(March 20, 2017 at 12:58 pm)InquiringMind Wrote: I think not. I think that it's natural for people to blame things outside themselves for their failures. It's much easier to blame a personal defeat on a rigged system or an unfair game than to take an honest look at one's own objective performance, talent, and contribution. Even when the system is fully fair - as in athletic competition or games of chance like gambling - losers will still tend to believe that they are being treated unfairly.Well, people do like to bitch and moan. However, it's just as easy to imagine that people are bitching and moaning rather than expressing a legitimate concern. They could be doing both...and at least in context, very often are. The person bitching could be a talentless hack with no work ethic..but it still doesn't help that the game is rigged either against him, or in someone else's favor, nor would his bitching alter the fact that it was. There are plenty of harder working and more talented people than myself who are richer than myself, but even more are poorer. Go figure. If it all went away and we woke up in utopia I;m willing to bet that people would still bitch...but a least then their bitching would be unfounded, lol.
Quote:And another thought. In a society of equality of result, like a Marxist society, there would still be gradations in status. A university professor will enjoy more status that a janitor, even if they are paid the same salary. Even in a society of equal financial distribution, status is still distributed unequally.Status isn't a fixed number. Some societies are inculcated with different notions of a professions relative status. Doctors, for example...were once the lowest form of life on the social status rung. I think that a society which either affords equal "status" or simply does not adhere to notions of "status" is probably more within our reach than a financially equal society. At least the metrics of the former are wholly set by ourselves and variable.
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