3 ms·
> Nobody is supposed to "give them" anything. They are supposed to be responsible adults, and as such they are supposed to earn their living themselves. The po
by ashark 9y ago
> Nobody is supposed to "give them" anything. They are supposed to be responsible adults, and as such they are supposed to earn their living themselves.
The point is that the system shifted to "give" some people more, and "give" others less. The winners in these cases were, by and large, already better off than the losers, with the result that political power also shifted (further) in the winners' favor (this is all covered in the linked paper).
The economic system we collectively create absolutely "gives" and "takes" from different groups, all the time. The notion that it's fine for one group to shift the rules to help themselves and harm others, but it's not fine for the harmed to try to retaliate (even via a voting-driven "revolt") is silly.
Letting this go on will, right or wrong, definitely create more crime and, taken far enough and especially coupled by political power shifting toward economic beneficiaries, reliably create political violence (see: relative deprivation). You can be personally offended over how these people aren't "responsible adults" and take an expensive, weakly effective law-and-order approach, or you can try to do effective (even just from a not-unreasonable point of view!) things like redistribute part of the gains that some people receive from changing economic policy to those who are harmed by the same policy, through direct transfers or e.g. retraining programs, even if it offends your derived-from-first-principles sense of right and wrong that labels this as theft or something.
Of course, if (taking a shot in the dark here) your view is that most of what's complex about economic policy (as e.g. the topics essential to the analysis in the linked paper) is accidental ("artificial", perhaps?) rather than essential ("natural"...) this will all come off as nonsense, I suppose.
> If for some reason they can not be satisfied with what they earn, and if they react by "revolting", that is with violence, then unfortunately the only sensible thing to do is to defend the rest of society against them. Poverty is not an excuse for crime, is it?
So no. That's not remotely the only sensible thing to do.
[EDIT] punctuation
- grondilu 9y ago> The economic system we collectively create absolutely "gives" and "takes" from different groups, all the time. The notion that it's fine for one group to shift the rules to help themselves and harm others, but it's not fine for the harmed to try to retaliate (even via a voting-driven "revolt") is silly. That's a very "class conflict" approach in the Marxist sense. It's not clear this was what was argued in the post I was answering to. In any case, that analysis is obviously highly political, and the least that can be said is that not everybody agrees with it.
- ashark 9y ago> That's a very "class conflict" approach in the Marxist sense. It's not clear this was what was argued in the post I was answering to. The topic under discussion is the changing of economic rules to benefit some at the expense of others. It's the heart of the linked paper (TFA), and may be assumed as context for a root-level comment's assertions. > In any case, that analysis is obviously highly political, and the least that can be said is that not everybody agrees with it. That certain economic rules benefit some and harm others seems pretty uncontroversial. That those who are harmed by changes to said rules should quit expecting to be "given" things and just work harder seems like an obvious double-standard. That coupling of economic power to political power makes ethical reasoning on this topic in particular a bit muddy also seems uncontroversial.