just look at the multitude of weapons we've
invented to use with our opposable thumbs.


Hmmm.

Technological advances are often mistaken as a measure of how our
species has advanced.

Is there any reason to believ that people have gotten better over time?
Are people better now than they were ... 100 years ago?
1000 years ago?

Is there any reason to believe that people will get better over time?

By what criteria? If we're talking a Christian or golden rule one, I
like to think we have.

Why do you think that we have?

When I look back only a century or two, I see slavery, colonialism,
and a form of capitalism so callous that people were literally worked
to death. Less than ten years before my birth, Hitler and the Final
Solution. One doesn't have to aim very high to do better than that! We
and the other industrial powers are anything but perfect, but at
least, on some level, we try.

Given Saddam Heissein, Bin Laden, the Taliban, and others, I see
no reason to believe that given favorable circumstances the same
conditions would not exist today.

Consider North Korea. I think technology has allowed sufficient worldwide
communication to make it much harder to maintain such a condition. I don't
think that people are inherently better and would we wouldn't have
dictators
just as bad today.

North Korea is certainly vile, as are any number of countries, but I
like to think that they make up a smaller percentage of mankind than
they once did. I may be wrong, of course, given the population
explosion in the third world, where most of the vileness is
concentrated these days.

But -- I don't know about you, but I haven't been entirely consistent
in the criteria I've applied to your original question. At some points
I've been thinking about us -- that is, America or the advanced
nations -- while at others I've been thinking about the world as a
whole. And in part because I've been short on time (past my bedtime
responses) I haven't taken sufficient pains to draw the distinction.

***** Note, my newsreader isn't adding '>'s this time. ******

I tend to think that the percentage of @$$holes in the world is
probably constant throughout history. These days countries have
a stronger legal infrastructure than ever before to restrict the @$$holes.

**************************************

As to people working themselves to death, until sufficent technology was
available people in every system worked themselves to death. Technology
changed the
standards by which we live and allows us to be more generous.

That last is certainly true, but the first isn't. People in primitive
societies apparently worked far less than we do -- I believe the
average figure is one day out of three. They certainly didn't work
themselves to death. That, to the extent it happened, came with
civilization. The plight of the blue collar worker in 19th century
capitalism was as I understand it far worse than the late feudal
system of mutual obligation that had come before.

Take away those conditions and would we be more generous than our
ancestors?

But don't those conditions influence our morality? We become what
circumstance allows, and I believe that the prosperity of the middle
class has led in the advanced countries to a significant change in
outlook, one that emphasizes opportunity and reward rather than
punishment.


******

That would imply that with diminished conditions, a diminshed morality
is acceptable.

******

<skip>

But moral criteria change with time and place,
and it's not always easy to establish a basis for comparison. Forex, I
read somewhere that the distribution of wealth in this country is now
as lopsided as it was in the 1920's.

I've read to the contrary, with more people becoming millionaires
and more people moving to upper income brackets in the last 10
years than ever before.

Home ownership is at an all time high, and even those defined as "poor"
can in no way be equated with what was poor in the 1920's.

That last is true, as I think I implied. The rest sounds to me like
right wing spin -- numbers that sound good but have no economic or
social significance. It's logical, for example, that there would be
more millionaires, thanks to population growth and inflation; it's a
cherry-picked "statistic" that has no actual bearing on income
distribution, which according to every source I've seen has been
widening.

Actually, it's my understanding that the percentage of people that are
considered wealthy is actually increasing.

I don't know where you're getting this information. I'm too tired to
do a thorough search, but this quote is representative of what
surfaces when one does one --

<skip>

The figures I saw considered all assets, not just income.


Income inequality is not inherently good or bad either.

Well, nothing is inherently good or bad, but if the reality is a
country in which virtually all the gains of the growing economy have
been going to the top 10% while regular people struggle to maintain
the same standard of living, and in which some /working people/ are
forced to live in cars, I vote for bad.

All of the gains have not been going to the upper 10%, and those top
10% are paying over 50% of the taxes, providing services to those
that pay no or little taxes.

It's actually worse than that:

'A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of
Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?,"
gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of
Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only
34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10
percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate,
wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

'But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the
99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th
percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

****
One presumes much of that increase in wealth comes from investing
in new companies and ideas, which creates jobs, provides health care, etc.

Such investment is a good thing. If it's rewarded, all the better.

