If an individual has no empathy for a particular individual or small group of similar individuals, they will likely not be thinking about this individual or small group, and they won't be interested in them either. Emotions, like empathy, sympathy, sorrow, love, fear, anger, joy, etc. are what prompt us to think and behave with respect to things and other people.

If you discount empathy, you are devaluing the prime mover of behavior. Delete the prime mover from your thinking, and you won't know jack shit.

Emotion and cognition don't operate in isolation from each other -- they are reciprocating pistons. It takes both parts. Feeling and thinking together leads to insight, discovery, the "ah ha!" moment.

I'm not saying we should give up on trying to understand others but rather than it should be obvious that it won't be easy to do that — Judaka

So you are telling us that understanding other people is hard. Who knew? You discount knowledge and empathy as both being insufficient. So, we use emotional and intellectual tools to try and understand each other -- which you say is not enough.

What is the upshot? What else have you got?

Someone capable of empathy about another's situation still has to employ rational analysis to really understand their situation. Anyone might feel empathy for a homeless person, but knowing something about the rates of homeless, the causes of homelessness, the existence of programs for the homeless, and a little bit about actually being homeless will have a much better understanding of the homeless than somebody who can only identify with their misfortune.

And sometimes empathy is pretty thin and cold. For instance, people who say they feel empathy for the homeless, but wouldn't give them cash because they might use it to buy alcohol are not actually empathetic -- they're being judgmental. If I were homeless, I would consider it entirely appropriate that I should salve my misery with a few beers, especially in the hot summer. If I were addicted, I would consider buying a hit (of whatever I needed) as a necessary thing.

When you say "obey" and "obedience" are you referencing the kind of obedience that a dog exhibits when it is commanded to sit, stay, heel, etc. or the kind of obedience that (99.9% of) Americans exhibit when a Highway Patrol orders them to pull over. These obedience behaviors are practically like reflexes. Lights and siren, one pulls over. One wouldn't think of doing anything else.

On the other hand, there is obedience to laws, warnings, and the like. Obedience and non-compliance is too complicated to be rote. Complying with IRS rules requires interpretation. A warning about how to mix, and how not to mix, chemical x and y together may take up several pages of discussion. Obedience will be a very careful, rational response.

It seems like many powerful authorities would like to receive rote obedience. "Jump!" when I say "jump." Quick and (largely automatic) obedience requires training -- whether of a dog or of a soldier or a child. Dogs and people are not naturally inclined to do what they are told. Obedience training has to get over the "Why should I?" response. "What's in it for me?" (Self-interest doesn't have to be a consciously worked-out position.)

People can make a rational decision to undergo obedience training -- they sign up for military service.

A lot of homeless people have other sorts of chains. Drug addiction, alcohol addiction, psychological problems, to name a few. — Tzeentch

This is totally true -- usually people who are reasonably well put together don't end up sleeping in doorways.

But, I have known two who were well put together charming, cultured people who did become homeless -- they were sheltered, fed, clothed, and so forth -- but they lost their homes. One's circumstances can change from solvent to broke in a very short period of time, and if you are broke... bad things happen.

Casting off one's material chains -- the vast array of stuff we keep -- is a very difficult, radical step which I think requires very strong 'spiritual' (for lack of a better term) motivation. Living simply (there's a movement and apps for that) or voluntary poverty (not very popular) are more secular routes. Voluntary poverty / simple living has a lot to recommend it, and I've tried it off and on several times.

The best example of voluntary poverty I can cite is the Catholic Worker Movement started by Dorothy Day and Peter Marin (back in the 1930s). Their mission was to serve the homeless and neglected, and they practiced poverty themselves, though as Day said, poverty is both commendable and a horror. She became a devout Catholic from her starting point as a secular leftist journalist. Christianity (in the form of pre-Vatican II Catholicism) provided her with the spiritual structure that made her work possible -- for her and for others in the movement.

Material reality isn't quite as generous as you make it seem. Adequate food -- never mind really good food, adequate clothing for the season (winter, where winter is a harsh material reality), and shelter -- beyond a reasonably adequate location in a box under a bridge, is not guaranteed, and in many places is a pay-or-drop-dead deal.

Yes, there really are people who go hungry, poorly clothed, and homeless even though they are able, willing, and even actually working. At Our Saviour Shelter, for instance, about 10% of the clients work. Housing has become too costly for them.

Are there people actually living in boxes under bridges in midwestern winters? There are. There are many more in California where, while it might not snow, can be very cool and wet.

