but why do people put up with blatant inequality?
One of the things ChatGPT is good at is serving as my ever-available debating partner. It can come up with a good list of pros and cons for/against any proposition, and it can brainstorm reasons for why something is or isn't the way I'd like it to be.
So yesterday I was debating with it about why people put up with obvious lower-class statuses. For example, in 1860 there were almost four million slaves in the US, with some states having over half their population as slaves. 57% of South Carolina's residents were slaves! Yet South Carolina was the first state to secede after anti-slavery Lincoln was elected in 1860, and it's the state where the Civil War in defense of slavery began in 1861. Why didn't this majority of South Carolina's residents rise up and free themselves?
After the Civil War, when the US Congress did finally amend the Constitution to end slavery, every legislator who voted for the amendment was a white person. Slavery didn't go away until white people fought a war over it, anti-slavery white people won that war, and then anti-slavery white people voted to end slavery. [Yes, there were eventually black regiments who fought on the Northern side, making up about 10% of the Union's forces.]
ChatGPT pointed out several reasons for the successful subjugation of black slaves that I hadn't put together on my own in a comprehensive way, even after decades of studying history. There was the intentional lack of formal education for slaves, the legal structure of slavery, the separation of slave families by selling members to other plantations, the violent punishments for rebel slaves, the system of rewards for loyal slaves, and the list went on. There were practically no systems available for black slaves to coordinate any kind of massive resistance.
There were a few slave rebellions, and many white slaveowners feared widespread slave rebellions. But the system maintained its control until white Northerners put a stop to it.
I don't mean to blame the victims, but I wonder why a group that makes up an actual majority would nevertheless submit to this blatantly unjust system. And a theme that kept coming up as I debated history with ChatGPT was "divide and conquer". Elites maintain their control by keeping non-elites divided. For example, by pitting working class whites against black slaves in a hierarchical system.
Then I widened the debate to include women, who were also a formally subjugated class in the 19th Century. When women were finally granted a Constitutional right to vote, every member of Congress who voted for that amendment was a man. Yet women make up a slight majority of the population. We've still never had a woman President in the US, although we've gotten close. Why doesn't the slight majority of the population who are women insist on having women lead the country?
But human history has always been a story of how a small elite formally led their societies. It seems entirely natural to everybody that we're divided into 200+ countries that have internationally recognized borders and internationally recognized heads of state. The ways in which people climb to the top of their countries differs, but the essential structure remains -- a small cadre of people run things.
Even non-state organizations have their CEOs. Businesses have the one person in charge, as do non-profits, and churches, and universities. Partnerships have managing partners. Our legislatures always pick one person to be Speaker or Majority Leader. Our Supreme Court has a Chief Justice.
There's always one person who is in charge. And the rest of us put up with that. We might grumble, we might try to put a different person in charge. But we put up with the hierarchy. We put up with somebody else being in charge, unless we are the person in charge.
ChatGPT suggested to me that humans have evolved to coexist within hierarchical systems in which some people dominate and others submit.
To survive and then to have children who survive, you can't fight to the death over every disagreement with your neighbors, you have to find a way to live together. Even if your disagreement is over something as fundamental as whether you are allowed to vote, or whether you are the property of somebody else. Are you going to fight to the death over this?
But those of us who do live in democracies with universal suffrage, those of us who don't have to fight to the death to win (or lose) fair treatment, all we have to do is vote: I often wonder why the people don't vote for a better deal for themselves.
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If we split up the total net worth of people and organizations in the US by each household in the US, each household would get $1,115,000. I mean, each household would get over a million dollars if we shared the wealth. Every household in the US!
There's enough wealth in this country to make every family a millionaire. So why do we put up with a minimum wage of $7.25/hour, why do we put up with 26 million people who have no health insurance, why do we put up with 40 million people living in poverty? Why is anybody worried about any aspect of the cost of living? Why are corporations only taxed at 21% of their profits? Why are billionaires only taxed at 20% on their gains in stock prices (and only when they sell their stock, which they mainly don't)?
Why don't the bottom 51% vote to make themselves millionaires?
Is it fundamentally the same reason why the 57% who were slaves in South Carolina in 1860 didn't rebel to free themselves? And why the majority who were women in the 19th Century didn't rebel to secure the vote?
Elites have been working diligently throughout human history to justify and enforce their elite status, while the rest of us put up with it because it's not worth risking our lives over every disagreement, because we've evolved to submit to authority, because we've internalized the propaganda of the elite classes to believe that we non-elites don't deserve what the elites have. "Elon Musk is a genius," people say, as though only geniuses deserve to have wealth.
We've been divided and conquered, we've been offered a system of lesser rewards and greater punishments. Here you go, middle class professional, you can have this salary of $100,000 and this 401(k) that doesn't add up to a million dollars, but it's more than those schmucks lower on the org chart get. You worked hard for this, you deserve it, but they don't. Here, we'll put you in charge of your workgroup so you can ensure they perform for even less pay than you get.
-----
I'm a Green because I care about the sustainability of our global environment, and I'm a Communist because I believe in sharing our wealth and production more equally. I'm also a (small "d") democrat because I believe everybody should have a voice in who our leaders are. And, I'm even a (small "r") republican because I don't believe in having a royal family LOL. But those who do have the millions and billions of wealth know how to keep the rest of us from demanding our fair shares. It's working pretty well because you aren't demanding your fair share, you aren't demanding your $1,115,000 share for your household.
