The Rich And The Poor

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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The Rich And The Poor
Daniel J. Lavender

Poverty and prosperity are polarities perpetuated by modern society, by civilization. Laws and practices that are in place actually ensure economic and social disparity.

What is civilization? Civilization is simply organized society. Unfortunately civilization is not about kindness and courtesy despite what you may have been told.

Civilization, particularly the capitalistic form, allows a few families to accumulate vast amounts of wealth. The few are said to own the wealth and therefore have rights to it.

To sustain this civil system propaganda must be disseminated into society and it must be enforced. Some of this propaganda takes the form of legal writ while other takes the form of religious dogma.

Since both legal writ and religious dogma approach property in a similar fashion I will reference the arguably less pretentious Biblical format.

“Do not steal” and “do not covet” seem fair upon first appraisal but after some analysis appear to be quite advantageous.

“Do not steal” and “do not covet” protect the wealthy considerably more than the poor. These parameters protect individuals roughly proportional of their possessions.

If Family A owned two businesses and three houses law would serve them more than Family B who owned only one business and one house. The same services would be provided for Family A but they would be provided on a much larger scale.

Business and law are linked in this way. Big business has the wealth to influence law and law has the force to protect business. Business and government enrich each other. This is the consolidation of power and wealth.

Law primarily protects the haves from the have-nots. The poor have hardly anything to steal therefore law has hardly anything to protect. Additionally the poor have no wealth to enrich or influence government.

The poor may steal from the poor but they wouldn’t be able to steal much. The poor may steal from the middle class, but the middle class must ultimately purchase its livelihood from the rich upper-class families.

Nearly all commodities originate from the wealthy few. They own the land, they own the factories, they have the means to produce and generate wealth. The middle class does not, and the poor certainly don’t.

Practically all of society is dependent on, and resultantly exploited by, the wealthy few. They own most of the wealth and are protected by law. Theft is illegal so the vast majority of people must work for the wealthy, effectively making the wealthy even wealthier.

The civil system is advantageous. It is intentionally advantageous. And the advantage only increases with participation.

Many say the middle class is shrinking. Some say it’s downright disappearing. The discrepancy between rich and poor is great as ever. Again, this is simply a symptom of the advantageous civil system. The advantage only increases with participation.

Many remain content in this civil system because they actually believe they have a chance at obtaining one of the top positions. But as stated repeatedly in this essay, there are only a few of these positions; only a few reach the top. The odds of reaching the top are incredibly slim. The majority of people are stuck in the lower classes of society. The majority of people are stuck serving the few.

A certain unsatiated greed sustains the system. Some assist those in power in hopes of gaining power themselves. This assistance only strengthens the system. Conversely some attack those in power in hopes of weakening the system. This only strengthens the system as it justifies increased protection of the system.

Civilization doesn’t necessarily concern kindness or courtesy. Civilization simply concerns organization. The organization of labor, the organization of power, the organization of wealth. The organization of the powerful and the powerless, the organization of the rich and the poor. Civilization is the systematic exploitation of the many by the few. Civilization creates the powerful and the powerless. Civilization creates the rich and the poor.

Poverty and prosperity are made possible by civilization, by organized society. Indeed they are civilized terms. Without organization resources couldn’t be systematically isolated. Without organization people couldn’t be systematically sorted into social classes.

Civilization is a forced system, perpetuated by law which is sustained by violence and imprisonment. Civilization is skewed in favor of the greedy and the arrogant and does more harm than good. Civilization, particularly the capitalistic form, measures individuals by their material possessions, it reduces life to merchandise. These issues of power and advantage are not just limited to capitalism, however, as all civilized systems work to consolidate power and advantage into the hands of a few.

By exalting and protecting the greed of the few greed is permeated throughout all of society. Many want to be rich and powerful but only a few are allowed and resultantly complications arise. By hoarding vast amounts of wealth the few exacerbate theft. By exploiting people the few exacerbate resistance. By consolidating power the few exacerbate revolt. All of these things manifest distrust and suspicion, leading to additional social issues.

