Brainstorming: M vs N, not M vs M

If only it where as simple as creating a new system and just implement that. But unfortunately it is not.
One thing through out human history is common and that is breaking the status quo.
Rules, and in a larger sense systems, are only here for us to break them. That is, somehow human nature.

It makes no sense, but it is true. If we are the pinacle of evolution, we should kill it. Before it kills us

a reply to: Puppylove

So sick of the one side is wrong the other is not delusion. There are bad eggs on both sides and in order to fix things we need to stop defending the bad aspects of both, not pretending the side we support most should be allowed to go unchecked.

There's such thing as too little and too much and anyone who refuses to recognize that is dishonest. There's also such a thing as what can be reasonably expected and demanding more than you deserve, anyone who refuses to recognize that is equally dishonest.

Can we not ignore the problems on one side and deal with both ends of the spectrum please?

I see.

Then please go out and find me all of the treatises and pages and reams of opinions on the destructive impulses of envy.

You can't because they don't exist. You will fine all of them on the destructive power of greed though, and a lot of the impulse behind it is envy. Do yourself a favor and examine most of the solutions to extreme greed. Do those solutions propose helping those without to attain or simply focus on tearing down the ones who have "too much" with the excuse that "no one needs ...". If it's the latter, then you're reading something through the lens of envy and it's shaping a destructive solution, not a constructive one.

That narrative doesn't want to become better. If the person writing it or otherwise speaking it is a bum on the street, he or she doesn't want to improve him or herself, they only want no one else to be better off. That's envy speaking, it's not really about greed. Greed in the end spurs you to improve your situation, and the destructive power inherent in it is when you stomp on someone's face to get there, not inherent in you simply attaining.

Or let's simply to tomato farmers:

The greedy farmer grows as many tomatoes as he can because he always wants more. The destructive power of greed might lead him to destroy himself in the process -- he works to ruin or neglects his family to ruin or both. Or for the unscrupulous, greed might lead him to sabotage his competitors to ensure no one has more.

Envy is the farmer who doesn't necessarily care at all about how his tomatoes did. He only really cares that some of his neighbors did better. Those neighbors don't even particularly have to be super-greedy farmers like the one above although this farmer might use that to justify his complaints. Make no mistake - he's coming for *any* farmer who did better. And he doesn't want to find ways to do better himself. He only wants to make sure that no one else can do better.

Social solutions that seek to make sure no one can ever do better than anyone else are children of envy and trap everyone at the level of the least. They are inherently destructive because they allow no one to improve. Greed, going the other way, is closely tied with the desire to improve oneself. It's part of the impulse people have when they want to get better, especially economically. And once you start to succeed, it's very, very easy to chalk all of that up to greed and not simply to the rush one feels when one starts to do well. Is an athlete like Michael Phelps too "greedy" for example when he jumps into the pool and wins yet another race denying the others a gold? I mean, he has so many of them ...

a reply to: ketsuko

Find me ever proposing a solution that did not emphasise and reward people for greater achievements and you'd have a point. I have ALWAYS advocated for a wage gap. The only thing I have ever argued against is an infinite wage gap. I've also never argued for extremes on the bottom. I've argued for the basics provided before work starts paying in. Some kind of basic, food, shelter, and medical care no matter what (not welfare which goes away before you can even afford the same things from work), after which jobs ADD to that (which is what makes it different from welfare), all while placing emphasis on those who do more get more. I just don't think there should no limit on that gain.

I look at society as a whole, not the individual. I don't see society as a bunch of individuals trying to one up each other. I think pushing such ideals is unhealthy to society as a whole, not to mention the people within it. More and more people close themselves off to others and are becoming miserable for it.

I'm ALL for rewarding hard work and innovation, never once even hinted at anything resembling everyone being directly comparable to each other. You do more, you get more, WITHIN REASON. You provide for society to any degree, society provides for you, WITHIN REASON. BOTH sides limited to WITHIN REASON. Making sure you're sheltered from the elements, gassed up with food, and healthy is a requirement to be a functional person in society, they are the minimum necessary for a person to truly function as an effective worker, let alone a human being. Why should we need to work to get the things required to be able to even function as a worker in the first place? You want people to work, make sure they're physically able to first. You'll never get good workers when most of them work to simply be healthy enough to work more. Even worse when they can't even afford to be healthy like that because the work isn't paying enough to do it. All I'm asking is to make sure people are healthy enough to work before demanding that they do so, and that it's unreasonable to expect people to work to be paid just enough and sometimes not enough, to maintain the ability to work in the first place. There's no incentive, it's just punishment avoidance.

