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I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchang

by mjfl 10y ago

I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence, whereas Jeff Bezos got rich because you gave him money in exchange for products. Like, "Hey, here's this cool electronic device called the Amazon Echo for $50." is a markedly different from "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terrifying.

milesrout 10y ago
That's an incredibly naive view of things. To not recognise that Jeff Bezos's wealth is the product of a violent system is wilfully ignorant.
- wtf_is_up 10y ago
  Not an argument.
greghatch 10y ago
The negatives need not be so similar for the two to occupy the same space of vast property ownership concerns - namely that a single person has what many consider to be a troubling amount of wealth and power. EDIT: sentence structure change
- ruleabidinguser 10y ago
  Sorry, why is it concerning? It seems concerning to me but only if you choose not to really engage with what it means.
  - DamnYuppie 10y ago
    Throughout human history there has never been a time where those in power, regardless of how obtained, didn't turn to violence and subterfuge to maintain it.
    - ruleabidinguser 10y ago
      Have you experienced violence from those in power? Its so easy to spread fear when you haven't used your brain. And have you considered how much of your lifestyle, the best parts of your lifestyle, is impossible under any system other than capitalism? I can't think of a better vehicle for diversity and indeed there certainly isn't one. It's almost insulting when people so casually dismiss these things.
      - candiodari 10y ago
        I have had things stolen from me by someone else and tried to get police help with that. And I've also stolen things from both poor and from large businesses and: a) confessed to it (thankfully before 18 years old, my advice from the experience : do not ever, ever, ever do this, no matter how obvious the situation is) b) gotten away with it Comparing the reactions of the authorities between what happened when I offended a large business, who wanted to make an example (I didn't realize this at the time but they never even want restitution or the stolen item back), and what happened when I tried to recover my own stolen property and attempted in vain to get ANYTHING done (other than "fill in this paper and add to this huge stack here") Just a piece of advice : DO NOT learn kids to not steal by having them return a stolen item, unless you know and trust the store owner. Does this count as violence ?
      - iamnotlarry 10y ago
        You may wish to tone down the condescension. Many people use their brains just fine and have, in fact, experienced violence from those in power. Perhaps they knew or were related to one of the dozens of people murdered by police. Perhaps they were turned away from a favorite recreational activity by armed BLM agents and snipers violently confiscating cattle. (Why does the BLM have snipers?) Maybe they were affected by government murders at Ruby Ridge, or police peppering of Occupy protesters, or maybe they were attacked by trained dogs near the Dakota pipeline. Maybe their children were threatened when they spoke out about a tax hike to hire more police. Maybe their relative is in lockup for crossing an imaginary line that arbitrarily bounds Arizona. Maybe their property was taken from them because it could generate higher tax revenue if a strip mall were built there instead. Maybe they read about somebody who fled for their life after exposing illegal activity on the part of the government. Maybe it is possible to use your brain and still be wary of the corrupt use of power in today's society.
  - greghatch 10y ago
    My intention was to show why comparing the two things you mentioned and claiming the comparison is outrageous was not a reasonable dismissal of OP's concern - because they were talking about the similarities of society predicated on wealth accumulation generally and not the violence inflicted to protect that wealth and how that has changed over time. Many disagree with the tenants of capitalism regardless of how violent those in power are or how corrupted their authority is, the system itself can occur as strange, especially when it puts a lot of power into the hands of a few people - that causes uneasiness in many cultures and it is certainly something to think about as wealth inequality gaps widen, for better or worse. I don't really have any stake in the result of this conversation and my views aren't as critical of capitalism generally, I'm commenting because your out of hand dismissal of OP's comment made me think that you might either be erroneously framing the comment or reading his concern as something far more serious than the casual comment would otherwise indicate (at least, that's how I read it). Another way to read the OP would be something this - "Doesn't this remind anyone of how wealth was distributed in more clearly feudalistic times? Weird, right? - it makes me feel weird. I worry sometimes that this might be the beginnings of what we will consider to be a slip into a dystopian society. It worries me, and I wonder about it from time to time." EDIT: copy/pasted a little too much and repeated myself
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- mjfl 10y ago
  But that's not the important part. The violence is the important part. Feudalism wasn't unjust because the kings had a lot of money, it was unjust because they got a lot of money through force and not through productive economic activity. Also, I think it is extremely problematic to compare any system with large disparities of outcome with an essentially violent system like feudalism (or just defining "inequality = violence", which people do) because what you are doing is basically justifying violence against that system. Violence against capitalism has happened historically, multiple times, and has led to huge injustices, the slaughter of innocent people, and the ruin of every society that has tried it (unless they ease off like China). That alone is a great counterexample to the idea of capitalism = feudalism = violence.
  - milesrout 10y ago
    Capitalism is inherently violent whether you like it or not. The police violently repress anyone seeking what they have a natural right to: their fair share of the wealth.
    - lukifer 10y ago
      Capitalism is absolutely violent, and just as concerned with with-holding value as providing it (the primary means of price negotiation is the threat of walking away). Look at how much food a grocery store throws away, or how many houses are unoccupied, all in the interests of accounting and bargaining leverage. However: I take umbrage with "natural right" (the only right nature guarantees is entropy and death), and "fair share" (as decided by whom?). I think a wealthy, free, and just society would include infrastructure investment and The Commons in addition to free enterprise and private property; but good luck getting every single person to agree on the same definition of "fair".
