
Elite do-gooders 'fixing' the world are part of the problem: Giridharadas - colinprince
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-elite-do-gooders-fixing-the-world-are-part-of-the-problem-anand-giridharadas-1.5441573
======
Loughla
This is the same argument that has been around for decades - the debate over
whether Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation were an agent for good or an agent
for helping Bill Gates sleep at night was a huge thing when I was in graduate
school.

The difference is the out-in-the-open, stark, startling, and seemingly
completely baked in income inequality. I think people outside of academia are
finally talking about the morality of a billionaire's mere existence.

~~~
missedthecue
Wealth isn't zero sum.

~~~
StavrosK
Isn't it really? Given that wealth is the amount of resources you can command,
and resources are finite, doesn't increasing your wealth decrease everyone
else's? It's why printing money reduces the value of everyone else's money and
gives it to you.

~~~
missedthecue
We are able to use existing resources more and more efficiently. This is why
the global wealth per person is higher than it was in say Roman times, despite
the global population being orders of magnitudes higher

~~~
StavrosK
That only means that you can add wealth up to the new delta. Anything more is
zero-sum.

~~~
atomicity
But we don't value things solely based on their natural resource composition;
we pay far more for "labor" and other intangibles.

As a result of the above, the value of a natural resource changes over time.
For example, natural resources used in electronics and batteries are
relatively more expensive now than they were 100 years ago.

So, you can be technically correct by saying that wealth is zero-sum, but
that's pretty much the same thing as saying "the world's 'wealth' traded for
natural resources sums up to 100% of all natural resources"

------
foghornleghorn
Immediately, the author assumes that everyone is playing a zero-sum game,
which is the root of the problem with his viewpoint: "We've got about 400
people in this room.... Imagine if dinner was carted into this room, and four
people got half the food. The night would end in violence,"

~~~
untilHellbanned
What's the tangible evidence that the world is a positive-sum game? The
tangible evidence to me seems to suggest it's a zero-sum game. E.g., a product
costs $X, owners get too large of a % of that compared to employees.

~~~
harryh
The world is vastly richer today than it was in the past due to the
development of new technologies and improved social systems.

~~~
wwright
Did billionaires accelerate that, or did they just profit from it
disproportionately while slowing it down?

~~~
tux1968
That's an interesting question, and I don't have an answer. But what you can
not deny, is that the system that produced those billionaires, is the same one
that produced such a rise in wealth and standard of living worldwide. We
better be very careful about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

~~~
wwright
I can’t deny that, but I can certainly point out that billionaires coinciding
with the rise in quality does not mean that they were even produced by the
same system, or that the presence of the billionaires was in any way
necessary.

To reframe your point: maybe we should be careful to identify where the baby
is and spend a little less attention on what billionaires want.

~~~
tux1968
It seems pretty clear that capitalism tends to produce concentrations of
wealth. Billionaires are created by capitalism because of this tendency. The
question is if you can stop the tendency of capitalism without killing the
system altogether. We just have to keep in mind, for all its faults, it has a
track record of provably doing more for the well-being and prosperity of
masses of average people more than any other system.

------
ssivark
This subject always reminds me of the quote from popular and beloved British
actor Paul Eddington, which puts on display a very different and much gentler
ethos from the “doer-ism” sprayed on us quite constantly: _" A journalist once
asked me what I would like my epitaph to be and I said I think I would like it
to be, 'He did very little harm'. And that's not easy. Most people seem to me
to do a great deal of harm. If I could be remembered as having done very
little [harm], that would suit me."_

It’s worth pondering whether the same (limited) perspective that caused
several problems is sufficient to fix some problems without exacerbating
others. The whole point of democratization of power is to distribute decision-
making so people could make the right choices as locally apt.

~~~
kshacker
Interesting... I used to have similar ideas about "at least do no harm", but
the intolerance of the times radicalized me somewhat and the new mantra is not
only to reduce the harm I do, but to also somewhat counter the harm others do:
either by negating them or their deeds. Because if we let some harm seep
through because we ignored it, that is still not good enough for our society.

