From what I have read, there are two reasons why patients stop taking prescribed drugs (psychotropic and medical): The drugs don't work, so why continue taking them. The other reason is that they do work, the patient feels better, so stops taking them. It isn't just the deranged that do this. Lots of people stop taking prescriptions as soon as they feel better. For antibiotics, this can have lethal consequences (drug-resistant bacteria). But the same goes for other diseases. No gout for 3 months -- oh, I don't need to take this stuff anymore. Bang, gout is back.

Many people fail to fill prescriptions. They go to the doctor, get diagnosed, feel better now that they know what is the matter with them, and decide that they don't need the medication,

Maybe they don't. There is drug-over-prescription. At 74 I find myself on 6 medications -- 5 maintenance drugs for specific somatic problems which would once have been treated with surgery or not at all. I also take a maintenance anti-depressant. Except for the statin (about which I am unconvinced) I benefit from these meds. Some people, though, take more meds than they can keep track of, don't receive regular follow up, and have problems with drug reactions and interactions.

What is the entitlement of the poor to relief for rent and food and other basics? — tim wood

There is clearly way more than enough money in the United States to provide a fully adequate social service program. Unfortunately, most of the money--for all purposes--is in the hands of an indifferent oligarchy.

Still, even in an ideal situation, some people will become addicted to illicit drugs and their lives will deteriorate severely. Some people will develop paranoid disorders and elude care. Some people will end up without shelter for various reasons.

While acknowledging civil liberties, I see nothing civil about allowing people to literally live on the streets. Encampments of homeless people are an invitation to abuse by predatory groups like drug dealers, traffickers, other homeless people, and the like. No one's life is improved by homelessness.

I am leaning towards people being forced to accept care--but not a minimal raw kind of care akin to jailing them. Given adequate funding, decent housing and excellent social services can be welcoming, attractive, and effective. Yes, some people will not accept care willingly under any circumstances. I'm OK with involuntary hospitalization for people who are too mentally ill to care for themselves.

What do you mean by deinstitutionalization? — Enrique

If I may, @BitconnectCarlos, I can offer an explanation. Prior to the 1960s, and the availability of antipsychotic drugs like Thorazine, people with major mental illnesses (like manic-depression) were housed in residential custodial facilities--the big 'state hospitals'. The patients' health didn't improve much, therapy was either ineffective (psychoanalysis) or unavailable. Crude treatments like electroshock were standbys.

Along came the antipsychotics, and--finally--doctors had drugs that enabled people with many severe disorders to get along outside of the hospital. So... the old wards were emptied out. In time, the old buildings were torn down, and most of the state hospitals were closed permanently.

Once departed from the hospital, the patients were no longer anyone's concern. Many of the former patients were able to get their lives together, generally with the help of social services and family, and live pretty much normal lives. Compliant patients took their meds on time, kept doctors' appointments, and did a good job looking after themselves. Noncompliant patients started falling apart and ended up in a downward spirals that could end in immiseration, homelessness, or early death.

Without custodial institutions, social services, emergency rooms, and short-term psych wards supplied care. For these to be effective, adequate funding is required. Cut back funding, or over-burden the agencies, and once again patients with complex care needs end up in the worst possible situations.

Break-out psychosis is pretty traumatic for everyone concerned, especially the patient. Even now it can be difficult to quell psychosis, and some people do require padded cells, heavy medication, and locked wards until the chaos in their brains can be brought under control. When mentally ill patients are discharged without support, they will either be back in the hospital, be homeless, or be dead.

For the most part, it would seem that the main problem was the political risk-aversion of state and federal officials rather than the risk tolerance of the public that caused the most problems.

Granted, the stats do not tell a crystal clear story. Neither North nor South Dakota imposed many restrictions on their population. They Sturgis motorcycle rally in SD went on as planned, for instance -- pretty much a free for all. Not surprising, quite a few transmissions were traced to Sturgis. Nothing against motorcyclists. The NYT reported a big biomedical conference during the early stages of the pandemic may have resulted in 200,000 transmissions. Science types breathing on each other is about the same as motorcyclists breathing on each other.

Minnesota imposed state-wide restrictions over a long period of time, and Wisconsin didn't. The population of Minnesota and Wisconsin are pretty much the same demographic. Not much difference in outcomes. South Dakota imposed no state-wide restrictions and has managed to have higher rates per 100,000 than either Minnesota or Wisconsin, and that in a sparsely populated state covering a very large area. For some reason North Dakota got off with fewer cases.

South Dakota 74 cases per 100,000 (population 884,659)
North Dakota 48 cases per 100,000 (population 762,062)

Minnesota 57 cases per 100,000 (population 5.4 million)
Wisconsin 64 cases per 100,000 (population 5.8 million)

When states impose restrictions, positive Covid-19 tests, diagnosed cases, hospital admissions, and (eventually) deaths from Covid-19 all trend downward (not instantly of course).