People deserve to be rewarded for hard work, I personally think we do pay wrong at jobs, it should vary within a range for the same job weekly or daily (which will better handle sick days), no more pay raises just pay ranges that fluctuate. It should have different rates with minimum rate representing pay for the work reasonably expected from a person working while sick, worn out, or having a hard time, with the highest rate for the cream of the crop. This allows for anyone to budget for the lowest rate, while giving incentive to perform at a higher rate, when you can. Oh and this rate needs to be determined by a formula, not the bosses or team leader's opinion of a person, and it must account for machine malfunctions. Time down due to machine maintenance is on the engineering side of thing, not the workers. They get the rate they were pulling before the machine went down and after it's up running again. This is mostly focusing on factory work as is a decent starting point example. This is a side tangent though and just one of my many brainstorms on the issue.

I firmly believe that those who contribute more to society should get more. Otherwise why do it? I can, however do that, and also believe that there's a minimum anyone who contributes in any way must receive to even be functional enough to contribute.

Just because people want to restrict wealth to any degree does not mean they want everyone living equally in the gutter. They want balance, a reasonable range of differences. They want there to be an incentive to do better, but they also want to make sure everyone is reasonably taken care of without a welfare trap, which hurts everybody.

a reply to: Puppylove

I'm only pointing out that we can't just worry about greed. Greed is self-destructive as often as not and ends up being its own solution. Envy is just as poisonous, but we've lost sight of it as a problem. Indeed, today, envy is damn near a virtue even if no one openly acknowledges it.

The most successful societies in human history acknowledge the destructive power of envy as much if not more than they worry about greed.

Understand that I never said greed by itself isn't ever a problem, but a lot of what we see today as cheerleading for the problem of greed is also envy.

Just for an example of how envy created a real world problem we deal with today:

Once upon a time, wage caps were imposed in this coutry because "no one needs ..." to make more than a certain amount. In order to entice better workers, which was usually done by offering more in the way of wages, employers started offering benefits, one of those was health insurance. Eventually, the wage caps were repealed, but the damage was done. Workers had come to expect health insurance as a benefit of employement, and the US health insurance industry as a part of employment was set to create the problems we see today.

Envy of some workers making more for essentially the same job helped to create that.

a reply to: ketsuko

Greed is more than self destructive. To use your tomato farmer example. A greedy tomato farmer that succeeds in his greed has not only monopolized tomato farming, giving them the power over others by deciding who can or cannot have tomatoes. Greed comes with envy, greed doesn't just want more of something, it wants all of something, greed comes often from a desire for power. It's not just about having things, it's about power over others through having those things.

Sure envy is a problem, but greedy people are envious in their own way. They're envy ramped up to the extreme. They're envious than anyone else may have anything at all. They want it all, for themselves, period. They give only what they absolutely must to get more, and if they can get away with giving nothing to gain more, happily do so. Sure they'll work to make it happen, it's an all consuming obsession after all, but they'll look for any means to get more not just hard work, the hard work is just a means to an all consuming end. They have a need that can't ever be filled.

Now obviously not all people who have traits of greed are this level of broken, same as not all envy (really they're both the same thing, only difference is the level of ambition attached) is as extreme as you imagine it. My example is the extreme levels of it.

That's the issue though, your not recognizing that greed and envy are the same thing, just with different levels of ambition and capabilities to back it up.

All envy is, is the desire for what others have. Add ambition, and now you have greed.

a reply to: ketsuko

That's where my fluctuating pay ranges come in. I think it solves that problem nicely. Everyone who starts a job can get the highest rate, if they're willing to put in the hard work, at the same time, if you do a # job, no matter how long you been there the rate lowers. It incentivizes hard work, and allows no one to be bitter someone else gets paid better for the same work.

It rewards hard work from the get go. One of the reasons so many people fail to keep up the pace is there's no reward for doing so until long after most people can maintain it without reward.

Other advantage is, it allows people to have off days or even weeks. It makes it much less likely people will call off simply because they're expected to keep up the breakneck pace they've been doing, just because they've done it before. People are more likely to show up when sick or down if they know they can tone down the pace to compensate.

Results, more people showing up everyday, more people working harder, with incentives to keep doing so, and many more.

a reply to: Puppylove

Envy is jealousy.