Social resources are ratcheted: it's much easier to go down than back up. Once you fall off the bottom rung of the ladder, you find that the first rung to get back on is quite a ways above one's reach. It is very hard to overcome the disadvantage of hitting the bottom. Do people literally starve and freeze to death? Yes. It may take time, but hunger, exposure, and homelessness are life-shortening conditions.

they think they cannot live without — Tzeentch

Like food, shelter, clothing... stuff like that.

Status? The urge to maintain a high standard of living? Social pressures?
The value of these matters is all illusory in nature. — Tzeentch

Status can be measured in very small increments. If you are living on the street, having a piece of dirty, deteriorating foam rubber to lay on is a step up from laying on the bare concrete; having a cardboard box to sleep in is a step up from not having a box. living in a noisy, smelly, cockroach ridden efficiency is many steps above having a box. Living in an old small house is many steps up from the efficiency. Living on the 33rd floor of the new condo building is a step up from living on the fifth floor. Living in the 80th floor penthouse (and having the whole floor to yourself) is many steps up from the 33rd floor condo -- as nice as that was. Having a fake Picasso is many steps above having a house full of abstract depressionist paintings by your sister-in-law in Cincinnati, Ohio, for god's sake.

That all this status is illusory is a rather harsh judgement. If you are sweating day and night to plunder the pension funds of auto workers, you had jolly well better believe that the status is real.

It takes more than one's self to strive for status, because status requires the jealous comparisons of one's peers. If absolutely no one gives a rat's ass about your new kitchen, what has one gained? Well, the $40,000 stove gets hot, but so did the old one. The deluxe 360º glass refrigerator gets cold, but so did the one you bought from Ikea. The granite counter top, imported from a nicely distant quarry allows you to chop up turnips, but so did the old Formica counter top.

Status requires a jealous crowd. No crowd, no status.

"Work! Strive! Persevere! You are all victims of a monstrous hoax."

You are very generous in your praise.

Isn't Democracy just an illusion made out of a Hollywood movie — pbxman

Not really -- Hollywood hasn't been around that long.

The quality of governance in the United States varies a great deal from national to state to county and city levels. It differs from place to place, and it differs over time. There are too many moving parts to all the political mechanisms to allow for gross generalizations and over-simplifications.

Not least among the moving parts are the electorate who have something to do with the quality of our political life in this sort of democratic republic. Then of course there are a lot of very focussed efforts being applied to the electorate to keep us too confused to vote boldly for better results.

Governments tend to be most attentive to those with the most power in society -- the wealthiest people. The United States has a lot of wealthy people who have seen to it that their interests are well protected.

As Karl Marx put it, "Government is a committee to organize the affairs of the richest people." We see this principle reenacted again and again where national, state, and local governments--elected all--hand over to the wealthiest citizens benefits.

Here's an example: The owners of the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings both wanted new facilities, paid for largely at public expense. The voters in Minneapolis rejected the plans (for both teams) because they didn't want yet another sales tax surcharge tacked on to help pay for the venues which, to be honest, most citizens would never use. Further, the owners of the teams would be the primary beneficiaries.

What happened? The state government over-rode the popular vote and imposed the cost of the facilities on the metro area.

So much for democracy, right?

:up:

What say you — schopenhauer1

There are several points here with which I can agree, or not.

I'm going to define politics as trying to or actually achieving influence/control over a community of people. — schopenhauer1

That's 1/2 of politics; the other half is resisting control. Individuals and groups prefer to maximize autonomy, just as surely as the goal of some individuals and groups is to minimize others' autonomy. Scale matters here: parents must exercise control and limit autonomy of children in order to keep them safe and prepare them for autonomous life. Family life is the genesis of politics. Employers exercise control and limit the autonomy of workers in order to operate an enterprise. That's economics shading into politics. The kingdom, satrapy, nomenklatura, senate, party, ministry, chancellory, etc. is about control. That's politics.

The first act of control over us is being born in the first place. — schopenhauer1

This has been discussed at great length from many points of view.

De facto, being born throws more workers into the grist mill of the economic-political system. The first coercive act is throwing a new human into the labor force to be used as a source of labor. Socialist/communist societies are more transparent that this is what a person is in a sociological setting. Capitalism has a gloss of "individualism" that simply puts a thin veil over the fact that the individual is used as a source of labor with the principle of the "invisible hand". We were never born for ourselves, but always on the account of another. — schopenhauer1

Karl Marx (and maybe others before or beside him) called it "reproducing society". People don't just reproduce themselves through effective parenting, they reproduce the personnel and the roles required at all levels of society. In mass societies, individuals existing for themselves is a necessary illusion. We don't -- we can not -- exist just for ourselves--and we never could, even in a primitive hunter-gatherer band.

