The Rules of the New Aristocracy

[Patroklos]

You could have said 18th century France had a better lot than 8th century medieval France. Which probably had it better than Ötzi the Iceman, who in turn was better off than early humans on African savannah. It still doesn't matter, as it's just sophistry on the level of "why they don't eat cake?".

No, they probably didn't have it better. A starving out of work agricultural peasent escaping to the city to live in the street while drinking sewer water probably looked exactly the same in ancient Rome as they did in 18th century France.

[Channel72]

To take Steve Jobs as an example, first thing he did after returning to Apple was axing all charity support Apple did and ordering full use of Dutch/Irish sandwich. Maybe it was done to increase margins against other companies, but immediate effect was still fucking up the poor without lube.

Yeah.. and? There's a lot of unfair corporate practices that fuck people over (especially in the 3rd world). The OP should be calling for the government to enact stricter corporate regulations, NOT complaining about an evil cabal of Illuminati rich sadists who control the world.

The corporation you quoted is one selling luxury food for affluent people. Normal food company? Oh, more processing, better double usage of preservatives, additives, and let's replace real meat with MSM or even better, pink slime, proles can't notice the difference anyway.

So? The point is rich people are just another market.

You know that companies catering to truly rich artificially limit production? Ferrari producing only 399 cars of new model? Hand bags and suits you need to commission then wait in line for it to be hand produced? When you get to goods to truly rich people, demand ceases to matter, there is literally no difference how many are out there. In fact, the smaller the number, the better, you won't risk someone will buy out the supply of Enzos before you have a chance to.

Common sense rules cease to matter in upper strata market.

What's your point? If people can't afford iPads, Apple loses profit. People who go to Ivy League schools tend to be able to afford iPads. End of story. Most corporations, especially those selling consumer products, benefit from a well-educated public. Hell, tech companies complain all the time about shitty education systems, because they need a well-educated pool of workers to be engineers, scientists, programmers, etc.

Oh, yes, it isn't the same - you could have find a noble or two that actually believed their propaganda and worked for the good of the state. Today, we have 'greed is good' creed and part of brainwashed masses honestly believing taxing oh so poor superrich is going to mildly inconvenience them, oh noes

What the fuck are you talking about? Far from being brainwashed, a large percentage of Americans favor more restrictions on corporations.

You could have said 18th century France had a better lot than 8th century medieval France. Which probably had it better than Ötzi the Iceman, who in turn was better off than early humans on African savannah. It still doesn't matter, as it's just sophistry on the level of "why they don't eat cake?".

Wrong. The war between "haves" and "have-nots" becomes less and less meaningful the higher the average standard of living becomes. Scientific research indicates that after a certain income, increase in happiness is logarithmic in relation to income at best. If you make $30,000 in the United States, you're probably going to be struggling and stressed out most of the time. If you make $70,000... a lot less so. If you make $100,000 even less so (with some variability depending on location). After that, making 200K, 300K, or 400K etc. doesn't make much a difference in your overall happiness.

So again, the OP is exaggerated bullshit. Invoking the word "Aristocracy" calls to mind 18th century France, where the difference between "haves" and "have-nots" really was outrageous, and the result of immense physical and psychological suffering. Today, while there is still a huge difference between "haves" and "have-nots" in terms of opportunity and lifestyle, it is much less significant than 18th century France. Only about 20% of the US population is technically "poor", and even they do not live in conditions that are in any way comparable to revolutionary France.

Okay, jokes aside, the problem with education is exactly the same as with the rest of the economy - idiots pressuring universities to make profit, tax dodging meaning less money available for education, mass privatization of assets. All this leads to universities hunting more affluent people, poor being no longer capable of sending children to universities, creating self-sustaining spiral where more and more people are excluded.

Again, it might not be conscious conspiracy, but the end result is almost identical, more education for rich, less and worse for everyone below. Had the rich have to rely on the same schools as everyone else, with meritocratic access, you'd see quick reform, but they can afford to pee on everyone. Their kid will go to snobby private 10.000$ per month school anyway, making them best buds with the rest of future elite, eliminating need to care for literally anything else.

