Scenario one, unquestioningly. It shows everything wrong with society.
Scenario one:
Adam and Bob are neighbors who live across the street from one another. Adam lives in a beautiful 3 story mansion and Bob lives in a cardboard box.
One day while out for a walk, Alex sees Bob rummaging through a trashcan for food. He says nothing, and continues walking.
That night, Alex eats wine and caviar, and feeds filet mignon to his dog. Bob goes to bed hungry.
Scenario A is so very much worse; it exists in a world with 3 story mansions, wine, steak, and caviar, but also cardboard boxes used as "housing." Somehow, some way, that 3 story mansion got built, the wine, cavair, and steak got made. We're not told how or if Adam inherited or earned that mansion or how Bob ended up in that damn box, or what actions or circumstances might happen to lead to these outcomes. Somehow, Adam ended up in a mansion and Bob in a box, but the question is, what can we do now, and the answer appears to be nothing. Everyone's disadvantaged in this scenario, Adam can't utilize trading to bob for labor, Bob can't get paid for his, and even Alex has to look at it without being able to do jack.
Assumptions are being made, but that was inevitable in these scenario examples. Adam can't reasonably hire Bob to do something he wouldn't like to do himself or that Bob is better at doing? We don't know if Bob is mentally ill, or on drugs, or who knows what. Bob, even if he has no problems of a catastrophic nature, probably can't get hired (why he is in the box). Assuming Mansions don't just appear out of nowhere and require no maintenance, Adam could hypothetically hire and pay bob to do some of that maintenance, but doing so would be very risky (as most people would never hire bob). Thus, Adam and Bob have no way to use economics, society and trade to benefit each other, they're so close, yet so separate. Neither of them can use what's around them to improve their lives (each other/society).
The downsides are obvious, Adam's mansion has a property value which is brought down by poor bob living in a freaking cardboard box across the street. Poor Bob is obviously getting screwed by having to live in a box and eat from the garbage (and if it's Adam's garbage, he could at least separate out the food knowing Bob will be eating it/making it easier and better for him to find it). Adam may be able to move away from Bob or have Bob moved away from him, but at some point, Adam still lives in a society that leaves Bob screwed and that will eventually come back to bite him somehow (materially, mentally, etc). It's a fundamental breakdown of society when you get into unequal tiers like this, and the problem is, there's little if any reasonable, low risk, practical solution.
In a perfect world (which somehow started on this horrid inequality) resources and labor could be split and everyone would benefit from the products of that greater labor. All sorts of things could theoretically be done. Adam could somehow profit from Bob's labor even after paying him. Someone could help Bob become more self sufficient by helping him with employment, or housing, or food procurement/production, but the grim realities are that, nobody practically can. As said above, Bob may have mental or drug problems, or other things holding him back that would be risky to anyone trying to help him. Likewise, Adam may have similar problems and could exploit Bob (not pay him) for any labor done, and we're not told what if anything Bob could to do force Adam to pay him for any work he may hypothetically end up doing. Nobody can trust anybody, and nothing can be done to improve things.
Yes, assumptions are being made, but that's because the example itself is inherently flawed and incomplete. We've got a universe consisting of 3 people (all male), a dog, a street, a mansion, a cardboard box, wine, steak, caviar, a trashcan and presumably trash. Unless all of these things exist in a vacuum and spontaneously sprung into existence from nothing, the universe is incomplete and basically requires some other assumptions. If not, and all of these things magically come into existence with no outside or prior factors, then that's far worse, because Adam mystically ended up with basically everything and Bob got screwed, while Alex presumably got screwed over worse, because he doesn't even seem to have anything and is just walking. Scenario B requires no assumptions if left in this vacuum, because at least that's equal, but with scenario A one wonders where the mansion came from. Unless these three people or some magical outside force created this all from thin air, you practically have to assume something, and perhaps this exercise was meant to see what assumptions would be presented by any potential participants.
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Topic: Which bothers you more: inequality and poverty edition (Read 1745 times)