I. my opinions
II. other people's opinions
III. literary hacks
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I. my opinions
there are many arguments and discussions about inequality you can find in the internet. here are my random opinions that i think people are not saying.
maybe in a sense we are really not that unequal where it matters the most. i'm not a rich person but i wouldn't trade my life with bill gates. it's possible for a rich person to be miserable and a poor person to be happy. there is no scientific instrument that can measure a person's content and happiness but it baffles me that my friends in the slums seems to be just as happy as me. many of my childhood friends were slumdogs so i hung out in the slums a lot. in the beginning i was like chomsky torturing myself trying to get my friends and their families to do the simple things that will make their lives better but they just laughed at me as if i was a lunatic. then i begun to realize maybe there really is no problem. a person's content or happiness depends on how well your inborn standards and abilities match - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2019/06/inborn-aptitudes-and-standards.html
in america a truck driver can have a better quality of life than aristocrats and royalties 100 years ago. he can enjoy many comforts and luxuries that were not available to the richest people in the world a century ago. the bottom line is that i would rather be a truck driver today than a billionaire a century ago. they had to ride the titanic while i can ride a plane to exotic beaches anywhere in the world. they had to read books while i can enjoy very entertaining tv shows and movies on my iphone wherever and whenever. i can go on tinder and score a date. although it's possible that if we had a true democracy we would be driving flying cars by now. but shoulda woulda coulda is for fools. a good investor is happy with a strategy that works especially when the alternatives can easily go haywire as we've seen in the soviet union, greece, and venezuela. we don't regret it when we only invest 5% of our nest egg in apple and apple quadruples in a year. the left is basically saying we should invest more on apple and point out it's past performance for justification. we are saying we should be conservative because we don't know apple might become like blackberry.
in the philippines, 40 years ago, if you are eating grapes, an apple or a hersheys bar, your friends will consider you the luckiest person in the world. it was like a status symbol. i remember i can only eat those goodies once a year during christmas. although sometimes we get lucky and my entire family (7 of us) would share a single hersheys bar even if it was not christmas. i remember i would let my tiny share melt in my mouth to prolong the pleasure. but now, some kids in the slum don't even care for it. when i came home from the US i was bringing boxes of chocolates thinking it will make the kids of our maids happy. i put the chocolates on the table and after a few days i notice nobody touched it. when i asked them they told me they find chocolates too sweet. i thought i was living in a different dimension.
sure there is inequality but isn't making people lives better the object of the game? a truck driver in america is just as prosperous as a truck driver in nordic countries where there is more equality. and as i said, many socdem countries that's been striving for equality are suffering right now. forcing equality could lead to more suffering in the long run.
we are much richer in terms of quick access to high quality information at a very low cost. so the wage stagnation argument is bogus. leftists fail to consider the hidden value of something. a truck driver on a video call with her 5 year old daughter while driving those long lonely interstate highways is priceless. you can't put a price tag on that. iphone is the result of capitalism (although chomsky idiotically claims it's the result of a more socialistic system -.https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2019/06/state-developed-tech-lefts-worthless-trophy.html). of course capitalism causes inequality but if you get rid of inequality you will be throwing the baby with the bathwater. the mistake of the left is like the mistake of the right when the right only looks at the numbers when arguing for privatization. when an 11 pm bus route is cut, it may look more efficient when the quarterly earnings come out but not to the leftist night shift janitor who has no bus to ride home after he gets off work. the bus company simply transfered the cost to the leftist janitor. i say leftist janitor because if he is a right wing janitor, he will simply bring a bicycle and bike to the nearest bus stop while the leftist will simply jump up and down and scream injustice.
i even think inequality or a hierarchical structure of society can be a source of stability and even happiness. i noticed this during a basketball game between a private and public school - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2019/05/apple-falling-far-from-the-tree.html. the movie minions is actually a good representation of human society. the movie seems stupid but in certain ways it's true. just watch teenagers going crazy when they see justin beiber. when i was working in altera, what really made me happy was impressing my bosses. the left tells us what humans or society "should be" and i'm sure normal people won't disagree with them. what makes the left lunatics is that they have a hard time accepting reality or what society really is. the reality is that equality will only cause too much hurtful and pathetic conflicts just like with my elders (which i talked about in https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2019/05/apple-falling-far-from-the-tree.html).