      - WalterBright 10y ago
        Grocery stores throw a lot of food away due to regulation and liability issues, not for bargaining leverage.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > a troubling amount of wealth and power Any rookie cop can force you to pull over in your car, and confiscate any cash you have with you. Bezos can do none of that.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    Bezos can buy The Washington Post and use it a megaphone to shape elite debate and tilt policy towards his preferences. No rookie cop can do that.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      He can influence the voters, sure, from his soapbox. But he can't make anyone vote his way. It's the government that wields the power, not Bezos. Keep in mind that Clinton way outspent Trump, and had most of the media on her side, and still lost. Money and media do not buy elections.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
There's a lot of ways you can look at it. Feudalism was a hierarchical system. Not all nobles went around hacking off heads - they could farm that out to higher ups who kept order. What's the difference between Amazon's reliance on national governments? The business model only works because the US enforces peace on parts of the world and because the Chinese government allows its workers to be used for pennies on the dollar. Within Amazon's kingdom, good luck getting the authorities to help you if you aren't a big player. Meanwhile the average worker who isn't any less intelligent or hard working is seen as worth a fraction of a percentage of Bezos. Sounds like feudalism, serfdom, slavery, or whatever you'd like to call it. That we can celebrate such disparities of human value and even worse in some places this kind of rampant greed is seen as something good is what is truly terrifying.
- zvpxdlk 10y ago
  > any less intelligent or hard working Not necessarily true. Luck plays a big role in things like this but Bezos is clearly in the elite when it comes to effective professionals.
  - dougmany 10y ago
    How many times more effective? As the difference between what humans can do and what computers can do increases, we become relatively closer.
    - Pooshlmer 10y ago
      Really? I would say we become a lot farther apart. The productivity an elite can have with computer support is far greater than an uneducated worker.
    - dwaltrip 10y ago
      Technology is a lever that can hugely amplify differences in capability. A 10% skill difference between two people with shovels will result in a much smaller output difference than a 10% skill difference between two operators of heavy duty earth moving equipment. With software, this dynamic occurs in the extreme, as the cost to run a software program is so low. A hour of unskilled human labor cost hundreds or thousands of times more than an hour of computation. And the quantity and complexity of output from a single hour of computation is rapidly increasing. Edit: reworked the comment to make my point much more clearly
habosa 10y ago
This reminds me of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example, which I will quote here: > Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1, is ordered by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls's Difference Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popular basketball player in this society, and Nozick further assumes 1 million people are willing to freely give Chamberlain 25 cents each to watch him play basketball over the course of a season (we assume no other transactions occur). Chamberlain now has $250,000, a much larger sum than any of the other people in the society. This new distribution in society, call it D2, obviously is no longer ordered by our favored pattern that ordered D1. However Nozick argues that D2 is just. For if each agent freely exchanges some of his D1 share with the basketball player and D1 was a just distribution (we know D1 was just, because it was ordered according to your favorite patterned principle of distribution), how can D2 fail to be a just distribution? Thus Nozick argues that what the Wilt Chamberlain example shows is that no patterned principle of just distribution will be compatible with liberty. In order to preserve the pattern, which arranged D1, the state will have to continually interfere with people's ability to freely exchange their D1 shares, for any exchange of D1 shares explicitly involves violating the pattern that originally ordered it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia
- indeed_thetruth 10y ago
  This argument is trivially inconsistent. The state must protect liberty by interfering with one's liberty? State interfence is a direct transgression against an individual's liberty. Thus far the majority has decided that such interfence is a greater evil than the "inequality" that it could reconcile.
  - mhermher 10y ago
    That's the point.
    - muninn_ 10y ago
lapsock 10y ago
you're wrong. this shit has gone to shit in the past few years
reddytowns 10y ago
For people paying alimony and child support, you must work or go to jail. And buying cheap stuff goes along with that.
- vecinu 10y ago
  Were you forced into having that child in the first place? We don't need children for farm work anymore (in first world countries).
  - reddytowns 10y ago
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statuto...
    - vecinu 10y ago
      You said "For people paying alimony and child support, you must work or go to jail". How does that play into rape? I don't understand.
      - reddytowns 10y ago
        > Were you forced into having that child in the first place? The victim of a rape had to play child support. So, he was forced into having a child. In general, some men are forced into having children by women who lie about taking birth control, or even by collecting semen by used condoms.
        vecinu 10y ago
        That really wasn't clear to me from initially reading your post. Of course in those situations I would hope that a jury could pardon the responsibility of alimony if there was rape involved and the child is not wanted.
        10y ago
SerpentJoe 10y ago
Whatever economic system may be in place, it will be possible to profit by making better decisions in that context, but that doesn't prove the superiority of that system, and it doesn't make it "terrifying" to wonder whether this or that emergent phenomenon is a feature or a bug.
- mjfl 10y ago
  The terrifying part is someone with a completely un-nuanced understanding of Jeff Bezo's wealth going around saying "Hey! This man committed violence against me! He committed violence against you too!" when the violence was selling them an Amazon echo at a cheap price, or just being richer than them. What happens when they reach a consensus that Bezos committed violence against them? History tells me very clearly (see Russia, China, LatAm, Germany).
  - visarga 10y ago