I agree: without early and nationwide draconian measures, Covid-19 (an airborne disease) was bound to spread. But minimal measures in many states, and a late start everywhere, pretty much guaranteed a higher death toll and a higher percentage of the population becoming infected.

I have freeclimbed 250 foot chimneys (rock climbing narrow rock cracks without ropes), I have snowboarded in avalanche zones, and stood within petting distance of Wild grizzlies in rivers in Alaska. Most people will never see any of these things, let alone do them. I have driven at excess of 300kph. I ask not that others are mandated to do these things, but I have no interest in begin told I must stop because others are uncomfortable with them. — Book273

You have demonstrated a high level of "risk tolerance" and (apparently) have competently conducted high-risk activities and lived to tell about it. People vary in their capacity to tolerate potential harm from very risk-averse to very risk tolerant. I suspect this is less a learned attitude and more innate. It may be the case that neither the bold nor the cautious can claim personal credit for their approach.

I have a moderate level of risk tolerance; I do and have done some things that many other people would consider reckless. I don't consider myself irresponsible in the same way you do not (more or less--I don't know you, of course).

I do recognize that sometimes our risk tolerance is irrelevant. Public safety trumps risk tolerance, and I consider this acceptable because we can generally find venues to take risks where public safety is not compromised. You flirting with grizzlies doesn't harm public safety and a grizzly might enjoy devouring you, a win-win. Driving at very high speeds on an isolated road poses little public safety risk. Doing so on a heavily used freeway does pose a public safety risk.

Sometimes the risk to others isn't obvious. Should you deliberately ski in an avalanche zone, and it is known that you were in that area during an avalanche, you may put rescuers at risk--especially since responders don't have the option of saying "He took the risk, so let him die."

Public safety (or national purpose) trumps risk aversion too. I would guess most soldiers sent into battle would strongly prefer to be somewhere else. But public safety, or national purpose, trumps their personal cautiousness.

So, I think we need to balance our attitudes toward risk (tolerance or aversion) with the needs of the collective. What I mean is, find a way of enjoying risk that doesn't endanger others, and accept the consequences (like, if the grizzly overcomes its risk aversion and decides you would make a fine meal).

only very rare rulers in history — a Napoleon, a Stalin, a Reagan — were themselves the creators of the ideas they came up with — Rafaella Leon

What a bizarre claim!

Mills ... died in 1962 and did not have the opportunity to witness a phenomenon that he himself helped produce: the New Left itself became the power elite and lost all interest in “transparency.” — Rafaella Leon

The "New Left" would surely be shocked to discover that they were the power elite. Some members of the New Left may have occupied positions of power, but as a group, they surely are not the power elite.

"The Power Elite" -- the principal power elite members are drawn from the top ranks of wealth, business, the military, politics and academia. They make up the elite because they possess and they represent real, raw power. The rag tag New Left and its drive for civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms has never had a victory that overly inconvenienced the power elite. The 'old guard' of the elites might prefer things the way they were before civil right, gay rights, and so on extracted some gains from the powers that be, but nothing has changed so much that the old guard and the new guard can't live with it.

Ask her, or him or something else -- whatever gender the person claims. It's not my place to decide that for that individual. I readily acknowledge that people may have anomalies which make them outliers as far as "normal for the species" is defined. It's up to them to cope with their anomalies as best they can,

What I don't have to do, and don't want to do, is elevate an anomaly to some sort of 'rare norm'. I was born with visual anomalies which have been difficult to deal with. I'd prefer to have normal vision, but I don't. Tough luck. I cope as well as I can. Your example may wish to be unambiguously male or female, but is not -- tough luck. I wish the person well. But a rare sex-chromosome anomaly doesn't add up to any sort of third sex.

Humans aren't defined as having two legs, and so that's a false analogy. — Michael

The species Homo sapiens is bipedal; that's not the only defining characteristic, bipedalism is one of many defining characteristics. Species have distinct characteristics, whether they be Scutigera coleoptrata or Pongo abelii. That's how we tell them apart. Defects don't define species, but they don't negate species membership either.

[PANGLOSS]
Pray classify
Pigeons and camels

[MAXIMILLIAN]
Pigeons can fly!

[PAQUETTE]
Camels are mammals!

et cetera, proving that this is the best of all possible worlds...

or turn myself into a pickle, I'd still identify as a man despite not having XY sex chromosomes. — Michael

I shall think of you the next time I bite into a pickle.

If to be male is to have genotype XY and to be female is to have genotype XX and if there are people who have neither genotype XY or genotype XX (and there are: see XYY syndrome and Triple X syndrome as examples) then either these people have no sex or there are more than two sexes. — Michael

By that analogy, if there are persons born without 1 or both legs, then one would say humans are not bipedal. Humans are sometimes born with abnormalities ranging from mild to severe.

I knew a person back in the 1970s who had a chromosomal abnormality who went by the name 'Neither She He'. Neither She He was very short, bald (not by choice), and had some other anomalies in proportion, short legs, for instance. I don't remember what choice of clothing Neither She He made. I came across NSH at gay male community gatherings concerning violence and two murders in a cruise park.