Yeah the education system has a lot of problems. Again, that's the result of many interacting forces, and it's not at all constructive to reduce it to "rich people hate you!!!" But in general, the average American is likely to be much more educated than just 20 or 30 years ago. College graduation rates are over 50% in most states, and climbing.

Really, the last thing corporations want is a world where only the 1% can afford their shit. Apple wants to sell overpriced tablets to everyone. The ideal environment for a corporation that sells consumer goods is a world where everyone has excess cash to burn. Which is why many technology companies, like Intel and Facebook, donate millions to education - that, and they want the good PR and they also want to "fertilize" the future work force with new engineers.

[PKRudeBoy]

The lack of perspective in this thread is absolutely hilarious. Someone living at the poverty line in the US is still in the top 10% of world income. The top 1% is $34k a year. If the world as a whole was 18th century France, we would be the bourgeois whining about the nobility's special privileges. Sure, we may have a point, but we're not going to get much sympathy from those actually suffering.

So, my fellow First-Worlders, unless you are living at a subsistence level and sending your excess income to help the Third World, you care more about yourself and your own comfort than you do about your fellow man. Which is fine, but please spare us your shrill self righteousness.

[Simon_Jester]

To take Steve Jobs as an example, first thing he did after returning to Apple was axing all charity support Apple did and ordering full use of Dutch/Irish sandwich. Maybe it was done to increase margins against other companies, but immediate effect was still fucking up the poor without lube.

Yeah.. and? There's a lot of unfair corporate practices that fuck people over (especially in the 3rd world). The OP should be calling for the government to enact stricter corporate regulations, NOT complaining about an evil cabal of Illuminati rich sadists who control the world.

Focusing hostility on the owners of those corporations is, in my opinion, a key first step to getting stricter regulations into place. People need to have a clear appreciation of the nature and scope of the problem, in order to solve that problem.

The corporation you quoted is one selling luxury food for affluent people. Normal food company? Oh, more processing, better double usage of preservatives, additives, and let's replace real meat with MSM or even better, pink slime, proles can't notice the difference anyway.

So? The point is rich people are just another market.

Yes, but they're a market that can fight back more effectively against people who try to cheat and manipulate them. Therefore, calling them "just another market" is misleading, because it is a qualitatively different market.

What's your point? If people can't afford iPads, Apple loses profit. People who go to Ivy League schools tend to be able to afford iPads. End of story. Most corporations, especially those selling consumer products, benefit from a well-educated public. Hell, tech companies complain all the time about shitty education systems, because they need a well-educated pool of workers to be engineers, scientists, programmers, etc.

The problem is that they want people to be thus educated without having to pay higher taxes to get it, that they are often quite happy to hire low-wage educated labor from overseas instead of encouraging the creation of educated labor domestically, that they increasingly decline to train their own employees (preferring to hire only pre-trained people), and that to create a functional educational system without either money or political latitude, we somehow have to square the circle of leaving no child behind while racing to the top.

So again, the OP is exaggerated bullshit. Invoking the word "Aristocracy" calls to mind 18th century France, where the difference between "haves" and "have-nots" really was outrageous, and the result of immense physical and psychological suffering. Today, while there is still a huge difference between "haves" and "have-nots" in terms of opportunity and lifestyle, it is much less significant than 18th century France. Only about 20% of the US population is technically "poor", and even they do not live in conditions that are in any way comparable to revolutionary France.

Again, the point is not that the poor are physically in danger of starvation and death. It is that (to take the US as an example) we have, for the median American, so much less than we could have.

You can sniff and say "First World problems!" all you want. It's still an issue, and it's retarding the further development of the countries it's happening in. And in many ways, it's enabling injustice in the Third World, because if you live in a First World country on the median income or below, you have relatively little in the way of spare funds, resources, and above all time and education to do much of any use to the Third World.

Yeah the education system has a lot of problems. Again, that's the result of many interacting forces, and it's not at all constructive to reduce it to "rich people hate you!!!" But in general, the average American is likely to be much more educated than just 20 or 30 years ago. College graduation rates are over 50% in most states, and climbing.

