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In a world where 8 people have more money than the bottom 3 BILLION people combined. You can blame the poor for surviving...or blame the rich for the greed tha

In a world where 8 people have more money than the bottom 3 BILLION people combined. You can blame the poor for surviving...or blame the rich for the greed that forces people to do this to survive.

lopmotr 8y ago
Can you explain the causal link between those rich people's greed and this fishing technique? Is it because rich people enabled dynamite to be produced cheaply enough for them?
- andkon 8y ago
  Exactly. Rich people literally put the dynamite in these people’s hands. That is the only plausible and widely accepted explanation for inequality, and kudos to you for advancing it.
- bshepard 8y ago
  It's because "richness" creates a pathologically competitive social system that encourages this sort of destruction activity in order to get the token that conveys value.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    I’m going to argue pathologically competitive people are the causative factor rather than richness itself.
    - nickthemagicman 8y ago
      I'm going to argue that lack of resources(caused by inequality) makes people pathologically competitive.
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    You mean rich people are to blame for poor people destroying their environment because the rich people set an example for poor people to aspire to? Have you got a suggestion for a way to solve that problem other than what the Khmer Rouge did? I have. Forbid poor people from becoming rich. By keeping them in fixed economic classes, they won't have the motivation to compete so hard and then the fish will be saved. There are obvious bad side effects of this. Can you improve on it?
- dotancohen 8y ago
  I'll explain it. Maybe not _those_ 8 rich people, but generally Western nations were made rich by exploiting the tragedy of the commons. Oil and other mining are the classic examples. Why should we expect these poor, poor fishermen to prioritize our poor, poor planet over their poor, poor families when our own rich got that way through exploitation of natural resources and pollution?
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    Wasn't every nation? Europe and China have lost almost all their forests. Pre-European New Zealand natives exterminated the giant flightless moa. There was a powerful ancient African civilization that died out because they used up all the artesian water. I'd say nobody cared about conservation until rich people we comfortable enough to stop worrying about their next meal and look at broader issues.
    - dotancohen 8y ago
      I don't understand why you are being downvoted. You're 100% right. I specifically mention the West because it is the West (the EU) who are pressuring the Philippines to better regulate their fishing industry, as per the fine article, and also because it is the West who are now comfortable enough to worry about the tragedy of the commons since they are done exploiting it.
    - ptaipale 8y ago
      BTW, elsewhere I just read that the amount of forests in England has now recovered above the levels recorded in Domesday Book (William Conqueror's land survey in 1086). Same's happening in many countries in Europe. I have a picture of my birth home, taken in 1903 from a nearby hill. The landscape is mostly bare, almost everything except the actual fields is used for cattle. Now you can't take a picture like that. Almost everything is covered by a forest, but you can't see it from the trees growing on the hill.
      - orwin 8y ago
        England might have been lucky enough (blessed with rain and all). Southern France and Greece, not so much, and will probably never recover pre-roman empire forests.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  How efficient have rich people made the economies of 3rd world countries?
gepi79 8y ago
Many rich people are rich because they employ people and profit from it. Many rich people are rich because they own real wealth and not (just) money. Rich people are not the problem. Rich people are no excuse for doing bad things. Poverty is no excuse for doing bad things. Deficient morality leads to bad actions and bad constraints. Change requires change. Understanding who and what to blame is an improvement. Becoming vegan is an improvement. Voting for better politicians is an improvement.
- jopsen 8y ago
  So true, yet we largely agree that the broadest shoulders should beat the largest load... ie. progressive taxes. We should do more of that to fight poverty, as that will hopefully mitigate things like this.
  - gepi79 8y ago
    Thanks. I agree that we should have the morality to defend Human Rights and to not tolerate poverty. Unfortunately no state in the world respects the Human Rights for its citizens. http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/ http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/ IMO not progressive taxes but progressive economics and progressive politics should be implemented. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2X_Ywepzm46_uGJDfRjYeQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2X_Ywepzm46_uGJDfRjYeQ/vid... IMO in a perfect world, there would be no tax and no debt but a moral government that distributes money as needed to private persons and not to banks by the central bank and by bailout programs. E.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/#648e0e8626b0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the...