So yes, I know there are people who are on the furthest end of the distribution of characteristics, or maybe they aren't even on it. They are exceptions which don't overturn the principle of 2 sexes--the way 1 arm or 1 leg -- or neither of both -- do not annul the principle of bipedalism.

IMHO, it's genotype, XX and XY. Granted, abnormal conditions can arise. These are rare cases--like 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 30,000 for XX male syndrome (>200 were reported in 2010). 1 in 100,000 is the frequency for for XY gonadal dysgenesis. <100 were diagnosed in 2018. Indeed, the disorders referenced concerns errors located in the expression of genes on the XX and Xy chromosomes. Other sexes or genders are not suggested in these abnormalities.

As far as I know, the typical person claiming to be transgender does not display any symptoms of the two syndromes which you mentioned. As far as I know, there are no physical markers for the vast majority of people claiming to be transgender.

Lacking a physical marker does nothing to undermine the claims. People feel the way they feel. There aren't any physical markers for homosexuality either--none that hold up to close scrutiny. anyway.

I'm curious about how people think the pronouns have been used historically because I think this can make it easier to think about how they could be used in the future. — McMo[u][/u]otch

Once upon a time, English (Old English or Anglo-Saxon) used masculine, feminine, and neuter gendered pronouns. Over time, English shed much of its complexity and became Middle English, an evolution of Old English with the addition of many French words (but not French grammar). In the renaissance period (1550 and forward, very roughly) English writers began creating a more complex vocabulary based on Latin and Greek roots. The more complex vocabulary fit into the still simplified grammar.

Early in this long process, masculine "he" became the default neuter pronoun, along with "it". You'd have to delve into Old English to find out more. (That is quite doable, but it would be enormously helpful if you were very interested in learning Old English.)

From what I read as a long since former English major, the use of "he, she, and it" has been stable since at least 1200.

It's one thing to add new terms to a language; that happens all the time. Changing the way a language handles gender, though, is a much much more loaded process, and is likely to be contested. Further, discussions are likely to be taken up between the Biology Department and English (or French, German, Spanish, etc.) Departments.

However much acceptance transgendered persons receive, there is very little biological evidence that there is such a thing. There are 2 sexes. Only 2, and they are fixed at conception.

Other departments in academia get involved. Psychology, Sociology, and Medicine, for instance. The idea that one can change one's gender in fact, not just in practice, is another highly contested idea.

Could it be evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset? — FrankGSterleJr

It could, indeed.

Competition will also determine the price. — Brett

Competition is a central feature of the capitalist market economy based on profit. The struggle is to buy raw materials at the lowest possible price, pay workers the least possible amount, sell at the highest possible price, and if at all possible, monopolize the market in [whatever it is a company makes] with the end being the largest possible profit.

In a capitalist economy everybody is competing against everybody else. It may be a very "exciting" system to operate in, but it tends to be very wasteful. A few people come out on top with a lot, and a lot of people end up on the bottom with little. Capitalism doesn't 'specify this result as a requirement' it is just the natural result of a total shake-down system.

Socialism (broadly defined) replaces the total shake down system of doing business with a cooperative, planned, non-competitive system. The phrase "cooperative, planned, non-competitive" might sound soft-headed and idyllic or paradisical, but it is actually hard headed, technologically sophisticated, and (very important) possible.

VALUE, PRICE, AND PROFIT by Karl Marx is a short, popular-oriented book which explains how the capitalist system operates. You can get it here--FREE. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/value-price-profit.pdf

So circling back to rephrase my original question: what are the people like who have benefited most from such a system? — Xtrix

In general? Hard to say. There are characteristics that may well apply to people who built fortunes up over time: highly motivated, focussed, maybe type A personalities; people who require large material rewards for their efforts. If they built a fortune they probably have insight into where opportunity is before it knocks on the door, or they recognize an opportunity when they see it. If they are good at it, they probably don't dither.

People who inherit a large amount of money may not resemble people who built up companies. They may or may not have entrepreneurial skills.

Are they the sort of person one would like to go drinking with? Quite likely--but don't let them get away without paying. But one impression I have of people with substantial wealth is that they tend to have their radar up for threats to their social, financial, political status quo. After all, their wealth may be threatened in the event of social turmoil, or they may at least be inconvenienced. If they feel entitled to deference, they won't take inconvenience lightly.

Just one smile at someone who's hurting could set events in motion that will roll out over the world and into the future for centuries. — frank

Apparently he also believes in smiling butterflies whose flapping wings cause an outbreak of lovely summer weather. An optimistic fellow. Smiling at the old woman lying in the street who just got run over by a bicycle will surely ripple out to the 24th century.

