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[ECrownofFire]

AIs in charge of managing humans are rather notorious for deciding that humans are inferior.

[Frumple]

I have more of a problem with the bastards if they are wealthy. I'm not sure why, it just seems wrong.

Ahh....honesty. Thank you. This is very good. You have more of a problem with bastards when they happen to be rich. It's very healthy for you to be able to come to terms with that. Now...just ask yourself why you feel this way. You don't need to tell me, you don't need to try to explai it to bay12, but you, personally, in your own life will probably benefit from examining why you feel this way.

Is it for the reasons I suggested above? That on some level you believe that money is evil? Is there a religious motivation? "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven." (Matthew 19-24) (Which, incidentally, is  mistranslation.) Did you grow up with parents who complained about rich people and that rubbed off onto you? What is it? And do these feelings negatively affect your life? Again...if on some level you feel that being rich is wrong...your own emotions will be working against you if you ever try to become rich yourself.

Can ignore the "just seems wrong" bit, but I definitely have more of a problem with bastards when they're wealthy, and it's not really a moral issue. It's because their wealth gives them a hell of a lot more power to inflict their bastardry upon other people. Jackass down the road you can punch out or avoid, jackass sitting on top of an inherited multi-billion dollar business can destroy your entire livelihood and your local area's economy and there's not shit you can do about it. That is a problem.

Money isn't a priori evil, but there's a morality to resource acquisition and use, and it's one that seems to be ignored by the wealthy to a disturbing degree -- mind you, it's ignored by almost everyone to degrees, but it seems to be worst among those who have horded the most. Even if you want to say "fuck it, hypocrisy" to the morality aspect, there's direct and observable issues regarding societal stability that occurs when these folks do what they do, and we don't want that -- no one does if they're thinking straight, unless there's something up with them that would normally make the general human population stick them into either a jail cell or a mental institution -- because it makes the situation worse for everyone in the long run.

Bigger problem is that the more numerous of the population is too moral to do the obvious thing, i.e. what DF players tend to do to particularly deleterious nobles. When these folks become a massive net malus on society, well, it's really time to get rid of them if you're going for maximizing personal, or even societal, benefit, or even minimizing detriment. Success isn't a problem, but wealth (cum resource) hording -- which you have to do to become the sort of wealthy we're mostly talking about -- is.

For me, it depends on what they spend the money on. There is no way in hell I can ever
see buying, say, a golden diamond'd chandelier for several millions as something moral.

Why? What's "immoral" about gold/diamond chandeliers? Nobody is being harmed by such a purchase. What could possibly be "immoral" about using one's energies towards ends of one's own choosing in manners that cause no harm to others?

It's very dangerous ground to say that X is "wrong" because it's too decadent. Where do you draw the line? Wealth is relative. You're probably sitting in a nice chair in a house with a computer, yes? Somewhere in the world there's somebody who doesn't have any of those things and hasn't eaten in days. To them...you, your clothes, the food you eat, the car you drive....probably all seems fantastically decadent and rich beyond reason.

Hup. The problem is the bolded part. What we're seeing is that all that decadence is rarefying the resource situation; concentrating material power (via wealth, goods, etc., so forth) into an increasingly small percentage of the overall population. That is bad, from a moral perspective (they're basically stealing -- or if you prefer, obtaining a disproportionate amount of -- resources from the overall pool, which is immoral because it worsens the overall situation) and from a societal perspective (it's unsustainable and causes escalating social unrest, because the 'have-nots' grow larger). It's bad business, really.

But you don't see it that way.

Why should you expect someone else to see it that way just because they can casually buy a gold/diamond chandelier with the same casualness that you might buy a floral centerpiece for your kitchen table, or hanging bells for your backyard, or any other purely decorative thing you have around your house? None of these purchases are essential. They're all cosmetic. One is simply more expensive than the others, and the only difference between them is your own relative position as an observer.

Heeeyyy... I actually do harangue my family about buying useless decorative crap they could just make out of local flora, and don't buy it myself. No purchase is casual because I equate everything to food and that makes getting fancy crap considerably harder to justify: Useless bell thing could be two days worth of food. Even the decorative stuff my family does have, most of it we've been reusing for years, if not outright decades.

As for my opinion on the wealthy; They're all bad people, or ignorant. If you allow people to starve, live in dirty hovels, and die of easily treatable diseases while you eat whatever you want, have multiple houses, and get a heart transplant when you're seventy, you are a terrible person and a parasite on society. I don't care how much of a contribution you make, noone has the right to put their own comfort over another's survival.

I see. So then, are you a terrible person?

