Economic Inequality And The End Of The World As We Know It

Welcome friends!

I probably mentioned the two reasons I often talk about distributional issues such as economic inequality, poverty, unemployment, etc.  One has to do with social ethics: equity, fairness, and so on.  The other has to do with social stability and sustainability.  I’ve talked often enough about the social ethics part.  Conservatives tend to buy into the idea that whatever happens on “the market” is above ethical reproach because of how the system is set up and therefore if some people are unemployed or poor or homeless or starving or sick and uninsured or what have you there’s really no problem with that and it’s exactly what we ought to see in an ethical society.  I along with most other liberals I presume most heartily disagree.  I suppose in some cases this rather notable difference of opinion could be from real differences in our underlying moral senses.  However, I can’t help but wonder if a big part of conservative thinking on the subject comes mostly from a lack of awareness of how real world markets actually operate (an issue that could equally well be expressed as a lack of awareness of the limitations of neoclassical economic theory) and perhaps more practically a deficiency in the variety of one’s life experiences or powers of imagination.  Listening to conservatives talk about social justice brings to mind little darlings emerging from gated cocoons and trying to explain why it’s natural and acceptable to find a dead hobo lying in the street.  Always a bit too quick to think they have an answer and always a bit too outraged when someone points out it doesn’t really make sense.  Of course, sometimes people just put self interest first and let their philosophy follow.  It’s called greed.  Lots of it about.  And you know for conservatives greed is good.  So that’s certainly another possibility.  Anyway, what I wanted to discuss today is not social ethics but the other half of the issue: the relationship between economic inequality and social stability.  Usually I just sort of state this as something that should be pretty obvious to everyone based on common sense and the most casual historical research.  However, this week I read about an article published a few years ago in which some social scientists developed a computer model for investigating social collapse.  They found the two engines of collapse are environmental breakdown and … drum roll please … economic inequality.  So there you go.  I’ve got at least one computer modeling geek on my side!  Regardless of one’s views on the ethics of the matter I would think even the most smugly self-adoring rich conservative might be a little concerned about social collapse.  So let’s talk a little bit about that this week shall we? 

Yes, it seems a systems scientist named Safa Motesharrei along with some colleagues published an article in 2014 that used computer models to delve into the causes of social collapse... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Monster Children of the UK

Welcome friends!

Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on with kids in UK?  I commented a while ago on a story about a pair of UK boys aged fifteen and eighteen who tried to beat a homeless man to death with a table leg and got caught bragging to their little friends about it.  (See my post Crime and Punishment, or Not from January 23, 2014.)  Well, I guess it wasn’t just the bragging that gave them away.  It was the blood spatter as well.  Always a dead give away.  Got to watch the spatter kids!  I thought it was pretty damned weird at the time.  We have violent crime in the USA, don’t get me wrong.  We’ve got plenty of that.  But monster kids I think are relatively rare here.  Most of our violent criminals were at least somewhat normal as kids and only became truly rotten to the core as young adults.  And usually our violent crime involves things like money, drugs, gangs, etc.  The sort of stuff denizens of the low life get excited about all around the world.  We have isolated serial murderers and so on but it’s kind of weird for two kids to get together and bash in the brains of a random stranger for kicks and giggles.  But no big deal.  I presumed the story was a one off.  The sort of thing that might have happened anywhere.  A pair of sadistic little nutlings found each other and did what came naturally.  Freaks of nature.  But alas that does not appear to be the case.  (Reader alert: ugliness ahead!)  No, I just read another horrifying story this time about two young UK girls aged thirteen and fourteen who tied a mentally challenged woman to a chair and slowly beat her to death by among things stamping on her face, throwing a television at her, throwing a printer at her, and hitting her in the face with a table multiple times.  They took a little break from their torture session to take selfies of themselves with the dying woman in the background with “splits in her head” bleeding profusely.  WTH?  Yes, I’m talking about pure unadulterated evil.  Spawn.

