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Okay, so stepping even further back, why is social mobility considered an important metric? Why can’t I just walk away from social strata to begin with, and liv

Okay, so stepping even further back, why is social mobility considered an important metric? Why can’t I just walk away from social strata to begin with, and live my life happily as a “lower class” citizen living in the woods if I want? What if the goal of changing social strata is actually just a larger scale version of the Peter Principle? Last year I saw a chart posted on imgur with habits and traits of lower, middle, and upper class people. I’m sure many saw that and thought “oh I need to act like X so I can stop being Y.” What I saw was contentment that I am in the social tier that feels right to me. I don’t need “more,” I would struggle with “less.”

yrimaxi 6y ago
We see research all the time about how poor people are more likely to have bad life outcomes. Not in the circular sense of “continually becoming lower class”, but in terms of things like health. You could go live in the woods in which case you might not suffer from the same fates. Until civilization starts to encroach on your cabin (I think that’s what happened to the Unabomber).
roenxi 6y ago
And the sister observation - we can't all be in charge. High mobility is good because at least the people in charge aren't chosen by heritage, but regardless there are going to be people who don't have a lot and are perfectly respectable. And entitled to feel satisfied. May as well work hard and feel proud about it, what is the alternative? Work lazy and feel good about it? Hard work isn't path to riches, but it is a path to respectability.
orange_tee 6y ago
Because if you are weak (and being poor is a form of weakness), then you are at the mercy of those who are strong. Now there are to ways for the weak/poor to combat this. The first is to join forces and act as one. The problem with this is that to do so one must give away some of their freedom (because they need to act as one). The other option is to climb the ladder and become richer and therefore stronger. And that is why social mobility matters. Wealth and power are intrinsically linked. You could try to just mind your own business and live your simple life, but it is not up to you. It is up to those stronger than you to let you live your simple life. Maybe you get lucky and maybe not.
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  > Because if you are weak (and being poor is a form of weakness), then you are at the mercy of those who are strong. That's the point. And the only way out is anarchy. Not the anarchy which lets ring your alarm bells of democratic turmoil, riots and revolution. But in the sense of a system where no one reigns over another.
  - WJW 6y ago
    I've always wondered about this in the context of dynamic equilibria; a system where nobody reigns over one another seems like it would be unstable. As soon as one person breaks the "truce" and does start to reign over somebody else, they then have a little more power and they might use that extra power to accumulate even more power. The usual answer seems to be that all the other people in society would somehow band together to oppose the initial perpetrator and then voluntarily split up their band/mob/militia again at the end, instead of keeping the power they formed by banding together. If one of the groups does not disband, you'd need an even greater group to forcedly disband the first and then an even greater group to disband the next and so on until you are right back where we are now: with nation sized groups in detente against each other. It seems the current situation naturally forms from a system where no one reigns over one another as a result of people having personal ambitions. I don't think ambition is something humanity has the means for to abolish, even if we wanted to (which is in itself an interesting debate).
    - kqr 6y ago
      > other people in society would somehow band together to oppose the initial perpetrator This band would probably also need some form of leadership, where a consensus-defined alpha role comes naturally to us, much like for chimpanzees. In fact, I'd argue that it doesn't even take a human to be the initial perpetrator. Humans (again, like chimpanzees) have an ever-present initial perpetrator: the environment. We're not built to stand strong against the forces of nature as individuals.
  - chii 6y ago
    > But in the sense of a system where no one reigns over another. even in anarchy, there will be those who reign over others.
TrackerFF 6y ago
I think the Indian caste system is a good example on why it's very important to promote social mobility. Even if you (or some other person) enjoy living a simple life, there are probably others out there that want to enjoy a different life. Would suck if that's next to impossible, because those in the superior classes are bent on keeping status quo, and suppressing those below.
- bradlys 6y ago
  I was reading it more like it’s a flawed argument/system. It should be regardless of what “class” you’re in, you should be able to live a happy and fulfilling life without a lot of worry. Instead, we paint it like, you have to get out of X class in order to even have the most “simple” of worries covered. (Food, housing, healthcare, etc) And I hate to think of any “class” being superior. “Wish I was of the superior race/gender/orientation/class/etc”. To me, people see class as something you can change (true to some extent) but why even make one class seem worse than the other? It’s only because it’s sometimes possible for people to change socioeconomic classes that we critique them for being in one and accept that being in a poorer class can have hardships that we don’t like but find acceptable because “you can change it”. But... not everyone can be rich. And a lot of our system is setup to profit off of the hard work of the working poor... so without fundamental change to the entire system, there will always have to be poor people and there is no way for everyone to be lifted out and live a less worrisome life where we aren’t concerned with class. We live in some weird ass feudalistic society now and think the peasants deserve what they get. I don’t agree.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
Social mobility in and of itself isn't desireable. But the possibility for it, is. Otherwise you'd (1) live in a static society where those in power, stay in power, and those who're not, never will, even if they wanted to. And (2) you'd also live in a society which is not conducive to exploiting the talents and resources within it, as swathes of people are never able to move up the socioeconomic ladder. When looking at an individual, you of course can't conclude that because someone didn't move up the socioeconomic ladder, that there's some kind of problem to be remedied. This could have many reasons, many of which entirely reasonable. But looking at it from a societal perspective, on aggregate, it is a useful proxy. You'd expect that among different population groups in different countries, humans would be roughly similar in their tendency to be ambitious, safe for some cultural differences. If one in country you see that there's very little social mobility compared to another (taking into account cultural differences), that's a good proxy to determine that the earlier mentioned problems exist, (1) the power imbalance and (2) not using human resources effectively. So if you find that in the US, social mobility is lower than in Nordic countries, despite a stronger culture of 'you can be anything you want' and the 'american dream', that can be a useful indicator that there's a power imbalance and a system not conducive to letting people be the best version of themselves. How any one individual chooses to live their life is a completely separate manner. We would have to assume that roughly, there will be about as many people with a disposition to life as you, in countries around the world. That's why ceteris paribus it's interesting to look at social mobility on a national level. It's a bit like BMI not being useful for individuals, but being useful for larger studies.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  > Why can’t I just walk away from social strata to begin with, and live my life happily as a “lower class” citizen living in the woods if I want? That's certainly an idealistic or romantic idea but it's not in any way realistic. Being poor, depending on where you live, also means having no social safety net. It means you can't educate your children, it means you and your family are vulnerable to all the social ills that afflict those who are in poverty. Being poor gives you the short end of the stick in almost every way that matters. It's not like everyone (or anyone, really) can live like the family in the film "Captain Fantastic", isolated in the woods, yet somehow thriving, more fit, and better educated. There's a documentary about people that lived for generations in the woods in Siberia for religious reasons. It was fanatic Christian sect called "True Believers" (can't find the documentary, but here's the Vice News story, https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68 https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68). Definitely not an attractive lifestyle!