Because I'm pretty sure there are some children starving in africa right now. Or if that's too far, there are still plenty of homeless in america. There are probably people in your home city right this very moment who are going hungry.

Why are you not helping them? Why are you sitting in the comfort of your chair reading posts on bay12 rather than helping those people meet their survival needs? You could. You could sell your chair and sit on a box. You could stop buying starbucks coffee every day. You probably don't really need an iphone. You could sell your car and take the bus.

Hey, if there was a bus to take I damn sure would be taking it. I don't actually own a chair and haven't had use for one in a long time; computer goes on the floor or the bed, and if people would stop giving me the latter I'd be sleeping on the floor. Have a computer only because it's pretty necessary for what I do (and considerably cheaper than trying to go about it non-digital), and even then I've been subsisting on many-years out of date computers for over a decade now. I drink mostly water, and only get more expensive stuff when it's on sale. I volunteer, and help out with local education programs (largely via aiding my mother, who's an adult educator and active in the local education system). My luxury bits are almost entirely only indulged in to a point that keeps me sane, and no further.

All of these things are "comforts" that you choose instead of helping homeless, starving people.

Are you a terrible person?

I'm definitely not as moral an individual as I could be, and the fact that I don't actively campaign and dedicate my life to preventing the existence of the homeless and the starving is a strong part of that. I am, indeed, an immoral actor by aiding and abetting a system that is categorically causing terrible things. I call myself on it regularly, and welcome anyone else to do the same -- it's nothing but flat truth.

Oh, you're not? Ok, well...if you made $10,000/yr more than you do right now, and spent that money on a nicer car, better food, and presents for your girlfriend...then would be a terrible person? Oh, still no? Ok...$20,000? $100,000? Where's the line? At what point does one suddenly become a "terrible person" for spending one's money on one's self rather than others?

There is no line.

Yeah, except there is. It's when the practice, especially writ large, starts quantifiably worsening the lives of other people, especially in excess of what benefit it supplies -- utilitarianism buggers up a lot of things, but it's still a damn good measure to judge some things by. This is a good place for it, I'd say.

Right now, odds are good that you're fantastically wealthy by the standards of a large portion of the world. You have food. You have clean water. You live in a house. You probably own a car. Much of the world doesn't have these things. Even in your own city there are probably starving homeless people who don't have these things.

But you don't perceive yourself as being rich. And you probably feel you deserve the things you have. Maybe you feel you deserve a little better than what you have. Well, guess what? People with more money than you feel the same, and there's no magic, arbitrary point of "I have X, and therefore I'm now bad if I don't give my money away."

Yeah, frankly I do consider myself and a large portion of my people to be sincerely frakking immoral bastards because of what the states have been doing to the rest of the world and how we handle the wealth we have, and to the extent I'm able to (which isn't nearly as much as I'd like, because I'm in a pretty poor situation myself, and teetering toward getting into a worse one) I do what I can to counteract that -- problem being I'm a poor sumbitch and don't have much in the way of force projection, so to speak. I don't feel I deserve what I have, I am fully cognizant that I'm a rich whoreson compared to most of the world, and while I'd like a bit better in some ways, I damn sure don't think I deserve it. Pretty much any benefit that comes to me in the future and is mine in the present is built at least as much on the suffering of others as it is on anything else.

I'll agree there's not a magic arbitrary point where your line becomes a true thing, but there is a line after which misusing the resources you've accrued becomes a net malus that outstrips the benefits you may have managed to generate while accruing them. If you'd prefer we use a different word than immoral for that, I'd welcome one, heh.

Power is power. Money is merely one form of power. Power is not inherently evil. I can already imagine some of you reading this and angrily concluding that I'm suggesting that you should run out and go stomp on everyone else to get ahead. If that's really the message you're getting out of this, you're totally missing the point.

Power is not evil. It's ok to have power. If that power takes the form of money, so be it. People who have power...have power. And that's it. There's no "...and they're evil." There's no "...and they should give that power away." They just "...have power." And that's ok.

And if you want to have power, that's ok too. Maybe you don't know how to get power. That's ok. Maybe some people had an easier time getting power, or were given their power through family circumstances or luck. That's all ok. Winning the lottery would not make someone evil. Being born into wealth doesn't make them evil either.

I advise you all to let go of the emotional baggage you have about money. It's not helping you.

Largely agree here, though. I don't have any problems with power qua power; it's a resource like any other. The problem is how the power's being used. When I have issues with the wealthy, it's not with the fact that they have power, it's with the fact that many of them are horrifically misusing it to the plain and obvious detriment of many, many other people. That? That pisses me off, and worse, it causes a gradual (usually -- sometimes it's damn quick) destabilization of the society that it's being inflicted on. I'll admit I have trouble seeing how that can be construed as anything but a negative thing. Bad, if you will.