    > when the violence was selling them an Amazon echo at a cheap price How about when the violence was selling under the normal market value undermining competition, then remaining the only vendor. Also replacing employees with robots. So in the end, people who would have had a job lost it, no matter if they work directly for Amazon or for the competition. It's not violence to take people's jobs, but in a society with few social protections, it's as bad as violence.
    - iamnotlarry 10y ago
      Selling under normal market value is not an act of violence. Using robots instead of human employees is not an act of violence. You have a very strange world view. Are your clothes hand-stitched? Was the electronic device you used for your post painstakingly constructed by hand? Do you think it is fair for some things to be automated but not others? Perhaps you think that it was bad to selectively cultivate a variety of wheat that could yield more tons of food per acre? Or maybe you think it is just wrong for a farmer to use a tractor? Should they water a hundred acre field by hand with 1 gallon buckets? That would mean more jobs! What is your opinion of all these auto-mechanics who have displaced stable hands? Should cities use thousands of laborers to spin manual generators to feed individual street lights? Modern power plants are taking peoples' jobs.
therpe1 10y ago
Uh, that's now how feudalism worked. Feudalism worked because an elite class (lords, the Church) owned the land. They had exclusive access to the means of production. Peasants didn't work the land out of a fear of violence. (Like a few dozen guys on horses could threaten a few thousand peasants.) Peasants worked the land because they didn't want to starve. The modern system is not any different. Jeff Bezos is part of an elite class that has exclusive access to the means of production. But now it's capital, not land. And this is what allows him to create something like the Echo and sell it. This is a feat that most people could never hope to do. At the end of the day because the average citizen doesn't have access to production he has no choice but to exchange his labor for food. He is a peasant.
mhermher 10y ago
Property is violence. If I try to take something that "isn't my property", the state will intervene with violence (e.g. forced imprisonment, etc.) on behalf of the person deemed to be the "lawful owner".
- ImSkeptical 10y ago
  I haven't seen opinion polls, but I doubt that's a widely held view. Why should people conform to your unusual position on property, as opposed to the mainstream one? Personally, I quite like owning things that are mine. The cost, that other people can own things that are theirs and not mine, seems well worth it.
  - mhermher 10y ago
    I'm not making a moral point. And it's not an opinion, nothing in my explanation is outside of trivially observed reality. I'm just trying to dispel the idea that capitalism (as we experience it, or otherwise) isn't maintained through violence. It very well is more pleasant for most people than feudalism, but they both perpetuate themselves through violence.
  - namlem 10y ago
    Parent comment didn't lay forth a good argument, but I think there is something to be said for the societal cost of people owning investment capital. However, there is also something to be said for the benefit of incentives. It's important to balance these factors, for example by making capital gains tax progressive and raising the rate for high earners.
  - zer0tonin 10y ago
    >Why should people conform to your unusual position on property, as opposed to the mainstream one? That's a nice fallacy you've got here, and that would imply that his opinion is actually uncommon around people who have studied the subject (spoiler : it's not). >Personally, I quite like owning things that are mine. Possession and property are not the same thing.
archagon 10y ago
Gave money to Amazon, which funneled it to a single individual. I think in a perfect society, this sort of cash flow would be severely tempered.
- adventured 10y ago
  > which funneled it to a single individual. You mean, which funneled a small fraction of it to a single individual. Bezos individually got more of it than anybody else, however to pretend that he got all of it, is silly. Total non-stock compensation paid by the business. Total stock compensation paid. Total investor return since inception. Total benefit to all consumers in convenience and savings. Total benefit to the investor return derived and that capital being put to further use in the economy. And on and on the calculation goes. The money has been funneled to hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of investors overall and millions of consumers (savings from aggressive margin pricing, or just value from various useful products Amazon has provided such as Prime), spanning decades. Bezos has likely gotten a low single digit percentage of all the value Amazon has created for everyone.
  - archagon 10y ago
    And yet he's now one of the richest people in the world. As an employee, is Bezos really a million times more valuable than a typical Amazon engineer? That seems almost self-evidently unfair to me. I think in a truly just society, the multiplier on the amount that a single individual could be compensated compared to his or her peers would have a hard cap. It would solve so many societal problems and also incentivize corporations to run more like collectives instead of fealties. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple would still exist, just as they do today; after all, their founders didn't get started out of the desire to make big bucks. But there wouldn't be any oligarchs on the other end of the pipe. Not that it's likely to happen, of course! A person can dream...
    - guskel 10y ago
      It's the reward for past work, not current. Imagine kid A studies really hard during his youth and doesn't get to have any fun because he's working so hard. Kid B likes to slack off and party and do drugs. If Kid A grows up and makes it big, why does kid B deserve half? Why should he deserve any portion? You could tax kid A's wealth but you can't tax kid B's youth and pleasure. Why put a cap on on kid A's wealth if you are not putting a cap on kid B's leisure time? We put no such caps on anything else whether it be beauty, intelligence, number of friends, popularity even though all of these things cause disparity.
eyko 10y ago
In essence you're right, but i just wanted to point out that that's not how feudalism worked.
branchless 10y ago
First generation rich, yes. But then his riches will rely on the state's monopoly on violence to defend the "property" of his descendants.
- foozed 10y ago
  """ His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000-acre (101 km2 or 39 miles2) ranch near Cotulla. As of March 2015, Bezos was among the largest landholders in Texas. Bezos’s maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. """ From Bezos wikipedia entry[0]. Hardly what i would call first generation rich... The foundation for his wealth (his education, social status etc) could - his ancestors being texan settlers and all - very well be based on very much violence (theft of land from native americans etc.) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
