Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality • Hacker News Board

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#171

Post by Florin_Andrei » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

edblarney wrote: post #166

sigmaprimus wrote: post #80

I love reading the comments on stories like this and consider these comments to be a bellwether as to the current state of inequality in our society. Unfortunately I tend to consider myself one who exists on the lower part of the wealth distribution logarithm within the western world, globally it's a different story. Just as anyone tweeting on their smart phone or tablet claiming to be part of the 99% might want to r…

"Could it be that the rise in terror incedents recently may in fact be caused by this inequality and not just radical religious zealots? " The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Many of those 'terrorist nations' have ample natural resources, in the way of Oil - and would be prosperous, glorious civilizations were it not for their totalitarian means, and total lack of intelligent social organization. The US…

> The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game.

Yes, but violence is mostly powered by irrational impulses, at least to get started. It may co-opt reason later in the process, but initially it's just a visceral eruption. So it does not care at all about zero-sum games and whatnot. It only cares that the bastard over'ere seems to have too much stuff and I don't have any.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#172

Post by openasocket » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

He seems to be talking about rapid changes to inequality. But inequality has been in steady decline for centuries (the last few decades in the US are a blip in comparison to the overall downward trend). These general downward trends that occur at the pace of decades or centuries can't be directly attributed to warfare, can it?

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#173

Post by snappyTertle » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

njharman wrote: post #151

snappyTertle wrote: post #46

Inequality is not inherently a bad thing. People should be compensated for the value they produce. Profits are a signal of how much people value what is produced. For example, people love iPhones, it no surprise that Apple is the most valuable company in the world. What causes resentment between classes is lack of mobility. This, IMO, is caused by government regulations and a banking system that hurts the middle clas…

> People should be compensated for the value they produce. Why? That is an opinion, not a fact. My opinion is that people unconditionally deserve shelter, food, healthcare, education, and liberty. As efficiency increased we could have made everyone work less. Instead those gains were funneled to owners, to capitalists. Who actually don't produce anything and live off of the labor of others.

I agree that it is an opinion. It's a choice between liberty or equality, we can't have both. In order to make things equal, people are forced to give up their income.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#174

Post by vkou » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

Dirlewanger wrote: post #129

lightbyte wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violence has historically been the only way for racial change to occur.

Because Martin Luther King Jr. was such a large proponent of violence...

Martin Luther King would not have gotten anywhere if it weren't for people like Malcolm X (Who scared the hell out of white America.)

When you've got Black Panthers on the streets with assault weapons, negotiating with (Instead of ignoring) a pacifist Baptist minister suddenly starts to sound like a way better idea.

Ghandi won because the empire was, quite literally, too broke to hold on to its colonies. An Indian nationalist movement would not have gotten anywhere before the World Wars bankrupted England.

Mind you, today, Martin Luther King's boycotts and marches are called economic terrorism.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#175

Post by germinalphrase » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #87

germinalphrase wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culturally, Americans have chosen "Nazis" and zombies as default groups on which we can assert violence without questioning our moral values or their expression. While Richard Spencer is even saying in that clip that he isn't a Neo Nazi (before getting punched) - a great deal of the American population don't draw the lines as finely as he might. He's certainly said some things that put him in that world of thought. I…

I'm also uncomfortable with violence but I don't have an answer to the inevitable "well what else should we do". Facts, reasonable logic, and ridicule do not seem to work. Do you have any suggestions?

Turn off the media and talk to your neighbors?

Interpersonally, I think we need to keep pushing the belief that there is more than unites us than divides us. At the core of it, we all really want the same sort of stuff (safety, purpose, love, fun, etc.) The more we allow ourselves to be divided (by media, by political rhetoric, by rumor and gossip, by hate) the less likely we will be able to hold those with real power and influence to task - the less we will be able to shape policy and investment in such a way that everyone in our communities benefit.

Big picture, we need to create communities in which all people - including disaffected bigots - can feel that they are thriving (rather than merely surviving). If we do that then these groups, and this repressible rhetoric, will find less support and fewer fertile minds to pollute.

That's my belief anyway.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#176

Post by edblarney » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #171

edblarney wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Could it be that the rise in terror incedents recently may in fact be caused by this inequality and not just radical religious zealots? " The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Many of those 'terrorist nations' have ample natural resources, in the way of Oil - and would be prosperous, glorious civilizations were it not for their totalitarian means, and total lack of intelligent social organization. The US…

> The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Yes, but violence is mostly powered by irrational impulses, at least to get started. It may co-opt reason later in the process, but initially it's just a visceral eruption. So it does not care at all about zero-sum games and whatnot. It only cares that the bastard over'ere seems to have too much stuff and I don't have any.