Well, I didn't ignore your posts. It's just that The Who's Who of capitalism is a long list, and covers a few centuries. You or I or Joe Blow can list a batch of very rich people, the 1%, and what they did / how they did it. Whether the 1% are 'good people' or hideous gargoyles would require a lot of individual biography, since having a lot of money alone wouldn't make one necessarily good or bad. Carnegie might have been a harsh employer, but he was a good philanthropist. I regularly used the Carnegie library in our small town when I was growing up. Henry Ford was richer than Carnegie; he might have been a better employer than Carnegie, but he was a vicious antisemite.

it's worth understanding exactly who they are. — Xtrix

Brett denies being interested in the question "who they are"; he says it is your question. I've attempted to address what I thought was Brett's question, either who they are or how one could find out.

Here's my last attempt to explain it:

I read somewhere that most of the gold that was ever mined -- going back 3000 years -- is still in circulation. I don't know whether that is true, but it illustrates an important point: Wealth is cumulative.

The undifferentiated wealth sloshing around in the trough in 2020 has a history. You can trace the development of wealth backwards to sometime in the medieval period, probably not much before then. There are, for instance, a few companies in the world that have been in continuous existence since 1200. Some of the wealth in England goes back to grants that William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) made after he won the battle of Hastings in 1066. Some of the valuable land in New York City is owned by descendants of Dutch settlers before New Amsterdam became New York. Land is the original wealth. From land one can extract rent, food and fiber (like wheat and wool). England accumulated a wad of wealth by exporting fine wool to manufacturers on the continent. Later, it was coal and iron. The reason the British claimed North America was to have the land from which to extract wealth. The Germans wanted Lebensraum, and came close to getting most of Europe. Land is wealth. Nations are willing to go way out of their way to get it.

Over time, starting in the late 1700s the first industrial revolution starting up, and more wealth was created. Families who owned industrial works of various kinds became rich; their wealth was passed on in the form of investments and inheritances. Of course, sometimes big piles of wealth were lost -- someone took the land away from you; the factory burned down; one's valuable ship sank; one died without heirs, war ruined the country, and so on. But a lot of wealth moved on to other people.

The secrets of technology are another source of wealth. The British tried to hold on to the secrets of manufacturing, but as luck would have it, they failed. Americans swiped several important secrets and started up manufacturing in New England -- the beginning of the American textile fortunes.

The southern economy was devastated by the Civil War, and it took roughly a century for the southern states to recover fully. The north was enriched by the same war, and the fortunes earned (by banks, mills, railroads, farms, etc.) established a springboard to greater wealth. Metal and railroads were the leading industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie was started working in 1848 at the age of 13--no huge credit to AC. Children usually were put to work early on.

Carnegie's first good job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He made enough money to invest in various industries and accumulated his first fortune. He started his investing about the time the civil war started. This was a period of huge growth in northern industries, and his (probably small) investments paid off hugely.

Carnegie had some money at just the right time. Had he first tried to invest shortly before the 'long depression' of 1873 which lasted 5 to 20 years, depending how one measures economic activity, he might have lost his nest egg and had difficulty recouping. Similarly, many of the people who lost a lost of wealth in 1929 didn't recover until WWII spurred huge government spending.

I’m trying to determine who they are. I don’t know why this is so difficult.
— Brett

The reason you are having so much difficulty answering the "who they are" question is that you are asking the question on a philosophy forum. What you will have to do is read history. Fortunately, that is not a dreary task. There are numerous interesting books which specifically or generally cover the question of HOW and WHO accumulated wealth from the getgo down to the present.

I am confident that you greatly exceed the necessary capacity to locate good, interesting, and economically oriented histories and read them. THEN you will know who it was that got rich and how.

I’m trying to determine who they are — Brett

And that is not the question. — Brett

OK, then what is your question? Who are the "who" you want to identify?

Regardless of how the money was made, that which might be inherited by a lucky member of the elite was created from scratch by someone before him/her. — Brett

I read somewhere that most of the gold that was ever mined -- going back 3000 years -- is still in circulation. I don't know whether that is true, but it illustrates an important point: Wealth is cumulative.

The undifferentiated wealth sloshing around in the trough in 2020 has a history. You can trace the development of wealth backwards to sometime in the medieval period, probably not much before then. There are, for instance, a few companies in the world that have been in continuous existence since 1200. Some of the wealth in England goes back to grants that William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) made after he won the battle of Hastings in 1066. Some of the valuable land in New York City is owned by descendants of Dutch settlers before New Amsterdam became New York. Land is the original wealth. From land one can extract rent, food and fiber (like wheat and wool). England accumulated a wad of wealth by exporting fine wool to manufacturers on the continent. Later, it was coal and iron. The reason the British claimed North America was to have the land from which to extract wealth. The Germans wanted Lebensraum, and came close to getting most of Europe. Land is wealth. Nations are willing to go way out of their way to get it.

Over time, starting in the late 1700s the first industrial revolution starting up, and more wealth was created. Families who owned industrial works of various kinds became rich; their wealth was passed on in the form of investments and inheritances. Of course, sometimes big piles of wealth were lost -- someone took the land away from you; the factory burned down; one's valuable ship sank; one died without heirs, war ruined the country, and so on. But a lot of wealth moved on to other people.