visarga 10y ago
> I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence Tell that to the hordes of unemployed people. Amazon is doing it darndest to employ as few people as possible in their warehouses and now are testing drone delivery.
- iamnotlarry 10y ago
  How is minimizing labor costs an act of violence? The point was that Jeff Bezos did not violently force anybody to work for him. Nor did he force anybody to buy from him. Your complaint is that Amazon is profitable because nobody works for them, and that's just feudalistic. That's an absurd argument.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  If automation is so evil we should ban the loom.
rdtsc 10y ago
> "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." I think you got confused, that's communism. :P And it's not decapitation (too messy) it is a bullet to the back of the head or death in a labor camp. Feudalism is "you can farm here but you owe me and your promise to fight in my wars". > The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terrifying. Really? Is it terrifying to compare a vassal's contract with the "work for me in the warehouse and I'll pay you a minimum wage, if you don't like, there is a line waiting at the door". They are not the same, it's a bit silly but is that sending shivers down our spine?
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  > Feudalism is "you can farm here but you owe me and your promise to fight in my wars". + if you will marry, I have every right to fuck your new wife on your wedding night, just before you. with church blessing. good luck figuring our if your first kid is yours or not. or having happy marriage. + I can kill you, anytime, for no reason, without consequence, horribly slow. or whole village. the only motivation to not do so is losing a bit of wealth since you all are my property, nothing more. but sometimes I can afford to lose a bit of property, just for the fun of it. > Really? Is it terrifying to compare a vassal's contract with the "work for me in the warehouse and I'll pay you a minimum wage, if you don't like, there is a line waiting at the door". They are not the same, it's a bit silly but is that sending shivers down our spine? WTF? there is a whole world to discover, to (re)define yourself, endless amounts of activities/job to take if really wanted/needed. you are FREE to choose your own fate. even building next amazon if you can do it. your skills and sky is the only real limit. so yes, comparing those 2 sends shivers down my spine too, since this is just envy. don't blame some rich guy for wrong choices earlier in your life (ie what to study). don't forget, horrible things like communism are built on envy and sense of entitlement.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    > , I have every right to fuck your new wife on your wedding night, Did you study this in school or read about or just watched movies? > sky is the only real limit. so yes, comparing those 2 sends shivers down my spine too, since this is just envy. I didn't blame anyone. Just pointing out that comparison is not really that outrageous and terrifying, mostly because it builds a straw-man out of what feudalism was about. If you believe kings and lords were going around sleeping with brides everywhere on their first night, yes, I can see why a lot of things would send shivers down your spine.
stdbrouw 10y ago
You might still wonder whether, insofar as modern society works due to a sort of non-aggression pact, all of us are getting the same benefits from that pact.
whazor 10y ago
Still, it could have been 10 or 100 rich people instead of just one.
max_ 10y ago
>The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terrifying. [0]The "half poor" rally don't care about the top 2 rich. [0]https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d8f00bc0cb46 https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...
khazhoux 10y ago
He didn't acquire it through violence, so there's nothing to see here. Move along, people. A handful of people control as much wealth as the world's population combined, but there's nothing here to concern any of us, since they didn't do it with sword and cannons like a few hundred years ago. In fact, since the days of imperial conquest by force are pretty much over (minus the occasional here and there), we really shouldn't worry ever again about the hundred people who own the world. Not. A. Problem.
- sooheon 10y ago
  Is Poe's law making a fool of me, or do you truly believe this?
  - greenhatman 10y ago
    He is sarcastic. But it's also a false dichotomy. It is different from taking things by force. There is in general mutual benefit between all involved parties. Though that doesn't mean we can just completely relax. We should stay vigilant, because tyranny is always just around the corner.
    - sooheon 10y ago
      Was the way that inequality was achieved ever the only problem? Is inequality in itself a social ill? Inequality achieved through socially accepted means is still inequality. I'm not advocating Harrison Bergeron levels of flattening here, but there has got to be diminishing returns on the utility of extreme wealth which could better be used to help the uber poor.
    - khazhoux 10y ago
      > tyranny is always just around the corner. I believe in capitalism, but still when a handful of people own the world, that in itself is a form of tyranny. The article below says EIGHT PEOPLE control as much wealth as over 3 BILLION PEOPLE, 50% of the world's population. And much of that number lives in poverty. It's no ill will against Bezos or his success in business to say, it sure would be nice if the world didn't have 1.3 billion people in extreme poverty, while the world's wealth is controlled by, and for the benefit of, just a roomful of people. http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-eight-richest-as-wealthy-as-half-humanity-oxfam-tells-davos-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-eight-richest-as-wealt...
pizza 10y ago
It's the flow graph of the $ thing that is of concern, not the terror of weaponry. Everyday life is terrifyingly unexamined.
ctack 10y ago
Feudalism is not a terrible analogy. It's just not complete. It's still stick, but now we get carrot too. We still get the stick as in - don't pay your taxes and you go to jail or can't pay rent - you're out on the street. It's not beheading, but it's still force backed up by promise of violence. But now we also get the carrot - the freedom to consume what you can afford to.
metaphorm 10y ago
in late stage capitalism the threat of violence is implicit (poverty) not explicit (men with weapons). the hyperbole in the post you responded to is a rhetorical device and it serves a purpose. is there anything substantively wrong with what OP said? I'm not sure why you find it important to attempt to treat figurative speech as if it was literal. It isn't literal and we all understand that.