No mass political system -- whether capitalist or collectivist -- can afford to be overly transparent. There are various necessary illusions. Stating the terms of existence baldly, "You are free insofar as you obey", is unappealing. "Your primary function is to serve". "Your task is to consume as much as possible." "Work, or else." "Vote!" -- even though it is often a meaningless gesture; we require a sign of your consent to be governed.

In fact, it is an impossibility to live for oneself — schopenhauer1

Yes, but let's be a little more nuanced about it. Life is too difficult to live only for oneself. The requirements of life require toil which one person alone cannot perform. We need and we must be helpers. We require both sources and objects of love and comfort--and so on.

People are de facto coerced into laboring. This I believe to be a harm to the individual. — schopenhauer1

Well, I would say the harm to the individual is being coerced into laboring for somebody's interest not his own. "Work or else..." when the labor is for the greater wealth of the ruling class; when the labor is too poorly rewarded to enjoy life; when the cost of labor is an early death -- all that is indeed a harm to the individual.

People are not free- they are social factors, social products. The individual, first person point of view, matters not in the political sphere. — schopenhauer1

It is true that we are not free, since we are not vaporous spirits whose existence is above the material plane. We are material, social, and individual beings. As such we can not be free of the demands of a material world.

So, "The individual, first person point of view, matters not in the political sphere" is clearly not true--even in a mass society where individual political freedom is highly constrained. It can not be true because the individual POV have always been the starting point of change that threatens to bring down the superstructure of power. Thinking about how things work occurs in individual minds, and when individual minds start comparing notes and when two, and two, and fifty, then a million... change can happen.

You, for instance, are an individual with a distinct POV beating the drum of antinatalism. You are not the only individual with a distinct POV about the futility of reproduction and a sensitivity to the ethical dilemma of bringing children into this particular world. You (obviously and correctly) think there is some point in expressing your individual point of view.

You could form a political group of antinatalists, and (you might be surprised) have remarkable success in promoting non-reproduction as an ethical act of resistance.

I'm not saying you would be successful, or should be successful, but if you were successful it would be because of individuals' points of view. (And, of course, social conditions that would either favor or negate your various efforts.)

I have no problem with the claim that men are stronger (on average) than women. Greater size, greater strength is one of the noted characteristics of men, compared to women. And, of course, both men and women are (I assume) separately normally distributed with respect to strength -- most people being in the middle of the distribution.

All that I was driving at was that sometimes bad design makes things difficult. Three of us spent 90 minutes trying to figure out how to detach the battery from its case on a VW Golf, and two of us were very mechanically inclined. "Devious" and "obscure" are the words that come to mind for VW's placement of the fastener.

Needless to say there was hardly any gender identification before gay pride took over — kill jepetto

No gender identification, no gender rules before gay liberation? Not so. "Appropriate sex roles" for men and women have been in place and 'policed' for quite a long time. The language changes over time, that's all.

I don't know how old you are, but I was on the scene when "gay pride took over" (granted, in the backwater of Minneapolis).

You've heard of Christine Jorgensen? -- first (famous American anyway) transsexual -- that was in 1951. Transsexual surgery was enough of a thing before 1951 for him to have heard about it before he became her at a hospital in Denmark. In the late 1940s homosexuals were quietly struggling to be merely tolerated, if they were doing anything political. Pride was a ways off.

There have been what were/are called 'gender-benders' in the homosexual community -- drag queens, basically. That was so in the late 1800s, early 1900s homosexual community in Chicago, for instance. It's still the case.

There were a few transsexuals around when gay pride took over in 1969-70. Where else would a transsexual hang out if not at gay bars? They were not tolerated in most places. So, they were absorbed into the gay movement, whether they really belonged there or not. Maybe transsexuals are just drag queens taken to the logical extreme.

Gay liberation is a piece of social change; I wouldn't claim too much credit for it -- or blame either -- for the social changes that have occurred in the last 50 or 60 years. There are too many other changes in process. Women's liberation, black liberation, (and various other ethnic liberations), huge economic changes, and so on. If one takes a Marxist view, economic and technical changes are the foundation for social change. The Pill is a prime example. A new drug enabled huge changes in sexual behavior, because fertility became more easily managed.

Geographical mobility and omnipresent media are two other economic, technical changes that have brought about many changes -- some foreseen, many not, some desired, many greatly regretted, Look how cell phones have changed social behavior.

Exactly! Every cell in his feminated body still has the xy chromosome.

