NationStates Jolt Archive

A comment I read yesterday made me think. Since biodiversity is requisite for a healthy ecosystem (the health of an ecosystem may even be measured by its biodiversity), is socio-economic inequality necessary for a truly healthy society/community/economy?

I'd say yes. No matter what system you have, there will always be a poor class. The divides in the classes actually drive a sociao-economic system further than it would have gone in a classless society. Niche markets can crop up and different driving forces power different sections of the economy rather than simply having one force drive the entre economy.

No matter what system you have, there will always be a poor class.
I am not asking what actually happens in reality. I am asking whether it's necessary for a healthy community. Whether it is actually healthier overall like that.

no, because socio-economic inequality (and social classes in general) restricts the options available to people. a class sytem throws up barriers that keep some people from fully developing their talents and skills, while rewarding others who make no contribution at all other than merely owning things (or being born into the right class, etc. depending on the class system in question).

I say yes, though I'm not thrilled about it.
Who else is going to wash the dishes, pick up the trash, etc.?
How would that work? Would you just trade off these jobs to keep everything *equal*?
Economics professor today, scrubbing toilets tomorrow.

Speaking of the greater good on a boilogical (and assuming evolutionary) level, without the promise of incentives, what's the driving force for advancement?
Personally, when the welfare state becomes totally pervasive, I'm quitting the job I like and sitting on my ass...
And I won't be alone. How many people do you know who'd follow suit equipped with a full arsenal of acceptable excuses?

There are two reasons why it's healthy.

First: You must have a group of unemployed workers if you expect to grow your economy. Let's say Wal-Mart decides to open a new store. They need people to work in that store. Who will they hire? They will hire people who are currently unemployed. If there were no unemployed people, then when Wal-Mart tries to open their store they would have to draw workers from other stores and industries, causing the whole economy to be understaffed. Ideally, you don't want the same people to be unemployed all the time, but it is necessary to have unemployed people.

Second: You need rich people. Rich people are the people who employ us. How many of us work for someone who makes less money than we do? Also, the upper-class gives the rest of us a goal to strive for. I don't want to be broke the rest of my life. I want to be rich someday. I know that there are some people who believe that true equality and justice can only happen in a society without classes. History has shown that such a system doesn't spread the wealth like it is intended to, but rather it spreads the misery. Besides that, a class system is natural. To have no classes would require way too much government interference in the lives of the people

Define inequality.
If you mean the way homeless people are treated by the [U.S.] government now, then no.
If you mean simply having a wide range from Malibu spoiled brats to dead end retard children of crack whores or "oppressed personages of the street", then yes, that's one of the unfortunate yet inevitable results of any economic system (yes, ANY).

And by the way, I use spoiled Beverly Hills folk for skeet shooting... well no, but I thoroughly enjoy watching their children suffer in school due to their own stupidity, ineptitude, lack of common sense, inability to relate to real life situations, lack of integrity, and spoiled behavior.

I disagree completely. I think society should be roughly equal. However jobs like coal miner or construction workers should be paid more because they are harder and less pleasent. Easy jobs like light office work should be paid the least.

I agree with the idea that perhaps rich people serve as inspiration to the poor to work harder but I hate assholes who just inherit a fortune and act like they are better then everybody else. In my opinion repealing the estate tax was one of the most appalling things Bush did. We should confisicate the wealth or the rich when they die and use it for the public good. Their kids should have to earn their wealth.

Second: You need rich people. Rich people are the people who employ us. How many of us work for someone who makes less money than we do? Also, the upper-class gives the rest of us a goal to strive for. I don't want to be broke the rest of my life. I want to be rich someday. I know that there are some people who believe that true equality and justice can only happen in a society without classes. History has shown that such a system doesn't spread the wealth like it is intended to, but rather it spreads the misery. Besides that, a class system is natural. To have no classes would require way too much government interference in the lives of the people

1) work needs to be done, no matter who owns the means of production.

2) that goal has to be steeped in unrealistic mythology, otherwise it doesn't work. people need to believe that you become rich through working hard for others, when the real way to be rich is to own things.

3) you aren't thinking of real classless societies, you are thinking of crazy-ass marxist-leninist-etc countries. those had an explicit and very real class system. the real classless societies that we know of were quite good at sharing their wealth and providing for all rather well. much better than class based ones anyway (at least until the invention of modern medicine and the welfare state).

