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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: the disparity of wealth
Thread: the disparity of wealth This thread is 7 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV / NEXT»
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 27, 2010 11:07 AM

I agree that some people are still missing the point. People are not complaining about rich kids getting Rolexes because they are envious or want a Rolex as well or bemoan the unfairness of THEY having to work to get one.

Some people here bemoan the fact that there are LOTS of KIDS in this world who starve to death while those rich kids get their Rolexes. Some people here bemoan the fact that there are lots of kids in this world who DO work their asses off, whether it's carpet-tieing (kids have small fingers and can do it best) or cloth-making or every other job kids do, for basically nothing, and try to keep their family going with the scant money they make, while those rich kids get their Rolexes.

Not to mention those kids in Asia who not only work their asses off, but work WITH their asses to earn enough to get themselves and their families through - while those rich kids get their Rolexes.

Of course not to mention either, that some of those Rolexes are very probably bought by the profits made with the work of those children...

There ARE those whiners of course, who never ever worked, but think they are entitled to society handing them everything - but as we have established, there's nothing illegal in that. Everyone can whine as much as they want, just as everyone can gloat as much as they want over their new Rolex, but that is not the point. Nor is the point how to work your ass off best to be able to buy a Rolex, whether for yourself or for your kids, or what you should or should not try to accomplish to be happy.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted October 27, 2010 11:14 AM
Edited by Doomforge at 11:16, 27 Oct 2010.

Salamandre: Patience I'm planning to leave after college, if I won't find a good opportunity in Poland for a year after finishing. It's not like I don't want to...

Some people however really can't. Not in Poland - I'm talking about really poor countries and regions.
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Kipshasz
Kipshasz


Undefeatable Hero
Elvin's Darkside
posted October 27, 2010 12:10 PM

Some goverments is forcing the people to emigrate. Some are joking that in Dublin's population consists of 2/3 lithuanians and 1/3 irish.

IMO shows like "my super sweet 16" are filming vain attention snows who want to show off what their mommys and daddys can do for their good for nothing excuse for a son/daughter.

Yes the above that I wrote is obvious.

I don't count myself as 'rich', I'm more like 'upper middle class'. I have renewed my house(well technically it's under my dad's name for ensurance reasons) with my own money, bought a car, not a new one, but still. My dad owns a construction company(which I work in now) it fetches quite a profit, even now. But we never bought expensive, useless luxuries, because my dad always says that "today we live without much financial difficulties, but maybe tommorow we'll be searching trashcans for food scraps". The thing is that most rich or wealthy people forget this, and mindlessly spends their earned or inherited money on such needless things like in Bixies example. Sure it's their business on how to spend it, but I wonder how much the party costed for the kid's parents, if the gifts were that expensive.
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"Ashan to the Trashcan", "I got PTSD from H7. " - LizardWarrior

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Binabik
Binabik


Responsible
Legendary Hero
posted October 27, 2010 12:54 PM

@Bixie

*shakes head*

You totally don't get it. The problem is that you are starting with an assumption that is wrong. So everything that follows is also wrong. Your wrong assumption is that somehow companies are inherently evil. And therefore you're also wrong that working for those companies is giving in to that evil.

You talk about being submissive and boycotting and protesting. Those things are all based on the assumption that companies are somehow evil. I'm not saying that companies never do anything wrong, because they do. And I think that when those companies DO do something wrong that it should be protested against. But your view of things and blanket rejection are so far from reality that to use it as a basis for your stance is seriously flawed.

I'm certainly no stranger to rebellion. I've been a rebel and fought against the system since I was in kindergarten where we were being oppressed by the kindergarten teacher. The difference is that now I (almost) never rebel just for the sake of rebellion. I still fight against what I think is wrong. I've hung out with some of the most radical people there are. I've been to the headquarters of radicals in several cities including the national headquarters in DC. Ever heard of Abbie Hoffman's group? If not then look it up.

For forty years I've heard the kind of stuff you are saying. During that time I've worked for probably 100 companies in many states in many industries doing a wide variety of work. In one way or another I've had dealings with a lot more companies. NOT ONCE have I ever felt like I was being taken advantage of. NOT ONCE!