You probably could just considering strength differences. My wife can change a flat tire, I still had to assist her a few weeks ago because she didn't have the grip strength to get the large plastic wingnut that secured the spare tire to the bottom of her SUV's trunk. — Taneras

Just because Superman was the last person to tighten the plastic wing nut on the spare tire shouldn't be taken as a strength deficiency. Maybe your wife just hasn't had to deal with enough wing nuts in her life. (Or maybe she has,) I've been outfoxed on a number of occasions by nuts and bolts,

BC said "Social construction is just egotism: I can be anything I want to be!"

That's not social construction. — bert1

The improved sentence: "I can be anything I want to be!" is socially constructed egotism.

Nor are people with genuine gender dysphoria, as far as I understand, in a position to freely choose what gender to identify with, any more than gay people choose to be gay. — bert1

Homosexuals and heterosexuals, metrosexuals, ambisexuals, ultrasexuals, desexuals, male feminists (aka eunuchs in the haram), those with gender euphoria, dysphoria, and especially those with gender dysphasia*** are all free to IDENTIFY with whatever gender they want. Hell, they can identify with whatever species they want. They just can't really BE any sex or gender they want.

***Gender dysphasia is a relatively recent disorder in which supposedly intelligent people with intact brains spout all sorts of unadulterated nonsense about gender. There is no known treatment, but gagging and handcuffing people with gender dysphasia can help everybody else.

I have never known a woman to mend a puncture on a bicycle. — bert1

IF they are 25 miles out, have a pump, have a patch kit, and don't want to walk 25 miles, they had jolly well better fix it. I've known a woman with a broken chain (on her bicycle) to take out a de-linker, shorten the chain 1 or 2 links, and ride on home in a high gear (because the chain was now shorter and the high gear sprocket is a smaller diameter). (Note to young philosophers: People have not always had cell phones.)

The women at the Hub Bicycle Coop in Minneapolis not only fix flat tires, they do complete bicycle overalls--dirt, grease, solvents, and all. So do the men. Ovaries or testicles just depends on what worker is next up.

I am a male, I know how to fix tires; I have fixed many flat tires. I can't do it any better than a woman with similar practice. I don't carry a de-linker. I know how to shorten a chain, but it's a son of a bitch to do if it is raining ... I'd end up walking.

We have some reasons to minimize genetic influence: being controlled by genes (mere molecules) gets in the way of our determination to be whatever we want to be, however and wherever. Social construction is just egotism: I can be anything I want to be! Children are told that they can grow up to be president of the United States. (During a persons life between 25 years and 85 years of age, at the most 15 people can be president. 299,999.985 out of 300 million are not going to be president. But hey, it could be you, little Hillary, Elizabeth, Amy, Betsy, William, Richard, George, Ronald...)

I'm somewhat persuaded (not going overboard) that our behavior is largely genetically directed. Since we have apparently exhibited cultural traits for a very long time, I think we can safely say that "some sort of culture" is a biological trait. The detailed expression of culture, though, is learned and can be innovated. Use of language is ancient and genetic; book publishing is a mere 700 year old innovation.

Genetically directed sex-role behavior is ancient; the ink hasn't dried yet on the up-to-the-minute cultural innovations in gender theory. The various "gender categories" (numbering in the dozens) suggests that a lot of the ink of gender thinking is not only still wet, but that a lot of it is also malarky. Yes, with hormones, costuming, and surgery a man or a woman can carry role playing to an extreme.

Technology, business practices, trade, corporate power, and so forth have lowered the economic value of individual human beings. As individual value has decreased, irrelevance has increased. The unpleasant fact is, that whether one is a male human or a female human is just less important than it used to be. Outside of being consumers, a lot of people have no economic utility at all. It just doesn't matter much which "gender" they want to play at. They are free insofar as they as they serve an economic function.

Biology plays a long-run game. The details of culture are just daily news. Oliver is now Olivia. George is gender fluid. Amelia wants to be a Navy Seal. It turns out that the serial killer called the Cannibal King is Emma Johnson.

Yes, no matter what you introduce to them in school they go back to that environment. So should school/education be a way of escaping that? Is it more than teachers can do? Some kids go to school because they can get away from that environment for awhile, but they don’t necessarily engage. — Brett

So much critical development takes place during the first several years of life -- before most children get to school -- that the child can arrive at first grade with significant deficiencies. If optimum language development hasn't happened by age 6, the child has a good medium-term chance of not succeeding in school.

Cultural factors and poverty play a critical role. There are significant differences among groups in how much language children are exposed to, and the rule is, the more the better, the more positive the better. Children who are short-changed by hearing significantly less positive and complex verbal discourse from parents and other care givers just miss the boat on language development.

