The Rich and Powerful Who Abuse the System: the contempt topic

[Kalbear]

Even worse on the attribution of rich people believing that it is their abilities that made them successful is that most other people believe it too. Again, in the west, but most people are willing to think that if you're rich or if you're poor it is mostly due to you, meaning the poor are lazy, stupid, etc.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Even worse on the attribution of rich people believing that it is their abilities that made them successful is that most other people believe it too. Again, in the west, but most people are willing to think that if you're rich or if you're poor it is mostly due to you, meaning the poor are lazy, stupid, etc.

Well, and it bleeds into the pernicious fallacy of the "deserving" poor.  I'm not into all of the recent "you deserve this" point of view.  No one deserves anything at least in the way that is meant (I mean yes, choices have consequences and all that, but that's a different sense of deserving).   

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The other side of this coin is that there is a trend of dismissing individual willpower and to blame far too much on 'environmental factors' and I think it's important to find the balance between those things.

Not really. You might get this impression from public debates, but when it comes to actual measures, Western societies are largely organized around the fallacy of individual willpower, and keep moving further in that direction, despite evidence of the principle having reached its limits a few decades ago.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

So while I think that environmental factors play their part, 'Willpower' is probably a bigger factor, and that isn't just based on the individual but everyone surrounding them.

We're not disagreeing: culture is undoubtedly part of environmental factors, broadly defined.

But that point brings water to my mill: if the culture of immigrant communities ends up giving a huge edge to their children, then it means public education is not geared toward teaching kids the basics of self-discipline, because the means are lacking, because there is no political will, or a bit of both. If there can be such differences between communities, then it's a point against the myth of individual agency, and it should also lead to a reflexion on what these communities are doing right.

At this point, I guess it should also be pointed out that self-discipline and willpower aren't easy to learn, and we probably don't want to go back to physical pain and violence either. A good place to start here is to give public education and teachers the means to do their job.

[Kalbear]

Also the topic title bugs because the system isn't being abused by the rich and powerful; it's working precisely as designed. Capitalism trends entirely towards monopolistic concentration of capital. That's exactly the point. The system is the abuse. It shouldn't be a surprise that we have a system that rewards gaining wealth and gives wealth significant power in economic and political realms, and then be shocked when said wealth gets used to give the wealthy more wealth and power. That it also rewards sociopaths is a fun piece of candy on top of the cake. But make no mistake, sociopaths didn't make this system worse or exploit it; the system was made for sociopaths. 

[Ran]

I deeply question the idea that the "system" exists to reward "sociopaths". Sociopaths fill our prisons --they do not appear to be rewarded.

I would say, instead, that the "system" rewards ambition -- whether careerist or entrepreneurial -- and I wonder why would that be bad in itself? None of us are where we are today without ambition of some kind, if not our own than that of our ancestors  who conceived the notion that they could manage to work themselves into a place where they could beget us (or our less vintage ancestors), who dared to cross oceans to make better lives for themselves and their offspring, etc.

The evidence of history seems to be that the best system that exists to create prosperity is a mixed system in which capitalism is a significant part for driving prosperity but which is tempered by a mix of regulatory and social measures to attempt to redistribute some of the dividends of the system on down and to reduce the inequity of the ambitious against their fellow man. We may all agree that the regulatory and social restraints on capitalism are insufficient as they stand now, that we could return to the progressive tax systems of decades earlier, that we could do this or that or the other, but capitalism would still be the way that the wealth would be generated. Even Piketty's "participatory socialism" imagines redistribution of wealth in the form of capital endowments that will allow people to start businesses or build homes and other wealth-building exercises, which only makes sense if you can take profits from these things. His system would take a good share of the profits to redistribute it back, but still, it's capitalism, just with bigger safety rails than today.

If capitalism is so rotten that in fact no mixed system will survive its inclusion (even Piketty's) and so it must be rooted out, my droogs, then I would like to know what the alternative is. All other systems have been failures to date.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

I deeply question the idea that the "system" exists to reward "sociopaths". Sociopaths fill our prisons --they do not appear to be rewarded.

