Posted January 30, 2013
The shocking aspect comes from the fact that such amounts represent nothing for some people, while they represent survival for others. It's the differential of meaning. Beyond a certain wealth, the currency means something completely different. Caprices, pleasures, stuff to burn. Yet, crumbles of it have life-and-death importance to others.
It's like bathing in front dehydrated dying people, or (if you speak of social services or institutions requiring money), in front of dried fields. And this rather obscene differential is justified by an ideology that equals wealth to "merit", implying that the struggling people's moral quality is proportionally as lower than the super-rich people's moral quality as their respective wealth are (or that, in a "free market", that would be the case). Redistribution, or mechanisms of diminishing returns, are "immoral", because the "moral" system is the one that allows for exponential differences, seen as legitimate rewards for people's moral virtues (these virtues being, themselves, circularly enough, restricted to the traits that make someone economically productive).
The problem is that these quantifications of motivational rewards use a currency that doesn't mean "luxury" and "fun gratification" for everyone : it's also the same units that determine someone's access to survival, or minimum life decency (shelter, food, etc). It's not a little game for everybody.
It's like bathing in front dehydrated dying people, or (if you speak of social services or institutions requiring money), in front of dried fields. And this rather obscene differential is justified by an ideology that equals wealth to "merit", implying that the struggling people's moral quality is proportionally as lower than the super-rich people's moral quality as their respective wealth are (or that, in a "free market", that would be the case). Redistribution, or mechanisms of diminishing returns, are "immoral", because the "moral" system is the one that allows for exponential differences, seen as legitimate rewards for people's moral virtues (these virtues being, themselves, circularly enough, restricted to the traits that make someone economically productive).
The problem is that these quantifications of motivational rewards use a currency that doesn't mean "luxury" and "fun gratification" for everyone : it's also the same units that determine someone's access to survival, or minimum life decency (shelter, food, etc). It's not a little game for everybody.
Post edited January 30, 2013 by Telika