@rholb depends on the group, there are many causes at play.

Black communities for example are generally suffering from recent racism that explicitly kept them poor for a long time. Even once the bulk of the racist policies were gone it takes a long time for a community to recover from that. Bad habbits of poor parents (not their fault but there all the same) continue to get passed down over time and takes time to break, not to mention that racism isnt completely out of the equation either.

In other cases where there isnt a systemic cause such as with some minority communities it is just a matter of the fact that some people are going to be better performers than other through a combination of genetic abilities but also, and more importantly, bad habits being passed down, just as people who perform well have the privilege of being raised with good habits to perpetuate that.

@freemo I've read the other thread

You don't see the earth as a unique system hence wealth can be "created" but that's not the case. It's not a pie: it's a global set of resources that we share between humans and with an entire ecosystem

When NIKE execs use slave labour in china they are taking their wealth, their time and their humanity for profit. Same goes for every capitalist enterprises.

@rholb resources is really just another word for wealth.

As I said a billionair **can** take wealth but they also may not. It also isnt always the fault of the billionaire even if they do benefit from an unfair situation.

While the NIKe executives using slave labour may be a good example of immorality it isnt really an example of them stealing wealthy. The labour they use is at market value, those people would have had no work if NIKE didnt use them, so instead of them starving to death slowly they gave them some (unfair) amount of wealth to ensure they die more slowly, or maybe even just barely life. This is unfair, but since those people did not have the opportunity to use their labour to make wealth otherwise, it isnt an example of stolen wealth.

Obviously the solution there lies in China not educating their people in the first place so they werent subject to that slave labour, not with NIKE. If china had done their job NIKE would have been in a position to pay them much more as their market value would have been higher.

Its important to differentiate between doing soemthing that is immoral and whether wealth is actually being stolen or not.

@freemo

first:
- capitalism is immoral my dude
- those people are literal slave. they don't lack education, their government enslaved them.

For the sake of argument let's take a minium wage worker in whatever country. According to the market their skills provides them barely what they need to eat and sleep.

They could hunt, forage build shelter, grow crop if the land around them wasn't owned to generate wealth one way or another.

@rholb

The idea "capitalism is immoral" just tells me you are probably too indoctrinated by dogma to be able to discuss the subject objectively.

Whether they are slaves are not is a matter of semantics, but what made them slaves in china's policies, largely china's lack of desire to help educate them and give them marketable skills so they can support themselves. So whether they are a slave or not is secondary tot he fact that they are in the position they are in because of China's policies, not NIKE's.

While in theory a minimum wage worker could forage or grow crops , again, they are not prevented from doing so by NIKE or any other mega corperation. Again that is the government and clearly unfair policies.

@freemo

Thanks for answering, I come from the same place as you, so guess my perspective :)

1/States and companies are not completely separated, they can be really close, eg: lobby

2/One cannot grow crop anywhere they like because of the concept of private property. Which is indeed secured by the state but not owned by the state.

3/ back to the last toot.
if:
1. resource = wealth,
2. resource are limited (one earth and all that)
Then:
3. wealth is limited

@rholb

States and government are no more or less separate than people and the government. Sure companies can influence government through money, but in the end its the peoples voting power that makes decisions. So the responsibility for the laws and conduct of any democracy rests on its people.

The fact that people can not just grow crops anywhere is a consequence of policies and education, as well as law. The ownership of private property, for example, wouldnt be an issue if there was enough land to go around, there isnt. But there was a time in the USA where private property laws existed and land was free for the taking. Blame population growth and peoples unwillingness to keep the population in heck if you want to really find blame for why we cant all have land.

Resources do equal wealth, but resources are not limited to those on in the earth, nor are all the resources accessible to us. There is a great deal of resources still in the ground no one has access to, by mining those resources only then do they get injected into the population. So the volumn of accessible resources is constantly growing and while there is an upper bound if we limit ourselves to earth it also ignores the fact that as we approach that limit asteroid mining and other techniques will likely be underway as well.

It also is ignorant to the fact that resources are not limited to raw resources. We often consume raw resources and create new more useful resources from it, for example taking silicon and making it into chips. So you have created a greater (more wealth) resource from a resource that represented less wealth by doing so.

@freemo

§1 capitalism is global, democracy isn't. You shift the blame for inequalities from state to the people, from personal responsibilities to education. I point the same constants, across all my examples

§2 we are centuries later with a different economic order, but the USA were not a virgin country with no inhabitant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples

§3 To drill you need to own the land. You should look at the history of Congo to see how well the resource get re-ijected in the population

1/?