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      Perfect worlds are, probably, the worst of all possible outcomes. It is unfortunate that how the world is conducted at any point in time is largely a result of the choices of those with the most power to bring about their desires. So it has always been and so shall it always be.
acchow 8y ago
What? This has nothing to do with the rich. This is the tragedy of the commons - other fishers are allowed to use dynamite to fish extremely effectively, so the only way for you to make a living wage is to do the same.
- ponzored 8y ago
  I think its a general cultural disdain for the environment within some cultures. Most of the world's plastic pollution coming out of 10 Asian and African rivers for example. This is why arguments from educated, intelligent and responsible Westerners that they themselves shouldn't have children in order to reduce the impact on the planet are flawed. If not for their children with the same skills and views, who else will reign in the Asians and Africans who are busy destroying their environments? The first thing that the world needs is for all countries to reach a stable population level. This means hugely reducing fertility in some developing countries, mostly by making sure contraception is widely available and that women are educated enough to know how to use it.
  - Peaker 8y ago
    An average US citizen contributes far more to pollution than the average African or Asian.
  - shams93 8y ago
    The Philippines are catholic so birth control might actually be illegal, if the Catholic Church is concerned about the environment they need to promote birth control not present it as a cardinal sin. Countries like this the pope holds a heck of a lot of sway. He talks a good game about global warming but here is where the rubber meets the road. For the sake of the common good they need to shift the focus of sin from sex to wrecking the environment and causing overpopulation.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      And what is the solution given that these people exist ? Because undoing that seems immoral now, even by non-catholic standards. I mean the best interpretation of your comment is wishing for an alternate world (in which millions of people would never have been alive in the first place). In the middle the comment is assigning blame for that. At worst ... I get that dozens of millions of people not being alive would solve your problem ... but I do hope you understand that nobody, especially not those few dozen millions, agree. And that does mean that you'll have to come with a different solution.
snarfy 8y ago
Generally, you exchange wealth for goods made from natural resources. If half the wealth is tied up in 8 people who could not possibly spend it, what do you think would happen to the earth's natural resources if it were suddenly dumped on the bottom 3 billion? It would be a huge boon to the economy at first, until we burnt through every resource.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  What does that even mean? Are you saying that once money is spent it's gone forever?
Arnt 8y ago
Are you trying to say that if you buy a fishing boat with money you borrowedfrom Warren Buffett, then dynamiting the fish is understandable, but if you borrow from the ABC Pension Fund it's not?
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  I'm trying to say that with less inequality and more resources available to them, these people could go to the grocery store to feed their family, or go to school to get a profession... Its not a complex idea at all.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    Not a complex idea. But it sounds as if you're trying to blame eight rich people, when you yourself have your henchmen, oops, your fund managers do the same thing. (I assume you're trying to get a maximum interest for your own pension savings?)
superflyguy 8y ago
Those 8 people must work really hard to have earned all that money.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  They worked hard to get born to rich parents.
  - daliusd 8y ago
    You have very low margin for being called "rich" in that case. Some of the top richest people were born in quite average Westerners family. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_educ...
    - icsllaf 8y ago
      Not to compare what average lives are but >He accepted an estimated 300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon This is the exact difference between someone who works and someone who is handed money to do work. I don't know if Amazon would be alive without this transaction, but it sure helped that Bezos was given 300k by his parents.
jhanschoo 8y ago
Everytime I see this argument I shake my head at the naivety. People with high net worth are so because they have capital tied up in assets. Nobody is rich because they hoard liquid money. Say you distribute a rich man's investments in risky instruments to a community living in a remote, impoverished land. Now each investment becomes infinitely less useful because they are not part of a portfolio, it may be difficult to find a buyer for them. Next, how does the community in the remote land trade them, seeing as they live so far from a market? This is a structural issue of capitalism and not something that anyone can boil down to some greed of the rich. For as long as populations do not see the need to pass laws regulating wealth, capitalist countries will always develop high inequality.