The very foundation of civilization, organization, seems threatened by its own merits. Perhaps that isn’t entirely bad. After all, civilization produces the exploiters and the exploited, civilization produces the powerful and the powerless, civilization produces the rich and the poor.

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Just remember : There are many kinds of power.
Some financial power, some socio-political power,
but also the soul and the mind.

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I’m a socialist.

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As for the bible, it’s neither capitalist, nor socialist.
The bible supports a different set of property norms than both capitalism and socialism.
There’s no such thing as intellectual property in the bible or in all of antiquity for that matter, intellectual property was made up by Europeans in the 18th century.
Intellectual property is theft, a sin.
Charing interest on a loan is a sin.
Preventing people from eating from your farm is a sin, so long as they don’t bring a basket to carry away the food in, they may eat from your farm, and I could go on.
Religions, regardless of whatever scriptures they’re supposedly based on, tend to support whatever regime happens to be in power.
Christianity has been used to support feudalism, capitalism, socialism and fascism.

Liberal democracy is largely, if not wholly, a scam.
Both the mainstream left and right are essentially crony capitalists.
If the mainstream left are elected, they may increase social welfare and regulations to protect workers and consumers a bit largely at the expense of the middleclass and small business owners, the upperclass will be able to afford the taxes, regulations and the overclass will be able to skirt around them.
This will upset the middleclass and there’ll be a backlash to the right.

As the middleclass continues to shrink and the gap between rich and poor grows, the masses will tend to swing to the left.
The right may become more ‘populist’, at least in rhetoric, (anti-migrant, anti-minority) in order to appeal to the masses, which’re increasingly proletariat and so disloyal to capitalism.
The ruling class will pump unpopular agendas into the left like climate austerity and cultural Marxism/woke in order to repel the working class and sidetrack the left from the class war.

Elections will be rigged.
Politicians will be bought over and under the table by the ruling class and promises broken.
The few (and they are very, very few, if any) that can’t be bought, or blackmailed will be defamed, deplatformed and doxed by mainstream, social and pseudo-alternative media.
They will also be debanked, lawfare will be waged against them and if necessary, they will be assassinated, see Eugene V Debs during the progressive era, Huey Long during the great depression, and the Kennedys.

Voting by itself isn’t enough.
Ultimately the ruling class only acquiesces to one thing; mass noncompliance.
If the masses want a substantial amount of socialism, the ruling class have to fear we’ll revolt if we don’t get it.
We have to show them that we’re serious by breaking the laws put in place to protect the rich and powerful, as well as protest and strike.
Eventually the ruling class may capitulate, as they did during the 1920s, 30s and redistribute some of the wealth to the people from what’s left of the middleclass and/or from the upperclass.
If they don’t capitulate, sooner or later you get revolution.
And revolutionaries, just like politicians, can be controlled opposition.

All this stuff takes many decades to play out.
We are now at the time when we’re just beginning to discuss some of this stuff, it may take many more decades before serious reforms and revolutions become a possibility.

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That being said, the real rightwing isn’t capitalist either, the real rightwing is protectionist, among other things.
See Donald Trump’s tariffs for example.
Tariffs oppose free trade/capitalism.
That’s right, Donald Trump, the multibillionaire businessman, is less of a capitalist than his republican predecessors W, HW and Reagan, at least in this regard.
Protectionists try to put the interests of their nation state and workers above the interests of other nation states and workers.
Protectionism is a form of rightwing collectivism.

The real rightwing is also corporatist (not to be confused with corporatocracy/crony capitalism, corporatism, at least in theory, is the synthesis of the interests of capitalists on the one hand, with the interests of workers, consumers and the state as a whole on the other, the Nordic countries for example practice some degree of corporatism).
The real rightwing is also paternalist, see paternalistic conservatism.