4) classless societies pre-date class based ones. and class based ones were a distinct minority for most of human existence - until they were finally successful in enslaving and killing off the remaining classless ones in the past couple hundred years. in other words, classless ones have just as good a claim to being 'natural', if not a better one.

3) you aren't thinking of real classless societies, you are thinking of crazy-ass marxist-leninist-etc countries. those had an explicit and very real class system. the real classless societies that we know of were quite good at sharing their wealth and providing for all rather well. much better than class based ones anyway (at least until the invention of modern medicine and the welfare state).

4) classless societies pre-date class based ones. and class based ones were a distinct minority for most of human existence - until they were finally successful in enslaving and killing off the remaining classless ones in the past couple hundred years. in other words, classless ones have just as good a claim to being 'natural', if not a better one.

What classless societies are you talking about? Native peoples? They were kind of quaint, but they never advanced themselves. Unless there was a group of Native American Indians who landed on the moon or who cured Polio that I have forgotten about. Besides, even in those societies there were still classes. There were no economic classes, but there was a governing class and a governed class. Women were not given the same rights as men, so there you have a class distinction. But the people had no initiative to improve themselves or their society. So they just wallowed around in misery until they died at the ripe old age of 40. They did a really good job at improving the standard of living.

1) work needs to be done, no matter who owns the means of production.

2) that goal has to be steeped in unrealistic mythology, otherwise it doesn't work. people need to believe that you become rich through working hard for others, when the real way to be rich is to own things.

3) you aren't thinking of real classless societies, you are thinking of crazy-ass marxist-leninist-etc countries. those had an explicit and very real class system. the real classless societies that we know of were quite good at sharing their wealth and providing for all rather well. much better than class based ones anyway (at least until the invention of modern medicine and the welfare state).

4) classless societies pre-date class based ones. and class based ones were a distinct minority for most of human existence - until they were finally successful in enslaving and killing off the remaining classless ones in the past couple hundred years. in other words, classless ones have just as good a claim to being 'natural', if not a better one.

1) Yes but it won't get done if there is no incentive to do it, that a class system provides, which is the problem. There either has to incentive or punishment.

2) And how do you own things, you produce them and get rich. In a classless society you own the same as everybody else no matter what, so why work? So nothing gets produced, so nobody owns anything and we're worse off.

3 & 4) All classless societies have been before technology. No classless societies have existed on a large scale. Classless societies don't advance because their is no incentive for anyone to learn new ways to do things, and there's no incentive to invent things. That there have been more classless societies than class socities is a lie. Most socities had slavery, most had serfs or lower classes, most had rulers who were rich. The only socities that have been classless were either religious based (ie Hutterites, Amish) or nomadic tribes. Once a society starts with agricultural, class begins. Classless socities weren't all that great as they rarely had agriculture to produce food, and depended on hunting and foraging, you got barely enough to survive.

What classless societies are you talking about? Native peoples? They were kind of quaint, but they never advanced themselves. Unless there was a group of Native American Indians who landed on the moon or who cured Polio that I have forgotten about. Besides, even in those societies there were still classes. There were no economic classes, but there was a governing class and a governed class. Women were not given the same rights as men, so there you have a class distinction. But the people had no initiative to improve themselves or their society. So they just wallowed around in misery until they died at the ripe old age of 40. They did a really good job at improving the standard of living.

99.99% of class societies didn't exactly land on the moon or cure polio either, you know.

and no, there were not governing and governed classes among the egalitarian societies i'm thinking of. and while they did have sexual division of labor, in at least some of them women were fully equal with men in all other respects.

you'd need to define 'improve' for that to be meaningful. they improved everything they felt needed improvement - their tool technologies, their rituals, etc. but why bother 'improving' your life style when you already only really work 18 hour weeks and live longer and healthier and happier lives than your agricultural neighbors? their standard of living was as high as their technology allowed, and much better than that possible to the average person under class societies until modern times. not too shabby.