Yeah, I agree with that. 'Perception of inequality' is perhaps all that matters.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#177

Post by snappyTertle » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

colefichter wrote: post #154

snappyTertle wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher wages drive prices up, and price out less productive workers. Sure, the people who remain employed are better off. But what about everyone who has to pay higher prices, and workers who are now unable to find a job? Why is it ok to tax profitable businesses/people for the sake of equality? I get it if they don't earn their profits fairly. Why should we steal from top producers and redistribute? Taxes should not…

> Taxes should not be a means to redistribute wealth. Isn't that more or less impossible? The whole point of a tax is that you take money from the broader population and spend it on something (a war, a road, libraries, public transit, food stamps, etc) that benefits only a subset of that population. Taxation is, by definition, wealth redistribution. Furthermore, > Why is it ok to tax profitable businesses/people for…

I absolutely agree with you. Taxation is, by definition, wealth redistribution..and theft by people in power!

I think the more important question is what are we spending taxes on? and why does it have to be decided by a bureaucratic monopoly that is above the law a.k.a. government? Shouldn't we have a choice in how we allocate our own resources? Is it not our own time and labor that we use to produce? Why does that belong to anyone else?

I'm not against helping others in need. But the important distinction is that is should be by choice not from coercion.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#178

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 7:02 PM UTC

daemin wrote: post #47

PaulRobinson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is really interesting, especially as how it has played out in recent years - right up to the last few months - in the UK. I used to know a guy who worked for a trade union who was bemoaning its demise. In 1997 when Labour came to power in the UK for the first time in nearly 20 years, they strengthened employment laws so well, the need for trade union was perceived as lesser by much of the membership. Thi…

Most likely what will happen, and I believe this is the case already in most businesses, that the cleaning functions will be outsourced to a separate company. Therefore the limit won't be the cleaner earning 10k/y, but some office admin person earning 30k/y (just guessing that one). Now then a CEO might want to outsource those jobs as well, so the company would officially only employ the highest income people. Either…

I have really had it with this kind of bullshit gamesmanship. If the people at the top default to exploiting the rules for their own advantage, why should anyone bother to play within the rules when it's so much more profitable to subvert them?

In the context of sports, this manifests as using procedural methods to run out the clock or interrupt play by complaining that a foul has taken place, or causing a foul because the penalty (letting the other team have a shot at the goal or having a player sent off temporarily) is an acceptable price to pay for interrupting the momentum and scoring ability of the other team. All sports teams want to preserve their options under the rules, but some teams seem to rely more on leveraging the rules than on superior performance onthe field. This may be pleasing to their hardcore fans, but when all the action is on the sidelines I feel it's a sign of the team going into decline.

I feel the same way about business. If a firm's corporate identity is built on clever legal and accounting tricks and PR rather than the provision of a valuable product or service by people who enjoy their jobs, then it's likely a shitty firm. Unfortunately there are quite a lot of shitty firms, and their cumulative effect on the economy as a whole is cancerous.

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#179

Post by killcapitalists » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

golemotron wrote: post #4

In the past few weeks the idea of 'legitimatizing violence' has been circulating heavily. On my Facebook feed most of it has centered on the idea that it is "okay" to punch neo-nazis now. The people saying this are people I'd never expect to. Twitter is similar. I wish I had stats on whether the legitimatization meme is really rising. To me, it looks like the fake news meme. Suddenly it's everywhere.

History has clearly demonstrated that Nazis cannot be defeated through discourse within civil society.

Here's a quote from Frank Frison, a Holocaust survivor:

"If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else. Those who recognised its threat at the time and tried to stop it were, I assume, also called "a mob". Regrettably too many "fair-minded" people didn't either try, or want to stop it, and, as I witnessed myself during the war, accommodated themselves when it took over. People who witnessed fascism at its height are dying out, but the ideology is still here, and its apologists are working hard at a comeback. Past experience should teach us that fascism must be stopped before it takes hold again of too many minds, and becomes useful once again to some powerful interests."

Re: Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality

#180

Post by munificent » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

openasocket wrote: post #172

He seems to be talking about rapid changes to inequality. But inequality has been in steady decline for centuries (the last few decades in the US are a blip in comparison to the overall downward trend). These general downward trends that occur at the pace of decades or centuries can't be directly attributed to warfare, can it?

We have certainly had no shortage of wars in the past couple of centuries. Just in the past two hundred years, in order of largest death tolls[1], I see:

    * World War II
    * Taiping Rebellion
    * Second Sino-Japanese War
    * World War I/Great War
    * Dungan Revolt
    * Chinese Civil War
    * Russian Civil War and Foreign Intervention
    * Napoleonic Wars
    * Second Congo War/Great War of Africa
    * Shaka's conquests
    * Vietnam War/Second Indochina War
    * Biafra War
    * Mexican Revolution
    * Soviet war in Afghanistan
    * Korean War
    * Iran–Iraq War/First Persian Gulf War
    * American Civil War
    * Spanish American Wars of Independence
    * Angolan Civil War
    * Ethiopian Civil War
    * Spanish Civil War

All told, those are something like a couple hundred million dead. Them for each of those human bodies, consider how many living are profoundly affected by their death.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll