5 ms·

"At the same time, the wealthy sought to escape their social responsibilities – think of white flight to the suburbs as well as exit plans to oceans and islands

by cafard 4y ago

"At the same time, the wealthy sought to escape their social responsibilities – think of white flight to the suburbs as well as exit plans to oceans and islands." Huh?

krapp 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
antihero 4y ago
If you become wealthy within a society, it is on the back of that society in which you do it, so you effectively owe the society somewhat for your success, unless you think you'd have become a billionaire in the wilderness. So if you get stinking rich and then don't contribute back in the form of tax, you're shirking your responsibility. The workers you employ didn't train themselves, and your profit wouldn't exist without them toiling their lives away.
- loki49152 4y ago
  This is an absurd take on social relations. It's equivalent to declaring that you're owned by "society" from birth, with an unchosen obligation you can never escape, because everything you do with other people is done "on the back of society". Society, as such, doesn't exist. There is no corporeal "society". The only reality is other individuals, living their lives, interacting with you or not. In a civilized society they're able to interact - or not - by mutual consent. The belief that every individual exists only to serve the group is false and evil.
  - js8 4y ago
    I think your take on social relations is absurd. Because actually, individuals as such do not exist, the only reality is there is just a bunch of living cells, interacting with each other. The idea that cells only exist to serve the need of an individual is false and evil.
  - antihero 4y ago
    See, you've missed the word "somewhat", become victim to black and white thinking, and thus missed my point entirely. You, of course, own your own accomplishments, and the energy you've put into the world, and the ways in which you've been smart enough to extract value through efficiency such that you have created it. However, you cannot deny that you wouldn't have done anywhere near as well without the giants on which shoulders you stand and the world around you which others have worked to create, and thus you owe it. Somewhat.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  How did that work for the Internet exactly? It obviously didn't work on some form of noblesse oblige that you presume it does. If you recall, the only people who used it were academics, technical professionals, or nerdy outcasts until sometime about the turn about the millenium. Why does society deserve any profit for something it doesn't care to understand? And, more fundamentally, what exactly is a society in a borderless world and what does it mean to be "responsible" for it?
- tacheiordache 4y ago
  Absolutely this. You'd expect people to do that but what they do instead is pull the ladder through lobbying.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
Wealthy white people have, historically, excluded people of color from their communities in USA. This resulted in strange phenomenon like, when nonwhite people gained enough access to live in cities, wealthy white people left those areas and also politically fought against social services that would benefit the city. For example: When it was ruled black people should be allowed to swim in public pools, primarily white neighborhoods shut down their public pool systems. When in reference to exiting to oceans and islands, wealthy people have benefited from the stable society in which their wealth grows in. Their properties are protected by police enforcement, etc. In return they are supposed to pay taxes to fund the society their wealth grows in. When they exit to oceans/islands, they take their wealth with them, and society doesn't benefit from the investment in allowing wealthy people to grow their wealth within them (eg. the policing of wealthy property vs the policing of tax fraud).
- moduspol 4y ago
  Oceans and islands, sure, but suburbs? Can one not morally choose to live, grow wealth, and pay taxes in one town instead of another? Is this escaping one's social responsibilities? And while "white flight" due to bona fide racism certainly has happened, it seems like a low-resolution take to frame all such choices that way today.
  - mushbino 4y ago
    Yes, one option is saying "Whelp, we created a lot of problems for certain people, but it's time to look forward and move on."
    - moduspol 4y ago
      Is "we" white people? Or voters? I grew up in a fairly rural area, but I've lived close to a big city for the last few years. Am I also morally in the wrong by choosing to leave? How many months of living as a white person in a city does it take before we're morally culpable for everything that happened there? Is it just white people or other groups you don't see as privileged? And it's really missing the elephant in the room to not acknowledge that these cities still have significant tax bases and revenues they benefit from, yet voters near-monolithically support the same candidates and policies that contribute to many of the worst problems. Being a "good" white person by shoveling more tax money into the system that's continuously affirmed by voters and leading to bad outcomes seems emphatically less moral.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Sometimes I'm reading an article and I come across a line like this and I'm sure it was generated by GPT3 or something similar.
lovich 4y ago
There is a general concept that many people believe in, that you have a responsibility to contribute back to society. This responsibility is usually assumed to be higher if you have reaped oversized rewards from society, such a becoming wealthy
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ThalesX 4y ago
  > This responsibility is usually assumed to be higher if you have reaped oversized rewards from society, such a becoming wealthy Thinking about Jeff Bezos. I feel that society as a whole has had a lot more to gain from his endeavors than he might be able to reap back from society in his lifetime. Unless he becomes an immortal meld between man and machine and rules the Empire of Mankind for millennia to come.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    How are you calculating these gains and losses? What value did you ascribe to a civilized non violent society, with sufficiently low theft rates, that allows a business to deliver door to door items worth hundreds and thousands of dollars? Or a society that educated its populace to be sufficiently literate and develop a network of devices that can communicate so that Bezos’ website can operate? The point is these types of comparisons are fruitless. There are numerous dependencies and benefits, both ways. The only thing that matters is what conditions lead to a better functioning society.
  - lovich 4y ago
    > I feel That’s fine. I don’t. One of the core claims of capitalism being an improvement over centrally planned economies is that no entity is capable of making all the most efficient decisions without being an actor in the transaction. The decentralized nature of the free market is supposed to create efficiencies as the actors closer to the transaction and with better information, make more efficient transactions. Mega rich billionaires are massive concentrations of wealth and as long as they control how it is deployed they are becoming closer and closer to the heads of centrally planned economies. The fact that they are private individuals doesn’t change that fact. In my most charitable view, billionaires are a sign of a market failure, as in a competitive market they never would have had the margins to accumulate that much extra capital

by cafard 4y ago

"At the same time, the wealthy sought to escape their social responsibilities – think of white flight to the suburbs as well as exit plans to oceans and islands." Huh?

