Comment by davnicwil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davnicwil | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Don't be angry at the people who are benefiting from a system, or at the system itself. Most just end up that way, the same way a river meanders towards the sea

This is absolutely brilliant, going to favourite it and steal your quote!

The only thing I'd contribute is to also think about the system from your perspective, wherever you've ended up. Zoom out. Think about how you got here.

How much of it is truly deliberate and chosen, how much is the default path of least resistance? How much did you create, how much did you accept and learn from others? How much is earned, how much is luck? What do you want to change, what can you change? Are you able to help others change? Are you able to help others by changing the system itself?

Things how they happen to be now aren't necessarily how they ought to be. Indeed probably as a rule they aren't. It's not the natural order of things just because it's been that way all your life, or you've been a part of it all your life. At any moment, you have the ability to put your head up, think critically about things, act deliberately and independently, and change yourself and the system around you for the better.

I mean if a system is bad and anger helps to change it for the better, then it seems like that's fine. Anger, outrage, etc are all systems as well, that you shouldn't be "angry" at, right? The rejection of the utility of emotion is itself irrational.

Anger is a way for your body to pool resources for a fight. It destroys the body in a sense, for short term gain. If you do not act upon that anger, it becomes less effective, and only serves to sabotage yourself. Save the anger for actual wars you intend to fight.

I have rarely seen people solve problems or make changes out of anger and outrage. Everyone can be angry because victimhood is easy, but only few who are able to rationalize, understand their goals and understand the resistance they'd need to go through end up taking actions to make changes.

> Think about how you got here.

I would add that, when asking yourself questions, make sure it’s your intellect and not your ego answering. They’re part of the same machine, but sometimes they give very different responses to the same question. Be suspicious of any answer that’s easy to accept.

The reason you get angry at those people is because when you try to change the system they try to stop you. ;) Just my 2c

The only type of person who will like this kind of quote is someone disproportionally benefiting from the system in an unfair way.

Let me tell you absolutely that if such people exist in the system then the system is flawed, unfair and such a person is indeed exploiting the system.

Systems can be made fair or unfair, that is what you must derive from the fact that everything is a system. It is pure stupidity to accept that all systems are unfair. This is not true and is nearly an obscene belief.

Think about it. The logical consequence of people disproportionally benefiting from the system means someone must be losing. If you must accept this, then you must accept that people working 3 jobs to stay afloat or people in poverty are just part of the system at work. Don't get angry at those facts.

> Systems can be made fair or unfair, that is what you must derive from the fact that everything is a system.

Or conversely, as the OP suggested systems end up that way. Not necessarily designed fairly or unfairly, they can become that way over time.

> It is pure stupidity to accept that all systems are unfair. This is not true and is nearly an obscene belief.

Where did anyone say that all systems are unfair? Where did anyone say you should just accept the way they are? Those do seem stupid and I don't see where anyone posited those ideas.

On the other hand it does seem very useful to understand that unfair systems do exist, how and why they came about. And if you have no control or influence over a system, then you need to accept it. Those are all pretty obvious truths and is what the OP highlighted...

This post seems to imply such unfair systems are emergent in nature. Possibly so. But is the system emergent among a group of human beings who are fully aware of the actions they are taking?

No. That's like saying global warming is an emergent phenomenon of human society.

Right, it is emergent among a group of human beings who may or may not be aware of the actions they are taking as is the case with global warming. Although nowadays more and more people are aware of what causes global warming and how they contribute.

That also doesn't mean that some people aren't trying to keep the status quo or rig a system. Just that if a system is unfair, that could be something that was not necessarily designed or intended, but happened anyway.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051363

I mean, frequent rain harms some and benefits some. But you wouldn't get angry at the people who benefit from rain. You'd deal with it, get an umbrella, build a roof, change your plans, and so on.

Angry tweets won't dismantle capitalism any more than it would stop the rain. The people who benefit from capitalism didn't invent capitalism. Capitalism might have poverty as a side effect, but the system doesn't need to be dismantled, it needs to be patched.

If there's anything we learn from software engineering, it's that destroying something and rebuilding it completely causes more unexpected bugs. Patches can be messy and ugly, but are often the best solution.