[kaijyuu]

AIs in charge of managing humans are rather notorious for deciding that humans are inferior.

In speculative fiction, perhaps.

In real life, we'll have the source code available, and can make more than 3 easily abusable rules.

[Ancre]

Lordbucket, that was a huge post, and I'm not going to tackle it entirely. I agree with most of what you said, but there's one thing that ticked me :

You have food. You have clean water. You live in a house. You probably own a car. Much of the world doesn't have these things. Even in your own city there are probably starving homeless people who don't have these things.

But you don't perceive yourself as being rich. And you probably feel you deserve the things you have.

All the things you listed aren't signs of wealth so much as stuff you need in order to live. You will die without food. No access to clean water is a serious health hazard. Having no shelter is a quick way to die (homeless people's life expectancy is halved in France - and homeless people die of cold every winter).

And, oddly enough, you kinda need a car to live in the US ("taking the bus" isn't an option, or at the very least it never worked for me every time I tried to live there), because without one, it's near impossible to find a way to guarantee all those things (ie - get a job, earn enough money, which is what most people do. there are other ways, but they are marginal). That you need a car to live in the US is a problem in itself, but that's another discussion I guess.

So yeah, since those things are actually basic needs, I feel everybody deserves them, because nobody deserves to die because their lives' basic needs aren't met. These are things you really can't do without. Having them isn't really a sign of wealth. Considering that it is, it's scary : it basically means living is a luxury and that you should feel privileged for being able to.

I know this was just a bad example on your part, but I felt it was necessary to say it. Being able to feed yourself is totally different from, say, owning an ipad, you can do without the latter, and you can't do without the former. Unfortunately, this is something I often see confused, put in the same bag, and I think for some people (not necessarily you), it became true as well,so this should be called out.

[nenjin]

What about it? Yes, some people come from rich families and never have to work a day in their lives. What exactly is the problem here?

When the article is based on the premise that people are rich because they "worked for it", yes I'd say there's an issue with their interpretation. Unless people suddenly get to take full credit for things their forebearers did that they did not. If wealthy people said they were wealthy because they inherited wealth, I'd have nothing to say. But that's never what they claim. They claim it's all because of their intelligence and hard work ethic.

I skimmed through the article and I don't see anything condescending in there at all.

Maybe you should read the whole article then instead of skimming it and saying there's nothing there?

If you can't even read about these things without getting angry about it, how can you possibly expect to improve your status in life?

Gee, I dunno, by working a job? I don't aspire to be rich. What is your point again, other than putting words in my mouth?

A lot of people are angry at "the rich." A lot of people believe that rich people are evil, or that money is evil, or that in some way money and people who have it are morally bankrupt, or...something. If you really believe that...do you see how that provides an emotional incentive to NOT have money? After all, "rich people are evil." And if you were rich...that would make you evil, right?

Maybe you need to refocus your attention on where our world and our country sits at the moment. And then ask yourself who is largely responsible for the state of our economy, our environment and the status of the middle class and what ethic has driven all these things. (Hint: The "world is not enough" ethic.) Then get back to me. Because I've read all the generic, relativistic arguments I can stand to read on this.

It's helpful to be aware of our emotions and thoughts. If you really believe that being rich is somehow wrong, you're probably going to have a more difficult time becoming rich than someone who believes it's a good thing.

When you're ready to address what I actually said, instead of what you'd like to think I believe, I'll be here.

And for the record, my grandfather is one of those "rags to riches" people, who went from being an orphan to being a multi-millionaire by starting, operating and then selling several restaurant businesses. I know "wealthy" people, I've associated with wealthy people and I even get to include myself in that designation for a few days at a time. My problem is not with money. My problem with how money gets used and how it gets made, and on whose backs it gets made. If you honestly think there's no call for debating these things, then I think you're living in a different reality than the rest of the world and there's little point to trying to make our two worlds sync up.

[DarkWolfXV]

If someone is wealthy, and he got the wealth in fair way (I mean like, not stolen or something), then its totally fine to be rich, if he has got the money and he worked for it, he probably deserves it and its totally fine for me.

[Ultimuh]

If someone is wealthy, and he got the wealth in fair way (I mean like, not stolen or something), then its totally fine to be rich, if he has got the money and he worked for it, he probably deserves it and its totally fine for me.

As long as he pays his taxes, it's all good and dandy for me as well.
And as long as he dosn't become a bastard from being so filthy rich.

[sneakey pete]

If someone is wealthy, and he got the wealth in fair way (I mean like, not stolen or something), then its totally fine to be rich, if he has got the money and he worked for it, he probably deserves it and its totally fine for me.

