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Stress that you won't be able to pay bills or debts is NOT envy. You can have it even in a society where everybody is poor. That's why, in rich societies, envy
by js8 5y ago
Stress that you won't be able to pay bills or debts is NOT envy. You can have it even in a society where everybody is poor. That's why, in rich societies, envy is not the cause of it, but rather how society distributes its wealth is. And so it becomes a collective, not an individual, problem.
- civilized 5y agoThe problem in this discourse is that certain people like to call everything "inequality" whether they're talking about "some people can't pay bills" or "some people make more money than others". We might want to tolerate the latter but reduce the former. But if we call them all the same thing, we can't think clearly or formulate such nuanced policy, as Orwell noted.
- js8 5y agoThat's a false dichotomy, because there is literally no country on Earth where inequality would only mean the latter. Inequal system, if free enough, always devolves into something which drowns at least someone.
- civilized 5y agoBy that standard, no nation is equal "enough", and we should go back to being hunter gatherer tribes where the guy who killed the mammoth gets murdered if he gets too big for his britches. (And FWIW, that isn't what "false dichotomy" means.)