All these things, protectionism, corporatism and paternalism taken together amount to fascism.
The real rightwing is fascist.
Or to put it another way, it could be said capitalism is the individualist rightwing, fascism the collectivist rightwing.

What happens is as people tire of capitalism, as capitalism becomes increasingly crony/corrupt, as the ruling class are held above the law to a lower standard, where they can commit force and fraud, where they receive a ton of corporate welfare at the expense of the people who receive little-no social welfare, where wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, people either begin looking for alternatives to capitalism, or at least a less corrupt form of it.
This tends to anger the ruling class who’ve profited the most from the form of capitalism in place, and they attempt to sabotage the people’s search for alternatives under the guise of ‘protecting liberal democracy from extremism’.

Alternatively, they may lead the opposition, the transition from capitalism into another economic system, so they may continue to corrupt and profit from whatever new system they put in place.
Degrees of fascism are one alternative to capitalism, degrees of socialism are another.
This may lead to a capitalist state moderated by fascism and/or socialism, or it may lead to full blown fascism and/or socialism, where capitalism, and liberal democracy with it are largely dissolved.

It’s a cycle and a process, we’ve seen it play out before.
Capitalism along with liberal democracy were challenged by Marxism, fascism, social democracy and anarchism during the upheaval of the early 20th century, and it’s being challenged again, a bit.
This challenge is still in its infancy and will in all likelihood continue to grow as the people become increasingly bored of, dissatisfied with and impoverished by capitalism.

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In the fight between classical liberalism and its challengers (Marxism, fascism, social democracy and anarchism) during the early-mid 20th century, roughly from 1917-1945, ultimately social democracy triumphed in the west.
Social democracy was the top dog till it was supplanted by a partial return to classical liberalism in the form of neoliberalism in the 80s and 90s.
Now neoliberalism is being challenged a bit by both the right and the left.
Culturally liberal democracy is being challenged a bit too, by a slight return to social and national conservatism on the right, climate austerity and woke/cultural Marxism on the left.

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Gllominary,

A short revision here , and revision here as not only a literal device is very fitting.

The facts show that isms don’t end, they convert into other formats.

The most illustrative one of aristocracy passing into capitalism. The economic-political tie in is masked by all kinds of dejure platitudes, but the various zsars, barons of industry are explicit overly touted by the very names of products, especially that sell in the automotive and celebrity industries.

These neuvo rische pride themselves in marrying European aristocrats, adopting their mannerisms, send their kids on their continental trips, and worship vogue cotturuer.

It’s unfortunate that such under the radar transitions achieved little of substance, yet have cost millions of lost lives on the battle field.

No wonder the crisis at hand of the crushing of the so called middle class has been aenesthetized with the cure of an antidote to diminishing returns, by offering cheep forms of immediately solvent products in return, a fitting antidote to inflation.

It’s all kind of a withes’ brew of sorts , like ring around the rosy kind of intoxication with the young consumer, they are predictably easy to beguile.

But then socialism is a lot lot worse, by any standard, they are the worst capitalist aristocrats ever.

The new world order rests on only one hope, and that is the realization that all this here means we all live in a yellow submarine simulation.

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Let’s put it this way.
Our civilization/society is founded on individualism, not collectivism.
Fiscally it’s founded on capitalism.
Socially it’s founded on liberalism (and by liberalism I always mean civil libertarianism, wiki civil libertarianism if you don’t know what it means).

Capitalism has its pros and cons, invariably the fallout from capitalism compounds and needs to be addressed.
Over time, capitalism has degenerated into corporate/crony/monopoly/oligopoly capitalism and liberalism into illiberalism/authoritarianism.
Many people are just beginning to notice this stuff now and some are eyeing alternatives to the system.

There are many alternatives, some well known, some not so well known, but a few stand out.
Fiscally two alternatives to capitalism (a form of rightwing individualism) are state socialism (a form of leftwing collectivism) and state corporatism (fascism, a form of rightwing collectivism).
Socially two alternatives to liberalism (a form of leftwing individualism) are woke/cultural Marxism (a form of leftwing collectivism) and social conservatism (a form of rightwing collectivism).