A lot of the argument in the thread seems to be that a "fair way" doesn't really exist because most money making methods involve exploiting the middle/lower class, or something to that effect, however.

[agertor]

I do not like the wealthy, as recently explained. Most wealthy men use loopholes in taxes to lose the least amount of money, things not available to the middle and lower class. The wealthy, I feel, are more entitled to help the people they employ. They own the country and control the workforce and money gained. I have not met or seen a wealthy man or woman who has not used exploits or used others to gain more for themselves. "Donations" as people might argue with my are reflected on their tax and in most cases, they give enough so they their tax would be less overall, even with those "donations" added. With the U.S. presidency bought out to companies who sponsor the main parties. It really doesn't matter who you vote for because their loyalty is not with the people, it is whoever is signing their checks. As a result, no poor man could be a real politician. Even if you get the occasional story, I would argue that someone is backing them at this point, keeping them in a financially secure place. As a communist, I can not agree with the capitalist system in general, it causes much suffering. People by themselves already cause suffering to others, I do not understand why people let others with power in money do any more damage to them.

[Flying Dice]

If someone is wealthy, and he got the wealth in fair way (I mean like, not stolen or something), then its totally fine to be rich, if he has got the money and he worked for it, he probably deserves it and its totally fine for me.

A lot of the argument in the thread seems to be that a "fair way" doesn't really exist because most money making methods involve exploiting the middle/lower class, or something to that effect, however.

Which really shouldn't be generating much argument. Money is power, power is obtained by competing with and standing on the backs of others. The only times where someone with power didn't gain it by exploiting others are when the power is purely personal, e.g. a master swordsman; and when the power was willingly given by people trusting that the one with power would use it responsibly, e.g. functional monarchy and democracy. Unlike personal ability, money (and more abstractly, wealth--you could substitute wealth for money at any point in this) is a finite resource which is also shared among the members of a population, therefore someone gaining a large amount of it is by default damaging others by restricting their access to a (n arguably vital) resource, even if they didn't intentionally harm others in gathering wealth. Unlike power gained through the trust and support of others, money requires the approval of no one else to be gathered or used.

In short, money is always going to have the capacity to allow one individual to damage and oppress others while also lacking the positive outcomes possible in other types of power. Money-power has the inherent capacity to facilitate wrongdoing while lacking the same capacity to facilitate positive interactions. Ergo, capitalism is also inherently wrong in that it glorifies the accumulation of money-power in the hands of the few. Certainly there are philanthropic possibilities with money-power, but those are common to all types of power, and stem from the morals of those who hold power, not the power itself. Personal power can be inherently good. Political power can be inherently good. Even religious power can be inherently good. Money power cannot. The first can encompass making oneself into a better, more complete individual. The second can encompass a worthy individual being intrusted with responsibility by their peers. The third can encompass virtuous standards of behavior (though admittedly not as often as one might wish). The fourth encompasses only greed and selfishness, the willingness to cause serious personal and societal harm for relatively minor gains, the evils of Randian thinking. If the best that can be said of the wealthy is that some of them do not harm others when gaining power, that is rather shameful.

[MorleyDev]

I have something of the attitude that that everybody is trying to claim as much of the world as they can for themselves and their own, and we all reach something of a stalemate which is called society.

If the weak won't fight to become strong against the strong, the all of strong will simply claim more and more and the weak are fucked. If the strong don't fight against each other to claim more, then the one who does fight will become too powerful and everybody is fucked. You can't have everybody be weak, that some will have strength is an inevitability, that some of those will use that strength to acquire power is also an inevitability. And the weak must fight against each other so that some of them can rise to become strong. Not everybody need be in the game, but enough need be in the game, and the game needs playing.

Society is an inevitable chaotic mess that if it's gotten 'right' will look somewhat ordered, and a society that looks chaotic is the result of these conflicts not being correctly balanced.

[Eagle_eye]

It's not purely money that's the problem. It's the manipulation of our culture as a result of concentration of power, wherever it comes from. People want to be rich. I expect if you asked slaves in the south whether they wanted to own slaves, most of them would say no. People naturally want to reject their oppressors and side with those who share their situation. The inverse is true in modern society. It is the greatest propaganda campaign ever conducted.

[Wolf Tengu]

I view wealthy people the same way as I view everyone else. Some are nice, some are assholes, and the rest are anything in between. You can't really add an attribute to a group that size and say it applies to everyone.

[Frumple]

I view wealthy people the same way as I view everyone else. Some are nice, some are assholes, and the rest are anything in between. You can't really add an attribute to a group that size and say it applies to everyone.