by mjfl 10y ago

milesrout 10y ago

That's an incredibly naive view of things. To not recognise that Jeff Bezos's wealth is the product of a violent system is wilfully ignorant.

wtf_is_up 10y ago
Not an argument.

greghatch 10y ago

The negatives need not be so similar for the two to occupy the same space of vast property ownership concerns - namely that a single person has what many consider to be a troubling amount of wealth and power. EDIT: sentence structure change

ruleabidinguser 10y ago
Sorry, why is it concerning? It seems concerning to me but only if you choose not to really engage with what it means.
- DamnYuppie 10y ago
  Throughout human history there has never been a time where those in power, regardless of how obtained, didn't turn to violence and subterfuge to maintain it.
  - ruleabidinguser 10y ago
    Have you experienced violence from those in power? Its so easy to spread fear when you haven't used your brain. And have you considered how much of your lifestyle, the best parts of your lifestyle, is impossible under any system other than capitalism? I can't think of a better vehicle for diversity and indeed there certainly isn't one. It's almost insulting when people so casually dismiss these things.
    - candiodari 10y ago
      I have had things stolen from me by someone else and tried to get police help with that. And I've also stolen things from both poor and from large businesses and: a) confessed to it (thankfully before 18 years old, my advice from the experience : do not ever, ever, ever do this, no matter how obvious the situation is) b) gotten away with it Comparing the reactions of the authorities between what happened when I offended a large business, who wanted to make an example (I didn't realize this at the time but they never even want restitution or the stolen item back), and what happened when I tried to recover my own stolen property and attempted in vain to get ANYTHING done (other than "fill in this paper and add to this huge stack here") Just a piece of advice : DO NOT learn kids to not steal by having them return a stolen item, unless you know and trust the store owner. Does this count as violence ?
    - iamnotlarry 10y ago
      You may wish to tone down the condescension. Many people use their brains just fine and have, in fact, experienced violence from those in power. Perhaps they knew or were related to one of the dozens of people murdered by police. Perhaps they were turned away from a favorite recreational activity by armed BLM agents and snipers violently confiscating cattle. (Why does the BLM have snipers?) Maybe they were affected by government murders at Ruby Ridge, or police peppering of Occupy protesters, or maybe they were attacked by trained dogs near the Dakota pipeline. Maybe their children were threatened when they spoke out about a tax hike to hire more police. Maybe their relative is in lockup for crossing an imaginary line that arbitrarily bounds Arizona. Maybe their property was taken from them because it could generate higher tax revenue if a strip mall were built there instead. Maybe they read about somebody who fled for their life after exposing illegal activity on the part of the government. Maybe it is possible to use your brain and still be wary of the corrupt use of power in today's society.
- greghatch 10y ago
  My intention was to show why comparing the two things you mentioned and claiming the comparison is outrageous was not a reasonable dismissal of OP's concern - because they were talking about the similarities of society predicated on wealth accumulation generally and not the violence inflicted to protect that wealth and how that has changed over time. Many disagree with the tenants of capitalism regardless of how violent those in power are or how corrupted their authority is, the system itself can occur as strange, especially when it puts a lot of power into the hands of a few people - that causes uneasiness in many cultures and it is certainly something to think about as wealth inequality gaps widen, for better or worse. I don't really have any stake in the result of this conversation and my views aren't as critical of capitalism generally, I'm commenting because your out of hand dismissal of OP's comment made me think that you might either be erroneously framing the comment or reading his concern as something far more serious than the casual comment would otherwise indicate (at least, that's how I read it). Another way to read the OP would be something this - "Doesn't this remind anyone of how wealth was distributed in more clearly feudalistic times? Weird, right? - it makes me feel weird. I worry sometimes that this might be the beginnings of what we will consider to be a slip into a dystopian society. It worries me, and I wonder about it from time to time." EDIT: copy/pasted a little too much and repeated myself
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mjfl 10y ago
But that's not the important part. The violence is the important part. Feudalism wasn't unjust because the kings had a lot of money, it was unjust because they got a lot of money through force and not through productive economic activity. Also, I think it is extremely problematic to compare any system with large disparities of outcome with an essentially violent system like feudalism (or just defining "inequality = violence", which people do) because what you are doing is basically justifying violence against that system. Violence against capitalism has happened historically, multiple times, and has led to huge injustices, the slaughter of innocent people, and the ruin of every society that has tried it (unless they ease off like China). That alone is a great counterexample to the idea of capitalism = feudalism = violence.
- milesrout 10y ago
  Capitalism is inherently violent whether you like it or not. The police violently repress anyone seeking what they have a natural right to: their fair share of the wealth.
  - lukifer 10y ago
    Capitalism is absolutely violent, and just as concerned with with-holding value as providing it (the primary means of price negotiation is the threat of walking away). Look at how much food a grocery store throws away, or how many houses are unoccupied, all in the interests of accounting and bargaining leverage. However: I take umbrage with "natural right" (the only right nature guarantees is entropy and death), and "fair share" (as decided by whom?). I think a wealthy, free, and just society would include infrastructure investment and The Commons in addition to free enterprise and private property; but good luck getting every single person to agree on the same definition of "fair".
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      Grocery stores throw a lot of food away due to regulation and liability issues, not for bargaining leverage.
WalterBright 10y ago
> a troubling amount of wealth and power Any rookie cop can force you to pull over in your car, and confiscate any cash you have with you. Bezos can do none of that.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  Bezos can buy The Washington Post and use it a megaphone to shape elite debate and tilt policy towards his preferences. No rookie cop can do that.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    He can influence the voters, sure, from his soapbox. But he can't make anyone vote his way. It's the government that wields the power, not Bezos. Keep in mind that Clinton way outspent Trump, and had most of the media on her side, and still lost. Money and media do not buy elections.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