At first I thought once again no big deal this could have happened anywhere blah blah blah... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Conservatives Run Amok

Welcome friends!

I almost did another post on the ongoing comedy revue known as the Republican Party but it’s probably getting a little monotonous.  If I covered every bit of cringeworthy claptrap coming from the motley pack of buffoons conservatives have put forward as their candidates for President of the US I’d never have time for anything else.  I must admit I was tempted to address the latest anti-terrorist idea put forward by Republican front runner Donald Trump, which was to murder the families of terrorists.  Is the guy self-consciously modeling himself after Adolf Hitler or is it just coincidence?  One never knows with American conservatives.  Or maybe all conservatives are just pretty much the same at some level?  Anyway, I read an entertaining rebuttal by an Israeli anti-terrorism expert who explained patiently that murdering the quite possibly entirely innocent families of terrorists would not only be immoral and basically a war crime but ineffective as well.  I wonder, how stupid is the Stupid Party anyway?  Do conservatives think this is all a big joke?  Do they think they’re doing some sort of extended TV comedy skit?  I do eventually want to do a post on the GOP’s attempt to erode support for our democratic government by gutting the ability of the IRS to enforce the tax code but I’ll save that another day.  Setting aside the Republican scourge I then thought I might do something on the latest crazy Muslim attack (CMA).  No, not the one in Paris; I’m talking about the one here in sunny Southern California in which a couple of lovebirds named Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered fourteen unarmed people and wounded an additional twenty one at a holiday party at some sort of facility for the developmentally disabled.  Who shoots people working at a school for the disabled?  Well, yes, probably the same sort of person who shoots people at a holiday party.  Point taken.  Fortunately the cops tracked them down and helped them reach their final destination in short order so it was all over pretty quickly but you know that sort of thing is also getting a little monotonous.  News Flash!  Crazy Muslim terrorists like to murder innocent unarmed people!  Details to follow!  Thankfully I then noticed a story on something that is actually probably also depressingly commonplace but at least something I haven’t written about recently so let’s just go with that one.  The story involved a US Marine murdering a transgendered woman in the Philippines and getting handed a laughably lenient sentence of six to twelve years in jail.  I mean honestly.  Hello!  Is there anyone out there other than me interested at all in what we used to call justice?  Well, let’s talk through the damn thing and be done with it... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Crime and Punishment, or Not

Welcome friends!

I just remembered a little news story I was going to comment upon last year so I suppose I might as well do it now but I must warn you it’s not going to be pretty.  The story that caught my eye involved two English teenagers aged 15 and 18 who attacked a homeless man (aged 54) and basically left him for dead.  Yes, it seems they tried to bash the poor man’s head in with a wooden table leg while he was sleeping out of doors or “rough” as our English friends might say.  But don’t worry, the story has a somewhat happy ending.  The doctors were able to save the victim’s life after getting him on life support and inducing a coma.  He was a bit of a mess though.  The doctors said his injuries were “similar to those suffered by a car crash victim.”  And it’s not all good.  He did lose sight in one eye.  But that’s a lot better result than what these two young men had intended.  Yes, the younger of the two little darlings was later caught on a security camera re-enacting the crime for his friends.  He said, “I feel high.  I feel on top of the world.  I want to do it again.”  His slightly older buddy was also flying high and bragged to his friends about killing a man after “hitting him forty times.”  (Well, that’s what he said.  Forty times.  Can you imagine?)  When confronted with the evidence, which included blood splatter on their shoes and clothes (as well as the face of the younger one according to witnesses), they claimed a friend had carried out the attack and they were just innocent bystanders.  The judge didn’t buy it and instead found they had committed a premeditated and entirely unprovoked attack on a complete stranger that nearly resulted in the man’s death.  He gave the younger of the two a sentence of seven years at a young offenders’ institution and the older one six years.  Too much, you say?  Don’t worry, they’ll both be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their sentences, so let’s say about four years each... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!