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Forums - General Discussion - 62 richest people has as much money as poorest 3.5 billion humans

Wiibaron said:
Things that make rich people rich: Smart work, Dedication. Investing. Long hours. Sacrificing when they are younger. Marriage and family. Things that make people poor: Smoking weed. Breeding. Dropping out of school. Laziness. Buying stuff they can't afford. Party time 24/7. Yolo. If you can't afford to support yourself, don't breed others into your mix. Think of a Doctor. No party in HS, good grades. No party in College. 10 years to get degree, mega loans owed. Live lite for 10 more years to pay back loans. 38 years old and now you can start to live. All those years of dedication and sacrifice equals rich for the rest of your life. And then some lazy weed smoking breeder come along and wants your money because he is poor because he partied his 20s and 30s away...

surely finding some balance between those 2 extremes would lead to the happiest and most fulfilling life





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MTZehvor said:
hershel_layton said:

Of course it'll take long if we wanted to fix the issues in undeveloped countries. However, think about the religious countries- give them some education, internet, etc, and think how many of them will stop resorting to their superstition beliefs. There can be potential for the production needed to become a developed country. I mean, let's face it. No matter how many times a person from Africa reads their Bible, it won't solve anything. Though, some education is what's needed to make actual change.

 

What you're saying has been tried before; many, many times over. Attempts have been made by Western governments, charities, the UN, missionaries, non profits, etc. There are two major roadblocks in the way, however.

Number 1 is actually getting the funding for these programs to the right people. Giving funding to governments rarely works, as, more often than not, the majority of the money will simply be taken by less than reputable "public servants." You can try and bring the supplies over yourself, but for things like education, that's extremely difficult to do. You need to either relocate teachers from Western countries (who also need to be well versed in the culture of the country they'll be teaching in, and believe me, there aren't many of those around), or train people to be teachers from the nation in question. The latter is what most attempts have tried, and it's extremely time consuming, extremely costly, and rarely successful, because the schools are still poorly funded, and because...

Number 2: Everything's interconnected. Simply providing better schools, for instance, in an underdeveloped country actually does very little because simply being able to go to school is often considered a luxury. Living conditions are, obviously, awful, many kids have to walk miles to school, and their ability to study at home is severly limited. Lower class American children, who are considered to oftentimes be incapable of escaping their circumstances due to their poor start in life, are far better off than these kids. Improving the schooling won't do much until the entire society is improved. Roads need to be built, easy transportation to school and back needs to be provided, basic utilities need to be installed so that parents/kids spend less time doing chores and more time helping their kids learn/study. And there's no way to do that without going through the governments of the nations involved, which, as mentioned before, are usually highly corrupt and unlikely to actually work with any sort of project.

I suppose it's basically a "we're screwed" thing. Brings me back to the original point i made before- I was worried that nothing would change.





 

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12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

I know a lot of people are correcting me. I don't have a lot of time to respond to everyone, so here's a general response to 99% of these posts-


Yes, no amount of work in an average lifetime can justify BILLIONS for one human. And yes, I know that no matter what we do, there seems to be no way to fix underdeveloped countries. As much $$$ and resources we send, corrupt governments always ruin the chances they get. I guess a topic such as this makes me point back to my original point I made. What was my original point? Fear that nothing will change.

Then again, the reason why more poor people keep appearing is because people keep making kids! I don't see why people financially incapable of having a family still proceed to have kids. It makes no sense. It's worse when you see poor families with 6+ kids.

So what idea do I have to solve this? Nothing! As I said, I'm not that smart when it comes to economics. I'll let a person smarter than me attempt to solve this. I'll probably only make things worse



 

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12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

Doing a worldwide comparison and pretending that the cost of living is the same everywhere is stupid.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

do you want more of their money? cuz that won't solve anything.



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jmorris724 said:
do you want more of their money? cuz that won't solve anything.

 

I'm good.



 

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12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

MTZehvor said:

Then you're simply setting the bar for what to evaluate fairness at a certain level. Once a certain set of rules or guidelines, along with some background details, are established, anything that gives one side an unfair advantage is unfair. I'm simply taking the same concept of fairness, and using it to evaluate the background of the situations as well.

To put it another way, imagine I fought Mike Tyson in a boxing match. So long as neither of us cheated by taking steroids or something, it would be a "fair" competition. Yet, people would say "that's not even a fair fight." Why? Because I'm obviously starting off at a disadvantage (namely barely having boxed at all in my life and being nowhere near as strong). The competition is only "fair" if you disregard the background knowledge to the situation, which is what fair means in regards to rules. If you apply the same standards to everything, however, including background information, it becomes far more difficult to make the case for it being fair.

Also, just as a heads up, you can end your sentences with more than just ellipses. =p

If your idea of fair includes having equal initial conditions then you may as well conclude that nothing is fair but that doesn't mean competition can't happen as far as economics go ...

To put it simply, you may not like the rules that economics has laid out and the same goes for many people but EVERYONE must play by those rules including the formerly filthy rich people ... 



Wer war der Thor, wer Weiser, wer Bettler oder Kaiser.

Ob Arm, ob Reich, im Tode gleich.



Hunting Season is done...

The neo-corporatist economic model that is displacing liberal capitalism turns my stomach. The sooner we end corporate subsidies (welfare) and return to proper capitalism the better. If you think the current system is fair then it's time to enroll in economics 101.



fatslob-:O said:
MTZehvor said:

Then you're simply setting the bar for what to evaluate fairness at a certain level. Once a certain set of rules or guidelines, along with some background details, are established, anything that gives one side an unfair advantage is unfair. I'm simply taking the same concept of fairness, and using it to evaluate the background of the situations as well.

To put it another way, imagine I fought Mike Tyson in a boxing match. So long as neither of us cheated by taking steroids or something, it would be a "fair" competition. Yet, people would say "that's not even a fair fight." Why? Because I'm obviously starting off at a disadvantage (namely barely having boxed at all in my life and being nowhere near as strong). The competition is only "fair" if you disregard the background knowledge to the situation, which is what fair means in regards to rules. If you apply the same standards to everything, however, including background information, it becomes far more difficult to make the case for it being fair.

Also, just as a heads up, you can end your sentences with more than just ellipses. =p

If your idea of fair includes having equal initial conditions then you may as well conclude that nothing is fair but that doesn't mean competition can't happen as far as economics go ...

To put it simply, you may not like the rules that economics has laid out and the same goes for many people but EVERYONE must play by those rules including the formerly filthy rich people ... 

I never said competition couldn't happen; my original point in all of this was that it isn't realistic to say that everyone started off on a level playing field, and thus, anyone could have earned as much money as those 62 people did. Economic competition is certainly viable, and a good starting point for helping underdeveloped countries...well...develop (South Korea is an excellent example of this).

All I'm saying is that the world doesn't put people off on a level playing field, and some inevitably start at a disadvantage compared to others. I'm not making a value statement on whether economic competition or capitalism is good or bad, nor am I saying whether I like the rules or not.