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Old 07-13-2012, 11:07 AM   #11
mathewjgano
 
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Dojo: Tsubaki Kannagara Jinja Aikidojo; Himeji Shodokan Dojo
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Re: Big business and the arrogance of their culture

Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote: View Post
Not saying that all poor people are irresponsible. However, as a class across the world if you dumped money on the poor with out leadership, then they would most likely not do well with it.

We are doing this in Afghanistan a lot and it does not work. It is better to teach a man to fish than to fish for him.

That said, yeah the rich make the rules for taxation mainly so yeah, of course the rules favor them....duh.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the reply! Yeah it's pretty common for folks who have relatively little sense of long-term goal setting to seek short-term gains instead. The delay of gratification is an underappreciate talent...and is something rich and poor alike need to work on within different contexts.
With this in mind, sure, poor folks have often gambled away their resources since prehistorical times...duh. Likewise, rich folks rig the various playing fields to meet their own sense of relatively quicker gratification rather than mitigate that with investment back into the system for a greater overall benefit.
The question I have has to do with how we as a society come together to place checks on those who seem to display destructive behavior while still respecting their personal autonomy as much as possible. To my mind this is the central issue to the basic concept of liberty and I believe in the concept of checks on power as a way of ensuring the greatest overall liberty. I'm not worried about those with huge resources; they're "just fine." The best answer I have so far is for government to impose regulation, to establish a common baseline for standards; and to shore up those "weakest" links.
I see economic growth a little like this: There's a marathon wherein the basic goal isn't necessarily to be fastest, but to finish; it's the government's job to see that everyone crosses the finish line. The problem is that the people who somehow got ahead at the start seem to get lighter and faster while the people who somehow fell behind seem to often get heavier and slower (and not always relative to the increases made by those ahead of them).
You're right that it's better to teach a person to fish than to give that person a fish. It teaches self-reliance instead of dependance. This is part of why I view the education system with so much importance. The problem is that it's hard to teach people who feel disenfranchised by those powerful folks who also set up the playing field. They don't trust that, A) it will do them much good anyway (e.g. "it's not what you know but who you know"), and, B) it's not the kind of information that will do much good anyway (e.g. "math past elementary school is completely useless"). I think it's more A than B, but both play a part. .
So, sure, "duh" the wealthy have rigged the system by virtue of their significantly greater degrees of power, but shouldn't that piss us off a little? And given that, should we do something about it like engage a conversation or other action which (hopefully) shifts things more toward the middle ground?
Thanks again for the reply!
Take care,
Matt

Gambarimashyo!
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