Let me be frank. If you are a plutocrat, you are at fault.

You are at fault because you have the ability to redistribute your wealth which you know was unfairly gained. No amount of work by a single person can generate the wealth possessed by the top 0.1%, for someone to be that rich you had to have people work for you and you have to exploit their work and take an unfair share. That is reality.

The people who benefit from corruption and theft didn't invent theft or corruption. You don't need to invent something to be morally unjustified in exploiting it.

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocr...

"Many economists would have you believe that their field is an objective science. I disagree, and I think that it is equally a tool that humans use to enforce and encode our social and moral preferences and prejudices about status and power, which is why plutocrats like me have always needed to find persuasive stories to tell everyone else about why our relative positions are morally righteous and good for everyone: like, we are indispensable, the job creators, and you are not; like, tax cuts for us create growth, but investments in you will balloon our debt and bankrupt our great country; that we matter; that you don't. For thousands of years, these stories were called divine right. Today, we have trickle-down economics. How obviously, transparently self-serving all of this is. We plutocrats need to see that the United States of America made us, not the other way around; that a thriving middle class is the source of prosperity in capitalist economies, not a consequence of it. And we should never forget that even the best of us in the worst of circumstances are barefoot by the side of a dirt road selling fruit."

For your first part, define "unfairly". A billionaire or multimillionaire might be benefitting from many advantages in life that others didn't get but this does not negate their capacity to organize capital and labor in a way that creates a business which otherwise wouldn't exist in the first place to give jobs to all those workers. This is not something just anyone or some collective of workers can pull out of a hat or easily continue to run in most situations. A single factory employee might work very hard but their marginal utility will make little difference to that company's survival. The CEO or founder simply ceasing work definitely could ruin the business as a whole though. So again, define unfair and why you have your definition.

Furthermore, Wealthy people in most developed modern economies didn't simply steal most of their wealth out of some giant pie that someone else created They instead organized capital and labor to create something others wanted to exchange value for. For this same reason again, I'd love to see you define how you measure "fair" and "unfair" share in a business or society.

As for the second part in italics, the idea that a middle class somehow can exist at all before a capitalist economy developed is absurd. Other parts of that quote are emotional dreck and as for said "plutocrats" being job creators, well, in many cases this is exactly what they are, whether you like it or not. This doesn't mean they're above criticism, but cheap, populist class warfare arguments are no good solution to anything economic or social.

You can tell it is unfair just by the outcome. It doesn't matter how clever you are or how hard you work, you are not personally creating 10,000 times as much value as the next bozo. You lucked into a good deal, and the only moral behavior is to spread the good luck around.

You cannot manage a big income without creating or supporting some number of jobs, so there is no virtue on it.

Even when they "lucked" into it, you have to think about the actual physical creation of that wealth and the fact that it cannot be created by one man.

Taking unclaimed gold sitting on the ground untouched by anyone is luck.

Taking 10 billion dollars sitting on the ground is not just luck. Other people had to create that wealth with their work and for you to own it means you are taking it from them.

10 billion dollars compared to the amount of work a human can output in his lifetime is obscene in scale. Anyone who owns that much money might as well have "taken" it from the ground as no amount of work from one man can justify that much wealth.

Yes. Besides blinding amounts of luck, billions also need a heavy admixture of coercion. Microsoft didn't just luck into its monopoly, it also maintained it through decades of strong-arm anti-competitive abuses. Amazon has driven tens of thousands of small, local businesses into the ground, and continues abusing its employees. It would be very easy for Amazon to treat its employees well, but it chooses not to. It would be somewhat less easy to root out counterfeit merchandise, but it instead participates in deceiving its customers. Is that luck? Hard work?

>As for the second part in italics, the idea that a middle class somehow can exist at all before a capitalist economy developed is absurd. Other parts of that quote are emotional dreck and as for said "plutocrats" being job creators, well, in many cases this is exactly what they are, whether you like it or not. This doesn't mean they're above criticism, but cheap, populist class warfare arguments are no good solution to anything economic or social.

It is emotional dreck, I'll give you that but that's not the important part of the quote and that's not why I posted it.

The important part of the quote is that the person saying it, is a plutocrat himself.

Watch the video.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com