The secrets of technology are another source of wealth. The British tried to hold on to the secrets of manufacturing, but as luck would have it, they failed. Americans swiped several important secrets and started up manufacturing in New England -- the beginning of the American textile fortunes.

The southern economy was devastated by the Civil War, and it took roughly a century for the southern states to recover fully. The north was enriched by the same war, and the fortunes earned (by banks, mills, railroads, farms, etc.) established a springboard to greater wealth. Metal and railroads were the leading industries after the Civil War. Andrew Carnegie was started working in 1848 at the age of 13--no huge credit to AC. Children usually were put to work early on.

Carnegie's first good job was with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He made enough money to invest in various industries and accumulated his first fortune. He started his investing about the time the civil war started. This was a period of huge growth in northern industries, and his (probably small) investments paid off hugely.

Carnegie had some money at just the right time. Had he first tried to invest shortly before the 'long depression' of 1873 which lasted 5 to 20 years, depending how one measures economic activity, he might have lost his nest egg and had difficulty recouping. Similarly, many of the people who lost a lost of wealth in 1929 didn't recover until WWII spurred huge government spending.

I’m trying to determine who they are. I don’t know why this is so difficult. — Brett

The reason you are having so much difficulty answering the "who they are" question is that you are asking the question on a philosophy forum. What you will have to do is read history. Fortunately, that is not a dreary task. There are numerous interesting books which specifically or generally cover the question of HOW and WHO accumulated wealth from the getgo down to the present.

I am confident that you greatly exceed the necessary capacity to locate good, interesting, and economically oriented histories and read them. THEN you will know who it was that got rich and how.

I would love to come up with some really original thoughts but I am inclined to think that the best way is not just to choose a topic that no one has explored enough. The reason I say this is that I believe that the most original thoughts come from experience, of battling with issues deeply. However, in philosophy there is a need to frame ideas in a way which can make them of use to others too. — Jack Cummins

"I try to think but nothing happens." Curly of the Three Stooges said,

My best thinking has occurred when I have been trying to solve a problem about which I was (at least somewhat) passionate. In isolation, one might think one had arrived at a genuinely NEW and IMPROVED idea, only to find that other people (also working in isolation) had come up with the same thing. Damn!!!!

The World draws us into similar thinking. EXAMPLE: In the 1980s the gay community had to find responses to the AIDS crisis. I was an outreach worker for the local AIDS organization, and part of the education and intervention group. I tend to be a loner and do not usually do well at collaboration, so I wasn't very aware of what other people in the country were doing. At an AIDS conference in Toronto, there was a workshop for outreach workers; it turned out that we were all doing very similar things.

Were we all doing similar things because we were unimaginative? Engaged in group think? Stealing each others ideas? No; we were doing the same things--maybe arrived at entirely independently--because the problem we were all working on--finding ways to change high-risk behaviors in high-risk settings--led us to the same approaches.

Granted, intervening in high-risk sexual scenarios isn't philosophy--though a lot of philosophy went into our collective thinking. Like, how much disruption are we willing to impose on our brothers? How does one balance the rightness of individual choice against epidemiology? The fact is that some people are risk averse and others are risk tolerant; how much change can one expect to achieve?

Another problem I wrestled with at the AIDS project was 'pitching information pieces at the right level of vernacular language'. This is a thorny problem because public health people usually avoid blunt vernacular language, and most of the public doesn't use public health terminology. My thinking about this was original to me but of course other people had worked on this problem and had come to similar solutions. (My 'original' solution was to write a computer program to help writers pitch their texts to a broad, low reading level. Original. Oh, slightly. Other people did the same thing, and better.).

WHAT'S THE UPSHOT OF ALL THIS?

Stop trying to be original. IF you have it in you, and IF you give your imagination free rein, you will come up with some ideas that are original to you. Somebody else, somewhere, some time, may have thought of the same thing. That's takes nothing away from your ideas.

It's possible that you will come up with an idea that absolutely no one else in the world has thought of, and therefore may seem like so much of an outlier that nobody will be interested in it. Or, maybe not. But most thinking involves addition and subtraction -- I mean, we add to or carve away parts of others ideas, and arrive at new thinking.

If consciousness is an illusion, who is the illusionist and who is the audience?

I don't know what consciousness is either, but calling it an illusion doesn't do much for me.

someone made it from scratch at some time — Brett

The people who made it from scratch were the workers. Andrew Carnegie didn't make so much as a pound of steel himself.

Why did workers agree to be employed by Carnegie? Because they needed work in order to earn money to live. Didn't Carnegie create the steel mills? Again, workers built the mills -- not Andrew Carnegie.

What Carnegie did was negotiate with investors and bankers to raise the capital to buy raw material. He directed the company on the macro-scale; more of his employees did the micro-managing of day-to-day production.

The pay the workers received for the millions of tons of steel they manufactured was significantly less than Carnegie's expenses. Carnegie walked away with the difference (an enormous fortune).

