Cobb

*giggle* It's funny when a Conservative dips into the pool of relativism when it suits them. Handy, innit.

I've never come across someone as nakedly enamoured of the rich as you, Cobb. It's a discomfitting sight. Should've called this post what it begs to be called, "Massa be good to us." Geez, man, it's called a profit motive. Ain't nothin magnanimous about it.

Yes, plights can be relative. But if you'd lost even one relative in Katrina, you tellin me you wouldn't consider it a tragedy? Is that what would prop up your stiff lip, the fact that others have died in greater numbers and perhaps more gruesomely? Very philosophical. But if you care about the lives of all -- rich, poor or booshie -- you'll feel the tragedy of *any* needless death.

Indifference is the fifth horseman, friend.

Memer's comment is so full of error I hardly know where to begin. But let's try. He accuses Cobb of being enamored of the rich. Cobb is not enamored of the rich. He's enamored of people who know how to do something. Growing oranges or installing plumbing or making TV sets, so that black people in America and everyone else drinks orange juice, have toilets in their homes and have TVs to watch without the least notion how any of these things work, how they are made, how they get to the stores where they are purchased. And the same people will be taking care of the Katrina victims. The food they eat, the shelters, the money that they receive, it all comes from people who work and who know how to do something. Even if a relative of mine or of Cobb's died in Katrina, that would not change anything I have said in this comment. And yes everything is relative because everything that humans do will always have evil in it. Everything will have error and unforeseen consequences. But the degree of evil in the US is less than anywhere else in the world. In fact it is miraculous. Memer you should go abroad and try to live, try to get a job, or send your kids to school. The poor people here are rich compare to other places.

My brothers puts his hands to steel everyday to make cars. My brother knows how to "do something." The rich make profits off of people like my brother because they know how to make investments. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT SKILL, one that we all should be better at.

But let's be clear here. The rich do not grow oranges, nor do they install plumbing, nor do they make television sets. Working class men and women from here and elsewhere "DO."

The American SAMOA literacy rate is 97%. The American literacy rate is pretty far below that one. Less than 60% of Americans have even picked up a book in the last year, much less FINISHED one.

"The poor people here are rich compare to other places."

Ok, and...? Really, what is the takeaway in saying that? Ignore or take your time with the Yankee Poor cuz, man, it would be worse elsewhere? Just what exactly are you trying to say? Spit it from your contemptuous throat.

The rich don't need a rootin gallery. Like they give a rats ass about your "In praise of..." hip-hip-hoorays. Some people, in their view, need to be on payroll, not heard.

If the rich didn't care there would be no such person as Sciafe. There would be no Cato Institute, no Hoover, no Manhattan Institute. There would only be people like Dennis Kozlowski.

It continues to astonish me that so many people refuse to recognize the morality of business responsibility. Surely my exposure to legions of people who are CPAs and for who 'fiduciary' is a sacred honor has something to do with it. But the fact of the matter is that if America were truly a kleptocracy, it would not function at all. That's Russia, and the Russian rich (and the Chinese rich) are nothing like Americans.

I am coming to a deeper and more fundamental distaste and distrust of those who preach against the principles and apparatus of our nation. Their corrosive populism which rails against the people who feed them is undermining the very sustainability of this civilization.

Contempt. That about sums it up.

The relative richness of poor people matters. Because unless you pass a law saying that everyone has to have the same income, there were always be someone with more and someone with less and the someone with less is the poor one. Russia tried doing that. It didn't work. ARe you going to arrange it so that everyone is rich? Should the government give everyone a big house? Exactly what should be done? And what should be taken from whom?

Cobb, I don't see the point in imagining walls where none exist. Before i go further, could you answer this question: is it your contention that the vast majority of the very rich care deeply about the very poor? For the record, I do not believe that. That's just my sense of things. However, that belief does not necessarily preclude my belief that (some form of) capitalism is the best of all existing worlds. These ideas are independent of each other.

Anita, you miss the point entirely. I was addressing how one treats the very poorest of your society. Again, is the urgency to help others dependent on how close they are to your economic class?