There's a lot of ways you can look at it. Feudalism was a hierarchical system. Not all nobles went around hacking off heads - they could farm that out to higher ups who kept order. What's the difference between Amazon's reliance on national governments? The business model only works because the US enforces peace on parts of the world and because the Chinese government allows its workers to be used for pennies on the dollar. Within Amazon's kingdom, good luck getting the authorities to help you if you aren't a big player. Meanwhile the average worker who isn't any less intelligent or hard working is seen as worth a fraction of a percentage of Bezos. Sounds like feudalism, serfdom, slavery, or whatever you'd like to call it. That we can celebrate such disparities of human value and even worse in some places this kind of rampant greed is seen as something good is what is truly terrifying.

zvpxdlk 10y ago
> any less intelligent or hard working Not necessarily true. Luck plays a big role in things like this but Bezos is clearly in the elite when it comes to effective professionals.
- dougmany 10y ago
  How many times more effective? As the difference between what humans can do and what computers can do increases, we become relatively closer.
  - Pooshlmer 10y ago
    Really? I would say we become a lot farther apart. The productivity an elite can have with computer support is far greater than an uneducated worker.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    Technology is a lever that can hugely amplify differences in capability. A 10% skill difference between two people with shovels will result in a much smaller output difference than a 10% skill difference between two operators of heavy duty earth moving equipment. With software, this dynamic occurs in the extreme, as the cost to run a software program is so low. A hour of unskilled human labor cost hundreds or thousands of times more than an hour of computation. And the quantity and complexity of output from a single hour of computation is rapidly increasing. Edit: reworked the comment to make my point much more clearly

habosa 10y ago

This reminds me of Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example, which I will quote here: > Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1, is ordered by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls's Difference Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popular basketball player in this society, and Nozick further assumes 1 million people are willing to freely give Chamberlain 25 cents each to watch him play basketball over the course of a season (we assume no other transactions occur). Chamberlain now has $250,000, a much larger sum than any of the other people in the society. This new distribution in society, call it D2, obviously is no longer ordered by our favored pattern that ordered D1. However Nozick argues that D2 is just. For if each agent freely exchanges some of his D1 share with the basketball player and D1 was a just distribution (we know D1 was just, because it was ordered according to your favorite patterned principle of distribution), how can D2 fail to be a just distribution? Thus Nozick argues that what the Wilt Chamberlain example shows is that no patterned principle of just distribution will be compatible with liberty. In order to preserve the pattern, which arranged D1, the state will have to continually interfere with people's ability to freely exchange their D1 shares, for any exchange of D1 shares explicitly involves violating the pattern that originally ordered it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia

indeed_thetruth 10y ago
This argument is trivially inconsistent. The state must protect liberty by interfering with one's liberty? State interfence is a direct transgression against an individual's liberty. Thus far the majority has decided that such interfence is a greater evil than the "inequality" that it could reconcile.
- mhermher 10y ago
  That's the point.
  - muninn_ 10y ago

lapsock 10y ago

you're wrong. this shit has gone to shit in the past few years

reddytowns 10y ago

For people paying alimony and child support, you must work or go to jail. And buying cheap stuff goes along with that.

vecinu 10y ago
Were you forced into having that child in the first place? We don't need children for farm work anymore (in first world countries).
- reddytowns 10y ago
  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statuto...
  - vecinu 10y ago
    You said "For people paying alimony and child support, you must work or go to jail". How does that play into rape? I don't understand.
    - reddytowns 10y ago
      > Were you forced into having that child in the first place? The victim of a rape had to play child support. So, he was forced into having a child. In general, some men are forced into having children by women who lie about taking birth control, or even by collecting semen by used condoms.
      - vecinu 10y ago
        That really wasn't clear to me from initially reading your post. Of course in those situations I would hope that a jury could pardon the responsibility of alimony if there was rape involved and the child is not wanted.
        10y ago

SerpentJoe 10y ago

Whatever economic system may be in place, it will be possible to profit by making better decisions in that context, but that doesn't prove the superiority of that system, and it doesn't make it "terrifying" to wonder whether this or that emergent phenomenon is a feature or a bug.

mjfl 10y ago
The terrifying part is someone with a completely un-nuanced understanding of Jeff Bezo's wealth going around saying "Hey! This man committed violence against me! He committed violence against you too!" when the violence was selling them an Amazon echo at a cheap price, or just being richer than them. What happens when they reach a consensus that Bezos committed violence against them? History tells me very clearly (see Russia, China, LatAm, Germany).
- visarga 10y ago
  > when the violence was selling them an Amazon echo at a cheap price How about when the violence was selling under the normal market value undermining competition, then remaining the only vendor. Also replacing employees with robots. So in the end, people who would have had a job lost it, no matter if they work directly for Amazon or for the competition. It's not violence to take people's jobs, but in a society with few social protections, it's as bad as violence.
  - iamnotlarry 10y ago
    Selling under normal market value is not an act of violence. Using robots instead of human employees is not an act of violence. You have a very strange world view. Are your clothes hand-stitched? Was the electronic device you used for your post painstakingly constructed by hand? Do you think it is fair for some things to be automated but not others? Perhaps you think that it was bad to selectively cultivate a variety of wheat that could yield more tons of food per acre? Or maybe you think it is just wrong for a farmer to use a tractor? Should they water a hundred acre field by hand with 1 gallon buckets? That would mean more jobs! What is your opinion of all these auto-mechanics who have displaced stable hands? Should cities use thousands of laborers to spin manual generators to feed individual street lights? Modern power plants are taking peoples' jobs.