What goes on in a capitalist economy is exploitation and extraction of surplus value (the difference between the cost of the workers labor and the profit derived from the workers labor), It's not accidental; capitalism, and the legal systems of capitalist countries, is designed to enforce that system.

I am wondering if there are any new ideas which have not been advocated by thinkers already. This is based on my reflection on the way in which I have discovered that any idea which I have, if I do some basic research, seems to have been explored. — Jack Cummins

The more you read, the more YouTube lectures you watch, the more classes you attend, the more you talk to other people, the fewer new ideas you will come across, and the fewer new ideas you can have. So, if you want to have new ideas, ignore everybody else.

Education is, to a large extent, immersion in the ideas that have already been thought, written down, discussed, advocated, promoted, rejected, been forgotten on the shelf, and so on. Education saves us from having to think of everything ourselves, which is a great mercy.

Does all that mean you won't have "new ideas"? No. But... you probably won't think of any MAJOR new idea that hasn't already been turned up by somebody else. And that's OK.

Does all that mean that intellectuals have reached a dead end? No. There are a lot of great ideas that remain to be implemented, and the means by which implementation can be carried out requires... new ideas.

Take a currently popular topic: POVERTY. There is probably nothing new to think, say, or write about it that hasn't already been thought, said, or written about a thousand times over. Most people, when pressed, think we should not have millions (or billions) of people living in poverty. Unfortunately, we do not know how to ACTUALLY eliminate poverty, because we don't know how to reorganize society (and its wealth) in a way that doesn't make things worse. More to the point, we don't know how to get people to change the way they think.

So, Jack, there is a topic where NEW IDEAS are very much needed.

I hate to say it but it seems that we are more of a virus to this planet than COVID is a virus for us. — Thinking

Humans are as much a consequence of evolution as viruses, bacteria, clams, grasshoppers, sparrows, scorpions, kangaroos, and poison ivy. We are part of nature as far as I can tell. Maybe you believe that evolution has a destination, an end, the OMEGA POINT of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin?

I

Thinking, you start out with a seemingly straightforward question by someone seemingly interested in the "problems of modern science". And of course there are 'problems'. But then you make a statement like

It is inherent that all artificially created devices break down over time and are created from the broken parts of nature and the Earth. — Thinking

Of course. tools, machines, and products deteriorate.

But then you go on to say

the devices and entities of nature are eternal and are capable of recreating themselves through the phenomena of birth and are infinitely more perfect than any device we can create today. This is due to the fact that natures devices are created by a seemingly universal intelligence that is reflected in galaxies and beyond.

So it would appear that you are more concerned with a 'religious' or 'spiritual' or some such matters more than scientific problems. You don't have much confidence in science at all. So, one wonders, what is your interest in "the problems of science"? It would appear that you have more confidence in "seemingly universal intelligence". Believe what you want, but it would be better if you were more up-front from the get-go about what your position is.

We pursue knowledge through science, true. We discover things. Sometimes what we discover is dangerous.

We pursue ends besides knowledge. Sometimes the end we pursue involves using knowledge for the purpose of making money or obtaining power. That often leads to disaster.

Sad, but true.

Edit: and you and Pfhorrest have drawn me off topic. — Brett

So, there have been several references to the lists of people who constitute the top of the 1%. However, the entire rich 1% of the population constitutes a far longer list than anyone would want to read. Hundreds of thousands of names are on that list.

Making the list would require a lot of searching in social registries, country club files, housing sales records, corporate records, tax records, property records, and the like -- some of which is, and quite of bit of which is not public.

And what about the ambitious? The rebels, the innovators who want to do things differently? — Brett

It might depend on what one is ambitious to do. Rebels? Innovators? Society needs them. Hopefully, they will make significant contributions to a good and better world.

Sorry, but I was just quoting Jesus. He's an expert in that area.

How would you enforce this, how would you manage human behaviour? — Brett

I'm not going to enforce anything, and neither are you, Ditto for managing human behavior. Human beings are well equipped to construct society, enforce group rules, and manage the behavior of the group. We have been using these capacities since the Stone Age when we struck out as hunter-gatherer bands a 250,000 years ago. And, please note, we still do. Most of the benefits of an orderly society derive from most people's willingness to cooperate. There are not enough law enforcement personnel in the solar system to make everybody behave. Most of the time, most of us behave because we understand following group rules.

Some people misbehave. There are criminals, anti-socials, capitalist pigs, and such that require the tender, loving care of the community. That's why communities hire people to police the town, and bring the drunkards in off the streets to sober up. That's why communities have mental health engineers to deal with anti-socials and capitalist pigs who just don't know how to behave. That's why there are jails, hospitals, and pleasant preserves on isolated Aleutian Islands to which totally uncooperative persons can be sent for rest and recovery.

To achieve that they would need to do what 1% did, which is build a business from scratch and produce the same wealth that so many resent the 1% having. — Brett

The 1% do not have a fated moral flaw. They are not rich because they are evil. the rich are evil because they are rich. Radix malorum est cupiditas." The love of money is the root of all evil.

OK, I'll dismount from this moral high horse.