In a world where 8 people have more money than the bottom 3 BILLION people combined. You can blame the poor for surviving...or blame the rich for the greed that forces people to do this to survive.

lopmotr 8y ago

Can you explain the causal link between those rich people's greed and this fishing technique? Is it because rich people enabled dynamite to be produced cheaply enough for them?

andkon 8y ago
Exactly. Rich people literally put the dynamite in these people’s hands. That is the only plausible and widely accepted explanation for inequality, and kudos to you for advancing it.
bshepard 8y ago
It's because "richness" creates a pathologically competitive social system that encourages this sort of destruction activity in order to get the token that conveys value.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  I’m going to argue pathologically competitive people are the causative factor rather than richness itself.
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    I'm going to argue that lack of resources(caused by inequality) makes people pathologically competitive.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  You mean rich people are to blame for poor people destroying their environment because the rich people set an example for poor people to aspire to? Have you got a suggestion for a way to solve that problem other than what the Khmer Rouge did? I have. Forbid poor people from becoming rich. By keeping them in fixed economic classes, they won't have the motivation to compete so hard and then the fish will be saved. There are obvious bad side effects of this. Can you improve on it?
dotancohen 8y ago
I'll explain it. Maybe not _those_ 8 rich people, but generally Western nations were made rich by exploiting the tragedy of the commons. Oil and other mining are the classic examples. Why should we expect these poor, poor fishermen to prioritize our poor, poor planet over their poor, poor families when our own rich got that way through exploitation of natural resources and pollution?
- lopmotr 8y ago
  Wasn't every nation? Europe and China have lost almost all their forests. Pre-European New Zealand natives exterminated the giant flightless moa. There was a powerful ancient African civilization that died out because they used up all the artesian water. I'd say nobody cared about conservation until rich people we comfortable enough to stop worrying about their next meal and look at broader issues.
  - dotancohen 8y ago
    I don't understand why you are being downvoted. You're 100% right. I specifically mention the West because it is the West (the EU) who are pressuring the Philippines to better regulate their fishing industry, as per the fine article, and also because it is the West who are now comfortable enough to worry about the tragedy of the commons since they are done exploiting it.
  - ptaipale 8y ago
    BTW, elsewhere I just read that the amount of forests in England has now recovered above the levels recorded in Domesday Book (William Conqueror's land survey in 1086). Same's happening in many countries in Europe. I have a picture of my birth home, taken in 1903 from a nearby hill. The landscape is mostly bare, almost everything except the actual fields is used for cattle. Now you can't take a picture like that. Almost everything is covered by a forest, but you can't see it from the trees growing on the hill.
    - orwin 8y ago
      England might have been lucky enough (blessed with rain and all). Southern France and Greece, not so much, and will probably never recover pre-roman empire forests.
nickthemagicman 8y ago
How efficient have rich people made the economies of 3rd world countries?

gepi79 8y ago

Many rich people are rich because they employ people and profit from it. Many rich people are rich because they own real wealth and not (just) money. Rich people are not the problem. Rich people are no excuse for doing bad things. Poverty is no excuse for doing bad things. Deficient morality leads to bad actions and bad constraints. Change requires change. Understanding who and what to blame is an improvement. Becoming vegan is an improvement. Voting for better politicians is an improvement.

jopsen 8y ago
So true, yet we largely agree that the broadest shoulders should beat the largest load... ie. progressive taxes. We should do more of that to fight poverty, as that will hopefully mitigate things like this.
- gepi79 8y ago
  Thanks. I agree that we should have the morality to defend Human Rights and to not tolerate poverty. Unfortunately no state in the world respects the Human Rights for its citizens. http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/ http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/ IMO not progressive taxes but progressive economics and progressive politics should be implemented. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2X_Ywepzm46_uGJDfRjYeQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2X_Ywepzm46_uGJDfRjYeQ/vid... IMO in a perfect world, there would be no tax and no debt but a moral government that distributes money as needed to private persons and not to banks by the central bank and by bailout programs. E.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/#648e0e8626b0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the...
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Perfect worlds are, probably, the worst of all possible outcomes. It is unfortunate that how the world is conducted at any point in time is largely a result of the choices of those with the most power to bring about their desires. So it has always been and so shall it always be.

