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> it is consistent with the belief that history's long arc does indeed bends toward justice. Then why do inequalities keep rising according to most metrics? Ju

> it is consistent with the belief that history's long arc does indeed bends toward justice. Then why do inequalities keep rising according to most metrics? Just because the poor fare relatively better (which is debatable depending on which metrics you take) doesn't mean justice is rising.

chrisweekly 5y ago
Maybe substitute "improvement" for "justice"? I'd rather be in the bottom 5% than the middle 50, given better health and comfort in absolute terms. That doesn't excuse injustice and inequality(!) but the absolutes matter, esp. given the context of parent's "things are just bad and getting worse" comment.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > That doesn't excuse injustice and inequality(!) but the absolutes matter, esp. given the context of parent's "things are just bad and getting worse" comment. You make a very good point! Yet the metrics you measure also matter. For example, it's fair to say that in terms of "free time" or "environmental pollution" things have absolutely gotten worse over the past centuries. I definitely think it's possible that some communities/States collapsed in the past due to local climatic changes or environmental pollution (for example desertification due to over-exploitation of wood, or water pollution due to rejects from metal workshops falling into the single available source). But in the past this was the exception not the norm. A few weeks back on HN frontpage there was a survey of hundreds of water sources worldwide, only two of which were unpolluted by medicine (the study did not consider other forms of pollution), and some time later was a study about 1/3 of the world population drinking lead-polluted water. In that sense, everything is fucked up because even if your local community respects the environment, you can be sure there's a damn industry upstream polluting everything, or a neighboring chemical agriculture field killing the insects that keep your own food sources available, polluting the water sources... I don't think the "are we faring better?" question can be answered in binary terms, but i think the "negative" side of things is shocking enough that it requires no less than an actual revolution to fix: as long as the people fucking things up for everyone else will profit from it, nothing good can come out of the system.
  - chrisweekly 5y ago
    Revisiting your provocative comments, I agree w/ much of it but not that there is less "free time" now than in centuries past. On the contrary -- for the vast majority of people, most waking hours were actively spent on subsistence and survival until very recently in human history.
    - beckman466 5y ago
      > for the vast majority of people, most waking hours were actively spent on subsistence and survival until very recently in human history. have you been to India or another country with a similar wealth disparity in the global south?
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > for the vast majority of people, most waking hours were actively spent on subsistence and survival Disclaimer: i'm not well-versed in anthropology/history, but this has been studied and debated by scholars [0] If you've ever been to the countryside, you'll notice that everything feels slower. The fast, ever-working "lifestyle" we know today apparently originated in with early capitalism/industrualism and was itself subject to stark opposition (for example from the luddites, who contrary to popular belief were not anti-tech but rather early anti-capitalists). When that new rhythm was expanded to all areas of life with mass-industrialization in the 18th/19th century, thinkers of the time pointed the absurdity to replace legal slavery with what they called "wage slavery". [1] [0] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
  - chrisweekly 5y ago
    Well put. Mostly agreed.
koide 5y ago
This is a great point to which I don't really have an answer, just a question. Why do we define justice as everyone having the same (or roughly the same within certain thresholds)? I mean, I can totally see that everyone having more or less the same is a good thing. But that is not necessarily a just thing. A related point is why are we seeing equality as something desirable? We don't even question it anymore. This is a rather new development in the last 400 years or so and came about after Europeans arrived at America and started interacting with the natives, which had this equality concept much more advanced than what was common in Europe at the time. This also leads to the recognition of differences between people. What does it mean for us to be equal? I run slower than you, should I carry the urgent message over the mountains because we're equal? Sorry to just add questions, but I think they are important questions people don't usually ask.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "A related point is why are we seeing equality as something desirable?" Should everyone be equal before the law? Is it possible if half the population can't afford a lawyer? Should everyone's vote count? How does Democracy survive when a small group of people own half the country?
  - koide 5y ago
    That's but one version of equality. Equality under the law (both your examples may arguably fall here), but we also have equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, equality by mean reduction. I personally agree that equality under the law is indeed desirable but some other types aren't. Which ones are good and which aren't should be made explicit. Then we can talk about how to increase the good equalities and reduce the bad ones.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      They don't exist in isolation, once inequality in capital gets large enough, it is impossible to accomplish equality of opportunity, or of anything at all between: 1- a child of a billionaire that had private tutoring and connections 2 - a child that grew up in poverty and was malnurished, didn't recieve proper education or attention from parents because they were working two jobs or perished in some kind of tragedy

chrisweekly 5y ago

Maybe substitute "improvement" for "justice"? I'd rather be in the bottom 5% than the middle 50, given better health and comfort in absolute terms. That doesn't excuse injustice and inequality(!) but the absolutes matter, esp. given the context of parent's "things are just bad and getting worse" comment.