99.99% of class societies didn't exactly land on the moon or cure polio either, you know.

and no, there were not governing and governed classes among the egalitarian societies i'm thinking of. and while they did have sexual division of labor, in at least some of them women were fully equal with men in all other respects.

you'd need to define 'improve' for that to be meaningful. they improved everything they felt needed improvement - their tool technologies, their rituals, etc. but why bother 'improving' your life style when you already only really work 18 hour weeks and live longer and healthier and happier lives than your agricultural neighbors? their standard of living was as high as their technology allowed, and much better than that possible to the average person under class societies until modern times. not too shabby.

Are you by any chance a follower of John Zerzan?

1) Yes but it won't get done if there is no incentive to do it, that a class system provides, which is the problem. There either has to incentive or punishment.

incentive can be provided in ways beyond those endorsed by capitalism's class system. at the most basic there is necessity - work gets done because it has to. beyond that there is the work that gets done because people find it fulfilling in some way. if you look at the data, you will find that most people list this as the main reason they do the job they do. nobody becomes a teacher because they want to get rich. doctors don't run off to do work with médecins sans frontières because that is the work that is the most highly valued in capitalist societies, etc. once we deal with doing the necessary work in a fair manner, people will be free to persue the work they find to be fulfilling. i fully expect that to be more than enough to see us through. if not, we provide some other form of incentive as necessary. as long as things remain egalitarian, it doesn't matter.

2) And how do you own things, you produce them and get rich. In a classless society you own the same as everybody else no matter what, so why work? So nothing gets produced, so nobody owns anything and we're worse off.

actually, you own things either by getting other people to produce them and then you take them as payment for your 'services', or you buy the things off of somebody else who did this. only very rarely, if ever, does anybody get rich entirely based on their own production. and they certainly don't stay that way because of it.

in capitalism your work is almost always worth more than you are paid for it.

in a classless society, if you work, you see the direct benefit of your work (labor deserves all that it creates, after all). and if you work in a group, each of you benefits individually by working, and each of you is individually harmed by slacking. a classless society does not demand an exactly equal distribution of resources, but rather an equitable one.

3 & 4) All classless societies have been before technology. No classless societies have existed on a large scale.

there have been a number of modern classless societies that have been fairly large scale and only ceased to exist due to outside forces. parts of spain during the civil war, for example.

Are you by any chance a follower of John Zerzan?

no - he loses me when he says that symbolic though is oppression.

i'm not even a primitivist. i like video games too much. i just happen to have an anthropology minor, and know a thing or two about 'primitive communism'.

While income inequality needs to be fixed, there still needs to be unemployed and other types of workers besides fulltime to keep the economy viable. It allows for a boom because jobs are created through increased consumer spending, and the increased consumer spending is because of jobs... But you always need unemployed people because there is a need to replace returing, incompetant and other types of workers.

no - he loses me when he says that symbolic though is oppression.

i'm not even a primitivist. i like video games too much. i just happen to have an anthropology minor, and know a thing or two about 'primitive communism'.

It would be pretty fun to be a naked tribal man eating berrires and living in a cave for a while, but I would miss our hyper modern culture as well. Anyway I hope that trend in anarchy has died out by now, but I don't really have any anarchist friends anymore so I haven't kept up with the latest soup de jour theories.

I thought you were hinting at a primitivist soulution in your earlier posts in which case I would have had to argue with you.

If we only define class in terms of economics, then classless societies are possible and income/wealth inequality is not essential. I doubt however such a system would be "healthy". Unequal wealth provides incentive for constant change, and allows for something which affects one wealth level to have a minimal impact on other wealth levels - ie if caviar trebles in price then most of an unequal system will be unaffected as they cannot afford caviar in the first place, while a trebling in the price of gasoline will have a minimal impact on the wealthiest classes while culling the weakest from the poorer classes.

An interesting concept, it does bear more serious consideration. Why is biodivirsity good for an ecosystem? IS biological diversity equivalent to economic diversity? Do the advantages of bio-diversity really equate to advantages for economic diversity? I actually think not, despite the appearancs of the first paragraph. The advantage of biodiversity is that it contains multiple redundancies, if one species is affected then other species are availible to pick up the slack and help fill it's functions in the ecological system. Diversity of wealth, however, does not equate to diversity of function, instead a diversity of skills is what is important for a healthy economic system, so that bank-tellers can become store clerks if something kills of the store clerks and coal miners can become silver miners if something kills off the silver miners.