true wealth is not just financial or material. the most valuable things in life such as true love don't even involve money. a plumber coming home to screaming kids excited because daddy's home is not that unequal to a billionaire. i envy those poor young dudes in the ghetto with their hot white girlfriends. even if i become a billionaire i'm sure i can never have a hot white chick as a soulmate. too bad i can't french kiss a ferrari and prostitutes are gross. i wanna marry dr. victoria bateman but can't. that's true inequality.
wealth also has diminishing returns. inequality of wealth does not mean inequality of feelings. of course feelings are more important than wealth because what's the point of riding your luxury yacht if you feel miserable? the left should stop using the word inequality and instead just focus on poverty. poverty causes people to suffer, not inequality. unless you are a jealous person. maybe leftists are just jealous people.
rich people don't actually consume all that wealth they have or use them for pleasure. they have to put it in banks and investments which creates jobs and benefits everyone so inequality statistics are misleading. statistics only make sense if money was something you eat or consume and the more you consume the happier you are and your ability to consume is endless or infinite. the fact is you can only eat so much food in a day, drive 1 car at a time, live in 1 house at a time, etc ... besides, you still need to eat vegetables and you will feel awful if you overeat. and you still need to do physical exercise anyway. my best friend siynp silagan works in a comfortable aircon environment as a medical technologist but he still bikes 200 miles on the weekends.
bill gates is 50 thousand times richer than me but bill gates' standard of living, happiness and contentment is really probably only 2-3 times more than me. as long as i have a nice comfortable bed and air conditioned room, there really is not much difference between me and bill gates during the 8 hours we sleep everyday. i would rather be strolling around on my scooter with my beautiful college scholar than be sitting on a luxury yacht. what's the physical difference in terms of comfort between a ferrari and a toyota corolla? to me there really is no difference in fun between bill gates tinkering with his very expensive toy and the fun i get replacing the starter, alternator or brake pads of my old car.
although in fairness, the diminishing returns of wealth can also be used to justify why rich people should pay more taxes because they don't really need that much wealth.
the solutions to lessen inequality are not that simple. they could easily backfire. just google the $15 minimum wage law in seattle and you will realize it's a wash. government welfare could also be a poverty trap. example in france a typical welfare recipient is receiving $1,800 a month. if there is an available job that pays $2k a month, it's better to not work because the extra $200 will just be used on additional cost such as transportation.
of course we should keep finding solutions to lessen inequality but we have to keep in mind there is no simple solution and we are all just guessing. example if we tax the rich too much, we could lose talents and companies because they can relocated to places with lower taxes. that's why ireland became rich when it lowered taxes because they attracted lots of companies. companies are moving out of the EU because of high taxes. that is why it baffles me when the supposedly smart people on the left like chomsky talks as if their solutions have no downside and those who oppose them are just evil morons.
capitalism may cause severe inequality but we should keep in mind there really is no better alternative. besides, capitlism allows socio-economic mobility. the left talks as if poverty is permanent. we all heard rags to riches stories. the driver of my dad was poor. his son simply finished college, worked as an IT technician in singapore and recently he gave my dad golf clubs for christmas. our maid married a rich japanese and recently she gave my mom a very expensive leather jacket.
i even feel inequality is more of a choice. just watch this video - Sex trafficking isn't what you think it is | Meghan Sobel. poor people and child prostitutes are luckier than people in rich countries. at least the child prostitutes got to be born, enjoy the sunset, and enjoy ice cream or pepsi. hundreds of millions of kids in rich countries like germany and japan never even reach conception because their parents are afraid they might become an economic burden. i'm not talking about abortion. i'm talking about CHOOSING to be rich by not having kids. the child prostitutes have less choice but they were gifted with the highest quality of all choices - LIFE. if you solve the inequality and poverty problem, poor people will just pop out 9 kids instead of 4 and the poverty cycle will refresh or restart. meanwhile, i can afford to raise 5 children but chose not to. i'm a worse human being compared to the mentally ill mother who murdered her 3 children because at least her children got to enjoy the sweet taste of kool aid while my kids never even tasted their first breath. trafficking of children can be solved overnight if humans simply don't have children that they can't afford to raise. but if there is a time machine where the parents of child prostitutes are given the chance to change their decisions, maybe the child prostitute will shout "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!! PLEASE DON'T PUT ON THAT CONDOM !!! i don't mind sucking a foreigner's dick i just want to be born and taste ice cream"(no pun intended). so when i look at countries with lots of child prostitutes, i'm impressed. when i look at developed countries with no child prostitutes, i feel those countries are just sad and pathetic. of course it's a crazy perspective. i won't blame you if you think i should be confined in a mental hospital.
