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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watcgl!jchapman
From: jchapman@watcgl.UUCP (john chapman)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: egg/chicken chicken/egg chigg/eckin
Message-ID: <2114@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Jun-85 16:25:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.2114
Posted: Wed Jun 26 16:25:46 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Jun-85 05:32:22 EDT
References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 64

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> >then he probably just doesn't deserve to succeed does he.  And if he
> >can't save to set up a factory because he only gets *just enough*
> >to feed his family for his 14 shifts well it's his fault; he should
> >work harder and longer, after all there are 24 hours in day.
> 
> Not to go on and on, but just what does this mean?  Do you suggest
> that all innovators did their work on the backs of the oppressed?  That
> all the succesful people started on their way with daddy's money?  That's
> not even true TODAY - check Forbes magazine's figures on just how many of
> the world's richest are new money, not old money.   The world was in
> poverty and somehow it got out of it.  The poor did not spontaneously
> organize.  Clever people organized them, and took a big chunk of the pie.
> Now you bitch because in hindsight you feel that these people should not
> have been given so big a chunk.
 Well listen and I'll tell you what I meant.  No I don't think that
 all innovators did their work on the backs of the oppressed.  I do
 think that a lot of them did in one way or another because the
 privelidged had the time and money to "innovate" and the poor
 generally didn't even if they did have the inclination.  Even if
 some hypothetical "poor person" had an idea he was a lot less
 likely to be able to carry it out if it required capital, as compared
 to a more well off person.  I think it's kind of like a race except
 that the advantage you get form being in the upper class is not just
 additive it's multiplicative.  A little more money gives you a little
 more time to think/innovate (whatever), it also gives you a little
 better chance of implementing your ideas.  Over you're lifetime
 you will widen the gap, between you and a poorer person, a little
 more and so you're children will start off even further ahead of
 the poorer person's children the you were ahead of him.

 Obviously this is not always the case and some people through luck,
 skill or other reasons will rise above their station, so to speak,
 while others may fall.  However when you are talking about whole
 groups of people I think it is generally true - the group that
 starts out with the advantages.

 Also - perhaps there was some humanitarian merit in giving orphans
 a place to sleep and (just enough) food to survive in return for
 them doing your mining but they wealthy people  who owned the
 mines could certainly have given them more (they might have been
 able to afford to leave though and you don't want to lose you're
 workforce).  I really don't see any difference between this and
 slavery.

 I guess the problem I have with your previous statements is that it
 makes it sound like those industrialists rose on sheer merit (which
 I obviously don't believe) and that it was the best thing that
 could have happened to the poor (I think a lot of better things
 could have happened).  The impression I get from you (right or
 wrong) is that the poor are poor through some fault of their own
 or some kind of congenital defect.

> >
> >> most of it and give only as little as possible to those they hired.
> >> But, they did have to give them something more than they had.  It wouldn't
> >> have worked otherwise, except through slavery.  Which is not to say there
> >> wasn't slavery and strongarming.  Those things did exist and are deplored
> >> by everybody today.  The only thing that isn't an established fact, and thus
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. < many other comments >