southerntofu 5y ago
> That doesn't excuse injustice and inequality(!) but the absolutes matter, esp. given the context of parent's "things are just bad and getting worse" comment. You make a very good point! Yet the metrics you measure also matter. For example, it's fair to say that in terms of "free time" or "environmental pollution" things have absolutely gotten worse over the past centuries. I definitely think it's possible that some communities/States collapsed in the past due to local climatic changes or environmental pollution (for example desertification due to over-exploitation of wood, or water pollution due to rejects from metal workshops falling into the single available source). But in the past this was the exception not the norm. A few weeks back on HN frontpage there was a survey of hundreds of water sources worldwide, only two of which were unpolluted by medicine (the study did not consider other forms of pollution), and some time later was a study about 1/3 of the world population drinking lead-polluted water. In that sense, everything is fucked up because even if your local community respects the environment, you can be sure there's a damn industry upstream polluting everything, or a neighboring chemical agriculture field killing the insects that keep your own food sources available, polluting the water sources... I don't think the "are we faring better?" question can be answered in binary terms, but i think the "negative" side of things is shocking enough that it requires no less than an actual revolution to fix: as long as the people fucking things up for everyone else will profit from it, nothing good can come out of the system.
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  Revisiting your provocative comments, I agree w/ much of it but not that there is less "free time" now than in centuries past. On the contrary -- for the vast majority of people, most waking hours were actively spent on subsistence and survival until very recently in human history.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > for the vast majority of people, most waking hours were actively spent on subsistence and survival until very recently in human history. have you been to India or another country with a similar wealth disparity in the global south?
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > for the vast majority of people, most waking hours were actively spent on subsistence and survival Disclaimer: i'm not well-versed in anthropology/history, but this has been studied and debated by scholars [0] If you've ever been to the countryside, you'll notice that everything feels slower. The fast, ever-working "lifestyle" we know today apparently originated in with early capitalism/industrualism and was itself subject to stark opposition (for example from the luddites, who contrary to popular belief were not anti-tech but rather early anti-capitalists). When that new rhythm was expanded to all areas of life with mass-industrialization in the 18th/19th century, thinkers of the time pointed the absurdity to replace legal slavery with what they called "wage slavery". [1] [0] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  Well put. Mostly agreed.

koide 5y ago

This is a great point to which I don't really have an answer, just a question. Why do we define justice as everyone having the same (or roughly the same within certain thresholds)? I mean, I can totally see that everyone having more or less the same is a good thing. But that is not necessarily a just thing. A related point is why are we seeing equality as something desirable? We don't even question it anymore. This is a rather new development in the last 400 years or so and came about after Europeans arrived at America and started interacting with the natives, which had this equality concept much more advanced than what was common in Europe at the time. This also leads to the recognition of differences between people. What does it mean for us to be equal? I run slower than you, should I carry the urgent message over the mountains because we're equal? Sorry to just add questions, but I think they are important questions people don't usually ask.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"A related point is why are we seeing equality as something desirable?" Should everyone be equal before the law? Is it possible if half the population can't afford a lawyer? Should everyone's vote count? How does Democracy survive when a small group of people own half the country?
- koide 5y ago
  That's but one version of equality. Equality under the law (both your examples may arguably fall here), but we also have equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, equality by mean reduction. I personally agree that equality under the law is indeed desirable but some other types aren't. Which ones are good and which aren't should be made explicit. Then we can talk about how to increase the good equalities and reduce the bad ones.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    They don't exist in isolation, once inequality in capital gets large enough, it is impossible to accomplish equality of opportunity, or of anything at all between: 1- a child of a billionaire that had private tutoring and connections 2 - a child that grew up in poverty and was malnurished, didn't recieve proper education or attention from parents because they were working two jobs or perished in some kind of tragedy