Envy is wanting for no one else to have more than you or different than you.

en·vy
/ˈenvē/
Learn to pronounce
noun
a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.

greed
/ɡrēd/
Learn to pronounce
noun
intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.

Look at the two definitions. Notice how greed is self-centered while envy is centered on others around you.

Both are forms of covetousness which is something you should not do. Thou shalt not covet ...

cov·et
/ˈkəvət/
Learn to pronounce
verb
yearn to possess or have (something).

But if you look at Exodus 20:17, the full text of the Commandment, it says:

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Thus the Commandment against covetousness is centered on others and applies to envy specifically, and yes, greed is a facet of envy, but envy is far more destructive because it doesn't just destroy you, it will destroy those around you too.

a reply to: ketsuko

Greed destroys those around you just as much.

For example.

You and several people are trapped in a building and need to wait for rescue. You have enough water that if rationed will give everyone enough to last until the rescue. You, however, are greedy, so you hide that water away, taking from it in secret. You survive to rescue, everyone else has died. Go greed.

Greed takes from the world and covets all it has to offer. It takes and takes and takes until there is nothing left.

You act like greedy people live in a vacuum where their actions don't affect anyone else. We all live on the same planet, same as those people waiting for rescue.

Envy is no worse than greed. Stop with the bull #. Both have a dramatic effect on the person and the world around them. Greed does not occur in a vacuum, stop pretending like it does.

Let's take a crazy cat lady, one that's obsessed with owning cats. As a result they keep getting more and more cats, eventually, most cats are sick, several litter the place, dead and buried under the living cats, the place reeks of feces and piss... That's the world when greed is done with us.

You see kids, this is why we can't have nice things.

Because if only two persons are trying to create a better world, we end up in a discussion about which human concept is worse, greed or envy

a reply to: Jubei42

I know it's annoying. Even if one were worse, it changes not the need to combat both.

a reply to: Puppylove

You need to calm down and read what I'm saying.

You're the one acting like envy isn't just as bad.

Do you know what unbridled envy brings? Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Unbridled envy is the SJW who sees pictures of the greats of the past and can only think that they don't look like her, so she gets them torn down. If *she* can't be on the wall, then no one can be! If there aren't enough people like *her* working at a place, then people need to be fired or otherwise removed to make room for *her* (those who look like her).

Mayor De Blasio wants to abolish the G&T programs in New York schools because not enough students of color are in them. If those kids can't qualify, then no one needs to have advanced education.

If you cannot see how those impulses aren't equally destructive, then I can't help you. They lead to the impulse that desires to try to force everyone to be the same which, of course, we aren't. And at what point does envy point figures and blame greed? What is simply excellence and what is greed when it comes to business? Apple is pretty darn successful, but are they greedy or did they actually earn much of their market share by excelling at what they do and produce. How about some of the other bigger companies?

Or are they all illegitimate simply because they grew large?

Where do you draw that line and how do you do it fairly? Where do you kneecap someone deciding that anything further couldn't possibly be excellence and is simply evil greed and how do ensure it's not your own envy guiding that impulse?

Ok I'm not feeling good right now. Sick as # so how about this one thing. Medical care. Everyone no matter their income gets the same medical care and it's completely debt free.

If people want workers to show up to work they need to be #ing healthy.

This isn't a car, or tv, or any other luxury. It's a need, straight up, and to make sure people are getting the best care, no exceptions, everyone, no matter their income, gets the same care.

In exchange for this people in the medical field get to live in a damn near palace near their work with anything they could ask for provided as part of their accommodations. Before anyone bitches about them getting free #, everyone needs medical care, so you want to live and they want a big screen tv in their palace, your company better damn well give them a big screen tv.

Obviously more would need to be worked out but is more than fair to give those who keep us alive a life of luxury and it would cost damn near nothing because money isn't real, and most product are produced in such excess, and those that aren't are still produced by people that need medical care, as well as all the food farmers are literally paid to not produce each year.

The main question is the incentive to make that medical care the best... oh right the range thing I mentioned earlier. Different perks for different amount of work, and any team that finds a cure gets a permanent increase in the minimum of perks.

Just tossing ideas. I will not accept that desiring debt free medical care can be described as people being un#ing fairly envious.

Get everyone proper medical care and that's enough to shut me the # up. I think that alone will ease the burden on everyone more than enough by itself.