Sorry to clip a lot of what you wrote, but I want to hit the key points.

Sociopaths do fill prisons. They also fill boardrooms disproportionately. That's why there's classifications. Many sociopaths/psychopaths display behaviors that are reckless among many other things and leads to the likelihood they will end up in prison. But there are the savvy ones who actually use their sociopathy to their advantage. These are the people being discussed in the thread.

Quote

I would say, instead, that the "system" rewards ambition -- whether careerist or entrepreneurial -- and I wonder why would that be bad in itself? None of us are where we are today without ambition of some kind, if not our own than that of our ancestors  who conceived the notion that they could manage to work themselves into a place where they could beget us (or our less vintage ancestors), who dared to cross oceans to make better lives for themselves and their offspring, etc.

No, the system rewards nepotism as you admit. Congrats to those who overcame it and made their own way. 

Quote

If capitalism is so rotten that in fact no mixed system will survive its inclusion (even Piketty's) and so it must be rooted out, my droogs, then I would like to know what the alternative is. All other systems have been failures to date.

A mixed system is necessary. Every country should figure out how to balance things in a way that works best for them, but you need both the fundamentals of capitalism and socialism. Neither system is evil unless you let them get to their worst possible conclusions. What we need (at least in the US) is to have an honest conversation about it and then create the best policies we can going forward.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[Larry of the Lawn]

22 minutes ago, Ran said:

I deeply question the idea that the "system" exists to reward "sociopaths". Sociopaths fill our prisons --they do not appear to be rewarded.

I would say, instead, that the "system" rewards ambition -- whether careerist or entrepreneurial -- and I wonder why would that be bad in itself? None of us are where we are today without ambition of some kind, if not our own than that of our ancestors  who conceived the notion that they could manage to work themselves into a place where they could beget us (or our less vintage ancestors), who dared to cross oceans to make better lives for themselves and their offspring, etc.

The evidence of history seems to be that the best system that exists to create prosperity is a mixed system in which capitalism is a significant part for driving prosperity but which is tempered by a mix of regulatory and social measures to attempt to redistribute some of the dividends of the system on down and to reduce the inequity of the ambitious against their fellow man. We may all agree that the regulatory and social restraints on capitalism are insufficient as they stand now, that we could return to the progressive tax systems of decades earlier, that we could do this or that or the other, but capitalism would still be the way that the wealth would be generated. Even Piketty's "participatory socialism" imagines redistribution of wealth in the form of capital endowments that will allow people to start businesses or build homes and other wealth-building exercises, which only makes sense if you can take profits from these things. His system would take a good share of the profits to redistribute it back, but still, it's capitalism, just with bigger safety rails than today.

If capitalism is so rotten that in fact no mixed system will survive its inclusion (even Piketty's) and so it must be rooted out, my droogs, then I would like to know what the alternative is. All other systems have been failures to date.

 

 

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Sociopaths do fill prisons. They also fill boardrooms disproportionately.

I'd imagine there's a built-in aspect of captalism that helps sort who fills which.  probably rhymes with 'ass'.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Larry of the Lawn

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

A mixed system is necessary. Every country should figure out how to balance things in a way that works best for them, but you need both the fundamentals of capitalism and socialism. Neither system is evil.

Well said!

[Kalbear]

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

I deeply question the idea that the "system" exists to reward "sociopaths". Sociopaths fill our prisons --they do not appear to be rewarded.

I would say, instead, that the "system" rewards ambition -- whether careerist or entrepreneurial -- and I wonder why would that be bad in itself?

I disagree. On a lot of counts - our prisons are not filled in general with sociopaths, they're filled by drug offenses, with property/theft taking up second place. 

And no, the system of capitalism does not reward ambition. Point of fact many of the very wealthy are there because they are risk-averse. There are a number of entrepeneurs that are wealthy because they went and tried something new - but there are far more wealthy that went and used their wealth to solidify their power that was given to them by previous people. 

Mostly, however, I categorically deny that capitalism has anything to do with ambition directly. It doesn't reward or harm ambition in any specific way. It rewards generating value. That can be done via things that are ambitious - or it can be done by extorting rent, keeping slaves, suppressing competition, or any number of other things that have nothing to do with ambition. 