****

As to living in cars, etc, let's look at the statistics of how those that
are defined as poor actually live:

a.. Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes.
The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau
is
a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or
patio.
a.. Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By
contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population
enjoyed air conditioning.
a.. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds
have more than two rooms per person.
a.. The average poor American has more living space than the average
individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities
throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in
foreign
countries, not to those classified as poor.)
a.. Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two
or more cars.
a.. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over
half own two or more color televisions.
a.. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable
or
satellite TV reception.
a.. Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a
stereo,
and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the
same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above
recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do
higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above
recommended levels.

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car,
air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and
a
microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a
VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His
home
is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is
not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his
family's
essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally
far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal
activists, and politicians.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is
supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours
of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per
year--the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the
year--nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official
poverty.
Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds
of
poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.3
million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the
fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be
lifted
out of poverty.

There are very few cases of people living out of cars, and with 81 federal
social programs and most states having equivalent programs, the need for
one
to actually live in a car is suspect.

Also, even in terms of health insurance, the figure given out most often is
that there are 45 million uninsured people in the US, however if you break
that down, 15 million of those are eligable for some form of health care
under a federal program right now but do not take advantage of it, and
another 13 million make over 50K a year (MN classifies someone making 67K
wealthy and in the top tax bracket) but choose not to buy it. If one
considered the illegal alien/undocumented worker population as being the 12
million that are usually reported, that leaves a *much* smaller portion of
the population that are actually about 5 million.

Wow, I have to run off and get poor.

***
Let's not get silly
***

Seriously, this Marie Antoinette stuff makes my blood boil. It's not
just that transparent spin like "81 federal social programs" is an
insult to my intelligence.-- do they really think the American public
is so dumb that we can't tell the difference between 81 pennies and 81
dollars? -- but that it's an intentional attack by some unknown
prosperous people on the weakest and most unfortunate members of our
society.

***********
Exactly where is the attack? There are many federal social programs
and many state programs. Between the two, there are a lot of resources out
there to prevent people from living in cars and starving to death. There
are programs that let entire generations of people to live off of them.

Please point out exactly where there was any attack on thepoor?

***********

Does a hungry child's belly hurt any less because he has a
deadbeat Dad? I don't know about you, but I've lived in urban areas
for much of my life, and I've seen the effects of poverty. It's real
and it sucks and brushing it under the carpet doesn't make it go away.

************
My youth was not exactly one of comfort. I am at least as aware of the
conditions you refer to as you are and I'm not brushing anything away. My
comment elsewhere was that I have no problem with social programs. I do
think we're continuing to throw more money on programs that aren't working
long term. At best they're keeping the same rate of poverty year after
year, generation after generation, yet they're held up as some shining
achievement. No one should dare question them or else you're a heartless
*** and you'll have emaciated children dropping at the side of every
road.

On top of that, a *lot* of money is lost to fraud and redundancy with state
programs.

************

Wealth is a poor standard for judging good and evil.

I consider discrepancies in wealth /wrong/ to the extent that I can
find no social purpose or social harm in them. In that, they're no
different than the likes of killing, in that right (a just war) or
wrong (a murder) depends on context.

You assume that there has to be a social purpose for such things; there
doesn't. If you're proposing that all aspects of life must be classified
in
terms of a social purpose and controlled to obtain that outcome (which I
would consider a lack of freedom), then we completely disagree on the
purpose of government (which is fine).

I don't see it as a matter of something that I want or not. Rather, I
see it as a matter of what is, because cultures compete, and those
which are less successful either change with time or are dominated or
destroyed by others. A social evolutionary process, in other words.

******
Perhaps. Sweden is moving away from the nanny state mentality that it had,
and
France is in for tough times.
******

Some people inherit money...that's called luck. Some people make more
money
than others through hard work, investing in themselves (an education), and
taking risks (starting a business). That's called earning their money.
Some people aren't willing to work that hard because they have other
priorities in their lives, don't have the talent, aren't willing to go to
college, risk their savings, etc. That's fine and *no* judgment should be
made in either case.

I see them as radically different. Setting aside for the moment my
bourgeois values, I believe that the societies in which merit and
initiative predominate over hereditary privilege are the most
prosperous, the most powerful, the happiest. Which is why capitalism
has proven so much more successful than the old aristocratic system.

