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Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

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Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#91

Post by qq66 »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #11

Further down in the article, some interesting points about the motivations behind philanthropy. "philanthropy is about more than just social responsibility—it’s about social stability." So other than a genuine desire to do good or vanity seeking that can motivate philanthropy, you have a third element in China - preventing a revolt by the poor on the rich. If you give just enough, you'll keep the poor subdued. I wond…

I would argue that the third motive is one that does not generate as much American philanthropy as it should. Events like the French Revolution usually seem more imminent in hindsight than they did at the time.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#92

Post by dreaminvm »

gozo wrote: post #27
EliRivers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit out of context. The full quote radically changes the meaning: "There are two groups of poor people. One is, you don’t work hard. You deserve to be poor because you don’t work hard. Second is, you work hard but can’t succeed. I think we should help the second group of people."

Which is still ridiculous because the Chinese are the hardest working people I've ever seen. I would assume she and her friends are by far the least hard working demographic in China. It's a just world fallacy if anything.

By hard working Chinese people, are you talking about immigrant Chinese workers or Chinese people in China? You could easily make the argument that migrant workers are historically a hard working demographic, but I don't think the same could be argued for the world's most populous country.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#94

Post by zhemao »

happywolf wrote: post #78
Apfel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh... I think Foo Arr Die is a more accurate pronunciation, no?

No, it has 'er' instead of 'ar' sound. In fact, 'err' is a better word than 'earl'

In Standard Mandarin pronunciation, er is definitely pronounced like "arr". If you don't believe me, listen to the pronunciation given by Google Translate.

https://translate.google.com/#zh-CN/en/%E4%BA%8C

There might be some regional accents which pronounce it more like "err", but "arr" is the standard pronunciation.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#95

Post by Retra »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #86
Retra wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>those were only the worst slave owners for future generations of sociology and history students That's the thing, though: he wasn't speaking as an owned slave, but as a future sociologist/historian. So if they are the worst for future generations, why would it be bullshit that he's claiming they're the worst? Maybe he simply isn't optimizing for immediate value, but for long-term value. And why would you be objectin…

Why should we care about a future sociologist's or historian's opinion about what was "worst"? It seems like the determination of worst would need to be made by someone who actually experienced these things, not someone who never experienced them or even saw them.

We are those future sociologists and historians. Why should we care about some long-dead slaves' opinion about what is good or bad?

The point is that we are trying to do what we can now to make the world better later. It matters what those in the future will think of us, because they will be the ones with the resources to improve upon it after we are gone. And if we do it right, they will be better at handling this stuff than we are.

Of course, if you actually believe things can't improve, then by all means: maximize your own happiness.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#96

Post by MrZongle2 »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #11

Further down in the article, some interesting points about the motivations behind philanthropy. "philanthropy is about more than just social responsibility—it’s about social stability." So other than a genuine desire to do good or vanity seeking that can motivate philanthropy, you have a third element in China - preventing a revolt by the poor on the rich. If you give just enough, you'll keep the poor subdued. I wond…

"So other than a genuine desire to do good or vanity seeking that can motivate philanthropy, you have a third element in China - preventing a revolt by the poor on the rich. If you give just enough, you'll keep the poor subdued."

I sometimes wonder if this is one of the motivations behind the guaranteed minimum income movement.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#97

Post by ronyeh »

happywolf wrote: post #78
Apfel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh... I think Foo Arr Die is a more accurate pronunciation, no?

No, it has 'er' instead of 'ar' sound. In fact, 'err' is a better word than 'earl'

You two probably speak with different accents. In Beijing accent, Foo Arr Die sounds pretty accurate. Arr like a pirate would say it.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#98

Post by meej »

littletimmy wrote: post #46
rcarrigan87 wrote: post #11

Further down in the article, some interesting points about the motivations behind philanthropy. "philanthropy is about more than just social responsibility—it’s about social stability." So other than a genuine desire to do good or vanity seeking that can motivate philanthropy, you have a third element in China - preventing a revolt by the poor on the rich. If you give just enough, you'll keep the poor subdued. I wond…

I really liked this sentiment of Oscar Wilde on charity: “[Charity] is not a solution [to poverty]: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible…Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by thos…

This puts me in mind of Slavoj Zizek on charity.

http://www.vice.com/read/youre-single-because-there-arent-en...

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#99

Post by cherry_su »

LiweiZ wrote: post #55
hellbanner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory in evolutionary biology.

Any nice book offering an overview of evolutionary biology applied to our society that you'd recommend?

Not quite a book, but you might find the materials for this MIT course on Game Theory and Social Behavior insightful: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-11-insights-from-gam...

"We will apply insights from game theory to explain human social behavior, focusing on novel applications which have heretofore been the realm of psychologists and philosophers—for example, why people speak indirectly, in what sense beauty is socially constructed, and where our moral intuitions come from—and eschewing traditional economic applications such as industrial organization or auctions."

I learned about signalling theory in this course, among other insights into why society acts the way it does.

Re: Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China's Rich Kids

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Retra wrote: post #77
veidr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote has always bugged the shit out of me, because: those were only the worst slave owners for future generations of sociology and history students (who mostly didn't descend from slaves). For the actual slaves themselves, the worst slaveowners were the ones who whipped and tortured their slaves in an attempt to extract more value (or just for fun), those who separated children from parents, raped the women or…

>those were only the worst slave owners for future generations of sociology and history students That's the thing, though: he wasn't speaking as an owned slave, but as a future sociologist/historian. So if they are the worst for future generations, why would it be bullshit that he's claiming they're the worst? Maybe he simply isn't optimizing for immediate value, but for long-term value. And why would you be objectin…

> he wasn't speaking as an owned slave, but as a future sociologist/historian.

Then he's optimizing for his value. Which is a really narrow-minded way of looking at the situation. One would hope for a sociologist/historian to be more broad-minded than that.

But I'm not sure to what degree Oscar Wilde was really a sociologist or historian. He was mostly an author, and he specialized in saying things that were counter to society's values. I'm not sure to what degree he believed all of the things he said.

But in the quote in question, his position essentially is "do evil so that good may come". That's a pretty dubious sense of morality.

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