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

None of us are where we are today without ambition of some kind, if not our own than that of our ancestors  who conceived the notion that they could manage to work themselves into a place where they could beget us (or our less vintage ancestors), who dared to cross oceans to make better lives for themselves and their offspring, etc.

Again, category error, dismissing it out of hand. 

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

The evidence of history seems to be that the best system that exists to create prosperity is a mixed system in which capitalism is a significant part for driving prosperity but which is tempered by a mix of regulatory and social measures to attempt to redistribute some of the dividends of the system on down and to reduce the inequity of the ambitious against their fellow man. We may all agree that the regulatory and social restraints on capitalism are insufficient as they stand now, that we could return to the progressive tax systems of decades earlier, that we could do this or that or the other, but capitalism would still be the way that the wealth would be generated.

The evidence of history is not a particularly awesome tale for a whole lot of people in this regard. I'm not sure that restraining our ambitions by looking only at what did succeed in the past is particularly valuable for going forward. It is true that highly restrained capitalism has resulted in more general prosperity for the most amount of people. I would strongly argue that it is the restraints, not the capitalism, that resulted in that prosperity. 

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

Even Piketty's "participatory socialism" imagines redistribution of wealth in the form of capital endowments that will allow people to start businesses or build homes and other wealth-building exercises, which only makes sense if you can take profits from these things. His system would take a good share of the profits to redistribute it back, but still, it's capitalism, just with bigger safety rails than today.

If capitalism is so rotten that in fact no mixed system will survive its inclusion (even Piketty's) and so it must be rooted out, my droogs, then I would like to know what the alternative is. All other systems have been failures to date.

I think one thing we can agree on is that capitalism requires constraints, because without constraints it is (again, by design) entirely sociopathic. 

Note also that capitalism does not mean 'a system where profits occur'. If you are arguing for redistribution of profits and using things like money that doesn't mean you're arguing for a capitalist system. As an example, one could entirely have a fully public economy where absolutely nothing is owned that also redistributes the money that is exchanged to give others chances to build value-generating systems - and that would satisfy Piketty's system while being nothing remotely like capitalism. But that's not really what I'm arguing for.

I'm arguing quite simply that capitalism has at its core a very big problem - that exploitation of other things is a feature, not a bug. Therefore, before you do anything else, you must put in place constraints to make that no longer viable as a mechanism. That must be something you address as the basis for your economic and political system. The easiest way to do that is to effectively disallow massive wealth collection at all. And I'm sure you'll say 'this will stifle ambition' but I would argue that there are many, many people who have been hugely ambitious with no monetary or material goals whatsoever. Again, pointing out that ambition has nothing to do directly with capitalism. Even then it's probably something you need to constantly have oversight and regulation and be regularly paying attention to in order to fight, but that would at least be a decent start. 

But if you don't do that - if you assume that capitalism is fine at its core and there are only a few outlying issues - you will invariably be turned into what we're seeing now. 

[Kalbear]

40 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

A mixed system is necessary. Every country should figure out how to balance things in a way that works best for them, but you need both the fundamentals of capitalism and socialism. Neither system is evil unless you let them get to their worst possible conclusions. What we need (at least in the US) is to have an honest conversation about it and then create the best policies we can going forward.

I'm curious what you think are the evils of socialism as an economic policy. Please don't try and conflate socialism (the economic system) with communism (the political system) any more than you would conflate democracy with capitalism. 

I'm also curious how you square that every country should find what works for them. Part of the evil of capitalism is that it allows wealthier countries to exploit poorer ones in all sorts of ways. Those work great for those wealthy countries and really shitty for those poorer countries. Is that what we actually want? I mean, by your token the US could very easily start simply taxing the rich and redistributing that wealth to the poor and adding more uplifting programs and satisfy your goal - but it still would support things like Exxon or migrant workers or globalization of workforces. I don't think that's a reasonable or ethical stance at all. 