I don't believe that the very rich care for the very poor, but in a Western democracy, the rich understand that their viability is tied to the upward mobility of society in general.

In any society, the rich attempt to encourage loyalty from the poor, but only in the West is it done through institutions for whom all members of society have access.

Because the rich need banks, the poor must also have free and equal access to banks, so there is law that assures that banks work for all levels of society. Thus the FDIC has evolved to protect the interests of banking customers, as an institution which is now independent of the personalities of the rich.

30 years ago, you couldn't get American Express cards if you weren't rich. Very few Americans had credit cards. Now the same kind of flexibility that only the rich had, now everyone has. Not everyone is well suited to managing financial instruments, but it's still open.

So what I am saying is that the rich in Western societies are a particular kind of rich folk unique in world history - they are those who pave a path which is open to all. That is the path of liberty, institutionalized and not subject to the whim of individuals.

These are the institutions that are constantly undermined by the carping of the Left. They would have everyone believe that free markets aren't free and are actually manipulated by rich individuals, and so derail the efforts of the poor and not so poor to take advantage of what is theirs by design. This is essentially treasonous.

Great points as usual Cobb, keep up the great work!!!

*sigh* All kinds of conflation in here. *puts on hard hat* Let's go to work, shall we?

"I don't believe that the very rich care for the very poor, but in a Western democracy, the rich understand that their viability is tied to the upward mobility of society in general."

Their viability? No, not so. What you're describing amounts to a rather impossible inexhaustible pyramid scheme. They can stay plenty rich with folk earning and spending just as they are, thankyouverymuch.

"In any society, the rich attempt to encourage loyalty from the poor, but only in the West is it done through institutions for whom all members of society have access."

The first part of your sentence (re loyalty) necessitates them caring. As for the second part (re so-called "institutions"), you are confusing the acts of a very (very) small minority of rich with the attitude of the class in general.

"Because the rich need banks, the poor must also have free and equal access to banks, so there is law that assures that banks work for all levels of society. Thus the FDIC has evolved to protect the interests of banking customers, as an institution which is now independent of the personalities of the rich."

The poor get banks cuz there's profit in it. Simple. Occam's razor. FDIC exists for the same reason. It's more profitable for the sheep to have a sense of security, real or imagined.

"So what I am saying is that the rich in Western societies are a particular kind of rich folk unique in world history - they are those who pave a path which is open to all. That is the path of liberty, institutionalized and not subject to the whim of individuals.

The question is whether this is out of a conscious magnamosity or is it just the happy accident of their first-adopter spending. I say the latter.

"These are the institutions that are constantly undermined by the carping of the Left. They would have everyone believe that free markets aren't free and are actually manipulated by rich individuals, and so derail the efforts of the poor and not so poor to take advantage of what is theirs by design. This is essentially treasonous."

What are these 'institutions' of which you laud? Banks? Lookit, it's only human nature to cheat or push the bounds of your power when you can. If suburban baseball dads lean on the umps on behalf of their kid's team, why wouldn't someone who has far greater influence do the same for whatever situations they deem profitful?

It's human nature, Cobb. Absolutely, power corrupts. Martha Stewart's was not a bizarre freak occurrance. It goes on. The market is only partially "free." Every ordinary Joe who lives in the world knows this. Cept you, who is wont to ascribe to those in priviledge some superhuman ability to hold back and (collectively) consciously take on the role of guardian for middle & lower class kind. That's just weird.

Now, that isn't to say that any one individual isn't capable of climbing the rungs. Of course he can. Happens to several lucky/cursed/determined souls every danged day. Not saying there aren't benefits of having rich folk around, tho people may argue about the net effects. Just saying you're too quick to gift the whole class virtues they have not -- strike -- cannot earn.

The guardianship is that of the commons, and those with plenty to lose are acting in their self-interest. But for those who (idiotically) sell their own citizenship down the river in some rhetorical farce of 'speaking truth to power', there is no commons and no pride for it. Instead, they scour the globe looking for resonance in their wildest critiques of a system of power they only dimly understand.