******
I'd much rather see the government focus on providing incentives to
the wealthy to invest in new businesses and technologies rather than
a feel-good attempt to drag the wealthy down as much as possible.

Incentives for the wealthy to spend work much better than something
like the absurd luxury tax on yachts that almost destroyed the iundustry
and didn't gnerate any money.

Also, money spent by the government tends to be spent on a much
narrower portion of the economy.
******

At some point, if the wealthy are paying their taxes, giving to charity,
living their lives without trying to harm others... what they make is none
of our business. If it's more than I make, good for them...I don't hold
it
against them for a second. I don't envy them, resent them, want to take
anything away from them in the slightest. It's simply none of my business.

I grew up in fairly privileged circumstances, so I've seldom if ever
had cause to envy or hate the wealthy.

******
You seem to express a healthy resentment
*******

But, as I said, I don't much believe in hereditary wealth (I've no time
to go into some minor exceptions to that statement).

It is not as you seem to be implying innocent: hereditary wealth is
in some measure a tax on the productive members of society,
a tax that is not repaid by the small percentage of income that
goes to the government or charitable causes.

**********
The initial creation of the wealth was taxed. Once the wealth was aquired
and taxed, whatever is left should be considered the property of the person
that made it. He or she should be free to give it to a son or daughter, the
next door neighbor, the local charity, or bury it in the back yard. You or I
don't have an inherent claim to it simply because it would otherwise go to
someone as a happy accident of birth. So what? I don't care if someone
else is wealthy. That doesn't change how hard I work, or what I expect as a
reward for my efforts. I have a job. I do my best at it and I make a
reasonable living. The quality of my life is not diminished if someone else
is wealthy. Someone else's luck is none of my business.

You seem to see wealth as something that should be lent by the government to
people as an incentive, but only short term and only for as short a period
as possible (taking it back as much as possible in any tax possible).
**********

You could move towards the old argument Aren't all people equal? Shouldn't
everyone make the same amount of money? That's a discussion by itself and
not a workable plan.

I agree. As things now stand, the benefits of incentive outweigh the
drawbacks of inequality, particularly insofar as mechanisms exist to
reduce the inequality.

Anyway, morals are very variable: we think the Pashtun are creepy
because they practice pederasty and harbor the likes of Bin Laden,
they think we're creepy because our women run around half-naked and
we're greedy and we ignore the principles of hospitality. So we have
either to assert that a single moral system is favored over the others
-- a moral system which just happens to be the one our own society
holds up as an ideal, naturally -- or we have to think of morality as
involving a varied response to a deeper purpose, and ultimately accept
the possibility that morality evolves much as our genome does.
(Caveat: I've skipped for want of time a lot of useful philosophical
dialectic, e.g., Kant's categorical imperative.)

I suppose it depends on how large a set or morals one is defining. If one
suggests a small set of morals (don't kill, don't steal, etc) it should be
shared. Unfortunately that's not even the case, given that women in other
countries are casually killed with no legal ramification.

Exactly. Even something as seemingly basic as the incest taboo has
been ignored in some societies -- pharaonic Egypt, forex, at least
among the country's rulers -- and takes varying forms in different
societies.

********
It wasn't just the rulers. I seem to recall that someone in the time
of Caesar wrote back to Rome suggesting that there wasn't a virgin in
the entire country.
********

Our own morals have evolved significantly even within my
lifetime, e.g., homosexuality was widely looked upon as a sin when I
was young. I imagine that the Americans of 200 years from now will
look back on our behavior in much the same way that we look back on
that of our slave-holding, male chauvinist, Indian-land-stealing
ancestors.

And there are things that the people of 2207 will take for
granted that we find horrifying, just as the people of 1807 would have
been morally outraged at some of our behavior -- revealing dress, say.

********
They might consider morals an outdated concept.
Future generations will always look back at their ancestors as
primative.
********

I've spent some idle moments over the years trying to sense the steps
in this moral minuet that we play, and I've concluded that we are
exquisitely sensitive to social needs, even when we don't know it,
because society -- the nexus of us all -- forms a metamind of sorts,
and as members of the group, we react to its decisions. The death by
pecking of Imus is an example of that. We may not know exactly why
we're pecking -- or at least why we're pecking so much harder than we
peck at Anne Coulter or others who say things we may also find
offensive -- but society does, the social metamind does. It makes a
decision and we're left to analyze it.

--
Josh

"Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour." - Rossini



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