krapp 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

antihero 4y ago

If you become wealthy within a society, it is on the back of that society in which you do it, so you effectively owe the society somewhat for your success, unless you think you'd have become a billionaire in the wilderness. So if you get stinking rich and then don't contribute back in the form of tax, you're shirking your responsibility. The workers you employ didn't train themselves, and your profit wouldn't exist without them toiling their lives away.

loki49152 4y ago
This is an absurd take on social relations. It's equivalent to declaring that you're owned by "society" from birth, with an unchosen obligation you can never escape, because everything you do with other people is done "on the back of society". Society, as such, doesn't exist. There is no corporeal "society". The only reality is other individuals, living their lives, interacting with you or not. In a civilized society they're able to interact - or not - by mutual consent. The belief that every individual exists only to serve the group is false and evil.
- js8 4y ago
  I think your take on social relations is absurd. Because actually, individuals as such do not exist, the only reality is there is just a bunch of living cells, interacting with each other. The idea that cells only exist to serve the need of an individual is false and evil.
- antihero 4y ago
  See, you've missed the word "somewhat", become victim to black and white thinking, and thus missed my point entirely. You, of course, own your own accomplishments, and the energy you've put into the world, and the ways in which you've been smart enough to extract value through efficiency such that you have created it. However, you cannot deny that you wouldn't have done anywhere near as well without the giants on which shoulders you stand and the world around you which others have worked to create, and thus you owe it. Somewhat.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
How did that work for the Internet exactly? It obviously didn't work on some form of noblesse oblige that you presume it does. If you recall, the only people who used it were academics, technical professionals, or nerdy outcasts until sometime about the turn about the millenium. Why does society deserve any profit for something it doesn't care to understand? And, more fundamentally, what exactly is a society in a borderless world and what does it mean to be "responsible" for it?
tacheiordache 4y ago
Absolutely this. You'd expect people to do that but what they do instead is pull the ladder through lobbying.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

Wealthy white people have, historically, excluded people of color from their communities in USA. This resulted in strange phenomenon like, when nonwhite people gained enough access to live in cities, wealthy white people left those areas and also politically fought against social services that would benefit the city. For example: When it was ruled black people should be allowed to swim in public pools, primarily white neighborhoods shut down their public pool systems. When in reference to exiting to oceans and islands, wealthy people have benefited from the stable society in which their wealth grows in. Their properties are protected by police enforcement, etc. In return they are supposed to pay taxes to fund the society their wealth grows in. When they exit to oceans/islands, they take their wealth with them, and society doesn't benefit from the investment in allowing wealthy people to grow their wealth within them (eg. the policing of wealthy property vs the policing of tax fraud).

moduspol 4y ago
Oceans and islands, sure, but suburbs? Can one not morally choose to live, grow wealth, and pay taxes in one town instead of another? Is this escaping one's social responsibilities? And while "white flight" due to bona fide racism certainly has happened, it seems like a low-resolution take to frame all such choices that way today.
- mushbino 4y ago
  Yes, one option is saying "Whelp, we created a lot of problems for certain people, but it's time to look forward and move on."
  - moduspol 4y ago
    Is "we" white people? Or voters? I grew up in a fairly rural area, but I've lived close to a big city for the last few years. Am I also morally in the wrong by choosing to leave? How many months of living as a white person in a city does it take before we're morally culpable for everything that happened there? Is it just white people or other groups you don't see as privileged? And it's really missing the elephant in the room to not acknowledge that these cities still have significant tax bases and revenues they benefit from, yet voters near-monolithically support the same candidates and policies that contribute to many of the worst problems. Being a "good" white person by shoveling more tax money into the system that's continuously affirmed by voters and leading to bad outcomes seems emphatically less moral.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Sometimes I'm reading an article and I come across a line like this and I'm sure it was generated by GPT3 or something similar.

lovich 4y ago

There is a general concept that many people believe in, that you have a responsibility to contribute back to society. This responsibility is usually assumed to be higher if you have reaped oversized rewards from society, such a becoming wealthy

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ThalesX 4y ago
> This responsibility is usually assumed to be higher if you have reaped oversized rewards from society, such a becoming wealthy Thinking about Jeff Bezos. I feel that society as a whole has had a lot more to gain from his endeavors than he might be able to reap back from society in his lifetime. Unless he becomes an immortal meld between man and machine and rules the Empire of Mankind for millennia to come.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  How are you calculating these gains and losses? What value did you ascribe to a civilized non violent society, with sufficiently low theft rates, that allows a business to deliver door to door items worth hundreds and thousands of dollars? Or a society that educated its populace to be sufficiently literate and develop a network of devices that can communicate so that Bezos’ website can operate? The point is these types of comparisons are fruitless. There are numerous dependencies and benefits, both ways. The only thing that matters is what conditions lead to a better functioning society.
- lovich 4y ago
  > I feel That’s fine. I don’t. One of the core claims of capitalism being an improvement over centrally planned economies is that no entity is capable of making all the most efficient decisions without being an actor in the transaction. The decentralized nature of the free market is supposed to create efficiencies as the actors closer to the transaction and with better information, make more efficient transactions. Mega rich billionaires are massive concentrations of wealth and as long as they control how it is deployed they are becoming closer and closer to the heads of centrally planned economies. The fact that they are private individuals doesn’t change that fact. In my most charitable view, billionaires are a sign of a market failure, as in a competitive market they never would have had the margins to accumulate that much extra capital