Now of course we (the people) look at things differently so me going carbon
negative (for example) may encourage others to pollute even more because hey
u/kshacker is going to fix it so I know the thought process needs further
evolution.

~~~
ssivark
The point of the quote is not so much about countering harm caused by others,
but first: How confident can you be that your actions to help are not
misguidedly exacerbating problems? Is there a line beyond which one could be
overconfident, our arrogant? What external feedback should you attend to?

------
alpha_squared
It's fascinating and saddening that this conversation that clearly needs to be
had within this community is being reported so frequently and fervently that
it's dropped from front page to third page in less than 30 minutes.

~~~
justicezyx
It seems it becomes a taboo to question the staggering inequality in personal
fortune. While at the same time, media are not shy away from waging wars on
racial inequality. But it seems to me that addressing economic inequality most
likely greatly solves the racial equality.

I never saw any individual who are less qualified for an opportunity, where
the inequality in opportunity cannot be fixed by strong social support in his
or her earlier life through education and community.

It of cuz will be slow. But that's precisely the time scale we need to think
about to make addressing inequality possible to start. I.e. we don't want Bill
gates or Jeff bezos to think we want to deprive their personal fortune.
Instead, we are looking for better ways to help them use the resources when
they themselves lack the means or techniques.

~~~
ianai
If we want to discuss topics like this then one way is to be careful to be
nonviolent and that means objective.

One problem I see in pointing at the billionaires and claiming wrongs is it’s
obviously an attack and puts them and anyone who feels they could be pointed
at on defense.

Instead, point out how people are held back by the systems and positions of
power.

When I had a particularly abusive management chain (4 managers for 9 workers)
they could ask just about anything of me. The corporate policies gave them
wide rights over even my personal liberties. For one, they could change my
schedule at any time. Meanwhile, I could be lawfully terminated for varying my
work schedule in excess of an 8 minute tolerance. That termination would mean
all sorts of things - like owing back rent on an apartment I would have left -
because I had no way to pay it. The way that particular industry worked, too,
meant one termination likely meant I would never again work in that industry.
That screams inequality to me.

Edit-That inequality has the effect of making any order my management gave me
as a functional threat of my ability to maintain my very way of life. Without
that job I would have been homeless shortly.

------
when_creaks
"We've got about 400 people in this room.... Imagine if dinner was carted into
this room, and four people got half the food. The night would end in
violence," Anand Giridharadas told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed at a public event
hosted by the Samara Centre for Democracy."

Effective altruism is clearly an important topic but this is a pretty bad
analogy. If we're discussing billionaires a (slightly) better reformulation of
the analogy would be something like:

"We've got about 400 people in this room... Imagine if there were 40,000 meals
carted into this room and four people got 39,000 of those meals"

However, this reformulation is also pretty bad. The way both of these are
phrased "dinners" are basically a stand in for "dollars" (or whatever your
currency of choice is) - and while "dinners" are generally perishable,
"dollars" are not.

Setting those quibbles aside - how did Anand come to his diagnosis of the
problem, and what is Anand's proposed solution? There's so little detail in
this article that I'm honestly scratching my head.

As a thought exercise - how would Anand fill in the blank for a statement like
"The world should follow the shared government, community, and decision making
model of <insert_location_here>"?

------
11thEarlOfMar
"Giridharadas calls on people to join organizations, membership lists and
movements that work toward building cross-racial, cross-class coalitions of
people — with a goal to create a future that benefits most people."

Thinking for just a few minutes, there are so many facets and nuances to the
issue of improving the world for others that the above sentence is a complete
throw-away. One could get involved and sign up, but as the article already
points out, how to know if the group you are joining is doing good or doing
more harm? Did you join a group of virtue signallers or will you roll up your
sleeves for Habitat for Humanity, or Doctors without Borders?

A couple of notions:

\- How do you know if your effort is more like bailing water from a sinking
ship, or, towing the ship into dry dock for repair? Maybe you have to bail at
the same time you're towing.

\- What is the actual goal? To ensure that people are able to eat today? Are
you trying to right a wrong, like human trafficking or environmental crimes?
Are you trying to create a level playing field so people are able to go as far
as their determination will take them? If you want a level playing field, what
system are you modeling?

The desire to do _something_ is invaluable. I'd suggest two things: 1) keep it
close to home. The farther the served are from you the harder it will be to
see the results. If your aspirations are far from you, make it a goal to get
there and see first hand what you're trying to aid, at least once. 2) Make it
something where you can directly observe the results and know that your
efforts are having a positive effect overall.