What is, pray tell, a Certified Public Accountant? Where is the great corrupting power these people weild? A young poor woman who gets a job at an accounting firm as a receptionist inherits the benefits of white collar employment for the firm who audits the books of the corporation that drives the trucks to fill the shelves of the supermarket. She can't get fired without cause because there are laws in place that protect her, and proctices going beyond the letter of the law that the accounting firm is in voluntary compliance with.

But you want a kind of *caring* that goes far beyond the responsibility (for which you have evidently no respect) of employer to employee. You want the concession that quite simply poverty = nobility. That the earth rotates around the unsophisticated soul. You assert the ridiculous converse of the corruption of power: that absolute destitute powerlessness ennobles absolutely. Talk about class virtues!

I'll be watching your rhetoric at every turn. You are in thrall to the underdog, who in your mind can do no wrong so long as there are people, wealthier, more powerful, and more intelligent who render them the slightest injury.

I bet that's how you face yourself after reading my website.

Are you talking to me, Cobb, or the ghosts of arguments past? What are you babbling about? Where on earth do you get all that from?

Look if this is some simple (minded) goading to get me to 'out' my stance, man, you can just ask me. No, I'm not really a "progressive." If you must use a 'p'-word, you can use populist if you like, but that mightn't be the best fit either.

I'm not so much some champion of the unwashed, as a reactionist against elitism. I know full well the stubborn ignorance of the sheep; I know that many of them are complete and utter dumbasses. But exploitation gets my goat. And unfortunately, the (very) rich -- as a class -- tend to do what comes naturally in that regard.

It just seems so beneath anyone to run around cooing over them.

I'd love a world where everyone treats everyone else with basic human respect and dignity, but that's not where we live, yo. People are people and we must (should) guard against the worst excesses of our natures.

Sometimes, I think you have a moment of clarity and you get it...other times, there's posts like these...

Cheers,

M
p.s. wth is all that CPA nonsense? CPA != very rich
i know you must've been a little sleepy when you wrote it, but what is that example supposed to say? that because they exist, the (very) rich must be iite??

Cobb, in certain aspects I do disagree with you. However it is a symbiotic relationship. I would refer you to Mertons Strain Theory, which discuss how 'poverty' is measured from the context in which we find ourselves in as opposed to an abstract comparison. In addition it shows the four responses to 'poverty' that we make.

For example if the America standard is X, and I have Y less than that, I will be dissatisfied depending on how I evaluate myself in relation to X. Being that we are a competively capitalistic society that requires increased standards to continue to grow and survive, the natural national psychology is that growth through increased wealth is good, and lack of growth is to be avoided or potentially bad. That is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but is general enough to fit the majority.

So if I am 'poor' in America, it is not based upon my relative status in comparison to a third world 'poor', but based upon my comparison to that which we consider is an 'acceptable' level of income.

Back to Mertons Strain Theory. Being that we do compare ourselves to others in the same context, our behavior reflects this comparison. Therefore those in poverty behave by either pursuing the goal legally, illegally, rejecting the goal and creating another, or dropping out.

This occurs regardless of the fact that their poverty would be considered wealth somewhere else.

You cannot forget context in this conversation.

I absolutely agree, and while I'm not familiar with Merton's Strain, I do understand Maslow's Pyramid. So for me, the question is whether people are capable to taking care of their needs better or worse, on an absolute scale, given the infrastructure of the US. I say they are much more able to. Except because of a *political* disposition to be mad at the rich, people are derailed. They're literally driving themselves crazy with envy and distrust without regard to their own real needs.

How can you *need* President Bush to take foreign aid from Cuba? How can the poor, or advocates for the poor, maintain a logical agenda when they constantly aim to expose the purported corruption of the rich? It has nothing to do with the needs of the poor, it only seeds distrust in the nation. 'Nobody rich does for me, therefore they must all be heartless crooks.' This is magnified in criticism of GWBush who is additionally cripple with the slur of being *incompetent* to do for the poor.