[Ran]

30 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Our prisons are not filled in general with sociopaths

Cross-national surveys show that ~50% of imprisoned persons are diagnosed with antisocial behavior disorder (aka sociopathy). In some studies, the number is more like 75%. It's all very sensitive to cohorts and definitions, and you can lump in borderline personality disorder too, but suffice it to say,  there's a lot of people who go on to commit crimes who are, in fact, "sociopathic".

Being involved in the drug trade, thievery, robbery, fraud, etc. even shoplifting, correlates with sociopathy pretty highly for the same reason you believe that sociopaths are disproportionately wealthy. Suffice it to say, antisocial personality disorder is found much more in felons than the general public, where it's estimated to be 3-4% of the populace. 

Also, you know, the US is not the world. Capitalism is not a uniquely US thing. If this is a US-only thread, the title should say so. Not all countries have the US's prisoner makeup.

50 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

The evidence of history is not a particularly awesome tale for a whole lot of people in this regard.

Far more people have had more positive than negative lives, by any measure -- more so now than ever, in fact. If this were not true, there would not be so many of us. It seems bizzare to think otherwise.

 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Cross-national surveys show that ~50% of imprisoned persons are diagnosed with antisocial behavior disorder (aka sociopathy). In some studies, the number is more like 75%. It's all very sensitive to cohorts and definitions, and you can lump in borderline personality disorder too, but suffice it to say,  there's a lot of people who go on to commit crimes who are, in fact, "sociopathic".

Being involved in the drug trade, thievery, robbery, fraud, etc. even shoplifting, correlates with sociopathy pretty highly for the same reason you believe that sociopaths are disproportionately wealthy. Suffice it to say, antisocial personality disorder is found much more in felons than the general public, where it's estimated to be 3-4% of the populace. 

Also, you know, the US is not the world. Capitalism is not a uniquely US thing. If this is a US-only thread, the title should say so. Not all countries have the US's prisoner makeup.

That's a fair point; I don't have a ton of data around non-US countries. That said, most prison populations are not as filled as the US are. And we can go the other way as well, mind you. 

That said, looking up some of the studies they very much lump in BPD with sociopathy and that is not remotely reasonable or fair. If you're wanting to put in psychopaths, addictive personalities and the like in there then I think the comparison becomes meaningless. There is a very real and distinct difference between someone willing to harm others and someone who has poor impulse control, and I don't think anyone is saying that CEOs suffer from going into psychotic rages on a regular basis. That is also true about ASPD vs sociopathy, especially given that the primary diagnosis of ASPD is 'failure to conform to laws'. 

That's not really what we were talking about so...yay?

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Far more people have had more positive than negative lives, by any measure -- more so now than ever, in fact. If this were not true, there would not be so many of us. It seems bizzare to think otherwise.

counterpoint: the massive slaughter of native Americans meant that billions of lives could not have even existed to have that positive life. This would be a survivorship bias error; in order to have that positive life you had to survive in the first place. 

[Conflicting Thought]

17 minutes ago, Ran said:

antisocial behavior disorder (aka sociopathy)

this seems like an oversimplification and wrong medicaly speaking, if a psychologyst on this board could expand on this i would be very thankfull

[Rippounet]

Sorry to clip this one small bit, but imho it's also something that needs to be addressed:

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we could do this or that or the other, but capitalism would still be the way that the wealth would be generated.

It really really depends on how one defines the words "wealth" and "capitalism."

The one thing that capitalism has proved insanely good at is mass production, the very thing that must now be stopped.
And I know not everyone here agrees () but at this point I've worked enough on the topic to say with a lot of arguments that mass production will collapse at some point in the next fifty years, one way or the other ; it might be re-established in the long-run, but there will be a point in the 21st century when the global economic system as we know it collapses.

Conversely, capitalism has proved incredibly bad at managing public services, which, almost by definition, aren't supposed to be run for profit, and yet do represent a form of national wealth - which will always be crucial to nations.
And at the same time, there's a lot of "wealth," artistic & cultural, which, almost by definition, requires individual initiative (/ambition ), and cannot really be State-run or "socialist."