~~~
mola
There's an old Jewish adage, help your city's poor first. I believe your point
is similar.

------
richm31415
"Distrust those who profess altruism." "Don't be helpful: be useful, be
available." "Helpful people are a nuisance." \- Guitar Craft Aphorisms -
[https://www.dgmlive.com/in-depth/guitar-craft-
aphorisms](https://www.dgmlive.com/in-depth/guitar-craft-aphorisms)

------
prvc
Professional pundits 'offering' old observations, watered down to the point of
near-meaninglessness, as their own original ideas, are part of the problem:
prvc

------
rayiner
Anand Giridharadas has a degree in politics and history. Completely
unqualified to comment about issues that are fundamentally about economics,
public health, etc. I’ve watched over the last 30 years as the “age of
capital” has lifted millions out of poverty, and organizations like the Gates
foundation have helped drop the infant mortality rate by 3/4 since my family
left the country.

Meanwhile, socialists like Giridharadas have done nothing but hold the country
back, trying to keep us in poverty. Millions of children are dead because of
the multi-decade detour socialists line Giridharadas took India and Bangladesh
in during the 1960s-1990s.

~~~
ianleeclark
> I’ve watched over the last 30 years as the “age of capital” has lifted
> millions out of poverty

Out of curiosity what would you call China's mode of production?

~~~
rayiner
Authoritarian capitalism:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/07/08/chin...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/07/08/chinas-
economic-success-proves-the-power-of-capitalism/)

See also: [https://www.cato.org/policy-
report/januaryfebruary-2013/how-...](https://www.cato.org/policy-
report/januaryfebruary-2013/how-china-became-capitalist)

China under Xu has more in common, economically, with say Korea under Park
Chung-hee or Chile under Pinochet than with China under Mao.

~~~
ianleeclark
So then we can praise authoritarian capitalism for this massive reduction of
poverty that you were doting on about. Seems like a questionable thing for you
to be supporting, but to each their own.

~~~
rayiner
Obviously democratic capitalism is better, such as what happened in Sweden in
the 20th century, or America in the 19th century. But authoritarian capitalism
is better than socialism of any form for poverty reduction.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
The article wasn't what I expected.

As I read it, his main point is a valid one. If you want change, you have to
participate in making that change. That participation is not limited to once
every 4 year vote ( in US ), but rather an ongoing participation in society.

There are some valid criticism of this approach ( demoracracy doesn't scale
well; it does work well on more local level, but you don't want to have a vote
for every little issue ).

------
alexashka
I like Anand, I find his blind belief in democracy = good, not-democracy = bad
- problematic.

You can have a disastrous democracy and a neighbour dictator that mounts an
attack and wipes your democracy off the face of the earth.

It's about _competency_ , not political ideology. Until people get it in their
heads that _competency_ and science are two fundamental tools that move
humanity where most people would unambiguously want to be headed, we are going
to have an endless problem.

They call it corruption - it's just people who don't understand what moves the
needle for them _and others_ , resorting to moving the needle _for them_
first, the rest maybe later.

That's what these Bill Gates and every other rich person in America is about -
_nobody_ has a unifying plan to move humanity forward, so they get rich and by
the time they become rich, they've made friends with a bunch of other rich
people. Now people like Anand come and say hey, you know all those friends you
have? They're all doing _bad things_ and you are too, you are bad.

What is rhetoric of this sort going to accomplish but separate us into us vs
them even further?

Until people understand how to move the needle for _most people_ including
them, they will always resort to moving the needle for them and their family
first and that is where we currently are.