When I was your age I was probably a lot more rebellious than you are (but in different ways). I was wrong. And so are you. If you really believe that something is wrong, then by all means fight against it. But before you take that fight too far, you should make damn sure you are right. And you should make damn sure that you fully understand the concept of rationalization and that you are susceptible to it. With a lot of years of experience, and a special interest in economics, finance and business with a few decades studying and observing those things, I am completely convinced that a blanket condemnation of companies is just plain wrong. It just doesn't work like you seem to think it does.

What I see in you is someone who is blinded by their own rebellion. Sheep are the ones who never bother to look. Rebels are the ones who look but lose their sight because they are too focused the fight.

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VokialBG
VokialBG


Honorable
Legendary Hero
First in line
posted October 27, 2010 01:01 PM

My reply is here.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 27, 2010 03:56 PM

Binabik, I read Bixie's post as well - and yours -, and I don't see Bixie telling something about evil corporations - putting that in his mouth is basically showing that you are the one who are not getting what he's actually trying to express.
He doesn't have to assume that corporations are evil, he's only stating that the interests of corps and people or workers are not the same, and workers do not have to include a corp in their prayers just because they work there: come the next round of "economically necessary" layoffs they may be fired anyway.
Nor do they have to mindlessly follow "corp ideology".
While ownership of things is one thing, consequences of corps's doings usually affect a lot of people nowadays, and if a corp screws it - let's say an oil drilling goes wrong - others will suffer.

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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted October 27, 2010 04:07 PM

@DF
Quote:
Not a contradiction, I'd say! Equal ground is fine, but since the massive luck factor (50% chance affecting a single decision that makes  you win or lose your life) it's not fair either.

Everything imho that involves that kind of "luck factor" isn't fair. It's only fair when everything is given the same choice & it takes effort instead of dice roll.


I hope you don't mind me pressing at this, because I find it interesting.  I'd like to therefore pose you a few scenarios and you rank them from most fair to least fair.  I suppose I'd also like to know what "fair" means.

Btw, I'm not setting you up to try to prove you wrong or anything.  I'm genuinely curious.

Alright, to make things simple, let's assume I live in an autonomous state with population of 100 people.

Scenario 1. I give everyone $100.

Scenario 2. I give everyone $100.  Then I offer each person in turn the choice to flip a coin.  If it is heads, I give that person another $100.  If it is tails, that person loses the $100 I already gave them.  

Scenario 3. I give everyone $100.  Then I tell each person in turn that I'm going to flip a coin.  If it is heads, I give that person another $100.  If it is tails, that person loses the $100 I already gave them.

Scenario 4. I keep my $10,000 for myself.

Scenario 5. I give everyone $100.  Then I make an announcement that if anyone wants an extra $100, they can do important but difficult work for me.

Scenario 6. I give everyone $100.  Then I make an announcement that if anyone wants an extra $100, they can do important but difficult work for me.  When the work is finally done, I tell the people who chose to work that they have to share their extra money with the people who didn't do anything.

Scenario 7.  I put my $10,000 on the floor in the middle of a big room and tell each person to take whatever they feel is fair.

So - what do you think?

Quote:
Genuine effort means working for it and dedication. Not getting your wallet pumped by rich daddy.

And who exactly are you arguing against when you make such a statement?  Please, tell me someone here who has stated that they feel that inheriting a fortune is equivalent to "genuine effort".  

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xerox
xerox


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 27, 2010 05:21 PM

Quote:
Scenario 5. I give everyone $100.  Then I make an announcement that if anyone wants an extra $100, they can do important but difficult work for me.


Is it not obvious that this is the best scenario?
Except that people that are like extremly, super injured should not need to work.
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Binabik
Binabik


Responsible
Legendary Hero
posted October 27, 2010 11:16 PM

Quote:
Binabik, I read Bixie's post as well - and yours -, and I don't see Bixie telling something about evil corporations - putting that in his mouth is basically showing that you are the one who are not getting what he's actually trying to express.

I've already stated that it's not just about what he said in this thread. This thread is not isolated. He has made it quite clear over the years how he feels about these things. I didn't put any words in his mouth, I've only summarized in a general way the things he (and a lot of other people) have already expressed. And I'm not even necessarily attacking him personally. I'm more using him as being generally representative of a large number of people with similar types of thought.