I say an organic approach is necessary, and when I speak specifically of blacks and the Old School, I assert that this strongly. This is why I say blackfolks shouldn't compare themselves to whitefolks strictly on the basis of race, but that's what everyone has been doing here, starting with Kanye West. It insinuates racism as the root of all evil, whenever and wherever. All it really is is worrying about 'whitey', and that obsession takes the place of the introspection that should be the root of self-improvement.

I wonder if there is a black culture tight enough to sustain this introspection and focus on its own ascent up the pyramid to self-actualization without getting hung up on what 'whitey' is doing. And I say that is precisely what black conservatives are doing, despite the fact that other blacks often find that impossible to believe. You cannot NOT be clear on the advantage of going Republican or Conservative with such introspection as an African American today. The result is that black conservatives find themselves outside of the realm of the political complaint of the stereotypically poor black.

I've said it before, that for the black liberal, even one that is self-actualized: "They insist that black America is too different, it's history too painful. It says to America, all you can do for me is shutup and fix me a sandwich." For them, 'whitey' is always 'other', and so the object of obsession. If they were to look more carefully at themselves in all honesty, they would see that America provides by dint of its institutional structure, a way up for all who apply the proper discipline (and luck).

moderator: please state your name and where you're from.
memer: uh, Norm de Plume...Toronto, Ontario

So, yeah, I'm stating for the record, I’m neither mad at nor jealous of the rich. Or at least I’m not any more mad at them than I am at a child who scribbles crayon masterpieces on the wall, or the scorpion wot stings frogs. Human nature cannot be contained, only managed for a time. Some “institutions” were created just for that purpose. Because we all know the deal about ourselves.

Cheating is done at every level and strata of society. I don’t contend that any one class is any more pious than another in that regard. It’s only human. And just like the average freeway policeman, you can let some stuff slide a littel ways past the posted boundaries. It’s the egregious stuff wot rots. And it’s those with the most power to wield who need careful watching. Because they’re only human, too. They will, and do, succumb to the myopia of self-interest. When we, the Gucci-less do it, it doesn’t affect too many, but when THEY do it...whoa, Nelly. If you ever get there, Cobb, you, especially, will see/be what I mean.

Knee-to-chin highsteppin and mini-skirt baton twirlin at the front of a Rich Folk Day Parade is beyond unseemly.

It’s never been explained to me why it is not possible to be Black, vote Democrat (presumably, on a practical level, for policies you figure stand to benefit you more favourably than Republican ones) and STILL keep your head down focussing on growing your edumacation/business/career, credit rating and family. Where’s the contradiction? Why do you NEED to be a Republican?

The problem is conflation of a number of goals and ideals and it’s tricky business tweezing them all out and looking at them independently, one by one. In the end, it comes down to how each individual prioritizes the issues.

Dag, I had another point while I was typin here...I’ll be back ;-)

Of course it's not about you memer my friend. Then again I can't use formal rules of debate because I don't know your last name.

I think one NEEDS to be a Republican out of a sense of duty as a citizen. And uppity people ought to be bound by duty. So from my perspective it is done out of moral obligation. I could be a Libertarian, but I may as well be bohemian - it's a marginal and alternative politics and the truth it serves has no effect on the polity. It (libertarianism) is therefore something akin to an act of romance, it may be precise, noble and heartfelt but it doesn't scale. I have a hard time distinguishing scaled up libertarianism from anarchy. If anyone presumes the good graces of the rich it is the libertarian.

To be a democrat is just nowhere. They are phlegmatic and deceptive. The great appeal of the Democrats is the lofty promise - listening to JFK in retrospect is just mind-numbing. What was he talking about? Their perception of the good of the nation is seriously lacking and they are humanitarians first and nationalists second. I do not trust them with the Constitution because they want to promise too much - they believe and depend entirely too much on the power of the state. Plus they overproduce with regard to the appropriate influence of the marginal and alternative, which essentially makes them a majority of rabble, and therefore ideologically suspect.

I suspect that the morals of the limousine liberal are the most hypocritical because they are essentially libertine, and as such believe ultimately in the (colossus). That's friggin scary.