@freemo

$3 mining resource is limited, you can only drill so much, you can only grow so much crop, ... Do you really believe asteroid mining will be old western gold rush? Only people with extreme wealth will be able to develop the tech and finance such endeavors, increasing again inequalities - if you like sci-fi watch The Expanse, it deals with those ideas and is a crazy good show.

2/3

@freemo
3/3
$4 The production of our computing power is extremely unethical... You create wealth by mining dangerous component in insecure facility, then assembling them in extreme working condition. Again I see inequality and unequal repartition of wealth.

@freemo
2/2
Wealth allow you and your heir to learn and grow in a stable environment, get those "good habits".

@penny Its hardly something I accept at face value. The examples and arguments made are easily understood and it becomes common sense with even a little bit of time and understanding.

I gave specific examples in this thread already, feel free to add where you see holes in those examples.

@freemo I found all of them irrelevant, the sign says money, which is finite.

@penny No money isnt finite either. Money is printed all the time and supply goes up as well as down. It tends to be on lab behind the wealth generation. As wealth is generated the value of the dollar increases, this is offset by printing more dollars. If you over print you get inflation, if you underprint you get deflation. But in the end money is no more a fixed quantity than wealth.

@freemo it is finite, the finite amount available fluctuating is not at odds with it's finiteness

@penny That misses the whole point.. money like wealth is generated, and as such one does not need to take from someone else to be wealthy or have money, if they generate wealth over long term the end result is generating money

@freemo I refuse to acknowledge your point on the grounds that it's based on something undeniably false. There is a finite amount of money in the world and the more people have of that money, the less other people have, full stop, no matter who prints it or who burns it or whatever

@penny being finite isnt the point, so no it isnt based on that. It is based on the fact that money and wealth are generated. The amount is finite, but it is not **fixed**, it is constantly created and destroyed.

@freemo The sign said money, it is objective truth that there is a finite money, and money can either be possessed by an entity or lost, and every entity that possess any changes the ratio

@penny Yes, but again the point your missing is that money follows wealth. Wealth can be generated, and when it is money is generated as well.

Ergo the amount of money is not fixed. People can generate wealth, and thus money.

by not finite I basically meant "it grows without bounds"

@freemo I don't care about any of that because I think it's based on false pretenses, and it's wrong anyway. Even in your perfect world we can observe wealth inequalities by observing spending, as time goes on and the ratio changes, fewer and fewer entities spend more and more money, the finite capacity of money allows concentration. Perhaps you say, anyone can be the person who does it, join that smaller and smaller caste, but this is a lie, the slots are limited, the people did not choose this.

@penny

I never claimed wealth inequality doesnt exist. Your arguing against something I never said now.

@freemo Inequality is a nature of the limited nature of wealth. You'll notice in this doomsday scenario, which exists in our world, these bigger and bigger entities make sure to only spend with each other, and buy out any new competition for themselves.

What there is is a distribution and limited amount of spending power which controls who and how wealth can be "generated", even if the wealth itself isn't "limited"

@penny Again your arguing a topic that is not what I am asserting..

You can have evil billionaires who steal from people and generate no wealth or money. You can also have billionaires who generate significant wealth and steal from no one.

The point is only that someone having more money doesn't mean you have less. It is not a pie, when one person has more it doesn't mean some had to be taken from someone else, it could be generated wealth (and thus money).

On the topic of if the billionaire we have are generating wealth or stealing it is a valuable topic to discuss, but not something I made any assertion on.

@freemo Stop ignoring MY point, because I just said that even if wealth isn't a pie, spending power is and spending power controls who is able to generate wealth. And do you know what gives you spending power? Excess wealth.

@penny I'm not ignoring your point. I am simply saying it is arguing against a case that I am not asserting either way.

But to address your point, it depends on the country. In the USA for example the majority of the top 500 richest people in the USA started as middle class or below. So clearly its not nearly as much of a closed club as people may think. With that said its hardly perfect. We absolutely need to make that easier for people, for example free education at all levels would go a long way to help leveling the playing field.

@freemo The source of the people doesn't change the limited slots available, and my point is honestly more relevant than most of yours.

Wealth is limited, and finite, and it's power provided is a pie chart, by the nature of those who have it having the relative power to choose who will go on to be successful. Which is usually white middle class people as in that list. Though, I know most of those are lies by the fact that Bezos and Gates are listed as coming from middle class on this list

@penny

ok

@freemo Honestly this is just bad math

@mikelga Yea, the difficulty is, of course, in knowing the value of your purchases and decisions. That isnt always easy.