Quote:
Scenario 4. I keep my $10,000 for myself.

Scenario 2. I give everyone $100.  Then I offer each person in turn the choice to flip a coin.  If it is heads, I give that person another $100.  If it is tails, that person loses the $100 I already gave them.


In order to do this you need $20,000 not $10,000. On average you will hand out $10,000 and keep the other $10,000. You greedy bourgeoisie bass turd.

^^^that's not entirely a joke, there's a real point in there^^^

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Fauch
Fauch


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 28, 2010 01:12 AM

Quote:
There are a lot of young people on this board who just want to have everything all at once. It doesn't work that way. It takes years. It takes sacrifice. It takes patience. It takes motivation. It takes good attitude.


and why? well, I'm not talking about having all you want, it is clear that some people are way unreasonable, but if you just want to live decently, why should you have to wait, to make sacrifices?
do some people have to suffer so they might have the right to eventually be happy?

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Salamandre
Salamandre


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
posted October 28, 2010 01:31 AM

Fauch, there "decently" needs to be defined. Look what's going here in France right now. People with less than 1000 euros/months keep playing luck games everyday, up to 25% of their monthly income. Then they go on strike for every penny they suppose the governmental is stealing by one reform or another. The luck games company "Française des jeux" made a 10 milliards income last year, while 90% of french peps are affirming they live in cruel poverty. And my guess is that it is not the rich who keeps playing. Irony of what means "decently". Decently means you have 10 euros every day to "invest" in luck games? Then don't complain at the end of the month.  
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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted October 28, 2010 12:02 PM

Quote:
There are a lot of young people on this board who just want to have everything all at once. It doesn't work that way. It takes years. It takes sacrifice. It takes patience. It takes motivation. It takes good attitude.


There are a lot of young people on this board who see this is not true by seeing people in their age driving ferraris and buying yachts (I know 2 of such persons myself) without ANY "years, sacrifice, patience, motivation". And they are annoyed by the fact that what would take them years and probably wouldn't be reachable anyway can be obtained without any effort at all. THIS is what kills motivation and patience. The unfairness. What you have to endure for 20-30 years of hard work is not necessary to some people who were just lucky to have a rich generous parent.

@ Cor: I'm game. I'll post the answers soon
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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted October 28, 2010 04:04 PM

@DF

Quote:
There are a lot of young people on this board who see this is not true by seeing people in their age driving ferraris and buying yachts (I know 2 of such persons myself) without ANY "years, sacrifice, patience, motivation".

You're making a fallacious conclusion based on a nonrepresentative sample.  Inexperienced (student) scientists make this mistake all the time, particularly in my discipline.

Hypothesis: It usually takes hard work and lots of time to become rich.

Your logical argument:
I see some people who are young and rich.  Therefore, the hypothesis is wrong.

Let's start first with the hypothesis.  Note the bold word.  True, Binabik did not add this qualifier, but I think it is a fair assumption that he did not mean to imply that it is impossible to be rich without working hard.  In fact his earlier posts indicate as much and I think we all know that there are examples of people born into money.  Therefore, we take his hypothesis to be description of a trend or prediction for the average person.  That is: While some people become rich with little effort, and some people work hard and remain poor, on average, it takes effort, determination, work, and patience to become rich.

That elaboration on the hypothesis should make it sufficiently clear why your argument is fallacious.  It's a matter of statistics.  Small sample sizes lead to erroneous conclusions because confidence levels are low.  In essence, you're making a fallacy of hasty generalization: I see some rich people who didn't work for their money, therefore ALL (or most) rich people didn't work for their money.  

In my line of work, we look at single molecules or nanoparticles one at a time and then try to derive general conclusions about their properties.  We do this with microscopes.  The problem is, if you take an image and there are 10 molecules in the image, and you find that 7 of them have a certain property, is it fair to conclude that a majority of molecules have this certain property?  Obviously not - it could be that only 5% of molecules have that property, but you just got lucky and got an image where 70% had the property.  Only by taking a THOUSAND images will you have a better idea of whether the property in question occurs in a majority of molecules, and even then nothing is certain.  A large concern in my field is that people misrepresent (either willingly or out of ignorance of statistics) their data by cherry-picking.

