Hypthetical: An End to Classes

If you would, ponder this hypothetical:

You have the power to snap your fingers and all economic classes will disappear. Nobody has leverage against anyone else in transactions. If you want someone to do something, you don't have any way of forcing, coercing, requiring or pressuring them into doing it -- instead, you have to convince them that it's a good idea.

No one will be harmed when you snap your fingers. Nothing will be taken away from anyone. Maybe instead of making the rich people poorer, like the republicans are always accusing everyone of, we just make the poor people richer until they're as rich as the rich people. Or maybe we invent some entirely new kind of wealth, or some new level of wealth, that makes all previous forms of wealth obsolete, and everyone has (and will always have) the same amount of the new wealth from that point onward.

I know some of you think we've already achieved this, in capitalism, and therefore you would feel no need to snap your fingers even if you did want to get rid of the class structure (although I suspect that if you are the sort of person that thinks that capitalism erased the classes then you're probably also the sort of person that will defend the importance of classes to society). Feel free to say so. It's a perfectly valid answer (valid does not mean accurate).

The rest of you. Would you snap your fingers and end the class structure? Or do you like the class structure? If you wouldn't snap your fingers to end it, would you snap your fingers to change it? Maybe instead of a pyramid, we have a square? Or maybe even something with more than two dimensions (which is what I think we have now)? Use your imagination.

Me? Snappin'. I'm Snapper-@#$%ing-Carr over here.

 

This is something I'd love to see happen.

But I must disagree with people who think that capitalism is a classless systems. It's just that the classes are not as defined in comparison to a feudal system.

But since you mentioned it, you have to define what the class structure is in capitalism.

 

There are always classes the only difference is that under capitalism the class system is based upon a willingness to work and for what you are willing to settle rather than upon who your daddy was or what some bureaucrat things you ought to have.. If you could snap your fingers and end all classes tomorrow within six months classes would already have begun to reestablish themselves.

 

making poor people richer won't solve the problem, as this usually just enriches foreign peasants that have limited education.

 

Classes are actually not defined by wealth, that is a noob mistake so don't feel bad, they are defined by power. Wealth affords some individuals to wield power but that is only part of the equation.

If you make everyone equal, the trust fund babies will not advance but those rich folk who have earned their way will eventually find their way to the top of the heap again in some other way while the rest of society maintains their position or falls.

 

agreed, and Marx said something along the lines of: 'wealth is measured by the degree of power one has over alienated labor'.

 

Exactly, it's funny to watch the left and the right fight each other over this though their absolutes are actually both correct.

Yes there are people who are idiots that come into money. However yes the majority earn their money.

Like you said, if you take it away it will simply repeat. Then in another generation you will have the trust funders again.

To think you can control this is foolish IMO

 

a lot of rich folk benefit from the time and place in which they live - for example, the pro ball player or singer - how many bucks would they make if they lived in a rural village in Africa, a small island nation or in a fascist state, for instance?

not much in all liklihood

 

There is no fixed class structure in the U.S. The only classes are a construct of statisticians and sociologists.

 

You might as well ask, "what if we could snap our fingers and nobody could die, there would be no disease, everybody was happy all the time and we lived in a utopia"

 

^This is exactly what Republicans are already trying to do. And if more of you guys would sincerely listen to them instead of just trying to demonize them, you'd realize this.

 

Snap fingers all we like, wealth will near instantly stratify in a short time again, so fine, do whatever. You see, despite the great democratic pablum taught in our "special snowflake" indoctrination centers, some people -are- better than others, physically, ethically, mentally, spiritually. Some people are willing to delay gratification, to work hard to try to obtain more security in life for themselves and their families. Most aren't. Most people want to be led, will choose to trade freedom for false security at every turn, and once their immediate, basic creature comforts are met, well the work ends there and let the fun playtime begin. Even worse, some people make bad choices, have children they can't afford, eat sh-tty food, party, do drugs, and demonstrate their inferiority as human beings in the lifestyles they choose daily. Even worse, those people can be easily manipulated into believing that their sorry state in life is someone else's fault. Someone who may have come from the exact same background, but is a better person, "took something" from them, oppressed them. It's basic human nature to try to blame our own faults and their consequences on someone else. That's the formula for and impetus behind resentment-based identity politics right there.

Their is some luck and advantage involved in wealth stratification, but in a still mostly free country like the US, that accounts for a trivial amount of wealth stratification. A vast majority of it is explained by the difference in people and their choices. Learning and knowing this elementary fact of human life and politics, as true 10,000 years ago as it is today, is the difference between adulthood and childhood. Half or more of the people in the US have been manipulated by a large, overreaching, graft-laden nannygov into eternal childhood. But there is still a choice for us all as to whether to conduct ourselves and view the world as adults or children.

 

---A fellow cynic. I agree.

 

So long as there is differences of any sort, there is going to be conflict.