There’s also different ways of doing capitalism.
Neoliberalism has been our way of doing it since the 1980s, classical liberalism, social democracy and protectionism are other ways of doing it.
As the middle class shrinks, the working poor grow more numerous and the upperclass more wealthy, as social conditions deteriorate, people are going to begin looking at these and other alternatives.
This will bring us into conflict with the elite, who either want to maintain the status quo, or firmly control and corrupt whatever system we may transition into, so they can continue profiting.

All civilizations//societies go through cycles of growth, then stagnation, then decay followed by either renewal, or death.
Capitalism is no different.
Capitalism has been thee system since the 18th century and neoliberalism thee flavor of it since the 80s.
Neoliberalism has an expiry date.
Only time will tell for sure what it’ll be supplanted by, we can only speculate.

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I agree with what you said but there are many forms of socialism and some are more workable than others.
I’m not an authoritarian or Marxist socialist.
Social democracy, like we had from the 1920s or 30s to the 1980s is workable.
Democratic and libertarian socialism may also be workable, but history didn’t give them a chance, so remain theoretical.
Neoliberalism/Thatcherism/Reaganism was a mistake, fiscally we need to get back to something like social democracy, and protectionism, and socially we need to get back to civil libertarianism.

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Reminiscence to both, liberalism and social democracy are at odds, within a typically reified history which supposed to serve as balances to mitigate the Christian moral type humanistic socialism on one hand, and the evolution of barebuckle nineteenth century undisciplined gross capitalism.

Such insularity mechanism did not work and brought about the current crisis the world rarely experiences, and aptly revised as the possible coming of a Great Recession, which is turning toward the inexplicable raising of interest rate, and by this doing a bad turn for the majority of taxpayers who would still like to see themselves in a solid middle class.

All at the cost of regaining stability to those, to whom inflation is the real killer. Yes but…. These people are really worried about their investment checks, and we know they are in minority of accountability.

Does this echo something that similarly went wrong from the late 20’s on, as panick ensued, when reality tried to match the standard of status quo?

— and look back to Daniel- no fear of those cats, they are just tiny Siamese hearted lions , and lionesses, so just feed them letting you be, but you’ve got to understand the magic they are born under, those condemned to have been borne in August, during the reign of Augustus,

Understand that charm , and you’ll know that the bad name kitties earned and suffered a Parisian court martial there upon, was just a stream in the islands of the sun, a worship that you simply cannot approach too directly the Incas knew of this , not too wild meeting another there any time soon.

Don’t quite me or will throw my wild blue Levi’s into Strauss the bestest describer.

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Look at all this banter over slave system of choice.

The most sustainable, natural, free way of life was as hunter-gatherers.

That is the lifestyle humans evolved to embrace.

All these other systems are slavery the results of which are fake, fatty foods and silly little toys.

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They are all slave systems, but as I’m poor, I still prefer social liberalism to neoliberalism.
If you’re willing and able to live off the grid, more power to you shrugs.
If you’re not than you’re a hypocrite.

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There are no capitalist economies in the current year of 2023, so it is wrong to attribute any current economic problems to capitalism. The last country to have what could be defined as capitalism was Hong Kong prior to its take-over by China. Meanwhile the most definitely socialist country seems to be Venezulea, which is one of the only countries in the world with mass starvation. The poverty of Venezuela is exceptional. Venezulea was one of the only countries in the world to have a shrinking population. If capitalism was bad for poor people, they wouldn’t have flooded into Hong Kong in extremely high numbers during the time when it was capitalist. Its not entirely black-and-white when you look at countries such as France with better economies.

The most accurate word to describe almost all large current economies is fascism, an economic blend of corporation and the state. It very much describes the United States economy and the economy of China. The United States converted from a capitalist economy to a mixed economy in the 1930’s. So, to speak about capitalism it is better to talk about Colonial America and the United States prior to the 1930’s “New Deal”.

By comparing actually capitalist eras for countries, which are quite rare, specific to countries in past time frames as a group, you can do an A-B analysis and make objective statements about capitalist economies. The statistics that I’ve seen on capitalist economies show that the system causes a reduction in poverty and a reduction in the rich-poor gap. The most substantial repository for identification of capitalist economies is the Index of Economic Freedom maintained by the Heritage Foundation. This capitalist-biased group scores countries from 0 to 100 for economic freedom. To talk about capitalism, talk about countries that scored 89 or higher on the Index of Economic Freedom during the period of time they were able to meet that score.

There is a major problem with socialism because the foundation of socialism is the immoral act of taking other people’s property without their permission, which is theft and extortion. It is contrary to intuition the most generally prosperous economic system rests on an immoral foundation. This can be quasi-circumvented at face value by considering all property to be collective under communism. In other words, you say that property is owned by the collective at all times, so there is nothing for an individual to own, so nothing can be stolen away from a specific individual. However, that system has its own problem of immorality. One specific group of people (such as the workers of a factory) must begin by arbitrarily declaring a higher government authority as another group (factory owners) as unequal rights. Unequal rights are also immoral. Also, forcing others into your system against their will is a violation of consent, and saying they consented to the system because they don’t move away is intellectually dishonest.

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So, as you seem to suggest here, even if one is unable to live off-grid they are hypocritical?

Off-grid can mean different things to different people. What some consider to be off-grid is still very much in line with the technoindustrial system.

With expansion of technology, destruction of the ecosystem, systematically-enforced private property and governmental acquisition and management of land it is becoming more and more difficult to live off-grid, to distance oneself from technocracy.

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Don’t get me wrong, when I talk about social liberalism, I’m not talking about a system, so much as I’m talking about the ruling class, the upper 1% sharing a bit of their wealth with us, not out of altruism or because we’ve voted the right people in, but because people are turning their backs on the system, not holding it up any longer/participating in their own enslavement, because people are breaking laws, rules and regs made to protect the wealthy and the powerful, because people are distancing themselves from the grid, because people are arming themselves, getting organized and talking about revolution, I’m not talking about doing things by the book, I’m talking about illegalism, about fear, the fear rich people have of losing everything because the masses have totally lost faith in the system.
I’m just saying when we’ve reached that point, the rich may share some of the goods with us, if they want to keep the thing afloat.

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Sooner or later we will reach that point, in all likelihood.
Society has always reached that point.
It takes whites and Asians longer than it takes Hispanics and blacks to reach it.
Our ruling class and their forms of social control are very sophisticated, but eventually people will stop working hard, paying their taxes and playing by the rules.
They’ll stop being loyal and obedient to a system that basically threw them overboard ages ago.
The rich will reap what they sow, it’s just a matter of time.
We had it decent for so long after WW2 (relative to the rest of history), it’s taken people a long time.
People are just starting to wake up a bit, the dam they’ve built can only hold for so long, we are just starting to see a few cracks in it now.
The rich can’t help themselves, they just keep taking and taking, they say ‘if I don’t take it, someone else will, then they’ll use it to take from me’, they just keep taking, the pressure keeps building until people lose their shit.
When people have little left to lose they lose it.
It’s as inevitable as the shifting tides.

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It happens in autocracies, oligarchies and so called ‘liberal democracies’ like ours.
Of course they’re all defacto oligarchies.
The same basic forces are at play in all of them, only the details differ.
Class warfare.
Class warfare never ends, it just mutates, utopia never arrives.

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It’s a long process, these things take decades, it may not even fully manifest in our life time, but things will continue unraveling bit by bit until the dam bursts.

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Our ruling class and their forms of social control are very sophisticated, but eventually people will stop working hard, paying their taxes and playing by the rules.”

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During the commies, the saying among Hungarian workers went:

“As long as they pay-paying, we will worky-working, as wages were set precariously on the Marxian model.

Soon came the revolution.