So yesterday I was debating with it about why people put up with obvious lower-class statuses. For example, in 1860 there were almost four million slaves in the US, with some states having over half their population as slaves. 57% of South Carolina's residents were slaves! Yet South Carolina was the first state to secede after anti-slavery Lincoln was elected in 1860, and it's the state where the Civil War in defense of slavery began in 1861. Why didn't this majority of South Carolina's residents rise up and free themselves?
After the Civil War, when the US Congress did finally amend the Constitution to end slavery, every legislator who voted for the amendment was a white person. Slavery didn't go away until white people fought a war over it, anti-slavery white people won that war, and then anti-slavery white people voted to end slavery. [Yes, there were eventually black regiments who fought on the Northern side, making up about 10% of the Union's forces.]
ChatGPT pointed out several reasons for the successful subjugation of black slaves that I hadn't put together on my own in a comprehensive way, even after decades of studying history. There was the intentional lack of formal education for slaves, the legal structure of slavery, the separation of slave families by selling members to other plantations, the violent punishments for rebel slaves, the system of rewards for loyal slaves, and the list went on. There were practically no systems available for black slaves to coordinate any kind of massive resistance.
There were a few slave rebellions, and many white slaveowners feared widespread slave rebellions. But the system maintained its control until white Northerners put a stop to it.
I don't mean to blame the victims, but I wonder why a group that makes up an actual majority would nevertheless submit to this blatantly unjust system. And a theme that kept coming up as I debated history with ChatGPT was "divide and conquer". Elites maintain their control by keeping non-elites divided. For example, by pitting working class whites against black slaves in a hierarchical system.
Then I widened the debate to include women, who were also a formally subjugated class in the 19th Century. When women were finally granted a Constitutional right to vote, every member of Congress who voted for that amendment was a man. Yet women make up a slight majority of the population. We've still never had a woman President in the US, although we've gotten close. Why doesn't the slight majority of the population who are women insist on having women lead the country?
But human history has always been a story of how a small elite formally led their societies. It seems entirely natural to everybody that we're divided into 200+ countries that have internationally recognized borders and internationally recognized heads of state. The ways in which people climb to the top of their countries differs, but the essential structure remains -- a small cadre of people run things.
Even non-state organizations have their CEOs. Businesses have the one person in charge, as do non-profits, and churches, and universities. Partnerships have managing partners. Our legislatures always pick one person to be Speaker or Majority Leader. Our Supreme Court has a Chief Justice.
There's always one person who is in charge. And the rest of us put up with that. We might grumble, we might try to put a different person in charge. But we put up with the hierarchy. We put up with somebody else being in charge, unless we are the person in charge.
ChatGPT suggested to me that humans have evolved to coexist within hierarchical systems in which some people dominate and others submit.
To survive and then to have children who survive, you can't fight to the death over every disagreement with your neighbors, you have to find a way to live together. Even if your disagreement is over something as fundamental as whether you are allowed to vote, or whether you are the property of somebody else. Are you going to fight to the death over this?
But those of us who do live in democracies with universal suffrage, those of us who don't have to fight to the death to win (or lose) fair treatment, all we have to do is vote: I often wonder why the people don't vote for a better deal for themselves.
-----
If we split up the total net worth of people and organizations in the US by each household in the US, each household would get $1,115,000. I mean, each household would get over a million dollars if we shared the wealth. Every household in the US!
There's enough wealth in this country to make every family a millionaire. So why do we put up with a minimum wage of $7.25/hour, why do we put up with 26 million people who have no health insurance, why do we put up with 40 million people living in poverty? Why is anybody worried about any aspect of the cost of living? Why are corporations only taxed at 21% of their profits? Why are billionaires only taxed at 20% on their gains in stock prices (and only when they sell their stock, which they mainly don't)?
Why don't the bottom 51% vote to make themselves millionaires?
Is it fundamentally the same reason why the 57% who were slaves in South Carolina in 1860 didn't rebel to free themselves? And why the majority who were women in the 19th Century didn't rebel to secure the vote?
Elites have been working diligently throughout human history to justify and enforce their elite status, while the rest of us put up with it because it's not worth risking our lives over every disagreement, because we've evolved to submit to authority, because we've internalized the propaganda of the elite classes to believe that we non-elites don't deserve what the elites have. "Elon Musk is a genius," people say, as though only geniuses deserve to have wealth.
We've been divided and conquered, we've been offered a system of lesser rewards and greater punishments. Here you go, middle class professional, you can have this salary of $100,000 and this 401(k) that doesn't add up to a million dollars, but it's more than those schmucks lower on the org chart get. You worked hard for this, you deserve it, but they don't. Here, we'll put you in charge of your workgroup so you can ensure they perform for even less pay than you get.
-----
I'm a Green because I care about the sustainability of our global environment, and I'm a Communist because I believe in sharing our wealth and production more equally. I'm also a (small "d") democrat because I believe everybody should have a voice in who our leaders are. And, I'm even a (small "r") republican because I don't believe in having a royal family LOL. But those who do have the millions and billions of wealth know how to keep the rest of us from demanding our fair shares. It's working pretty well because you aren't demanding your fair share, you aren't demanding your $1,115,000 share for your household.