So while I also agree a mixed system is necessary, my vision of capitalism is one that is drastically limited (possibly to Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)), a bit like libertarians view the government .
A couple of decades ago I'd probably have argued for "balance," but the environmental crisis does "change everything."

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

this seems like an oversimplification and wrong medicaly speaking, if a psychologyst on this board could expand on this i would be very thankfull

It is not. Sociopathy is an outmoded term (but it's the term others have used in this thread). Antisocial Personality Disorder is the correct clinical term.

[Conflicting Thought]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

It is not. Sociopathy is an outmoded term (but it's the term others have used in this thread). Antisocial Personality Disorder is the correct clinical term.

yes, in my opinion sociopathy is an outdated term because of the stigma it generates and its use oversimplifies complex mental issues, so to use antisocial personality disorder in much the same way doesnt seem right to me.

[Ser Reptitious]

1 hour ago, Conflicting Thought said:

this seems like an oversimplification and wrong medicaly speaking, if a psychologyst on this board could expand on this i would be very thankfull

Yeah, I'm not a psychologist either, but "anti-social behaviour" sounds more like lashing out at society in anger, whereas a sociopath is often someone who comes across as smooth and charming, while hiding the fact that they lack any sort of moral conscience and would throw even the people closest to them under the bus if it serves their purpose. 

Linking the two terms simply because they both contain "social/o" and therefore appear similar on the surface seems like quite the stretch. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 minutes ago, Ser Reptitious said:

Yeah, I'm not a psychologist either, but "anti-social behaviour" sounds more like lashing out at society in anger, whereas a sociopath is often someone who comes across as smooth and charming, while hiding the fact that they lack any sort of moral conscience and would throw even the people closest to them under the bus if it serves their purpose. 

Linking the two terms simply because they both contain "social/o" and therefore appear similar on the surface seems like quite the stretch. 

I believe before the DSM favored anti-social personality disorder, that a distinction between sociopath and psychopath was that sociopaths were less able to hide their behavior, whereas the 'psychopath' was more the charming, seems normal, but really devious behind the scenes type.  

Edited September 15, 2023 by Larry of the Lawn
ive smoked about three tons of weed since i opened an out of date DSM twenty years ago so who knows

[Clueless Northman]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

The evidence of history seems to be that the best system that exists to create prosperity is a mixed system in which capitalism is a significant part for driving prosperity but which is tempered by a mix of regulatory and social measures to attempt to redistribute some of the dividends of the system on down and to reduce the inequity of the ambitious against their fellow man.

You mean, the socio-economic system that has turbocharged climate change and environmental destruction to the point that mankind's survival might nearly be in the balance? A great success, without any doubt.

As far as I am concerned, capitalism is absolutely incompatible with mankind's survival. If it's allowed to exist for too long, it will doom us all without any possibility of survival, and must therefore be brought down fast.

As for sociopaths, I don't think there's any country with 3-4% of its population in jail, which would be the case if we decided to wise up and to lock up the bulk of the psychos and sociopaths who are destroying our societies and our world. And even within countries with high jail population, many of them are still not sociopaths, so we're not nearly close, not even in the US (but then, a look at Wall Street or Congress would disprove the illusion that US is good at taming sociopathy).

 

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Every country should figure out how to balance things in a way that works best for them, but you need both the fundamentals of capitalism and socialism.

This! What's sorely needed right now is that the most powerful countries should shut the fuck up and stop bothering the rest of the world about what they're doing, about their political and economic systems. Let them be. Stop interferring. Stop sending propaganda there. Stop bribing their elites in any way. Stop plotting coups. Let every country decide on its own, and don't complain if you're not happy with the decision, and most importantly, don't put any sanction on them "because reasons" and let them be.

[Spockydog]

Frankly, the incessant demand for 'growth' is what drives many of these executives (and politicians) into bad practices.

I mean, wtf? Other than The Markets, who gives a shit if a company is growing or not if it is profitable and providing gainful employment for people?

Oh, but these companies can only attract investment if blah hock blah souls blah.

Here's a radical idea. How about companies just expand within their means? That's what we plan to do.

And if we sell enough shit? Well, then we'll make some more.

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Spockydog