therpe1 10y ago

Uh, that's now how feudalism worked. Feudalism worked because an elite class (lords, the Church) owned the land. They had exclusive access to the means of production. Peasants didn't work the land out of a fear of violence. (Like a few dozen guys on horses could threaten a few thousand peasants.) Peasants worked the land because they didn't want to starve. The modern system is not any different. Jeff Bezos is part of an elite class that has exclusive access to the means of production. But now it's capital, not land. And this is what allows him to create something like the Echo and sell it. This is a feat that most people could never hope to do. At the end of the day because the average citizen doesn't have access to production he has no choice but to exchange his labor for food. He is a peasant.

mhermher 10y ago

Property is violence. If I try to take something that "isn't my property", the state will intervene with violence (e.g. forced imprisonment, etc.) on behalf of the person deemed to be the "lawful owner".

ImSkeptical 10y ago
I haven't seen opinion polls, but I doubt that's a widely held view. Why should people conform to your unusual position on property, as opposed to the mainstream one? Personally, I quite like owning things that are mine. The cost, that other people can own things that are theirs and not mine, seems well worth it.
- mhermher 10y ago
  I'm not making a moral point. And it's not an opinion, nothing in my explanation is outside of trivially observed reality. I'm just trying to dispel the idea that capitalism (as we experience it, or otherwise) isn't maintained through violence. It very well is more pleasant for most people than feudalism, but they both perpetuate themselves through violence.
- namlem 10y ago
  Parent comment didn't lay forth a good argument, but I think there is something to be said for the societal cost of people owning investment capital. However, there is also something to be said for the benefit of incentives. It's important to balance these factors, for example by making capital gains tax progressive and raising the rate for high earners.
- zer0tonin 10y ago
  >Why should people conform to your unusual position on property, as opposed to the mainstream one? That's a nice fallacy you've got here, and that would imply that his opinion is actually uncommon around people who have studied the subject (spoiler : it's not). >Personally, I quite like owning things that are mine. Possession and property are not the same thing.

archagon 10y ago

Gave money to Amazon, which funneled it to a single individual. I think in a perfect society, this sort of cash flow would be severely tempered.

adventured 10y ago
> which funneled it to a single individual. You mean, which funneled a small fraction of it to a single individual. Bezos individually got more of it than anybody else, however to pretend that he got all of it, is silly. Total non-stock compensation paid by the business. Total stock compensation paid. Total investor return since inception. Total benefit to all consumers in convenience and savings. Total benefit to the investor return derived and that capital being put to further use in the economy. And on and on the calculation goes. The money has been funneled to hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of investors overall and millions of consumers (savings from aggressive margin pricing, or just value from various useful products Amazon has provided such as Prime), spanning decades. Bezos has likely gotten a low single digit percentage of all the value Amazon has created for everyone.
- archagon 10y ago
  And yet he's now one of the richest people in the world. As an employee, is Bezos really a million times more valuable than a typical Amazon engineer? That seems almost self-evidently unfair to me. I think in a truly just society, the multiplier on the amount that a single individual could be compensated compared to his or her peers would have a hard cap. It would solve so many societal problems and also incentivize corporations to run more like collectives instead of fealties. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple would still exist, just as they do today; after all, their founders didn't get started out of the desire to make big bucks. But there wouldn't be any oligarchs on the other end of the pipe. Not that it's likely to happen, of course! A person can dream...
  - guskel 10y ago
    It's the reward for past work, not current. Imagine kid A studies really hard during his youth and doesn't get to have any fun because he's working so hard. Kid B likes to slack off and party and do drugs. If Kid A grows up and makes it big, why does kid B deserve half? Why should he deserve any portion? You could tax kid A's wealth but you can't tax kid B's youth and pleasure. Why put a cap on on kid A's wealth if you are not putting a cap on kid B's leisure time? We put no such caps on anything else whether it be beauty, intelligence, number of friends, popularity even though all of these things cause disparity.

eyko 10y ago

In essence you're right, but i just wanted to point out that that's not how feudalism worked.

branchless 10y ago

First generation rich, yes. But then his riches will rely on the state's monopoly on violence to defend the "property" of his descendants.

foozed 10y ago
""" His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000-acre (101 km2 or 39 miles2) ranch near Cotulla. As of March 2015, Bezos was among the largest landholders in Texas. Bezos’s maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. """ From Bezos wikipedia entry[0]. Hardly what i would call first generation rich... The foundation for his wealth (his education, social status etc) could - his ancestors being texan settlers and all - very well be based on very much violence (theft of land from native americans etc.) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

visarga 10y ago

> I think that's a little hyperbolic. In feudalism the balance of power is enforced by violence Tell that to the hordes of unemployed people. Amazon is doing it darndest to employ as few people as possible in their warehouses and now are testing drone delivery.