Ehhh... you sorta' can, in this case, or at least that's part of one of the underlying arguments that gets bandied around with this topic. You can say that all the wealthy are in possession of great amounts of wealth, and that there's an inherent problem with that. It's kinda' like saying all executioners execute people. They might be great people outside of that lil' killing folks part, but they're still, y'know, killing people.

It's a tenable position to say that execution is socially acceptable -- or even functionally necessary! -- but that doesn't allow you to go so far as to say it's a good thing, or that the person in question is a good person. I've got a couple extremely personable and giving mafiosos in parts of my family, ferex, though it's been a long while since I've interacted with them. Very moral people outside the whole violent organized crime thing. You can be moral in most ways and still immoral on the net -- nice in almost all ways, but still a monster. The system they're interacting with and the actions they're committing are still inherently flawed in certain ways, and that, you can say of all people in that group.

There's certain systemic negatives to the accumulation of extreme wealth that paints the wealthy with an ill colored brush. These negatives can be counteracted by proper action, but it's hard to point to cases where the wealthy have done that -- even harder to find cases where the wealthy have done so to a degree that they actually become a net positive. A negative opinion of the wealthy might not apply to every wealthy individual, no, but most...? You can definitely say most, with the world as-is, or so I'd say.

[LordBucket]

Money is power, power is obtained by competing with and standing on the backs of others.

No. Power is completely impartial, can be acquired in a variety of ways, and power itself doesn't care in the least how it is acquired.

Money is only a special case of power because:

1) There is a more or less finite quantity of it.
2) The only way to get it is to convince someone to give it to you.

(Please evaulate the spirit of intent of these statements rather than their literal meaning. Yes, there is reserve banking. Yes you can rob people. Focusing on that misses the point.)

And the point is that other forms of power are usually limitless. If I know how to grow food, I have the power to grow food. If I teach you how to grow food, you now also have the power to grow food, but my power is not diminished. If I have the strength to lift 100 pounds, that gives me a certain power. If you work out and gain the ability to lift 100 pounds, my ability is not diminished, and it doesn't matter whether you worked out to achieve that strength, or were simply born with good genetics, and it doesn't matter whether you learned to grow food by being taught, reading it, trial and error, or any other way.

Money does not work that way. If I give you $100, I necessarily have $100 less. If your company gives you a paycheck, in order to give you that paycheck they must give up an amount of power corresponding to the power that they give you. This artificial scarcity of power creates difficulties for those are less skilled in its acquisition. If I'm naturally stronger than you because of genetics, or if work out more than you do, I will be stronger. But this makes no difference for you in terms of your own acquisition of physical strength. If you can grow twice as much food as you need, it doesn't matter if I can grow 10 times as much. But because money can only be acquired as a finite exchange between parties, when one is more skilled in its acquisition than other, over time and many exchanges, there is a tendency for that power to accumulate into the hands of those more able. This is a function of the nature of money, not a moral failing on the part of those who acquire it.

It is a natural consequence of systems of artificial scarcity than disparities exist. In fact, such systems would generally not work in the first place without them. For example: if everyone had exactly the same amount of money no matter what...why would anyone use it? If we both have $100, and "the system" worked such that if you give me $10, we would both still have $100 rather than me have $110 and you $90, money would serve no useful purpose. It is only by virtue of the fact that disparity can exist that money can have value in the first place.

3) It only has value by virtue of mutual consensus.

Money has no inherent value. If you have the strength to life 100 pounds, you are able to lift 100 pounds regardless of what anyone says, does, or is capable of. If you are able to grow food, you are able to grow food regardless of whether your neighbors are able. Nobody has to agree with anything for power of this sort to function.

Money does not work that way. Money has no value independant of what others are willing to do for you in order to acquire it. If you have $100, you are able to...what? Nothing. You can't life anything. You can't grow anything. $100 has no value. Except that others may choose to perform for you, or give to you, in exchange for it.

It is a tremendous irony, that the middle class who clamor for jobs, and complains about the unfair power of the rich...give that power to the rich by choosing to accept a purely worthless, illusory form of power (money) in exchange for real goods and services. If I know how to grow food, I might be able to use that power to feed myself or others. If I'm strong, I might be able to use that power to help you gather wood, or use it to build something for myself. Money conveys no utility whatsoever except as a tool to convince others to use their power on someone else's behalf. But it does not compell them to act. It cannot. Money is illusory power. It is purely by choice that people give up their goods and services in exchange for money. Money itself has no real value.

I expect if you asked slaves in the south whether they wanted to own slaves, most of them would say no.

And yet the middle class seems to want jobs. Why is that?