II. other people's opinions
II. other people's opinions
here are good opinions about inequality that i found in the internet.
i watched this beautiful and heart warming video in youtube - "i married a maasai and moved into his boma" then posted this in facebook:
imagine being born into a society where nobody will be homeless. nobody will starve. nobody will get into a car accident and your risk from getting diabetes or heart disease is practically zero. the massai people in africa and quakers of pennsylvania are not economically wealthy but considering them wealthier than an average american in terms of happiness is a legitimate perspective. this perspective is not correct. it's not wrong either. what is wrong is trying to choose which perspective is correct. society can only improve using a mixture of different perspectives. the challenge is figuring out the right mixture. but it's impossible to figure out the right mixture if you don't try to view the situation from all the ingredient perspectives. if you want icecream for your brain, watch fax news and sea en en. if you want meat for your brain, read chomsky. if you want vegetables for your brain, watch "i married a maasai and moved to his boma"in yt, then search "ian's knowledge bombs" on the web and click "knowledge-bombs-on-equality" in the table of contents.
i also watched this: 5 Inequality Myths
here's a cut and paste from one of the comments in the video:
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Three boys go to a high school baseball game. One boy is tall, one is medium height, and one is short. They are standing outside the fence and they find three boxes. Each boy takes one box and stands on it. But now, the short one still can not see over the fence. The medium boy sees fine, and the tall boy sees really well but he saw well before. THIS is "equality." The boys decide to switch it up so the short boy now has two boxes, the medium boy has one box, and the tall boy has no box. Each can now see the same as their heads are now at the same height. This is "equity." Each boy has what he needs to be successful. The moral of the story: some kids need more help to be successful and all kids are successful.
I had to retell the story making it more realistic:
Three boys go to a high school baseball game. One boy is tall, one is medium height, and one is short. They are standing outside the fence and they realize they need boxes to stand on if they are to see the game. So they go back home to earn money to buy boxes. The tall skinny boy mows 1 lawn and makes enough money to buy one box. The medium boy mows 2 lawns and makes enough money to buy two boxes. The short fat lazy boy sits and watches tv and makes no money and buys no boxes. They return to the baseball field and realize the short kid still can not see anything whereas the other two can see just fine. The high school principal comes and sees them, confiscates their boxes and says "I will redistribute these boxes, taking them according to your ability to pay for them and giving them according to your need for them" and gives no boxes to the tall kid, one box to the medium kid, and two boxes to the short kid. We now have equality of outcome, same as in the first scenario. But, we have deprived one kid of everything he earned, one of half he earned, and we gave the lazy fat kid a bunch of stuff he didn't earn. The moral of the story: THIS is socialism. It deprives two of the kids of the incentive to work, one more than another, and it incentivizes one of the kids to NOT work.
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here are some good opinions from thomas sowell about social mobility or "churn".
maybe hans rosling is a neoliberal puppet, but his video seems legit to me - Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen. although hans could be just a pragmatist because he did say mao brought health to china. but the video shows that despite what chomsky and the left tells you, neoliberals like reagan are great contributors to mankind. there has been greater inequality of wealth but equality does not automatically mean we all have food on our table. we can be equally starving. maybe the unfair and devious trade barriers by US and UK was a blessing in disguise to keep the western powers and NATO strong which created more stability and allowed many poor countries to develop with minimal wars and conflicts.
the agenda against inequality is closely related to the socialism - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2019/05/socialism-demystified.html
III. poem
let me end my rant and pseudo sciences with my literary hacks. here's a little poem i wrote you might wanna read note for note:
here's a little play i wrote you might wanna read note for note:
(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)
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