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Similarly, rich-person's opioids are distributed legally (often) and are a drug treatment and addiction problem. Poor-person's opioids are criminal distribution

Similarly, rich-person's opioids are distributed legally (often) and are a drug treatment and addiction problem. Poor-person's opioids are criminal distribution and a law enforcement problem, treated in prison. Until sentencing reform, rich-person's coke (powdered cocaine) received much shorter sentencing than poor-person's cocaine (crack). The difference, IMHO, is between the familiar and the 'other', between us and them, between feeling safe and feeling alarm. If someone of my milieu does it, it's one deviation from a norm I understand; they aren't threatening to me; they have my empathy or even my secret envy for doing something exciting. If someone of an unfamiliar milieu does it, it could mean anything; will they rob me? Kill my family in a drug-fueled rage? Undermine the foundations of society? It creates fear and alarm.

detcader 8y ago
At an individual level this may be true, but it is becoming necessary to ask if this is a standalone phenomena or symptomatic of a system with one class extracting resources from another. Is the problem just a pattern of fallacy in the perception of privileged people, or is this pattern borne of the group interest to extract and control the underprivileged en masse, not explicitly or consciously thought about by almost anyone but economically incentivized? To give another ex. it used to be common for people to be really uncomfortable with the idea of women having full-time jobs. Did this interpersonal discomfort create the system of gender roles where men extract domestic labor from women in marriage, or was the discomfort a function of this system?
- forapurpose 8y ago
  That's one of the most interesting questions I've read on HN; thanks; I've really had to think about it. To refine the question, I think it is, 'to what degree' does each factor - perception or system - cause the other? First, I'd love to read someone who has studied the issue and has expertise in the domain, if anyone has any suggestions. Obviously, I don't know the answer. I'd wildly guess that the economic system creates inequality which creates social division which creates the perceptual fallacy which reinforces it all. I'd also guess that for some the economic system creates a conscious desire to control the underprivileged; Thiel might be a leading example: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."[0] Also, any system gains the self-reinforcing phenomena of normalizing itself (perhaps defined by the perceptual fallacy that the system is inevitable or the best of all possible worlds) and of vested interests who act, consciously and unconsciously, to protect the system that benefits them. [0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

detcader 8y ago

At an individual level this may be true, but it is becoming necessary to ask if this is a standalone phenomena or symptomatic of a system with one class extracting resources from another. Is the problem just a pattern of fallacy in the perception of privileged people, or is this pattern borne of the group interest to extract and control the underprivileged en masse, not explicitly or consciously thought about by almost anyone but economically incentivized? To give another ex. it used to be common for people to be really uncomfortable with the idea of women having full-time jobs. Did this interpersonal discomfort create the system of gender roles where men extract domestic labor from women in marriage, or was the discomfort a function of this system?

forapurpose 8y ago
That's one of the most interesting questions I've read on HN; thanks; I've really had to think about it. To refine the question, I think it is, 'to what degree' does each factor - perception or system - cause the other? First, I'd love to read someone who has studied the issue and has expertise in the domain, if anyone has any suggestions. Obviously, I don't know the answer. I'd wildly guess that the economic system creates inequality which creates social division which creates the perceptual fallacy which reinforces it all. I'd also guess that for some the economic system creates a conscious desire to control the underprivileged; Thiel might be a leading example: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."[0] Also, any system gains the self-reinforcing phenomena of normalizing itself (perhaps defined by the perceptual fallacy that the system is inevitable or the best of all possible worlds) and of vested interests who act, consciously and unconsciously, to protect the system that benefits them. [0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...