It is very difficult to remediate missed development in children as they grow older. It might not be impossible, but it would be a very intensive and long project.

Peers play a critical role in how well children do in school. IF most children in a given community like school, like reading, like learning, peer support will help. If the prevailing peer culture dismisses school as an unpleasant burden to be avoided, then peer support will go to avoiding learning.

So, that's one thing.

Another thing is cultural turmoil which leaves everyone uncertain about the nature and future of work, the future of our society (in terms of what anyone may need to know in the future), and the uncertainty of the natural environment and the economy.

We really don't know what exactly lays ahead, but it looks like children (and adults) could be running into unforeseen "cultural discontinuities" to use a vague term to cover over some very unpleasant possibilities in the years ahead that render obsolete and/or irrelevant whatever people have learned.

Just for example, to pick up on a trend that isn't getting enough attention... IF the declines in insect populations continues, the economic sustainability of agriculture will begin sinking (because insects pollinate). What kind of knowledge does one need to know if agriculture starts failing? Beats me. Maybe hand pollination of food crops will be a critical skill in the future.

Is it to make good citizens of our children
is it to help them cope in a competitive world
is to make them fit in and maintain traditions
is it to make them fully rounded out human beings
healthy psychologically, physically and spiritually? — Brett

All of the above, but who, what, when, where, how, and why.

Parents have the first and most critical responsibility: psychological, physical and spiritual health. When parents fuck that up, their children are screwed--not invariably, but almost always. Stupid, fucked up people have difficulty delivering healthy children to kindergarten. (There are unfortunate social reasons why some parents are stupid and fucked up; nevertheless, it is a major handicap to the child to have stupid fucked up parents.)

Citizenship is, I supposed, either learned by 5th/6th grade, or you end up with garbage. Some schools do good work in citizenship development. Some schools should be dynamited. (of course, it isn't corrupted bricks and criminal concrete. Of course, it is corrupted, criminally incompetent administrators and teachers who cause the problem. Plus, you can't make marble New England Citizens out of the dirt who populate a degraded slum.

Parents and schools can launch a child into the competitive world, but once out, it is up to the individual to adapt, survive, and succeed without screwing everybody else. Good luck. The facts of life are hard.

Becoming a well-rounded, four-square, and fully human being is a lifelong task, It's not over until it's over.

Whether fitting in and maintaining traditions is a good idea, or not, depends on the traditions. Maybe one should not fit in.

Let's get serious about security. Enough of this sickly inability to use force!

It isn't the physical barrier that effectively keeps people in or out. What works are the land mines, the machine guns, the watchtowers, drones, mobile pounce squads, ill-tempered guards and worse-tempered guard dogs, and a robust desire to use force. It's the summary executions, the avoidance of fussy civil rights rules, the ICE raids where the illegal workers are carted off to labor camps, and so on.

Are their no planes capable of strafing caravans? Where are the box cars to deliver people back to their beloved homelands?

Brick walls? Naaah!

OK, so how's that rational desire limiting working for you?

Most of us have more desires than we can shake a stick at, so it is a good idea to stop wanting everything we can possibly think of. Wanting less gives one more energy to actually obtain some of the stuff one wants. A paradox. Or is that irony? Or divine wisdom? Or just plain nonsense?

And they are not doing that anyway?

Never mind larks on the wing, snails slithering over the thorn, Robert Browning. CO2 levels are rising, our celestial orb is heating up, insect populations are crashing, God is in His heaven and the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Or, just don't get the body work done -- I mean, if the driver's side door still works, and the windshield is intact, that's pretty much all you need. If your car looks bad enough, other cars will start avoiding you -- bad juju, again. Make it work in your favor.

In far less rarified circumstances than Ming flower pots, I don't like buying even slightly dented cans, or boxes of food that have been slightly crushed. Like the vase (soft 'a' sound, 'z' for 's'), nothing is at stake, really. I've never opened a slightly dented can or slightly crushed box that was anything less than what I expected it to be, but still...

I've observed better-grocers sorting fruit and discarding slightly blemished items. I once asked the produce manager why they did that, and he held up a 'perfect' pear and a slightly blemished pear, and asked me "which one would you buy?" Well, the perfect one, of course. Case closed. Hopefully they donated the slightly blemished pear to a food shelf. THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO BE THAT FUSSY!

When you buy a new car, you should hit the hood with a hammer and put a noticeable dent in it, before you even drive it off the lot. This will relieve the new-car-driver of the horror of getting the perfect new car scratched or scuffed in a parking lot. Just dent the damned thing and get it over with.