iamnotlarry 10y ago
How is minimizing labor costs an act of violence? The point was that Jeff Bezos did not violently force anybody to work for him. Nor did he force anybody to buy from him. Your complaint is that Amazon is profitable because nobody works for them, and that's just feudalistic. That's an absurd argument.
ajmurmann 10y ago
If automation is so evil we should ban the loom.

rdtsc 10y ago

> "Farm here or I'll decapitate you." I think you got confused, that's communism. :P And it's not decapitation (too messy) it is a bullet to the back of the head or death in a labor camp. Feudalism is "you can farm here but you owe me and your promise to fight in my wars". > The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terrifying. Really? Is it terrifying to compare a vassal's contract with the "work for me in the warehouse and I'll pay you a minimum wage, if you don't like, there is a line waiting at the door". They are not the same, it's a bit silly but is that sending shivers down our spine?

saiya-jin 10y ago
> Feudalism is "you can farm here but you owe me and your promise to fight in my wars". + if you will marry, I have every right to fuck your new wife on your wedding night, just before you. with church blessing. good luck figuring our if your first kid is yours or not. or having happy marriage. + I can kill you, anytime, for no reason, without consequence, horribly slow. or whole village. the only motivation to not do so is losing a bit of wealth since you all are my property, nothing more. but sometimes I can afford to lose a bit of property, just for the fun of it. > Really? Is it terrifying to compare a vassal's contract with the "work for me in the warehouse and I'll pay you a minimum wage, if you don't like, there is a line waiting at the door". They are not the same, it's a bit silly but is that sending shivers down our spine? WTF? there is a whole world to discover, to (re)define yourself, endless amounts of activities/job to take if really wanted/needed. you are FREE to choose your own fate. even building next amazon if you can do it. your skills and sky is the only real limit. so yes, comparing those 2 sends shivers down my spine too, since this is just envy. don't blame some rich guy for wrong choices earlier in your life (ie what to study). don't forget, horrible things like communism are built on envy and sense of entitlement.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > , I have every right to fuck your new wife on your wedding night, Did you study this in school or read about or just watched movies? > sky is the only real limit. so yes, comparing those 2 sends shivers down my spine too, since this is just envy. I didn't blame anyone. Just pointing out that comparison is not really that outrageous and terrifying, mostly because it builds a straw-man out of what feudalism was about. If you believe kings and lords were going around sleeping with brides everywhere on their first night, yes, I can see why a lot of things would send shivers down your spine.

stdbrouw 10y ago

You might still wonder whether, insofar as modern society works due to a sort of non-aggression pact, all of us are getting the same benefits from that pact.

whazor 10y ago

Still, it could have been 10 or 100 rich people instead of just one.

max_ 10y ago

>The fact that you harbor a resentment as if the former is anything like the latter is slightly terrifying. [0]The "half poor" rally don't care about the top 2 rich. [0]https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d8f00bc0cb46 https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...

khazhoux 10y ago

He didn't acquire it through violence, so there's nothing to see here. Move along, people. A handful of people control as much wealth as the world's population combined, but there's nothing here to concern any of us, since they didn't do it with sword and cannons like a few hundred years ago. In fact, since the days of imperial conquest by force are pretty much over (minus the occasional here and there), we really shouldn't worry ever again about the hundred people who own the world. Not. A. Problem.

sooheon 10y ago
Is Poe's law making a fool of me, or do you truly believe this?
- greenhatman 10y ago
  He is sarcastic. But it's also a false dichotomy. It is different from taking things by force. There is in general mutual benefit between all involved parties. Though that doesn't mean we can just completely relax. We should stay vigilant, because tyranny is always just around the corner.
  - sooheon 10y ago
    Was the way that inequality was achieved ever the only problem? Is inequality in itself a social ill? Inequality achieved through socially accepted means is still inequality. I'm not advocating Harrison Bergeron levels of flattening here, but there has got to be diminishing returns on the utility of extreme wealth which could better be used to help the uber poor.
  - khazhoux 10y ago
    > tyranny is always just around the corner. I believe in capitalism, but still when a handful of people own the world, that in itself is a form of tyranny. The article below says EIGHT PEOPLE control as much wealth as over 3 BILLION PEOPLE, 50% of the world's population. And much of that number lives in poverty. It's no ill will against Bezos or his success in business to say, it sure would be nice if the world didn't have 1.3 billion people in extreme poverty, while the world's wealth is controlled by, and for the benefit of, just a roomful of people. http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-eight-richest-as-wealthy-as-half-humanity-oxfam-tells-davos-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-eight-richest-as-wealt...

pizza 10y ago

It's the flow graph of the $ thing that is of concern, not the terror of weaponry. Everyday life is terrifyingly unexamined.

ctack 10y ago

Feudalism is not a terrible analogy. It's just not complete. It's still stick, but now we get carrot too. We still get the stick as in - don't pay your taxes and you go to jail or can't pay rent - you're out on the street. It's not beheading, but it's still force backed up by promise of violence. But now we also get the carrot - the freedom to consume what you can afford to.

metaphorm 10y ago

in late stage capitalism the threat of violence is implicit (poverty) not explicit (men with weapons). the hyperbole in the post you responded to is a rhetorical device and it serves a purpose. is there anything substantively wrong with what OP said? I'm not sure why you find it important to attempt to treat figurative speech as if it was literal. It isn't literal and we all understand that.