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> "When did the future turn into a game of Survivor?" When we allowed 20% of the population to assume ownership of 80% of the wealth, forcing everyone else to

> "When did the future turn into a game of Survivor?" When we allowed 20% of the population to assume ownership of 80% of the wealth, forcing everyone else to scramble for scraps. When we've dismantled and made useless our social safety nets by a combination of poor policies and equally poor policing for abuse. When we've collectively moved to the right in economic and social policies, thereby not only disenfranchising the poor, but also make them hate themselves - the loudest complaints about "socialists" and "redistribution" seem to come from people who need it the most, but don't recognize it. It happened when we started penalizing people for having anything less than perfect health. Have a chronic condition? Well, forget about entrepreneurialism and adding to the economy, pray for a worker-cog job for the rest of your days to keep the insurance flowing! This may be a gross simplification of a complex issue - but it seems to me like the futured turned into a game of Survivor when we started treating everyone else like animals out to get us. The poor are lazy and out to game the system. The immigrants are out to steal our jobs. The unemployed are lazy and slovenly and want a free ride... etc etc. The American public, IMO, needn't look much further than a mirror to see the cause of their woes.

hugh3 15y ago
The real question, I think, is when did news.ycombinator turn into reddit/r/politics?
- forensic 15y ago
  When software entrepreneurs put 10% of the population out of work and then used social darwinism to justify the lack of a social safety net.
scrod 15y ago
What is possibly the only coherent comment in this entire discussion is already being down-voted. Sorry Hacker News, but your "cultivated community" demonstrably fails to perpetuate very little more than a disinterested, self-serving, center-right frame of reference with a strong undercurrent of elitism.
- temphn 15y ago
  Not to pick on this too much, but elitism is a good thing. Do you want 1000 random links from the internet or 10 ordered blue links on Google? Do you want to send your child to a "mediocre" school or have them operated on by a "mediocre" surgeon, or do you want them to go to the best schools and have the best medical care? If you are an investor, do you want to invest in mediocre companies? If you are searching for work, do you want to work at a middle of the road place? And if you are an employer/entrepreneur, do you want anything other than the best employees? Everyone is an elitist when they are doing the selecting. Some people don't like it when they are on the other side of the selective filter. But let's not kid ourselves, elitism is not an "undercurrent" and it's not objectionable by any means. It's the whole ball of wax in any functioning society.
  - scrod 15y ago
    Every example you give is in terms of an individualist view point, and yet understanding what makes a "functioning society" requires some conception of a common good. It is impossible for any significant portion of society to be treated by the very best doctors, or to send their children to the very best schools. To do what's best for society, the majority merely need access to good and decent services. From the dictionary: Elitism is "the advocacy or existence of an elite as a dominating element in a system or society." A society that favors the elite individual above all else is by nature hierarchical, exclusionary, and anti-democratic. Elitist societies by definition disempower the majority for the enrichment of a few. And as per the definition of "society" — "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" — elitism is an absolute failure. Your attitude epitomizes this online community, and that's not a good thing. Frankly, it's pretty repugnant.
    - temphn 15y ago
      > It is impossible for any significant portion of society to be treated by the very best doctors Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, which was used to inoculate millions. Just about every medical procedure used in practice and documented in textbooks was developed by the best doctors, systematized, and then scaled out. > or to send their children to the very best schools. Take a look at ai-class.org, ml-class.org, db-class.org. Textbooks were version 1.0 of this concept, and also tend to be written by the best educators. The point: different people in different areas have different talents. The key is to come up with models that allow the efforts of the talented in each area to scale out so that more can access them, and so that the less talented can benefit from the solutions even if they couldn't think them up in the first place[1]. This is a process of iteration. But the iteration won't even get started if one rejects quality/elitism from the beginning. [1] How many of the tens of millions of people operating browsers, iPhones, refrigerators, or automobiles can understand them, let alone improve them, let alone invent them? Civilization is based on finding the best, allowing them to amass resources, and rewarding them for distributing their discoveries to as many as possible. Denying that a technical elite exists is counterproductive.
defen 15y ago
> It happened when we started penalizing people for having anything less than perfect health. It's my understanding of history that it wasn't until very recently that some societies started to mitigate some of the effects of being in "less than perfect health".
- arethuza 15y ago
  I thought the modern idea of welfare programs (old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance) originated in the 19th century in Prussia with Otto von Bismarck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Paternalistic_welfare_state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Paternalistic... That doesn't strike me as "very recently" - even the UK "cradle to the grave" NHS is over 60 years old: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/your_nhs/86100.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/your_...
  - defen 15y ago
    That's very recent in civilizational terms.
    - potatolicious 15y ago
      You're right - progressive societies are a relatively new invention, but is that really an excuse? The history of the world is dominated by oligarchies because these ideas and systems didn't exist. We now have working examples of a better way - and in fact the USA's closest peers (in terms of economic output, political stability, etc) are practically all progressive socialist nations. And yet all I can see in this country is the poor cheering madly while the oligarchs trample all over their faces.
rick888 15y ago
"When we allowed 20% of the population to assume ownership of 80% of the wealth, forcing everyone else to scramble for scraps" Allowed? I suppose you mean we didn't tax them at 90% to "redistribute" it. "the loudest complaints about "socialists" and "redistribution" seem to come from people who need it the most, but don't recognize it." Or the people that have nothing and would rather have the government give it to them than try and earn it themselves. We do need some social nets, but if those social nets are too large, we create a system of people that feel entitled propped up by the people that are actually working. When that system starts to collapse, there are riots in the streets because there are too many people relying on it. "The American public, IMO, needn't look much further than a mirror to see the cause of their woes." There are many countries in Europe that are struggling just as hard (if not harder) than the US. They had all of these social nets that you speak of. What happened?