Perfection is a maybe-not-quite-literal fetish--less in the sexual sense (being turned on by some thing) and more "bad juju" -- being haunted by a bad vibe. The dented can or barely visible Ming vaaazz is touched by bad juju. It's contaminated. Some people have contaminating power. One might have admired a particular shirt, but if you see it on one of these corroding persons, the shirt is immediately degraded. If Donald Trump were to say he loves to read Dostoyevsky--and worse, quoted something significant from that esteemed author, references to Dostoyevsky would disappear from The Philosophy Forum. Donald Trump's bad juju would spread shit on all of Russian literature for several thousand well-read liberals.

(Fortunately bad juju wears off, and can be cleansed with the appropriate action.)

Of course they should be abolished--not personally, of course. We don't need to liquidate the super rich, just divest them of their ill-gotten gains. Once their financial morbid obesity has been cured, they can work as salaried employees in a research and development company, where they will excrete great ideas for humanity. Or else.

Speaking of research and development, people who think no one will work unless they can get rich, should look at Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technology). The researchers at Bell Labs came up with many discoveries which enabled various new industries. University researchers come up with new ideas all the time, and generally the University owns the patents. That doesn't mean the researchers aren't rewarded, just that the rewards are reasonable.

Do we have writers like Homer, Shakespeare or Doestoevsky? — Brett

We do not, and we do not have Homer's and Shakespeare's time, either. Dostoyevsky is obviously much closer to us.

Question: Are you an active reader of Homer, Shakespeare, and Dostoyevsky, or are they placeholders for an idealized literature?

I have read Homer and I can't say I came away with much satisfaction. Shakespeare is more accessible, closer to us, but I'd take Dostoyevsky over the other two, any day.

I quit focusing on "great literature" a while back. 19th/20th century history and essays on the contemporary world have taken their place; biography, letters, etc. Short stories, some of which are great literature, are more appealing.

I read fiction, certainly -- but I'm looking for engrossing story lines and interesting characters at this point. Great moral messages, not much.

Peace and War — Number2018

the unabridged edition of War and Peace has a sales rank of 43,486 on Amazon--not bad for a book nobody is reading, when sales ranks run into the hundreds of thousands.

Now, now... let's not be stealing sheep.

My children love Monty Python as much now as I did forty years ago. — andrewk

Before I checked in with TPF, I was watching an old BBC interview program in which John Cleese and another Python were defending recently released The Life of Brian against Malcom Muggeridge and some aged Anglican bishop. The two old farts were lamenting the state of western civilization, and how TLOB mocked Christ, and so on and so forth. I thought Muggeridge and this old bishop had probably contributed a lot more to the near death experience of Christianity in England than Monte Python and all their works did.

Right, I wouldn't recommend anybody watch Monte Python for moral uplift -- that's not what they do. I'm not sure the bishop does that either, frankly. Or Muggeridge. Watch Python for inspired humor and a good laugh.

As you say, Andrew, literature (and the arts all combined) provide a lot of services for us--intellectually, emotionally, morally, and more.

Culture does provide time & trouble saving teaching through parents teaching their children how to behave -- that's the first crack that "the culture" gets. School, church, the playground, and so forth add on more later.

Here's an item in the Guardian (London) about a groundswell in favor of taxing the rich much more heavily. You might find it interesting.

I wonder if it were feasible to dismantle these dynasties... like you can only pass on $10 million or less per person. — Judaka

Yes, this is perfectly possible. After the excesses of the late 19th century gilded age, the progressives in the US passed much higher taxes on wealthy people. It was really the "Reagan Revolution" starting in 1980 where wealth taxes were cut and we headed back into another "gilded age". Here's a chart showing the 20th century history of economic inequality.

I may have to read Capital myself and see what he is saying precisely. — Judaka

Good idea. I haven't read it myself--just excerpts and summaries by others. Not reading books I recommend others read is not commendable, but... one can only get so much done in a day.

I assume at least some ultra-rich will make some businesses and be a bit productive, invest into companies and make them more productive... things like that. The main problem appear to be the social and political implications. — Judaka

Well, taking Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway as an example again, Buffet has nothing to gain by wrecking his various corporate assets. If Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad is badly run and starts falling apart, it won't do Buffet any good at all. Same for all the various businesses which capital owns: They need to be operated successfully to hold their value.

It seems more logical to assume that increased capital can only increase economic growth. — Judaka

One of the means by which capital became so very fat was by getting tax law changed to cut estate taxes (allowing more to pass to heirs after death) and slash income taxes for the richest bracket. These changes starve governments of revenue, and displace the tax burden onto those less and least able to pay.