acchow 8y ago

What? This has nothing to do with the rich. This is the tragedy of the commons - other fishers are allowed to use dynamite to fish extremely effectively, so the only way for you to make a living wage is to do the same.

ponzored 8y ago
I think its a general cultural disdain for the environment within some cultures. Most of the world's plastic pollution coming out of 10 Asian and African rivers for example. This is why arguments from educated, intelligent and responsible Westerners that they themselves shouldn't have children in order to reduce the impact on the planet are flawed. If not for their children with the same skills and views, who else will reign in the Asians and Africans who are busy destroying their environments? The first thing that the world needs is for all countries to reach a stable population level. This means hugely reducing fertility in some developing countries, mostly by making sure contraception is widely available and that women are educated enough to know how to use it.
- Peaker 8y ago
  An average US citizen contributes far more to pollution than the average African or Asian.
- shams93 8y ago
  The Philippines are catholic so birth control might actually be illegal, if the Catholic Church is concerned about the environment they need to promote birth control not present it as a cardinal sin. Countries like this the pope holds a heck of a lot of sway. He talks a good game about global warming but here is where the rubber meets the road. For the sake of the common good they need to shift the focus of sin from sex to wrecking the environment and causing overpopulation.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    And what is the solution given that these people exist ? Because undoing that seems immoral now, even by non-catholic standards. I mean the best interpretation of your comment is wishing for an alternate world (in which millions of people would never have been alive in the first place). In the middle the comment is assigning blame for that. At worst ... I get that dozens of millions of people not being alive would solve your problem ... but I do hope you understand that nobody, especially not those few dozen millions, agree. And that does mean that you'll have to come with a different solution.

snarfy 8y ago

Generally, you exchange wealth for goods made from natural resources. If half the wealth is tied up in 8 people who could not possibly spend it, what do you think would happen to the earth's natural resources if it were suddenly dumped on the bottom 3 billion? It would be a huge boon to the economy at first, until we burnt through every resource.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nickthemagicman 8y ago
What does that even mean? Are you saying that once money is spent it's gone forever?

Arnt 8y ago

Are you trying to say that if you buy a fishing boat with money you borrowedfrom Warren Buffett, then dynamiting the fish is understandable, but if you borrow from the ABC Pension Fund it's not?

nickthemagicman 8y ago
I'm trying to say that with less inequality and more resources available to them, these people could go to the grocery store to feed their family, or go to school to get a profession... Its not a complex idea at all.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Not a complex idea. But it sounds as if you're trying to blame eight rich people, when you yourself have your henchmen, oops, your fund managers do the same thing. (I assume you're trying to get a maximum interest for your own pension savings?)

superflyguy 8y ago

Those 8 people must work really hard to have earned all that money.

nickthemagicman 8y ago
They worked hard to get born to rich parents.
- daliusd 8y ago
  You have very low margin for being called "rich" in that case. Some of the top richest people were born in quite average Westerners family. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_educ...
  - icsllaf 8y ago
    Not to compare what average lives are but >He accepted an estimated 300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon This is the exact difference between someone who works and someone who is handed money to do work. I don't know if Amazon would be alive without this transaction, but it sure helped that Bezos was given 300k by his parents.

jhanschoo 8y ago

Everytime I see this argument I shake my head at the naivety. People with high net worth are so because they have capital tied up in assets. Nobody is rich because they hoard liquid money. Say you distribute a rich man's investments in risky instruments to a community living in a remote, impoverished land. Now each investment becomes infinitely less useful because they are not part of a portfolio, it may be difficult to find a buyer for them. Next, how does the community in the remote land trade them, seeing as they live so far from a market? This is a structural issue of capitalism and not something that anyone can boil down to some greed of the rich. For as long as populations do not see the need to pass laws regulating wealth, capitalist countries will always develop high inequality.