Again, the fact that you are aware of some (perhaps even a large number!) of rich people who didn't do squat to become wealthy only proves that it is possible to be rich without working hard.  It says nothing on the likelihood of that happening.  This problem is compounded by the fact that inheritees, or whatever you want to call them, tend to attract media attention out of proportion to their numbers.  You don't hear much on the news about all the people who go to work every day and slowly accumulate a fortune - you hear about Paris Hilton though almost every day.  The media is, sadly, a vector for bad logic.  The fact of the matter is that the only way to be sure of a conclusion is to count every person on the planet and then develop some metric to measure how rich they are and how much work it took them to get that way.  Failing that, you need a larger sample size, or at least an understanding that making conclusions based on limited perceptions is difficult at best and detrimental to your health and/or livelihood at worst.

I mean, let's think of it this way.  Let's say that for every 100 people who are wealthy, 10 of them got that way by doing very little work.  The other 90 had to work hard to slowly accumulate their wealth.  I think that's being generous to the sloths, but the numbers are easy.  Now let's say for every 10 who didn't have to work hard, 9 of them got their money through inheritance.*  That leaves 1 out of 100 who did not inherit their money but they got rich without luck.  We'll call them lottery winners.

Now, your contention might be that it's unfair that some people get wealthy without working.  And therefore, you make the conclusion that you don't want to work.  (I don't quite get the logic there, but whatever.)  Are you hoping that you might somehow get rich without working?  Hmm, well considering that of the 10% who are lucky enough to get rich without working, 90% of those do so by inheritance, that leaves you with only a 1% chance** of getting rich without working, since it's too late probably for you to inherit (ignoring the potential death of a previously unknown rich uncle).

So, what - your solution is that because it's possible to get rich without working, even though the odds are very slim, that's what you elect to do?  You'd rather sit in squalor because of the injustice that a very small fraction of people win the lottery?  Do you do so out of protest?  Are you a martyr?  What?  I don't get it.  Why this resistance to work, when it's the surest way to financial success?

Note to JJ - I didn't say it ensures success, so don't bother.

I'll end this with just one little final statement.  Did it ever occur to you that work can be enjoyable, and rewarding in ways beyond a paycheck?  But perhaps that's a discussion for another day.

*And we'll ignore for the moment the question of where that money came from.  Someone had to work for it at some point.  Money doesn't just appear out of thin air, as much as some people think it should.  Even in system where wealth is compeletely redistributed, the wealth came from SOMEONE'S labor, even if it wasn't yours.  Even if I win the lottery and only had to expend the effort to go to my local supermarket to buy a ticket, that 100,000,000 dollars came from someone's work.  I think this is a point that a lot of people forget.  There's no such thing as a free lunch.  Even if you don't pay for it, someone did.

**Another dangerous word, as it implies a random event.  But, we'll leave it for now.

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OmegaDestroyer
OmegaDestroyer

Hero of Order
Fox or Chicken?
posted October 28, 2010 04:10 PM

Quote:
Did it ever occur to you that work can be enjoyable, and rewarding in ways beyond a paycheck?


Wait, what?  Work enjoyable AND rewarding?  Where did you come up with such strange and wonderful ideas, Corribus?  

Are you a prophet?

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted October 28, 2010 04:55 PM
Edited by Doomforge at 16:57, 28 Oct 2010.

Quote:
You're making a fallacious conclusion based on a nonrepresentative sample.


No, I don't mean a sample, I don't mean any conclusion and I care only about single, individual event. I only mean that seeing such a person is highly discouraging from doing anything, and it doesn't matter one tiny bit whether it happens 1% or 0.000000000000000001% of the time to me - who cares how often it happens? It's not the frequency, but the sole fact that it DID happen. Even if it was a single person on the planet, it would be STILL unfair.

Quote:
Therefore, we take his hypothesis to be description of a trend or prediction for the average person.


My friend, I'm not going for predicting, math models or anything here Again, it doesn't matter to me what's the chance or how often does it happen.

