If upward income/class mobility isn’t actually possible for most people, belief in it won’t make it possible.
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Either way, I want to live in a world where providing value to other people can be expected to result in rewards to oneself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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”
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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.
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It's also difficult to gauge/explain what is productive. Labor Theory of Value discounts the value of effective systems, which consequently are ignored by people who focus solely on labor as not being useful for getting ahead. They ignore value that doesn't align with their view.
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It is difficult to explain. I don’t understand the next sentence, can you unpack?
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