Now- factor in the damages done. The costs of improvement. As more of the world population lives longer, has a stable environment to reproduce in, can travel and buy goods and with their basic needs cared for want more. As more people become educated and industrialized. Look at China or India to see examples of countries where large populations suddenly have access to more. So now you are increasing the cost of social upkeep- increasing demand and the impact on our environment. More trees cut down, more livestock and commercial farming. More travel and more power plants and more consumer waste. More chemicals and more people needing more space.

When the rich no longer have money to donate to charities they already were, foundations, and no money or reason to get the tax breaks from these philanthropic ventures. (I’m not saying that these ventures somehow are “better” than giving 100% away- I am saying that we have to account for the net losses of these things when calculating total gains.)

Now- tags looking at a simple and flat earth. That doesn’t account for the loss of income that occurs when those wealthy people aren’t spending money. When private jet companies and real estate and contractors and jewelers and high end auto makers and almost the entire high end luxury goods industry collapses overnight as does any industry supporting them.

It’s tempting to look at all that money and say “wow! They could solve everyone’s problems!” But wait.... Thats like saying that because someone was able to buy a $100-200k or more house and a new car that they must have enough money to throw around; or because a poor person got a PlayStation for their birthday or bought a new iPhone they must have money for everything else. Well... no. If you spent $600 million dollars a day, bill gates would be broke in under a year.

Thank you purplepumpkin. Also- lol. Pascal can be a bit much at times. For some reason my phone autocorrected the name the first time and I didn’t notice until like an hour later. But by then I just left it for posterity.

We will be here all day of you get me started on the treatment of women by science and medicine. From surgery to sexuality to quality of life and even basic anatomy. There are factors that contribute to that but come on. The level of disinterest and the imbalance in the study of female anatomy even though females comprise the majority of the population is insulting. Even sex- a favorite field of research and a classic male obsession even in science- women get (no pun intended) the short end of the stick. Don’t get me started.

Good point.

Two human beings are equal in the universe because what does it matter in all the creation of the vastness of space that a hairless anxiety monkey broke profit records or ran around a circle faster than any monkey before? Transmit any humans accomplishments into space and wait for a message back saying “good job” and the results will be the same. Equal. Humans are not always equal in the eyes of other humans. Ask a number of people who the worlds greatest artist or entertainer or singer is and you will get different answers. Ask who the worlds best looking person is and at least one person will say “my spouse/partner.” The overarching idea of social equality is to simply not let the subjective opinions of even a majority form a default standard that others must live by.

Experience itself is even more varied in quality control than education- but how does one place a value on experience vs education for example? It is indeed all very complex and as we tend to do as humans, we try to make it simple enough that we can manage it.

But so much of society is comprised of artificial or imaginary concepts and rules- things which exist to serve a purpose but act via a mechanism not inherent to nature but of our decision or design. So the direct link between ones actual contribution to society and ones compensation or recognition is a falsehood- but quantifying “contribution” in terms other than a hard metric like the money generated by ones labors is too abstract. The person with no education or experience who works selling the thing can make as much or more than the person who invented or designed it using their education.

The basic concept of equality (speaking of humans only-) is that all human life has equal value regardless of outcome or ability. That Beethoven and Shakespeare and you and the homeless man on the corner are all equal value by inherent property of life. Equal value in society is the next step- that the garbage man and the doctor and the police officer, the man, the woman, the blind, deaf, etc. all serve a value to society. It starts to break up there as we commoditize humans. It’s easier and less costly to train a courier than an accountant. More humans have the skills or mindset to be a retail shelf stocker than a Nuclear physicist.

You’re not wrong- but I think it’s contextual. When one holds the thought experiment to be true, or just takes it at face value it becomes fallacy. Perhaps not the actual wager- but the sentiment.

1,000 cars on the freeway each morning with 1 lone person in each, all going the same way but by themselves. They’ll go home and many will be separated by a few feet or so from the family next to them and not want to smell their food or hear their lives through the walls. There is a strong difference between being about lifting everyone up and supporting things that lift us or those we see like up with a side effect that it might help someone else too.

So to me anyway- the root of the issue is greed and personal “self determination.” We usually claim to have succeeded by our merits but we tend to claim to fail by other factors. We don’t look as hard to how we can share our success when we do well- but we sure do want to share the burden when things go wrong.

Perhaps... both? I mean- a large corporation COULD and likely would get assistance if it miscalculated. A bank certainly would. As the bail outs and stimulus and other things show- we have a system to say: “we can’t let these businesses fail. It is bad for society...” however we don’t really apply that to a home or healthcare or a private individual. But aren’t people themselves the make up of the society these sorts of things are meant to benefit?

That would be nice. Perhaps easier said than done- at least in a system where economic libertarianism is the norm (not saying that is bad or good. Just a fact.) But for example- if a person buys a $70k car to drive Lyft or deliver pizza, and can’t make enough money or get hired as a driver- is the fact a series of miscalculations and poor choices led them to debt on their chosen path to profit a social issue or a personal issue?

If I wanted to be mean however I might point out that if not having a degree makes my opinion worthless- what does it say if your opinion that you can’t write a full sentence with correct grammar?

I might point out that one doesn’t need a degree to form an educated opinion. Most people who vote don’t have law degrees or medical degrees or economic or political degrees do they? I need not get into my lengthy backstory or defend my expertise because I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject- I’ve learned some things and know a bit on the subject to speak in vague terms. That said- at least I’m making constructive comments and not just tearing other people down.

So what I see is less “clever stump of an expert” and more akin to walking up to a doctor saying: “I hear you’re the best doctor on earth? Well tell me what THIS is..” and dumping a box of various body parts and cuts of meat. At the core however there is a clever play on words. But beyond that I see red pen marks.

Good eye and good question. That falls into the “this sentence is nonsense” category. We could pick at syntax and say this or that aspect of the sentence is worded slightly awkwardly but has a different meaning- but they don’t line up together nor with the punctuation. “Who” could be a proper noun- but then it is declarative as in “Now you tell me John was drunk that night...” but there’s a question mark- which we could say is akin to “and you say Sarah is violent?” But context doesn’t add up.

Well said. She’s 2. She doesn’t have the cognitive ability or years on earth to understand her socioeconomics and such. It’s not less impressive when a poor child learns 2 languages- it doesn’t make the news because unlike a princess the world doesn’t tend to try and watch every intimate moment of a poor or even middle class child’s life. By the same token- is the achievement of a 2 year old learning diminished because of who their parents are? How bout this one- if the media is driven by profit to feed people what they want to see- if more people spent time and money caring about poor kids the media would too. The media is a mirror through which we can see society. It can distort the image but at its core what you see is the “average” reflected back.