I suppose the good news is, when the Russians finally get fed up with US hypocrisy and meddling, and Poot’n presses the red button, LA and DC will be the first to become radioactive toast. It’s an ill-wind…
Status is relative, and zero sum. There's only 100% available to 100% of the people - the more any one person gets, the less for everybody else. Name dropping is an attempt to increase one's status - and it works, generally. Especially with others who also name-drop for status. Forbes 400 richest, or their billionaire's list (2,668) is a more objective list of money wealth, but there's clear status that goes along with that.
Wealth can be positive sum, despite the fact that any limited time budget is zero sum. Competitive capitalism is hugely better for normal folk, those in the 20-50-80% ranges of status or wealth, mostly because getting rich under capitalism means serving mass numbers of normal folk as customers. Serving customers is seldom the big desire of those advocating socialism.
The rabbi claims: "one of the most important problems of our time is inequality. " Absolute poverty is an important problem, inequality in an inevitable zero sum status comparison is not. Insofar as poverty for citizens born with American privilege exists, it is primarily because of bad behavior. Bad behavior of parents, who thus victimize their innocent kids, and then bad behavior of those kids who become older every year, and far less innocent as they choose to act.
Focus on "inequality" is a deliberate attempt to avoid focus on bad behavior - since focus, too, is zero sum.
And all working normal men in America can afford a tuxedo, if they want.
I want to push back on this picture a little. Humans (especially men) being what they are, there is no other reliable way to stimulate high performance than competition, and competition always has its ugly sides. Communists and assorted socialists love painting pictures of the ugliness of capitalism and markets. IIRC, their picture of the Wall Street (broadly speaking) resembles the picture of D.C. presented in this post, with money taking the place of social status. Neither of these two pictures is untrue, but they focus exclusively on the ugly.
I was once on the Metroliner (dating this) to D.C., and the man (perhaps a lobbyist) across the aisle made a dozen phone calls, each with the purpose of slipping in to the conversation that he had "just sat down with Chuck Schumer."
It became a fun game for me to see how quickly and with what level of "casual" art the man would achieve his goal.
Hence the old saying that politics is show business for ugly people.
I suppose the good news is, when the Russians finally get fed up with US hypocrisy and meddling, and Poot’n presses the red button, LA and DC will be the first to become radioactive toast. It’s an ill-wind…
I used to think I could ignore this game, but now think that is naïve.
Status is relative, and zero sum. There's only 100% available to 100% of the people - the more any one person gets, the less for everybody else. Name dropping is an attempt to increase one's status - and it works, generally. Especially with others who also name-drop for status. Forbes 400 richest, or their billionaire's list (2,668) is a more objective list of money wealth, but there's clear status that goes along with that.
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
Wealth can be positive sum, despite the fact that any limited time budget is zero sum. Competitive capitalism is hugely better for normal folk, those in the 20-50-80% ranges of status or wealth, mostly because getting rich under capitalism means serving mass numbers of normal folk as customers. Serving customers is seldom the big desire of those advocating socialism.
The rabbi claims: "one of the most important problems of our time is inequality. " Absolute poverty is an important problem, inequality in an inevitable zero sum status comparison is not. Insofar as poverty for citizens born with American privilege exists, it is primarily because of bad behavior. Bad behavior of parents, who thus victimize their innocent kids, and then bad behavior of those kids who become older every year, and far less innocent as they choose to act.
Focus on "inequality" is a deliberate attempt to avoid focus on bad behavior - since focus, too, is zero sum.
And all working normal men in America can afford a tuxedo, if they want.
What....no tuxedo! ; - )
I want to push back on this picture a little. Humans (especially men) being what they are, there is no other reliable way to stimulate high performance than competition, and competition always has its ugly sides. Communists and assorted socialists love painting pictures of the ugliness of capitalism and markets. IIRC, their picture of the Wall Street (broadly speaking) resembles the picture of D.C. presented in this post, with money taking the place of social status. Neither of these two pictures is untrue, but they focus exclusively on the ugly.
I was once on the Metroliner (dating this) to D.C., and the man (perhaps a lobbyist) across the aisle made a dozen phone calls, each with the purpose of slipping in to the conversation that he had "just sat down with Chuck Schumer."
It became a fun game for me to see how quickly and with what level of "casual" art the man would achieve his goal.