From: Erin (macavity11@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Oct 01 2005 - 17:19:08 BST
As MSH said to me once....if you don't want to talk to
me about this than fine but than don't mention me in
your emails either.
--- Arlo Bensinger <ajb102@psu.edu> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> Glad you've been listening in.
>
> [You wrote]
>
> I think the "50 yard line" problem of wealth
> accumulation can be
> avoided if we simply agree that wealth accumulation
> is not inherently
> bad, but is immoral only insofar as it negatively
> affects the well-
> being of others.
>
> [Arlo]
> Of course, I've never meant from this football
> analogy that I believe there to be some absolute
> "line in the sand" where "wealth accumulation"
> becomes immoral. I was merely attempting to focus
> the conversation of the easily seeable endzones (or
> poles) before getting bogged down in a mire of
> detail, that as you suggest (and I agree) may be
> something that needs to take multiple factors into
> account, and also I think have some degree of
> historical placement.
>
> I also want to emphasize that a big problem in the
> dialogue is the use of the word "poor". We use it,
> because we've been enculturated to do so, in a
> near-strict capitalistic sense. And this is
> precisely the problem with the valuation of people
> based on an economic marker. In the sense we use the
> word, the Amish are "poor". They lack financial
> capital, they lack material acquisitions we use as
> strong measures of succcess, but the Amish
> themselves don't consider themselves "poor", quite
> the opposite, many have expressed (I know this from
> personal encounters) a feeling of great wealth. That
> is, "rich" and "poor" in their views are not
> economically derived, as they are in ours.
>
> When Erin talked about "making people richer" versus
> "making people poorer", I had hoped to start to talk
> about this discursive shift in meaning. Namely, is
> the only way of "making people richer" giving them
> more financial capital? Does a loss of financial
> capital equate with "becoming poorer". What makes
> the Amish feel wealthy, even though we consider them
> poor?
>
> As a short, and simplistic, example, I offer "public
> libraries". By using taxation to fund this community
> service, people are (in the economic model) "made a
> little poorer". They are deprived of capital means
> they would otherwise possess. But, at the same time,
> they are "made much richer" (I'd argue) by being
> part of a community where access to information is
> egalitarian and not class-derived.
>
> Now, this is not to support a "capitalist" system
> gone awry that deprives most of its people of true
> socio-economic power, or keeps a notable segment
> living in or near poverty, that somehow this should
> be ignored and people should just be content and
> measure their "richness" in other ways. That would,
> and has been sadly, the opiating role of consumerism
> and warped religious doctrine. No, only when both
> the economically "rich" and the economically "poor"
> come to see "value" as more than money money money,
> would such a shift be beneficial to society and not
> merely a ploy to make the "poor" feel they should be
> content with their economic reality.
>
> You suggest three very good questions to begin the
> process.
>
> [MSH]
>
> 1) What did you do to "get" it?
> 2) What are you doing with it?
> 3) What are you willing to do to keep it?
>
> [Arlo]
> All of these, as is obvious, places "wealth" outside
> of economic measures. Ask these three questions of
> most Amish (and again, I use these not as some
> Ideal, but as antithesis to mainstream thinking
> about "wealth"), and you'd find that although their
> financial levels are low, they score "rich" on each
> of these questions. (Of course, there have been some
> Amish communities that have turned to drug running
> and prostitution. Go figure.)
>
> In short, I like these questions as a springboard
> into the dialogue. Indeed, these three questions are
> just what Bill O'Reily (that great Marxist pundit)
> was trying to ask/say in his criticism of the oil
> companies and their gauging "the little guy". They
> made money, yes, but they fail in a morality check
> on these three questions. Hopefully, although I
> doubt it'll happen, O'Reily will begin to apply this
> critical thinking to other situations (such as, I've
> already mentioned, slashing healthcare of laborers
> while CEOs and boards reap millions and millions in
> bonuses, options and so-called "golden parachutes").
> He lacks the language to do this, of course, because
> in his (as in most) views, the pursuit of wealth is
> a measure of personal worth. And you can't fault
> someone for seeking to become "better" (aka
> "richer").
>
> [MSH]
> For example, I bet we'd all agree that becoming
> wealthy by writing a
> book like ZMM is morally superior to becoming
> wealthy by
> manufacturing land mines or cigarettes or depriving
> people of life-
> saving drugs.
>
> [Arlo]
> Like all dichotomous dialogues, one is placed in the
> seeming position of supporting an elimination of
> wealth, gulags, Stalinism or such when one begins to
> question "wealth". Such is the entrenched notion
> that "wealth acquisition" is an Axiomatic Good, an
> Unassailable Goal to which we should all pursue (or
> at the least, not impede the more-valuable people
> who do). I've never stated, nor do I agree, that no
> one should be rewarded, or profit, from their
> endeavors. But the system is not just. There are
> people who work 70-80 days, 6-7 days a week, doing
> hard labor who will never receive any just-reward
> from a system that separates people from the rewards
> of their labor. To "conservatives", these are
> "bottom feeders", worth nothing more in life than
> the minimum wage they bring home. Truly "valuable
> people" rise in the system (they believe) and earn
> money based on their value as people. But the truth
> of it is, as you know, that people (the vast
> majority) die in the same socio-econo!
> mic class as they are born. Whether this is due to
> access to social networks, imbalance in education,
> or other factors is another good question.
>
> For example, yes, Pirsig did deserve the wealth
> generated by his work. But, let me ask a difficult
> question. Pirsig was not born into poverty, his
> parents were economically well-off, and he attended
> a privileged private school. He had familial wealth
> to support his "wanderings" during the years he
> formulated what would become Qualtiy. What would
> have happened, hypotheticall, if Robert Pirsig was
> not born into such wealth, but rather born as the
> son of a day laborer, or unemployed factory worker?
> Would he be where he is today?
>
> The point is that economic privilege at birth
> bestows advantages to the child that pretty much
> secure the child's success and wealth in life (um,
> Paris Hilton?). This is not to challenge the notion
> that Pirsig's wealth is morally superior to those
> whose wealth was generated by "manufacturing land
> mines or cigarettes or depriving people of
> life-saving drugs", only that part of the equation
> that must be addressed is the "potential" of
> participating in a system that obviously, by all
> accounts and measures, favors what I call "wealth
> gravition", namely that there is little vertical
> movement or participation in the system.
>
> This is, obviously, part and parcel of the problem
> of "wealth" as a measure of value. People who have
> accumulated wealth have no dialogic reasons for
> parting with it, to say make someone else's life
> easier, when such an act would mean a devaluation of
> their own social standing.
>
> The final thing I want to comment on is this.
>
> [MSH]
> Is someone who cracks a bank vault at night morally
> beneath S&L
> owners who stole millions from taxpayers during the
> 1980's? (FYI, the
> few who went to jail received sentences one-fifth
> that of the average
> bank robber.) How about bankers who have become
> wealthy by knowingly
> laundering drug money, or by straight-forward
> embezzlement?
>
> [Arlo]
> Yeah, this always cracks me up. You'll hear how we
> do address "white collar" crime, but when you look
> at the numbers people get more time for stealing a
> purse than for embezzling millions from 401ks. Maybe
> it has something to do with celebrity. Maybe, as a
> society, we can relate to that greed? Maybe we are
> just accustomed to seeing the wealthy as "more
> valuable", so we don't inflict punishment on them
> the
=== message truncated ===
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