Too wrong. It's already been shown that the American rags-to-riches rhetoric is largely a myth. The country was created by wealthy people, administered by wealthy people, and most of the people who occupy the highest positions in our country have a background of higher middle-class to high class family backgrounds, or have received significant aid or funding from them.

It's also been shown that work is not an indicator of success. That's that Purtian bullcrap American's ascended out of- the ideology of farm hands and coal miners hoping to rake up enough wages to sustain himself through old age. I believe success in a society of competition and capitalism (as they all seem to be, at heart) requires a bit more of a reptillian instinct. The ability to "act while there's blood in the streets" as Mr. Rockefeller said...

 

That's largely because Marx when it came to understanding economics was a flaming idiot.

 

Absolute and utter nonsense. It is more difficult now because taxes only impact new money to any real extent. Rockefeller, J.Paul Getty and most of the Robber Barons began poor. Neither Gates nor Jobs started out rich. Oprah wasn't born rich. People, even in these days of excessive bureaucracy and far to much government move from one wealth quintile to the other with surprising fluidity. Most people who think like you do so because it gives them an excuse to settle where they are at rather than try for more.

 

I didn't quite understand the bolded part. Could you explain?

Other than that, you're saying that capitalism is a meritocracy and that the classes that exist naturally arise from the worthiness of the people in them, correct? The rich are more willing to work than the poor, is what you're saying? And that, left to their own devices, the rich will naturally just become rich again because they're more willing to work, and the poor will naturally just become poor again because they're not willing to work? I'm following you correctly?

 

A very good point! Classes are defined by power, not wealth specifically. But isn't capitalism the system that most directly turns wealth into power?

What about poor people that were unable to advance due to lack of capital? The rich people who theoretically earned their way before didn't have to compete with them.

 

Thanks kindly, and I am a cynic in some respects, but on this topic, I see it as -optimism-, not cynicism. Human history for thousands of years was such that no matter how much better one person was than another, no matter their choices, we were mired in a mostly inescapable caste system. A commoner born in the 1400s anywhere on Earth had about as much chance of becoming a leader in govt, the church or business as a the cliche snowball in hell. It happened, but was completely anomalous. It isn't like that any more, especially not in the US. My family, friends, myself, all proof of this... in both directions upwardly and downwardly mobile The door to the 1% is wide open for anyone willing to work and choose correctly.

The doctor next to me in the mansion home gets up at 5AM, to the office by 6, and works til 7-9PM... seven days a week, has for 30 years. Sees dozens of patients a day. He went to lab and studied in college while I was sleeping off a hangover. He works harder than I am willing to. He makes 3-5 times more income than I do, and I do pretty well. Good for him, Even in my middle age, I could start working 5AM to 7PM and obtain more wealth, but I choose not to. In certain objective commercial and civic respects, that Doc is a better person than I am and deserves the benefit of his hard work and choices. A society that respects and honors such people as the doc next door, the REAL 1%in this country, instead of resents them and lies about silver spoons, luck, Wall Street, CEOs, and Koch Bros will beat a resentment based society every time IMO.

 

Well, there are those that make choices for other people, and people that choices are made for. As a couple of other posters have kindly pointed out, it's not precisely about wealth, it's about power. I would say that because capitalism is a direct funneling of wealth into power, that under capitalism the classes of the powerful and the powerless will be defined largely by wealth, but obviously there are other routes to power because we're not purely capitalist.

I once played this MMORPG, City of Heroes, where they didn't even bother to refer to money as money. They just called it influence, which is more accurate.

 

That is exactly the opposite of what republicans are doing, and if more of you guys would take your blinders off and wake up instead of just trying to deify them, you'd realize this.

Seriously, you think republicans are on the side of the poor people? Seriously? That's what you're gonna try to tell me, here?

 

I think you'd get more snaps with that question. Note how many people are defending classes.

 

As coopted as the GOP is, there are still more elements in it that realize that large, excessive, inept, corrupt, costly government is the real problem affecting all of us, regardless of our current economic condition. I think that's what Unifier is getting at. The best way to help the poor is to prune, decentralize and neuter the power of central government in our lives. That also happens to be the best way to help the rest of us too. Win-win.

 

put down the communist manifesto and step away
do you know how many millions have dead world wide falling for the same classless utopia Marxist propaganda crap you are spewing
OMFG do they not teach what communism its philosophy and agenda did to the people under its rule in our schools anymore

 

I have to give you points for honesty and your willingness to just go ahead and say the crazy things that republicans are thinking, but the human beings you describe are nothing like the human beings I know. We must live on different planets.

Everybody I know is at work right now, unless they're either handicapped in some way, or else they're sufficiently young or old that they count as handicapped. The workers are making society's real sacrifices, sacrificing their time and their health. They'll never get ahead, most of them, precisely because they're always at work. Is that a bad choice?

Personally, I think you should start writing the republican campaign speeches. Then at least they'd be honest. "They get to live and have health care and clean water because they're just better than you! You don't because you're terrible people! Vote for us."