Quote:
It's a matter of statistics.


I'm not bringing statistics to it.


Quote:
Small sample sizes lead to erroneous conclusions because confidence levels are low.


Which is fine and all, but I'm not analyzing a sample group and drawing conclusions taking confidence levels in my test. I'm merely saying that I know two guys who got a lot of cash from their rich daddies, and it's pretty discouraging.

Not sure what are you trying to prove by turning this into a probability distribution or some sort of social experiment. Aww, scientists.

Quote:
I mean, let's think of it this way.  Let's say that for every 100 people who are wealthy, 10 of them got that way by doing very little work.  The other 90 had to work hard to slowly accumulate their wealth.  I think that's being generous to the sloths, but the numbers are easy.  Now let's say for every 10 who didn't have to work hard, 9 of them got their money through inheritance.*  That leaves 1 out of 100 who did not inherit their money but they got rich without luck.  We'll call them lottery winners.


Let me rephrase then: even if it was 1 person out of 1000000000, it would be still unfair that all those people had to work and he got all for free.


Quote:
Now, your contention might be that it's unfair that some people get wealthy without working.  And therefore, you make the conclusion that you don't want to work.  (I don't quite get the logic there, but whatever.)


Are you assuming I made such a conclusion or stating I did? Either way, I did not make such a conclusion.

Quote:
So, what - your solution is that because it's possible to get rich without working, even though the odds are very slim, that's what you elect to do?  You'd rather sit in squalor because of the injustice that a very small fraction of people win the lottery?  Do you do so out of protest?  Are you a martyr?  What?  I don't get it.  Why this resistance to work, when it's the surest way to financial success?


I never said anything about such resistance - not sure why do you insist I did. I never said anything about martyr, protesting or anything. All I did was stating it's unfair to those who work hard - and it is, too.

Regarding "surest way", statistics are nice and all, but in truth, if you don't have the talent/luck, you will just be an average Joe like everyone else. If you want to drag statistics in it, try to calculate your chance of being an average Joe that has only enough money to live from start to end of month (pretty much never saving). Moreover, use global statistics in comparison to global prices over US ones - the average payment and savings will be drastically lower in relation to how much everything costs. I'm pretty sure you'd come to a conclusion that most of the world's population is doomed to live in poverty and the rest is pretty sure to be average Joes for the rest of their lives, chances of you being the one "chosen" to be the top group so small that it's pretty... depressing

and that's exactly how it is, btw.

Or just dump the statistics to the garbage bin - each life is so highly individual and success is based on so many factors that making "hard work" the crown factor seems somehow naive to me.

Quote:
I'll end this with just one little final statement.  Did it ever occur to you that work can be enjoyable, and rewarding in ways beyond a paycheck?  But perhaps that's a discussion for another day.


Of course.
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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted October 28, 2010 04:59 PM

By the way, when I used "you" in my post, for the most part it was a general "you", not you, specifically, DF.  

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted October 28, 2010 05:19 PM

oh, ok then.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 28, 2010 05:19 PM

Since this is pretty off-topic, I'm not going to elaborate a lot, but what I don't like, Corribus, is the term "hard work".

You can work as hard as you want, serving out burgers, clean out trash cans and so on ... but for example as well as an elementary school teacher - and you won't get ricch from it.
You WILL get rich working hard as a beauty surgeon, but note again, that "rich" is basically determined by the job you have, not by the amount of work you put into it (even though there is of course such a thing as doing a job WELL, but doing a job WELL isn't the same as WORKING HARD).

That said, the key word here is REWARDING. You simply need a REWARDING job - subjectively rewarding, of course. If you have that, "rich" is already covered.

But I suppose that wasn't the point. If you want to be rich, you want to BE rich, not to BECOME rich (eventually). This is, however, where I'm out, because frankly I don't care about people who whine about not being rich, while everyone and their dog buys Rolexes - that wasN#t Bixie's thread purpose at all.

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JoonasTo
JoonasTo


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
posted October 28, 2010 06:21 PM

Working hard is the last hope of people without talent.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted October 28, 2010 07:31 PM

Not so. Talent is nothing without "hard work" - but not every talent will make you rich and famous.

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