I am honestly repulsed by socialists because I find it difficult to imagine a greater crime than that perpetrated by Stalin in service of his state. I want to get as far away from that as possible.

I can’t get too mad at socialists neither cuz I dig what they’re trying to generally accomplish, futile as it is. Tho I really find the more ‘severe’ forms of socialism suspect (they don’t take into account enough of human motivation, imho), I’m not sure I’m ready to say a Stalin (good lord, Stalin, jack) is a direct and natural consequence of Socialism per se.

I will say tho, that socialist-leaning near-Shangri-las already exist on earth: why do Sweden, Denmark or Iceland seem to work? Ahh, if only they had more brown folk…
Is it a size thing (then mebbe the US is better off as a loose confederation of verry independent states)?

As is the case with Religion, in Politics it’s often hard to separate the failings of the adherents from the system itself.

I can’t get too mad at socialists neither cuz I dig what they’re trying to generally accomplish, futile as it is. Tho I really find the more ‘severe’ forms of socialism suspect (they don’t take into account enough of human motivation, imho), I’m not ready to say a Stalin (good lord, Stalin, jack) is a direct and natural consequence of Socialism per se.

I will say tho, that socialist-leaning near-Shangri-las already exist on earth: why do Sweden, Denmark or Iceland seem to work? Ahh, if only they had more brown folk…
Is it a size thing (then mebbe the US is better off as a loose confederation of verry independent states)?

As is the case with Religion, in Politics it’s often hard to separate the failings of the adherents from the philosophy itself.

Hello, why is my comment being denied for questionable content? I have no profanity or anything remotely close to naughty.

Dell, It's auto spam code, not particularly subtle is it? Best thing to do is get a TypeKey account.

I agree that it is a size thing. Sweden, Denmark and Iceland aren't much bigger than Mississippi and their suicide rates are much higher. One can hardly expect them to be models of substance for a nation with a population our size. In other words, I don't think that socialism scales. It makes perfect sense for a family or a dozen folks on a camping trip but that kind of command and control in the hands of a government our size would produce huge dislocations. I think we all naturally cringe at the thought of world government. That impulse is correct. This brings up a good tangent to take to the top...the danger of typification.

I don't think that socialism scales.

I suspect that’s the thing. That’s why if it’s to work in North America (assuming you dig the general situations in the countries mentioned), things have to go small. States have to be given more powers. Eventually, I think what works best is city-states.

Betta watchout for that China, tho. I hear things may be on the rise a li’l bit over there. Too early to tell, but it may be a bear in the communism-can’t-work ointment.

City States would be about right but only if they were networked into the galaxy of city-states. Global competion still has a place. See Dyson's Utopia and remember that somebody somewhere still has to build the Mercedes and cavity magnetrons.

City States would be about right but only if they were networked into the galaxy of city-states. Global competion still has a place. See Dyson's Utopia and remember that somebody somewhere still has to build the Mercedes and cavity magnetrons.

By the way, the Chinese aren't Commies so much as they are Mafioso. That is a Command economy, and there are no MBAs or infrastructure for entrepreneurialism. Which means you are rich because the state ordered you to be rich. That's a huge difference.

By the way, the Commies weren't commies, so much as they were mafioso. Now that the imaginary war is over, will you drop to pretense and keep to convo's about dough?

Oh, fer sher, the city-states would be all networked up. Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t wanna be – I’m not talking isolated mega-communes, here. It'd be EU-style intra-trading an wot all. The same somebodies who build the Mercedes and so on in city factories today can build them in the new city-state world order, too.

Yes it's about dough - the difference between honest money and racketeering. I'm talking about the American Rich, who are the most responsible rich folks around because of our democratic systems that mean you don't have live like the Mafia controls everything.

Ah, I get it re the Mafia thing, now. Right. I suppose. Instituting (and continuously reviewing) checks, balances and some modicum of transparency definitely checks the natural rise to mob rule (mob-archy). I can’t say that the American Rich themselves, are more responsible than (say) Euro Rich or Asian Rich. It’s the American system, the social architecture itself, that tries to balance maximum freedom with necessary restraints.