Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth • Hacker News Board

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#91

Post by DefaultUserHN » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #49

matwood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So anytime the mob goes against my wishes it was clearly uninformed :)

No. You and your sibling seem to be thinking along the same lines. When the mob goes against your wishes you've been overruled. But when the mob (or any entity) makes a decision that results in harm to itself, that was a bad decision. Decision-by-mob is incredibly amenable to this consequence. Mobs are too easily swayed by rhetoric, appeals to emotion (particularly fear and anger, see the practical lynch mob calling…

I say we setup an institution of well-informed individuals to make decisions for us. We can call them the Ministry of Truth.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#92

Post by ende » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

lastyearman wrote: post #86

ende wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Moving towards "socialism" by increasing taxation on the ultra-wealthy is a move to restore balance and guide us away from one extreme which has gained in popularity in the past 30 years. What you just described is not socialism, or even approaching socialism. It could be best described as social-democracy, which is a completely unrelated concept. Socialism would be banning private enterprise in favor of direct stat…

I may be completely wrong on this one but isn't social-democracy a sort of compromise between socialism and capitalism? So I wouldn't call it entirely unrelated.

You're not wrong. Where proper socialism seeks to supplant capitalism (and property law) through the power of the state, social democracy instead seeks to exist within the basic capitalistic framework while attempting to curbe its perceived social injustices through state intervention into the market economy and provisioning of social welfare services.

In some respect it's a compromise; mostly in that many of Europe's social democrats emerged from discredited hard core socialist parties. American social democrats, on the other hand, emerged out of a split with liberalism and ironically kept the name.

The distinction is important though. Social democracy in practice translates to simple fiscal policy. Actual socialism would imply a complete overthrow of our judicial and legislative systems.

Re: Hawking: We need to rethink our attitude towards wealth

#93

Post by gonvaled » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #79

gonvaled wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is a relative term: somebody without a shirt is poor because nearly everybody has a shirt, not because shirts are absolutely necessary. Edit: not sure why I am being downvoted. Take the poorest man on Earth today; he is richer than most men alive 20 thousand years ago. I would argue that he would conquer any ancient society.

What's your point? Not everyone "deserves" a shirt? Seems like an incomplete analysis.

That simple things that we take for granted in our day-to-day live are luxuries (or even impossibilities) in other contexts . Which I use to show that poverty is a relative them.

The analysis is surely incomplete.