hugh3 15y ago

The real question, I think, is when did news.ycombinator turn into reddit/r/politics?

forensic 15y ago
When software entrepreneurs put 10% of the population out of work and then used social darwinism to justify the lack of a social safety net.

scrod 15y ago

What is possibly the only coherent comment in this entire discussion is already being down-voted. Sorry Hacker News, but your "cultivated community" demonstrably fails to perpetuate very little more than a disinterested, self-serving, center-right frame of reference with a strong undercurrent of elitism.

temphn 15y ago
Not to pick on this too much, but elitism is a good thing. Do you want 1000 random links from the internet or 10 ordered blue links on Google? Do you want to send your child to a "mediocre" school or have them operated on by a "mediocre" surgeon, or do you want them to go to the best schools and have the best medical care? If you are an investor, do you want to invest in mediocre companies? If you are searching for work, do you want to work at a middle of the road place? And if you are an employer/entrepreneur, do you want anything other than the best employees? Everyone is an elitist when they are doing the selecting. Some people don't like it when they are on the other side of the selective filter. But let's not kid ourselves, elitism is not an "undercurrent" and it's not objectionable by any means. It's the whole ball of wax in any functioning society.
- scrod 15y ago
  Every example you give is in terms of an individualist view point, and yet understanding what makes a "functioning society" requires some conception of a common good. It is impossible for any significant portion of society to be treated by the very best doctors, or to send their children to the very best schools. To do what's best for society, the majority merely need access to good and decent services. From the dictionary: Elitism is "the advocacy or existence of an elite as a dominating element in a system or society." A society that favors the elite individual above all else is by nature hierarchical, exclusionary, and anti-democratic. Elitist societies by definition disempower the majority for the enrichment of a few. And as per the definition of "society" — "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" — elitism is an absolute failure. Your attitude epitomizes this online community, and that's not a good thing. Frankly, it's pretty repugnant.
  - temphn 15y ago
    > It is impossible for any significant portion of society to be treated by the very best doctors Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, which was used to inoculate millions. Just about every medical procedure used in practice and documented in textbooks was developed by the best doctors, systematized, and then scaled out. > or to send their children to the very best schools. Take a look at ai-class.org, ml-class.org, db-class.org. Textbooks were version 1.0 of this concept, and also tend to be written by the best educators. The point: different people in different areas have different talents. The key is to come up with models that allow the efforts of the talented in each area to scale out so that more can access them, and so that the less talented can benefit from the solutions even if they couldn't think them up in the first place[1]. This is a process of iteration. But the iteration won't even get started if one rejects quality/elitism from the beginning. [1] How many of the tens of millions of people operating browsers, iPhones, refrigerators, or automobiles can understand them, let alone improve them, let alone invent them? Civilization is based on finding the best, allowing them to amass resources, and rewarding them for distributing their discoveries to as many as possible. Denying that a technical elite exists is counterproductive.

defen 15y ago

> It happened when we started penalizing people for having anything less than perfect health. It's my understanding of history that it wasn't until very recently that some societies started to mitigate some of the effects of being in "less than perfect health".

arethuza 15y ago
I thought the modern idea of welfare programs (old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance) originated in the 19th century in Prussia with Otto von Bismarck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Paternalistic_welfare_state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Paternalistic... That doesn't strike me as "very recently" - even the UK "cradle to the grave" NHS is over 60 years old: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/your_nhs/86100.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/your_...
- defen 15y ago
  That's very recent in civilizational terms.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    You're right - progressive societies are a relatively new invention, but is that really an excuse? The history of the world is dominated by oligarchies because these ideas and systems didn't exist. We now have working examples of a better way - and in fact the USA's closest peers (in terms of economic output, political stability, etc) are practically all progressive socialist nations. And yet all I can see in this country is the poor cheering madly while the oligarchs trample all over their faces.

rick888 15y ago

"When we allowed 20% of the population to assume ownership of 80% of the wealth, forcing everyone else to scramble for scraps" Allowed? I suppose you mean we didn't tax them at 90% to "redistribute" it. "the loudest complaints about "socialists" and "redistribution" seem to come from people who need it the most, but don't recognize it." Or the people that have nothing and would rather have the government give it to them than try and earn it themselves. We do need some social nets, but if those social nets are too large, we create a system of people that feel entitled propped up by the people that are actually working. When that system starts to collapse, there are riots in the streets because there are too many people relying on it. "The American public, IMO, needn't look much further than a mirror to see the cause of their woes." There are many countries in Europe that are struggling just as hard (if not harder) than the US. They had all of these social nets that you speak of. What happened?