If you want a different world - it has to come from a unifying message, not a
message of blaming other people for your plight. This call for democracy is
really a call for de-throning rich people and unless you want a dictator to
come into power and start a civil war - this is not the rhetoric you want to
promote.

------
DontGiveTwoFlux
I read Giridharadas' book, and I found it to be pretty narrowly focused on
hypocrisy of the wealthy class. Sure, there is a lot of undeserved back
patting about how much good people are really doing in the world, but that's
probably always been the case. I would have preferred a serious treatment of
the ways in which the world has been improved through the mass reduction of
deadly infectious disease, famine, and extreme poverty. Steven Pinker's
Enlightenment Now explores these topics. To read Giridharadas, you might think
that all social ills are caused by the wealthy in society, which made it
harder for me to take his side on everything.

Still, his main point stands that elites should feel bad about their
concentrations of power and that the link between money and political power
should be weakened.

------
11235813213455
I believe a large part of the solution is still to minimize one's
environmental footprint, to act by consuming much less, to live more simply

In developed countries, less than 1% of the population do that, if it's 50% of
the population, it's a total game and climate changer

~~~
scrozier
Making the author's point: "If only...."

~~~
11235813213455
yes and no, because I do it, and I do my best to convince other people, that's
all I can do anyway

------
btilly
This article is a good example of "the pie fallacy".

Read [http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)
for an explanation of what that is, and why it is a fallacy.

------
ChomskyNormal4m
The idea that the problem is that some own more than others is itself an idea
promoted by those who "own more than others". They set that as the thing to be
argued about.

The actual problem is social relations. The heir expropriates the surplus
labor time of the worker. That is the real problem.

Wealth redistribution is, in a dialectic sense, a goal of those who own the
most wealth. It is a goal set by this elite. Workers controlling our own labor
time has been the clear goal of the worker's movement for at least a century
and a half, if not longer.

------
fnovd
Ironically, the author was talking about all those _other_ elites. Click less,
but not before you've added my book to your cart! "If only" I could vote on
how you spend your money.

~~~
blueagle7
Is it that ironic? From what I can tell, He isn’t looking to become a
billionaire but to gain money and recognition to further this idea.

------
haecceity
"We've got about 400 people in this room.... Imagine if dinner was carted into
this room, and four people got half the food. The night would end in
violence," Anand Giridharadas told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed at a public event
hosted by the Samara Centre for Democracy."

Violence is unethical. Half of the food is theirs who is the rest to take it
away from them?

------
blisseyGo
Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became
one of the most admired virtues under its new name, “social justice." \-
Thomas Sowell

[https://twitter.com/ThomasSowell/status/1133792472063258627](https://twitter.com/ThomasSowell/status/1133792472063258627)

~~~
tasty_freeze
Rather than just downvoting, I'll offer another perspective. Sowell's
statement is vacuous, just a bumpersticker retort. Rather than engaging in the
issue, it simply questions the motives of the opposite party and in fact
dismisses their motives as one of the seven deadly sins.

I realize this is twitter and not a well developed thesis, but that just means
twitter is a terrible platform to meaningfully engage in nuanced topics. It is
a great platform for shallow thinking and insults, though, akin to the excuse,
"I have a wonderful proof of this but the margin it too small to contain it."

~~~
nickff
What you say about Twitter sounds about right, but Sowell appears to have put
a bumper-sticker quote on a bumper-sticker; he's written a bunch of long books
if you want to find out more about his views.

~~~
blisseyGo
Note that the twitter I linked to is not Sowell's actual twitter. He doesn't
use Twitter. It's an account which tweets useful passages from his books.

------
owenshen24
I haven't read Giridharadas's book, and this article was very light on
substance.

I do think this is an interesting topic. Effective altruism has lots of
ongoing internal discussion about the efficacy of pushing for systemic change.

But I think the claims made in the article would have to be made a lot more
substantive. See Scott Alexander's take here
([https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-
billio...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-
philanthropy/?reverseComments=)).