Government plays a role in economic growth, but in order to do its part, it needs adequate revenue. How does it stimulate growth? By building and maintaining big infrastructure -- roads, airports, locks and dams, canals, ports, railroads, and the like. These projects facilitate economic activity and put people to work, increasing prosperity and broad economic activity. With adequate income the government has subsidized education (K - PhD) to maintain a strong intellectual base. In many countries the state operates national health insurance which controls costs and improves broad health outcomes [which is why, without a national health insurance plan, the US compares so poorly to other countries on health outcomes per dollar spent].

So: diverting income to the super rich through favorable taxation plans starves government and burdens the working classes, all of which cuts the standard of living over the long run. Here's an example: the states used to support colleges and universities at about 75%. This enabled higher education to offer large numbers of people affordable tuition, and at the same time do research and public service. Now, most states pay only 25% of university costs which means much higher tuition, fewer public service programs, less pure research, and more corporate involvement.

Starved of taxation, government (federal down to local) have difficulty delivering the services which are critical to maintaining economic growth (g).

Can you explain your reasoning as to why this leads you to believe inequality leads to lowered economic growth? I am not saying you're wrong but I don't quite understand it.

What ramifications are there for r>g for the mid-level entrepreneur that make him different from the ultra rich? — Judaka

People in my age group -- I'm 72 -- grew up in the post-WWII boom. This boom lasted from the end of the war up to about the end of the 1960s, give or take 15 minutes. During this time economic growth (g) was actually pretty high. I don't know what the percent was, but millions of upward mobile minded people were able to buy houses, cars, have children, go to college, and create some new wealth for themselves. Around the beginning of 1970 (maybe 1973, the Arab Oil Boycott) the boom fizzled out. Since 1980 the trend has been toward continually increased inequality, and we are now back to where we were in 1910--very unequal.

I am not an economist, please understand. As I understand it, the very rich who own capital assets (like land, large shares of corporations, and so on) can count on a steady income from their property--at the rate of 4% to 5%. they don't have to do anything, really, to keep the cash flowing. They tend to become risk averse. They don't want to rock the boat of their wealth. They invest safely in assets that will return a steady and reliable yield.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, who either borrowed money or obtained it by some other means, can't afford to sit on their assets. They want to find business opportunities where their $100,000 investment will increase rapidly -- not at 4% a year, but by by 15% a year, at least for a while. In order to get high rates of return, one has to take more risks, which means betting on innovative technologies which may or may not pay off.

Entrepreneurs--for better and worse--drive economic activities in new directions -- toward the electric car; toward the new app; toward the high volume low cost airline; toward the non-farm method of making meat (cultivating cell cultures in a vat, rather than cell cultures on the hoof) and so on. Micro-breweries are a recent innovation -- never used to exist. All the apps on a smart phone never used to exist.

Some old businesses will always be around: Mining and smelting metal, for example; agriculture and food/fiber processing; transportation in one form or another; forestry and wood products; construction, etc. But take a look at construction: Maybe the printed house will be the next big thing to invest in -- it will be risky, but it might pay off for some.

Economic growth doesn't come from owning large blocks of Manhattan property. (Many New York skyscrapers are on leased land which has been owned by the same family for generations.) It comes from what is done on top of the property--by entrepreneurs.

Take Warren Buffet, owner of Berkshire Hathaway -- one of the richest people in the world. Buffet invests in businesses that have already proved themselves to be successful -- like Dairy Queen, for instance, or Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. He is very unlikely to invest in a company making "beef" in a factory. When Buffet dies, his heirs will come into a huge fortune which will carry little risk.

The difference between the entrepreneur and the rich is that the wealth of the rich is pretty much guaranteed. The wealth of the entrepreneur is on thin ice and has to be looked after. The entrepreneur can go broke overnight if he isn't careful; the rich are in no risk of going broke (short of some sort of cataclysm).

Entrepreneurs can become very rich if they are very lucky. If they are just somewhat lucky, they may make a decent income. If they are unlucky, their investment will break even. If they are very unlucky, they may have to consider which dumpster will offer the best pickings.

The best way to get rich is to be the sole heir of a fabulously rich old man with heart disease. (So I have heard, anyway.)

I'm all in favor of social welfare programs, but welfare is not socialism. Socialism entails industrial democracy where the workers own the economy and direct its activities. (Most people are workers, so you'll be a participant.).