Many people are stuck trying to imagine a different way of operating a large complex economy. They just can't picture a world without rich people running the show.

The thing is, we don't need the rich or their motivation to accumulate great wealth at everyone else's expense to have a successful, productive economy. The workers have the technical know-how to produce, everything from digging up iron ore to putting the finishing touches on a car. Workers supervise the factories (they are employees, after all) and workers do the accounting, payroll, design, advertising, production planning, etc. The owners of auto companies (Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler, VW, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, et al) do not do any of the work producing cars. They are, to a large extent, what @streetlightx called them: parasites.

The work of beginning an enterprise (let's say, making chicken McNuggets from stem cells) can be done by members of the community who want to provide a sustainable supply of meat (such as stem-cell McNuggets) to other workers. The local elementary school teacher, nurse, construction worker, or mechanic need not know how to do this, because there are people who already know how to do this. The community raises the funds, contributes labor, etc., however they want to do it, to plan, build and operate the ersatz bird pieces. They sell the product to other worker organizations that buy and warehouse food, prior to distribution. Yes, cash changes hands but the intent is not to maximize profit (the capitalist model) but rather to earn enough to operate the plant, pay the workers, and set aside something for future expansion, repairs, machinery replacement, etc.

None of this requires a capitalist bent on becoming rich. Indeed, it requires NOT HAVING such a capitalist deadweight.

The biggest obstacle to success is the dead hand of the past in the form of banks, corporations, politicians, and so forth that would hate to see such a development come to pass. So it isn't likely to happen without getting rid of the dead hand of the past.

There is no cosmic rule which requires the world to meet its needs through the capitalist model.

I don’t see how destroying the 1%, branding them as parasites or robbing them of their wealth will change things. — Brett

Well, gee whiz, Brett; I was just following Jesus on this: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the kingdom of God."

Not only that, but Jesus said to the rich young man “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor."

Upon Jesus' pretty plain advice, very few rich folk have ever made themselves poor, and if Jesus couldn't get them to give it up, I seriously doubt that they will give it up on my recommendation.

Supposedly the 90% are starved for wealth because 1% has it.[/quote]

Correct. Here's the principle behind it:
Workers produce goods and services for which they get paid.
The value of what they produce is greater than the wages they are paid.
The owner of the company keeps the difference between wages paid and value of goods produced.

Of course, there are some other pieces -- like plant maintenance, raw materials, heating an cooling, administration, taxes, and so on. What the owner takes away after everything is paid for is called surplus value. Accumulating surplus value (in the form of money) is the goal of the capitalist. He wants to make money for himself (or herself). The more the better.

But let’s assume the 1% didn't gain it, does that mean the 90% would have it instead? Where would it come from? — Brett

Labor ultimately produces all wealth--in any economic system.

IF there were only workers and no owners (no 1%), THEN what there would be some sort of socialist economy operating. Yes, the 90% would have it instead. Workers and their children make up the majority of the population. They would keep the value of what they produced. They would be better off because they would possess the surplus value they produced. (Obviously, they wouldn't all be filthy rich. One gets rich by accumulating surplus value, not by spreading it out evenly.).

Andrew Carnegie and others have found that it is hard work to dispose of billions of dollars through philanthropy in a responsible manner. Most foundations (even ones that are loaded) give money away in dribs and drabs; usually about 5% of their total assets (less than what the foundation is earning on investments, one hopes). Target Foundation gives away 5% of its profits, about $4,000,000 a week.

If Bill Gates gave his money away at Target's rate, it would take him 500 years to get rid of it all. So, Billy dear, send me... oh, 400 million. It will make life easier for both of us.

Many on this OP regard the 1% as a blight on the land, parasites and responsible for the hardships of the poorer members of the community. — Brett

We live in a capitalist country par excellence and accumulating wealth (surplus value) out of the hides of the workers is The Name of the Game. The 1% are either the most successful capitalists, or they are the children of capitalists (or grandchildren...) Capitalism is not based on any sort of equal distribution of wealth. The Uber Capitalist himself, Henry Ford, realized workers had to make enough money in his factories if any of them were to be able to buy his products. He didn't raise their wages to $5 an hour in 1914 out of the kindness of his heart. Kindness had nothing to do with it.

The existence of extremely wealthy people today, by itself, is not the critical problem. The critical problem is that in heavily concentrating wealth among one to ten percent of the population the remaining 90% are starved for wealth. Large numbers of people (I should say, large percentages of people) can not acquire the basic pieces of a comfortable life style that was available 60 years ago. States, counties, and cities have increasing difficulties financing the essential services and amenities that make a big city and a given state a nice place to live. Students have to borrow a lot of money to pay for college (because legislatures have reduced state funding to higher education). And so on and so forth.

Between 1930 and 1980 the distribution of wealth was not egalitarian by any stretch of the imagination, but it was less severely disproportionate. That more egalitarian distribution turbo-charged the post WWII recovery, which started to come to a halt in 1973 with the Arab oil boycott.