Overall, I think parts of this approach might throw the baby out with the
bathwater. Even if we do restructure the way that society works, presumably
we'll still care about interventions to improve well-being. I think effective
altruism
([https://www.effectivealtruism.com/](https://www.effectivealtruism.com/)) has
provided a lot of traction on how to think about these issues. Even if you
disagree with their moral stance, I think it's hard to deny that people in the
EA community have been very thoughtful about quantifying interventions and
thinking about impact.

And I don't think these sorts of questions are going to go away, come a social
restructuring. There seems to be a lot that we can salvage from the EA
viewpoint, even if we decide systemic change is the way forward, and I think
that's worth emphasizing.

------
tmaly
I think giving others the chance to create competition would even the playing
field.

If you look at what these larger companies do, they embrace complex
regulations.

Individuals and smaller businesses with innovative ideas cannot enter the
marketplace because these complex regulations act as barriers to entry.

------
RickJWagner
Add to that list all the wealthy actors and politicians who loudly advocate
for climate improvements while travelling by private jet and vacationing on
private yachts.

------
aziytuiam
It is much worse than this; the elite works to actively divide the populace
and distract us. Note how divisive politics has become; divide and conquer.

------
supercanuck
It is kind of funny reading through these comments. The author's point is that
power should be distributed and decisions should be made outside of those with
concentrated amounts of wealth. Kind of like a democracy.

Folks on this thread seem to be falling over themselves arguing that
billionaires are justified to even be billionaires at all.

The issue isn't that billionaires exist, its that billionaires have cornered
all the decision making abilities of the public.

~~~
mac01021
But how have they done that?

We _do_ live in a democracy (well, a republic -- in the USA). The
government/legislature does seem, to a large extent, to be beholden to the
wants of the immensely wealthy, but that's only because the electorate at
large won't hold their representatives accountable for that behavior.

Despite having more resources and more leisure time than has been possible
throughout most of history, people don't stay informed, contemplate policy,
engage in activism, interact with their legislators ...

The laws of human psychology may simply not afford people people enough agency
for a large democracy to be fair and effective.

