Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

peternixey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 108 posts

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#11

Post by white-flame »

If the poor end of the wealth gap are still better off than 90% of the rest of the world, why does the wealth gap matter?

That was my thinking for quite a while.

However, the one thing that happens here in the US is that the wealthy have more representation and power in the legal system. Be it federal or local, the systems tend to get slanted against the not-wealthy because the wealthy take over the communications channel to the movers & shakers.

It's in many ways becoming the new "taxation without representation".

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#12

Post by soneca »

spikels wrote: post #6
twoquestions wrote: post #3

This guy put into much better words what I've been thinking for a while. It doesn't matter to me at all that Bill Gates has more money than God, because he's empathetic to people who aren't as rich and aren't as great as he is, and wants to continue to use his strength to lift people up instead of feathering his own nest even more. It's when people get the idea that "I'm better, so I deserve better than Them!" that r…

Can you give some examples of the "Really Bad Things" you are thinking of?

not gp, but I think of rwandan genocide where this idea of power/wealth superiority lead to Really Bad Things.

Maybe French Revolution or Soviet Revolution of 1917? Here I mean that things before the revolutions were really bad and the revolutions were bad in themselves (as bloody).

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#13

Post by RodericDay »

white-flame wrote: post #11

If the poor end of the wealth gap are still better off than 90% of the rest of the world, why does the wealth gap matter? That was my thinking for quite a while. However, the one thing that happens here in the US is that the wealthy have more representation and power in the legal system. Be it federal or local, the systems tend to get slanted against the not-wealthy because the wealthy take over the communications ch…

Exactly.

Wealth isn't a zero-sum game, but power/influence is.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#14

Post by sharemywin »

spikels wrote: post #6
twoquestions wrote: post #3

This guy put into much better words what I've been thinking for a while. It doesn't matter to me at all that Bill Gates has more money than God, because he's empathetic to people who aren't as rich and aren't as great as he is, and wants to continue to use his strength to lift people up instead of feathering his own nest even more. It's when people get the idea that "I'm better, so I deserve better than Them!" that r…

Can you give some examples of the "Really Bad Things" you are thinking of?

use lobbyists. throw lots of soft money at politics. hold bazillions off shore so they can avoid as many taxes as possible. become patent trolls. buy back their own stock so they make themselves rich while screwing ordinary investors and employees and companies. pay less in taxes than their secretaries. Colluding into oligopolies and monopolies so that can extract monopoly profits. stop spending in a recession then complaining because the government does. not training employees and cutting benefits.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#16

Post by oldmanjay »

white-flame wrote: post #11

If the poor end of the wealth gap are still better off than 90% of the rest of the world, why does the wealth gap matter? That was my thinking for quite a while. However, the one thing that happens here in the US is that the wealthy have more representation and power in the legal system. Be it federal or local, the systems tend to get slanted against the not-wealthy because the wealthy take over the communications ch…

There is nothing new in the way the powerful wield more power than the powerless. It's a story older than history.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#17

Post by twoquestions »

spikels wrote: post #6
twoquestions wrote: post #3

This guy put into much better words what I've been thinking for a while. It doesn't matter to me at all that Bill Gates has more money than God, because he's empathetic to people who aren't as rich and aren't as great as he is, and wants to continue to use his strength to lift people up instead of feathering his own nest even more. It's when people get the idea that "I'm better, so I deserve better than Them!" that r…

Can you give some examples of the "Really Bad Things" you are thinking of?

In addition to what soneca said, it could also motivate a government to enact bad populist policy (confiscatory tax rates, punitive wealth confiscation) and leave us all poorer.

Or the elites could convince the government to execute bad policy to protect themselves at the expense of society (like our awful patent system).

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#19

Post by golergka »

I'm pretty sure I've seen an episode of Friends with the exact same story about splitting the lunch. But after that story, I expected the author to bring analogy back to the realm of social and economic matters, and show how, on global scale, wealthy are trying to "divide by the number of people" when they've been ordering more than others, but he never delivered. Just as the book that he criticized, it's just a sympathetic story.

Re: Is it the Wealth Gap that's bad or the Empathy Gap that comes with it?

#20

Post by daodedickinson »

Is it bad that we don't empathize with the Sentinelese? If they knew about us they would feel worse because all of their comparisons, all of their sensations and evaluations would change. The problem is that the poor cannot sense the presence of the rich without immense pain. Neither redistribution, nor empathy are as palliative as ignorance in this case.
Post reply on HN