And the degrees mean less and convey less value. We've hit diminishing returns because the high school graduates are less and less educated- so the colleges are having to dumb down their curriculum to keep pace.

This doesn't reduce to "rich people hate you." It reduces to "rich people are directly and indirectly screwing you, by locking in their control of the levers of power, and ignoring the problems that affect you." Fixating on the issue as "do rich people hate you, y/n" misses the point.

Really, the last thing corporations want is a world where only the 1% can afford their shit. Apple wants to sell overpriced tablets to everyone. The ideal environment for a corporation that sells consumer goods is a world where everyone has excess cash to burn. Which is why many technology companies, like Intel and Facebook, donate millions to education - that, and they want the good PR and they also want to "fertilize" the future work force with new engineers.

Corporations may want you to have money- but they also want control of how you spend that money. They want to be able to charge you for monthly services that are hard to cancel, to ensure your brand loyalty while providing the minimum possible services in return. Financial firms want control of your retirement funds so they can use them to invest and rake in profits.

None of this is unique to the modern era, but it's a reality we need to keep in mind.

[Block]

The lack of perspective in this thread is absolutely hilarious. Someone living at the poverty line in the US is still in the top 10% of world income. The top 1% is $34k a year. If the world as a whole was 18th century France, we would be the bourgeois whining about the nobility's special privileges. Sure, we may have a point, but we're not going to get much sympathy from those actually suffering.

So, my fellow First-Worlders, unless you are living at a subsistence level and sending your excess income to help the Third World, you care more about yourself and your own comfort than you do about your fellow man. Which is fine, but please spare us your shrill self righteousness.

This is SUCH a stupid argument. Other people have a shittier life, so you should just accept your place as not quite as underprivileged. You can't acknowledge that other people need help too while striving to improve your own situation?

[K. A. Pital]

The OP should be calling for the government to enact stricter corporate regulations, NOT complaining about an evil cabal of Illuminati rich sadists who control the world.

As if it wasn't tried. And it didn't fail, with the dismantling of the welfare state and the official triumph of capitalism aka 'end of history' in the words of Fukuyama, propagandist prime.

The point is rich people are just another market.

Indeed - which kind of underscores the OP. Rich people are a different market. What this means is that literally proles can eat shit while the rich have an entirely different subset of products designed specifically to keep them healthy and well. Is it not segregation?

Most corporations, especially those selling consumer products, benefit from a well-educated public. Hell, tech companies complain all the time about shitty education systems, because they need a well-educated pool of workers to be engineers, scientists, programmers, etc.

You would be surprised, but corporations only need clusters where education is doing great, like little Elysiums, to draw upon. The rest who are left outside for whatever reasons are irrelevant. It doesn't take a billion engineers to make a corporation's plants work perfectly. And with automation it takes just a few such people. You wanna know the IT department size of a supercorporation with over 1000 employees in just one country? 5 people. There you go.

Far from being brainwashed, a large percentage of Americans favor more restrictions on corporations.

And yet they have voted for people who lowered or dismantled these restrictions. Not once. Not twice. They voted for them consistently.

If you make $30,000 in the United States, you're probably going to be struggling and stressed out most of the time.

That is very interesting, because it demonstrates what a piece of shit America is. In Europe you'd be doing mostly fine with that money.

Only about 20% of the US population is technically "poor", and even they do not live in conditions that are in any way comparable to revolutionary France.

That's because the scale now isn't the opulent US, which made it's 'middle class' a semi-bourgeois climate-changing cancerous tumor on the face of the world, consuming on a 1-for-10 scale, but the world itself. Where workers live in conditions very much comparable to revolutionary France, and the First World, with minor exceptions like protectionist economies of Japan, Switzerland, etc., benefits from it immensely and directly. Protectionists benefit from it too, by indirect ways but nonetheless.

The ideal environment for a corporation that sells consumer goods is a world where everyone has excess cash to burn. Which is why many technology companies, like Intel and Facebook, donate millions to education - that, and they want the good PR and they also want to "fertilize" the future work force with new engineers.

'Excess cash' originates from a lack of competitors. The ideal world for corporations is the one where their loyal drones keep buying their shit but a competitor never arises (or is smacked down through lobbying, aggressive acquisitions, et cetera). The same applies to nations. First World nations would not want the Second and Third World to be richer, because (despite this increasing the market) it automatically means strong competition. From companies they don't want to challenge. And it means an end to cheap labour. Which they do not want either.

[White Haven]

It's more a sign of how divorced from reality Channel72 is. 30k is quite, quite comfortable in most places that aren't ludicrously expensive to live in.

[PKRudeBoy]

The lack of perspective in this thread is absolutely hilarious. Someone living at the poverty line in the US is still in the top 10% of world income. The top 1% is $34k a year. If the world as a whole was 18th century France, we would be the bourgeois whining about the nobility's special privileges. Sure, we may have a point, but we're not going to get much sympathy from those actually suffering.

So, my fellow First-Worlders, unless you are living at a subsistence level and sending your excess income to help the Third World, you care more about yourself and your own comfort than you do about your fellow man. Which is fine, but please spare us your shrill self righteousness.

This is SUCH a stupid argument. Other people have a shittier life, so you should just accept your place as not quite as underprivileged. You can't acknowledge that other people need help too while striving to improve your own situation?

No, what I'm saying is this:
A) The simple act of being able to post on here means that people on here are probably on the side benefitting from income inequality. If income truly was equalized on a worldwide basis, I would wager rather heavily that most people on this forum would see a sharp downward turn in their lifestyles.

B) Discussion is all well and good, but how many people actually do something about it? Honestly, how many people actually take the time to make sure that they are not promoting the very thing that they rail against? I'm not sure it's even possible short of going and joining a commune somewhere. Saying something is bad on the internet costs nothing, and does very little.

C) Discussing ways to better promote equality is reasonable. Comparing a system that probably benefits you to an absolute monarchy where the accepted response for a peasant insulting a noble was for the noble to have his servants beat the peasant, with yourself as the commoner, while there are still people living in conditions similar to the peasant, and people in the first world in some ways live better then the noble, is self righteous screeching.

[Block]

No, what I'm saying is this:
B) Discussion is all well and good, but how many people actually do something about it? Honestly, how many people actually take the time to make sure that they are not promoting the very thing that they rail against? I'm not sure it's even possible short of going and joining a commune somewhere. Saying something is bad on the internet costs nothing, and does very little.

Oh it's possible. The U.S. Army civil affairs teams do it every day, something I was a part of. NGOs do it, although I take issue with the way in which they distribute resources sometimes. The way to do it is to help others lift themselves up in such a way that they feel invested in the progress, not just give them things. That's true of anything, people appreciate reward a lot more than they do a gift, for whatever reason. There's programs like the PEace Corps, Water.org, Kiva, etc. that seem to me to do a better job of that. Regardless, there's tons of programs that can and do work on equalizing things world wide, and the fact that a lot of people in the first world are technically in that 1% while still living in poverty isn't something that they should be dumped on for, it means that we need to work a lot harder to lift the standard worldwide.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, I submit that these are two separate issues. And that it's disingenuous to say "don't think about reform in the First World, the Third World needs to be fixed first!"

Among other things, making the First World a corporate-dominated system makes it less likely that First World citizens and governments will be in a position to do anything constructive for the Third.

It's more a sign of how divorced from reality Channel72 is. 30k is quite, quite comfortable in most places that aren't ludicrously expensive to live in.

As long as you don't have dependents.

Some people indulge in those, y'know.

[Guardsman Bass]

As if it wasn't tried. And it didn't fail, with the dismantling of the welfare state and the official triumph of capitalism aka 'end of history' in the words of Fukuyama, propagandist prime.

The welfare state is hardly dismantled, and in some ways is more comprehensive than it used to be even in the US.

Indeed - which kind of underscores the OP. Rich people are a different market. What this means is that literally proles can eat shit while the rich have an entirely different subset of products designed specifically to keep them healthy and well. Is it not segregation?

No, it just means they're a different market. You get high-cost products being sold to rich people, and much lower-cost products being sold to very cost-conscious people shopping at places like Walmart, Target, the German discount chains, and other supermarkets. The proles aren't "eating shit" - they have cheaper goods and food in the First World than they've had before.

That's because the scale now isn't the opulent US, which made it's 'middle class' a semi-bourgeois climate-changing cancerous tumor on the face of the world, consuming on a 1-for-10 scale, but the world itself. Where workers live in conditions very much comparable to revolutionary France, and the First World, with minor exceptions like protectionist economies of Japan, Switzerland, etc., benefits from it immensely and directly. Protectionists benefit from it too, by indirect ways but nonetheless.

Most of the developing world has done pretty good in the 1990s and 2000s. The Chinese are far richer and better off than they used to be, and a whole ton of other people are much better off in their wake. Truth be told, conditions only appear stagnant if you happen to be living in a rich country.

[Starglider]

The lack of perspective in this thread is absolutely hilarious. Someone living at the poverty line in the US is still in the top 10% of world income. The top 1% is $34k a year. If the world as a whole was 18th century France, we would be the bourgeois whining about the nobility's special privileges. Sure, we may have a point, but we're not going to get much sympathy from those actually suffering.

So, my fellow First-Worlders, unless you are living at a subsistence level and sending your excess income to help the Third World, you care more about yourself and your own comfort than you do about your fellow man. Which is fine, but please spare us your shrill self righteousness.

This is SUCH a stupid argument. Other people have a shittier life, so you should just accept your place as not quite as underprivileged. You can't acknowledge that other people need help too while striving to improve your own situation?

It's a stupid argument because market exchange rates are not a meaningful way to compare real income between different regions. The basic things that humans need - shelter, food, clothes, medical care, education, essential transport (to work, shops etc) vary wildly in price between regions in nominal terms. The variation in % of the average local income is much smaller (although significant). Effectively the huge differential in developed / developing world income only applies to globalised, mostly luxury goods like consumer electronics. The difference in actual living standards (when adjusting for dimminishing net utility of luxuries vs essentials) is significant, but not order-of-magnitude.

[K. A. Pital]

The variation in percentage of local income is immense actually. Cost of life except rent was the same in a region with average wage of 200 Euros as in a region where you get 1500-2000 Euros. The difference was very clear. Even those working hard 10-6 would be nothing but poor beggars by the standards of the other region.

[Starglider]

The variation in percentage of local income is immense actually. Cost of life except rent was the same in a region with average wage of 200 Euros as in a region where you get 1500-2000 Euros. The difference was very clear. Even those working hard 10-6 would be nothing but poor beggars by the standards of the other region.

Remember to include taxes in 'cost of living'; although what fraction of those taxes is 'essentials' and what fraction is 'legalised theft for the benefit of corrupt politicians, lobbyists and contractors' will vary depending on region and politicial viewpoint.

[K. A. Pital]

Remember to include taxes in 'cost of living';

Net income is compared.

...although what fraction of those taxes is 'essentials' and what fraction is 'legalised theft for the benefit of corrupt politicians, lobbyists and contractors' will vary depending on region and politicial viewpoint.

Irrelevant. Net income is compared and only that; the fact that most people in poorer places also suffer from terrible government corruption and rampant banditism on the streets plus a generally high crime level is not even factored in.

[Starglider]

Net income is compared and only that

Income net of taxes is obviously not the sole determinant of what goods and services are available to a person (and hence quality of life) when so many services are provided by the government, via taxes. Even between the similar UK and US, net incomes are misleading as the UK has single-payer taxation supported healthcare wheras US citizens pay for healthcare out of their 'net' income.

[K. A. Pital]

I know; that's why I noted that poorer nations generally also have severely reduced and poorer quality tax-funded services (evident by the fact that government-redistributed GDP share is a lot smaller in poorer nations than in the developed ones). And yes, that includes healthcare. Factoring this in only makes the comparison even more lopsided. Except for some outliers (like the US), healthcare insurance is univeral in the First World.