~~~
supercanuck
Essentially, you, me, the author of this piece is saying the same thing. The
populace needs to take back control over their governance, and the way the
author is proposing to do that is by getting involved in by "joining
organizations, membership lists and movements that work toward building cross-
racial, cross-class coalitions of people — with a goal to create a future that
benefits most people."

~~~
mac01021
Would the need for the population to do those things be any less if there were
no billionaires?

------
dfee
Resource attribution seems to follow the power law. Is there a way to solve
around this without creating unintended consequences which are worse?

There probably isn’t even too much difference over the ages either. It’s just
in America’s democratic-republic with capitalism the billionaires aren’t
royalty.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Can't think of anything but progressive taxation and redistribution of such
taxed money. The power law comes from various positive feedback loops on the
market, so it sounds only fair that if you want to clamp it down, you need to
inject a strong negative feedback loop into the mix.

------
dzink
Architecting a working system requires objectivity. What happens when you have
different doctrines in power? What do the prototypes of each model look like?
What does the Big(O) of resource distribution look like (and where are the
leaks).

In a government managed system, you have a MASSIVE amount pooled resources
controlled by whoever activated (or coerced) the most voters. What is the
worst case scenario? Whoever is in power has a narrow list of buddies with
businesses. Lucrative government contracts with little oversight on spending
are taken to people who have some favor with the elected officials or their
family members (and pay officials back in insider stock trading, or planned
small stock dumps, or some other form of laundering). Money accrues to the
family tree of those in power and those in power make all important decisions,
eventually draining the country. Read the news in Eastern Europe for a while
to see a live simulation.

Foundations. Anyone can start one, fulfill a mission, work to make the world a
better place. A lot of foundations are doing a lot of good out there, so where
does that model leak? With stringent requirement to hold no profit at the end
of the day, worst case scenarios with foundations look like this: Similarly to
government, the distribution of large quantity of pooled resources can go to
the team running the foundation. In some, the executives collect whatever
money is left at the end of the day (can't leave a profit after all). In
others, a foundation on the side of a lucrative business gets the profits to
reduce the tax burden on the business, but then distributes those to friends
as contracts or generates sales from that business at increased margins, etc.
How do you know this is happening? If you look at the ever increasing number
of foundations, there are no incentives to create economies of scale in
giving, despite the high fixed costs of running of foundation. Where are the
foundation mergers that would make giving more efficient? Thus the tax
incentives given by government can sometimes turn foundations south.

Where do Billionaires come in? A actually self-made billionaire has presumably
lost the need to be corrupt. They have also proven themselves able to lead
people to execute projects efficiently. The combination of resources,
networks, and lack of misaligned incentives makes them more likely to focus on
the impact of the work, than on self-enrichment with it. The down sides can
happen if the original billions were a con-scheme and not actually acquired
(Madoff), or if the billionaire is completely incompetent in the field they
are giving in, or if they do it for the attention and ego boost, and social
favors that may come from being asked for money. With all the attention paid
to one person, however they can be more easily scrutinized than the other two
models.

Please do feel free to contribute to this analysis tree.

------
bobthechef
1\. The power of money depends on the greed or neediness (also when created
through usury) of those receiving it. A billionaire doesn't have any power to
do any more than anyone else. It's the willingness of so many to exchange
their labor, etc. for money that allows billionaires to exert outsized
influence on things they should not have influence over. Instead of blaming
the cause of the temptation, take a good look at your own moral mediocrity and
how you respond to the temptation to sell out. I know many people in tech who
bitch and moan about this or that corporation, but suddenly become silent the
moment they end up working for one of those corporations (such as through an
acquisition).

2\. Conversations about the 1% often betray an underlying pathology of envy.
Many hate billionaires because they're envious of what they have. Why would
inequality of material goods be a problem per se? You can see that it isn't
when you compare someone with an upper middle class household income with a
billionaire. Does that upper middle class family really have a reason to shake
their fists at the billionaires when it comes to income? No, of course not.
Who cares if some guy makes X times as much as you? (If you have a problem,
then perhaps you ought to check your envy.) The problem isn't inequality. It's
poverty. And the boorish worship of Mammon.

3\. The belief in zero sum wealth is utterly false. Everyone who understands
basic economics knows that the economic wealth of the world today far
outstrips any other epoch in history. The idea that billionaires only have
what they have because they effectively stole it from you is exactly the kind
of agitation that communists would engage in in Soviet Russia and Maoist China
and the tumultuous years that led to their creation. It's the politics of envy
and it's a hideous affair.

4\. There are of course problems associated with billionaires that is not
intrinsic to the wealth they possess. For example, the influence billionaires
have over politics and society through the media, through education, through
lobbying, and so on. They may be dealt with in various ways, such as actual
committed and personal involvement in improving your local community in some
way instead of raging ineffectually on Facebook and Twitter. A lazy,
effeminate populace that only knows how to complain, and yell, and emote
deserves what it gets.

5\. While socialism is a tyranny, a grotesque perversion (and no, the
Scandinavian countries aren't socialist), rapacious and ideological capitalism
is likewise unnatural and perverse. By "rapacious and ideological capitalism",
I really mean one that is laissez-faire in a doctrinaire way, where the market
is the dominant social institution and the consequent ethos one of consumerism
and commodification of everything, one dominated by powerful corporations
unanswerable to government or public opinion, doctrinaire about the
minimalization or elimination of social welfare institutions even in the
absence of a sensible private alternative, and globalist of a kind that is
opposed to corporate and individual loyalties to the nation state.

6\. Sure, billionaires can run self-serving philanthropies. I doubt it stems
from a feeling of guilt, but I don't know the individual consciences of
billionaires (and conscience need to be formed to feel guilt, something that
has been categorically discouraged by our culture along with shame and the
concept of sin). Some may wish to genuinely do good. Some may be interested in
their next conquest. Some may be afraid of the mob. Certainly, Zuckerberg's
"free internet" plan for India was a patently obvious move to magnify his own
power. The guy seems pathetically oblivious to how transparent he is. Social
skills aren't his strong suit.

7.

------
throwawaysea
I disagree with the notion that "elite do-gooders" (which seems like a
pejorative phrasing) are part of the problem. These people have worked hard
and brought innovations to the world to generate their wealth. They have great
judgment and lots of experience, and they should be afforded the freedom to
invest in the problems they value and the freedom to manage those solutions.
Chances are, they will end up being more impactful than the typical waste that
comes with slow-moving, bureaucratic, bloated governmental organizations.

However I do also support creating a more functional market with enough room
to enter so that other innovative, motivated entrepreneurs can effectively
compete. That doesn't require some kind of destructive ground up rethinking or
abandonment of capitalism. It requires a tweak - namely updated anti-trust
laws that are actively enforced. This would achieve a different distribution
of wealth and power while retaining the mechanisms we have in place to reward
success precisely.

