'Not every Norwegian feels guilty but many do' | Hacker News Reader

'Not every Norwegian feels guilty but many do'

bbc.com

21 pointsingve12 comments

Some thoughts inspired by the article and other similar discussions on privilege:

* Feelings of guilt about the economic circumstances one is born into is often mentioned. What are the limits of feeling“privilege”? Family finances, race, and gender for sure. How about intelligence? I’m assuming the crowd on HM ales higher on IQ, do you feel guilty about this? How about physical beauty (which has substantial impact) and body integrity? How about being a native speaker of English rather than spending years to learn it?

* Assuming you are recognizant of your born privileges and are grateful, where is the limit of helping others so you don’t feel guilt? If Norway gives its budget surplus to suffering 3rd world countries should its citizens still feel guilt? Should such guilt be de factor, similar to original sin, something you’re born with and couldn’t (shouldn’t?) get rid of?

I don’t have good answers to most of the above but as with many other things the more you think about privilege the more complex it becomes.

The intractable challenge is that what constitutes “enough” and “too much” is extremely variable worldwide because there’s no “correct” answer on what values people should be working toward and no physical enforcement mechanism towards some resting state

Consider you dropping a baseball off of the Eiffel Tower

We can predict with extreme certainty what’s going to happen to the baseball because there are fundamental laws of physics that we can measure and predict based on actions taken in the world, what the next steps are going to be in the given environment in context

Despite what economists tell you there is no natural law of commerce. There are no laws of social interaction. Something acceptable on one side of the planet would be totally totally unacceptable on the other side of the planet. One side of the planet may have infinite solar resources that are sustainably extracted and turned into commercial capacity while another side of the planet is experiencing ravaging drought, and wildfires or something.

The extreme variability in our environments as humans does not allow for direct comparison of relative suffering because the contexts are so vastly different

> Consider you dropping a baseball off of the Eiffel Tower

That seems like a really odd example to use unless you are making the point that the basic laws of physics can only take you so far. As starter, assuming we drop it from the top (330m), how fast is the baseball travelling when it hits the ground?

If you apply standard physics formulas, I think you are likely to be way wrong. There are good formulas for the terminal velocity of a perfect sphere in still air, but I think the error would be significant if you try to apply this to a real life baseball.

And how close to the point of aim (straight down) does it hit? If you just drop it, it's a knuckleball, and it's going to float every which way. I don't think we even have a formula you can use here---you are basically limited to testing it out and measuring.

So while I'd agree that laws of economics are nowhere near as precise and well founded as the laws of physics, at least for this example I'm not sure that they differ as much as you'd like when put in actual practice.

Let's not forget the near certainty that our imperfect sphere will hit at least one angled steel beam on the way down, it's not a clean fall through air from the peak to the tower to the ground, it's a tower that famously flares out at the base.

The bounce of a baseball against steel at an uncertain angle isn't as clean a computation in real life as the GP appears to suggest, in addition to the seam | stitching spin additions.

Makes sense.

Norway's economy ever since discovery of offshore oil is similar to Saudi Arabia, Dubai or Qatar's. The difference is just that while Saudi wealth is concentrated among roughly 20,000 members of the extended royal family, Norway's is distributed across their 5 million citizens.

It would be weird if they didn't feel guilty about it. The know fossil fuels are harming the world and they know their comfortable lives are thanks to their share of the profits from extracting and selling massive amounts of fossil fuels.

They could follow the Canadian solution and simply allow multinationals to take the profits offshore for themselves. No need to feel guilty about wealth you don’t have!

Norwegians are rich if you look at the average, but if you compare higher earners there vs the U.S. I would say they are actually poor. For example, take an above average software developer in the US and compare them to one in Norway - you will see a massive difference, especially in disposable income.

lol, so on that basis Saudi, Russia, Brunei, various Asian and African kleptocracies are also richer, because they have richer billionaires?

Sorry, it's a ridiculous argument.

Norwegians should maybe feel guilty at having had an unfair share of natural resources, but also proud that they've put it to good use for the whole of their society, and beyond.

I say higher earners and you think I'm just talking about billionaires? Deranged.

I'm just people at higher than the 50th percentile. Say 75th percentile, which probably includes a lot of people from HN.

We're protecting the global poor by not letting them work for us is such a backwards piece of rhetoric that I'm always surprised by how casually it's brought up in stories like this.

Sure they can work for you. At the same salary as you would expect for the role. If not, why not?

This whole privilege nonsense is a good warning for current successful people to not bias against consumption too heavily because the beneficiaries of your hard work (i.e your descendants) are likely to waste your sacrifice crying about it and living a life leisure rather than continue following your example of hard work and sacrifice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com