yrimaxi 6y ago

We see research all the time about how poor people are more likely to have bad life outcomes. Not in the circular sense of “continually becoming lower class”, but in terms of things like health. You could go live in the woods in which case you might not suffer from the same fates. Until civilization starts to encroach on your cabin (I think that’s what happened to the Unabomber).

roenxi 6y ago

And the sister observation - we can't all be in charge. High mobility is good because at least the people in charge aren't chosen by heritage, but regardless there are going to be people who don't have a lot and are perfectly respectable. And entitled to feel satisfied. May as well work hard and feel proud about it, what is the alternative? Work lazy and feel good about it? Hard work isn't path to riches, but it is a path to respectability.

orange_tee 6y ago

Because if you are weak (and being poor is a form of weakness), then you are at the mercy of those who are strong. Now there are to ways for the weak/poor to combat this. The first is to join forces and act as one. The problem with this is that to do so one must give away some of their freedom (because they need to act as one). The other option is to climb the ladder and become richer and therefore stronger. And that is why social mobility matters. Wealth and power are intrinsically linked. You could try to just mind your own business and live your simple life, but it is not up to you. It is up to those stronger than you to let you live your simple life. Maybe you get lucky and maybe not.

jhoechtl 6y ago
> Because if you are weak (and being poor is a form of weakness), then you are at the mercy of those who are strong. That's the point. And the only way out is anarchy. Not the anarchy which lets ring your alarm bells of democratic turmoil, riots and revolution. But in the sense of a system where no one reigns over another.
- WJW 6y ago
  I've always wondered about this in the context of dynamic equilibria; a system where nobody reigns over one another seems like it would be unstable. As soon as one person breaks the "truce" and does start to reign over somebody else, they then have a little more power and they might use that extra power to accumulate even more power. The usual answer seems to be that all the other people in society would somehow band together to oppose the initial perpetrator and then voluntarily split up their band/mob/militia again at the end, instead of keeping the power they formed by banding together. If one of the groups does not disband, you'd need an even greater group to forcedly disband the first and then an even greater group to disband the next and so on until you are right back where we are now: with nation sized groups in detente against each other. It seems the current situation naturally forms from a system where no one reigns over one another as a result of people having personal ambitions. I don't think ambition is something humanity has the means for to abolish, even if we wanted to (which is in itself an interesting debate).
  - kqr 6y ago
    > other people in society would somehow band together to oppose the initial perpetrator This band would probably also need some form of leadership, where a consensus-defined alpha role comes naturally to us, much like for chimpanzees. In fact, I'd argue that it doesn't even take a human to be the initial perpetrator. Humans (again, like chimpanzees) have an ever-present initial perpetrator: the environment. We're not built to stand strong against the forces of nature as individuals.
- chii 6y ago
  > But in the sense of a system where no one reigns over another. even in anarchy, there will be those who reign over others.

TrackerFF 6y ago

I think the Indian caste system is a good example on why it's very important to promote social mobility. Even if you (or some other person) enjoy living a simple life, there are probably others out there that want to enjoy a different life. Would suck if that's next to impossible, because those in the superior classes are bent on keeping status quo, and suppressing those below.

bradlys 6y ago
I was reading it more like it’s a flawed argument/system. It should be regardless of what “class” you’re in, you should be able to live a happy and fulfilling life without a lot of worry. Instead, we paint it like, you have to get out of X class in order to even have the most “simple” of worries covered. (Food, housing, healthcare, etc) And I hate to think of any “class” being superior. “Wish I was of the superior race/gender/orientation/class/etc”. To me, people see class as something you can change (true to some extent) but why even make one class seem worse than the other? It’s only because it’s sometimes possible for people to change socioeconomic classes that we critique them for being in one and accept that being in a poorer class can have hardships that we don’t like but find acceptable because “you can change it”. But... not everyone can be rich. And a lot of our system is setup to profit off of the hard work of the working poor... so without fundamental change to the entire system, there will always have to be poor people and there is no way for everyone to be lifted out and live a less worrisome life where we aren’t concerned with class. We live in some weird ass feudalistic society now and think the peasants deserve what they get. I don’t agree.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago

Social mobility in and of itself isn't desireable. But the possibility for it, is. Otherwise you'd (1) live in a static society where those in power, stay in power, and those who're not, never will, even if they wanted to. And (2) you'd also live in a society which is not conducive to exploiting the talents and resources within it, as swathes of people are never able to move up the socioeconomic ladder. When looking at an individual, you of course can't conclude that because someone didn't move up the socioeconomic ladder, that there's some kind of problem to be remedied. This could have many reasons, many of which entirely reasonable. But looking at it from a societal perspective, on aggregate, it is a useful proxy. You'd expect that among different population groups in different countries, humans would be roughly similar in their tendency to be ambitious, safe for some cultural differences. If one in country you see that there's very little social mobility compared to another (taking into account cultural differences), that's a good proxy to determine that the earlier mentioned problems exist, (1) the power imbalance and (2) not using human resources effectively. So if you find that in the US, social mobility is lower than in Nordic countries, despite a stronger culture of 'you can be anything you want' and the 'american dream', that can be a useful indicator that there's a power imbalance and a system not conducive to letting people be the best version of themselves. How any one individual chooses to live their life is a completely separate manner. We would have to assume that roughly, there will be about as many people with a disposition to life as you, in countries around the world. That's why ceteris paribus it's interesting to look at social mobility on a national level. It's a bit like BMI not being useful for individuals, but being useful for larger studies.

crispyambulance 6y ago
> Why can’t I just walk away from social strata to begin with, and live my life happily as a “lower class” citizen living in the woods if I want? That's certainly an idealistic or romantic idea but it's not in any way realistic. Being poor, depending on where you live, also means having no social safety net. It means you can't educate your children, it means you and your family are vulnerable to all the social ills that afflict those who are in poverty. Being poor gives you the short end of the stick in almost every way that matters. It's not like everyone (or anyone, really) can live like the family in the film "Captain Fantastic", isolated in the woods, yet somehow thriving, more fit, and better educated. There's a documentary about people that lived for generations in the woods in Siberia for religious reasons. It was fanatic Christian sect called "True Believers" (can't find the documentary, but here's the Vice News story, https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68 https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68). Definitely not an attractive lifestyle!