~~~
lostlogin
> These people have worked hard and brought innovations to the world to
> generate their wealth.

The richest three Americans have more money than the poorest 50% of Americans
combined. However hard those three worked worked, there is no way that they
worked harder than half the country. As COVID-19 has shown us, you don’t get
far without the jobs we value the least. We need supermarkets open, bins taken
away, rest homes cleaned etc. Wealth is further concentrating too,
exacerbating the issue.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-ric...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-
americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-
finds/#25b87fbc3cf8)

[https://www.mintpressnews.com/super-rich-see-wealth-
rise-282...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/super-rich-see-wealth-
rise-282-billion-three-weeks-coronavirus/267027/)

------
umvi
Even non-elite do-gooders 'fixing' the world are part of the problem IMO. For
example, cancel culture is the end result of non-elite do-gooders banding
together to "do good". I believe the net effect is actually quite bad, but the
people engaging in cancel culture really believe they are helping fix the
world.

~~~
juliushuijnk
Cancel culture* is not new. If you say you are a cannibal and eat human flesh,
you're out of a job, same thing 100 years ago I assume. The thing that is
slowly shifting is what is morally acceptable, or perhaps that more voices are
part of the discussion of what is morally acceptable.

Shame has its function. Personally, I'm more worried about people who are
proud to not use morals and are not hypocritical about it, than the do-gooders
who put the bar higher than they can live up to.

Yes, they are more often hypocrites. That's great, you can point to that and
expect some kind of feedback loop to have effect.

People without shame, who apply no morals to their deeds, are not to be
applauded. I hope you agree when it comes to things like child beating. Now
the questions is where to draw the line for cancel culture. Not if cancel
culture is a 'bad thing'.

* Probably people load the word 'cancel culture' differently. I see it as pointing out morally bad behavior, and asking other people to also notice it, hoping there will be repercussions.

~~~
wizzwizz4
A lot of people refer to cancel culture this way, because they're bigots who
don't like people pointing out that they're bigots (or fans of bigots who they
don't like being called out as bigots).

However, there is another problem: a “dark side” of people being willing to
call others out on their shit. Clickbait.

It's surprisingly easy to make it seem like arbitrary person X is an evil evil
person, regardless of whether they actually are. If you're familiar with
person X, you might be able to spot a lie… but being universally sceptical
will protect you from _legitimate_ call-outs as well as fake ones. The average
person has no real way of knowing, even if it's _occurred_ to them that they
might need to check.

So, yeah: _overall_ , I think this is probably a good thing. But it's set back
the lives of some good people.

(There's a rather simple way to turn this around: remove guilt by association.
It should be okay to defend cancelled people. Defending bad actions doesn't
need to be okay, but if it's costless to lie / “bend the truth” for social
media clicks and costly to rebut them… calling people out on their shit
becomes a much less useful force for good.)

~~~
juliushuijnk
100% agree.

Media and companies should not 'cancel' just because a group of people is
demanding it, but it could be reason to look into something and then make up
their own mind.

Wanted to rant on about lots more, but I'll let it go :)

~~~
wizzwizz4
The media and companies aren't really concerns; they've got libel and stuff to
worry about. It's public opinion that worries me.