Automation and "artificial intelligence" is already cutting into white-collar and managerial jobs too. Labor, in general, is viewed as an unfortunate expense, so the more the entrepreneur can get rid of employees, the better. The work-force liquidating entrepreneur is short sighted, however. Who will buy his products and services if large swaths of the population are jobless and impoverished?

The solution proposed, nowhere implemented, is the guaranteed living wage, where the government pays the many jobless a fixed sum. This enables the jobless to take care of themselves, and it provides them with an income which ends up being spent on goods and services -- driving the economy.

Finland recently terminated a 2 year experiment of giving a random group of unemployed people a fixed sum every month. The control group did not receive the funds. The upshot is that the recipients of the cash were happier and healthier after two years, but were still not employed for the most part. Neither was the control group employed.

Do you have any resources about economies becoming less productive because of inequality? I'd like to learn about that if it's true. — Judaka

The problem of concentrated wealth in a nutshell is this: The uber-wealthy, who control such a large share of capital, have little incentive to innovate or invent. Continual growth of their already great wealth, and inequality, is pretty much guaranteed, short of a revolution or disaster (like WWI/the great depression/and WWII) which dispossessed them of much of their assets.

According to French Economist, Thomas Pikkety... r > g, where r = return on capital, and g = economic growth. In the long run, (like the last 250 years) r has been about 4% to 5%, and g has been about 1/10 of 1% -- a little bit above zero. So, obviously, those who own capital (land barons, traditionally, but also big share holders in Amazon or the RAMJAC Corporation***) get richer and richer, and everybody else does not.

Here is a PBS News Hour segment on Pikkety (a little over 6 minutes)

Here is another -- Bill Moyers speaking with Paul Krugman about Pikkety's book CAPITAL. (24 minutes)

NOTE TO @HANOVER: Pikkety is not a Marxist.

***RAMJAC Corporation is an invention of Kurt Vonnegut. In the novel Jailbird, we discover that RAMJAC Corporation owns 19% of all the wealth in the United States.

I was speculating on what might be the case in 200 years, per your request. I think overstating the case would sound like "In 200 years several city-satellites of a million people each will orbit the earth." OR "in 200 years the earth's human population will have disappeared."

How can one overstate any 200-year estimation? Do you know what will exist in 200 years? If Thomas Jefferson had speculated about life in 2018, could he have over- (or under) estimated anything? He hadn't seen the first train in the US. (Jefferson had seen a steam boat in the late 1700s). Could Jefferson have predicted the ball point pen? An electric iron? Digging oil wells (started just 30 years after his death)? The means and end of slavery? A light bulb. A simple box camera?

Given that the various governments, corporations, and NGOs are unable to mobilize themselves and the population to sharply reduce the use of fossil fuels, it seems inevitable that we will continue to add a lot of CO2 and methane, and other green house gases to the atmosphere for quite a while. Technological turn-arounds are possible, but generally take quite a stretch of time. By the time we achieve significant CO2 reductions, it will probably be too late.

Am I unaware of the progress we are making? I am aware. I know that many electric utilities are now on track to produce a significant share of electricity (like...25%) from wind and solar within the next 5 to 7 years. I also know that oil is relatively cheap and most people are still buying new cars. The population is still growing, and people aspire to higher standards of living--both of which promise an enlarged CO2 output.

We didn't have a lot of time to make alternative arrangements when Global Warming became a thing back around 1985, and that was 35 years ago. Now we are chewing through the 10 years that we thought we had to make big changes, and we haven't made them yet (on a local, et alone global scale).

So, yes, I am pessimistic about our chances of avoiding the negative consequences of run-away global warming. However, I'm not expecting eco-armageddon next week. (more like... maybe 2050?)

One thing that is for sure, Capitalism isn't going to solve the problem.

In 200 years? in 2219 we will be living in an altogether different environmental regime. IF we continue to use hydrocarbons and exhaust the supply, continue to burn coal, continue to to pursue consumption over conservation, then global warming will have been beyond control for roughly 200 years. The climate will be warmer, oceans much higher. The asian glaciers will have melted (and will no longer feed the major asian river systems). The population of the planet is likely to have already dropped significantly and its lower carrying capacity will continue depopulation (natural depopulation will be brutal.)

Of necessity, the most useful technology will be simple and or primitive compared to the Hanover's BEST 100 list. As James H. Kunstler has shown, our whole productive system is predicated on cheap hydrocarbons. For its complex molecules and abundance, there is no substitute for petroleum. (Coal? Don't bother.)

Predicting what economic system will prevail in 200 years is out of the question. We don't know how much turmoil, upheaval, and chaos we will be dealing with 100, 150, or 200 years from now.