So, within a capitalist milieu, it makes no sense to prevent people from accumulating wealth. Either accept some degree of inequality, or opt for abolishing capitalism.

I think Streetlight opts for abandoning capitalism; he's kind of bitter and resentful about it. I'm in favor of getting rid of capitalism too, but despite my handle I have a sunnier disposition. Odd how that works out.

How can anyone make judgements about these people without understanding who they are, specially here on a philosophy forum? Why would anyone do that? Why insist that — Brett

Yes, without understanding who they are, OR without understanding the social/political/economic milieu in which they exist.

As it happens, tax law has quite a bit to do with how well inheritance transfers wealth from one generation to the next. In times and places where inheritance tax law is quite restrictive, it is more difficult to be "born with a golden spoon in one's mouth". Where tax law is lax, it's much easier.

The organization and operation of the economy has quite a bit to do with how easily one can get rich through one's own efforts. Where investment capital is scarce, where investors are very skittish and reluctance to take chances, starting a company is much more difficult -- and the same for expansion.

How personal income and corporate income is taxed is also an important factor in getting rich by one's own efforts.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak DID NOT get Apple Computers going by buying parts from Radio Shack, building 5 computers, selling those, and using the profits to buy parts for 8 more computers; selling those, and so on until they were making first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of computers, finally seeing some real income.

What they did was get a loan to buy parts, rent space, hire some people, and then build a bunch of computers, sell them, and then show the bank that their plan was worth another loan. The banks made money, eventually Apple made money, and finally Steve & Steve got rich.

Businesses almost always require borrowing in order to operate -- even very large companies. Bankers can kill or promote a company with the denial or granting of credit. Start-ups especially require credit.

Why do banks lend money to some people and deny it to others? Well, connections matter a great deal. Backers (or guarantors) are another. Collateral helps a great deal. Some sort of track record is important. The fact is that a lot of people couldn't get a loan to get the greatest idea in the world off the ground if banks don't like their looks, background, connections, plans track record, or the astrological sign they were born under.

Of course, banks lend money to make money, and they hate losing it. Consequently, most credit seekers are going to be shown the door pretty quickly.

The OP is actually about who these people are. — Brett

There are a number of studies about who these people are, and how they operate. If you want to know more (much more) about wealth and power, start with G. William Domhoff, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His four books are among the highest rated titles in sociology (OK, not the same as the best selling books on Amazon).

Who Rules America? (1967, #12)
The Higher Circles (1970, #39)
The Powers That Be (1979, #47)
Who Rules America Now? (1983, #43)

Don't be too concerned about the publication dates; the perches where the elite roost do not change very fast. Besides, he's still publishing:

More recently, he is the author of The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century: How They Won and Why Labor and Liberals Lost (2020); Diversity in the Power Elite (3rd ed., 2018, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft); Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich (7th ed., 2014); The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy: Corporate Dominance From the Great Depression to the Great Recession (2013); The New CEOs (2011, with Richard L. Zweigenhaft); Class and Power in the New Deal (2011, with Michael Webber); and The Leftmost City (2009, with Richard Gendron).

Domhoff has a good website, https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/about.html which has more information,

Wealth and income are closely related, but maybe not inseparable. They are often reported separately, So, if you look at a list of people's earnings, it's often much less impressive than the list of people's accumulated wealth.

Then there is earned income from work, and unearned income from investment. If you are worth $100,000,000 your earned income might be peanuts, while your unearned income could be quite high.

Frugality is an underrated virtue, especially for people who aren't already rich. And for those who are really really rich, there is no amount of wealth that stupidity can't flush down the toilet.

Even someone who worked in below-average-paying non-profit or service job (with or without degrees) can end up a lot wealthier than one might suppose: If they saved money consistently; if they bought a house prudently (smaller, at the bottom of the market); if they paid cash for cars (by saving over the life of the present car); having adequate health insurance; investing conservatively, if they maintained a lower-income life style, and so on. They could end up having 350,000 to 500,000 in wealth when they retired. Were they employed in better paying jobs, or well-paid jobs (but not high-paying) they could, with the steps listed, end up as millionaires.

Having children is expensive, so raising a family might deter one from achieving any accumulation of wealth till later in life.

Frugality doesn't require one to live a pinched pleasure-free lifestyle, but it does foreclose freely spending on vacations, decorating, drinking a lot (alcohol is expensive, especially when regularly consumed at a bar), smoking (especially at the average per pack price of $6.30). Over 10 years a pack a day smoker would spend a minimum of $22,920. That's a significant hunk of cash. A 2-pack a day smoker in a state with higher taxes ($8-$10 a pack) would spend close to $60,000 over a 10 year period. Regularly eating meals in restaurants (even if run of the mill or fast food) can prevent one from saving much. Pack a lunch on your way to becoming a millionaire.

OK, so a millionaire today isn't what it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago -- let alone 100 years ago, but having cash in the bank is imminently better than owning money all over town. Even if one's wealth is minimal, avoiding debt is very desirable.