If upward income/class mobility isn’t actually possible for most people, belief in it won’t make it possible.
-
-
It’s obvious that not *all* wealth is acquired through productivity (see: aristocrats, lottery winners, con artists) and that wealth can *ever* be acquired through productivity (see: Thomas Edison) but the magnitude matters.
Show this thread -
Either way, I want to live in a world where providing value to other people can be expected to result in rewards to oneself.
Show this thread -
The more self-interest and empathy are opposites, the more conflict and destruction we can expect. The more people are rewarded for doing nice things, the more nice things we can expect.
Show this thread -
The ideology that’s *definitely* pernicious, no matter which world we live in, is the one that says mutual benefit is in principle impossible or undesirable.
Show this thread -
It’s usually subtextual, an assumption of hostility between humans that’s never questioned. *Of course* good for me means bad for you — not just in a particular situation but by default.
Show this thread -
It can just be *true* that a given situation is adversarial. I’m not saying it’s wrong to notice conflicts. The thing I’m saying is bad is usually an *implicit* assumption of conflict that would sound fucked up if you ever said it out loud.
Show this thread -
I don’t know the best single word for “a system that rewards behavior that benefits others”. A system where giving results in getting. Meritocratic, just, fair, incentive-aligned, cooperative, reciprocal?
Show this thread -
There are productive arguments to be had around “Don’t destroy this institution’s substantial meritocratic/just qualities” vs “this institution is already so unjust there’s not much to preserve”
Show this thread -
And there are sometimes ways to cut across the debate: proposals that tend towards meritocracy/justice regardless of how fair or unfair the world currently is.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
What further compounds the problem is that there is probably some "evolutionary" dynamic at play here. The more people believe in upwards mobility through hard work and act accordingly, the harder and more luck dependent it actually becomes (and the other way around).
-
Might be similar to the dynamics of smth like lying/conning and being distrustful. E.g., if everybody's distrustful, lying doesn't really offer a benefit, resulting in more truth-telling which in turn leads to more trust until a certain treshhold where lying becomes viable again.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.