This does not just apply in India. A long time ago, I had a job soliciting donations door to door in the US. We did all we could to avoid the rich neighborhoods and actively sought out the poor minority neighborhoods. People in those neighborhoods with only two dollars would give one to help others. In the rich neighborhoods, they would call the police the moment they saw you. If I ever had to have a heart attack in the street, I would much rather have it in a poor neighborhood, because some kind person would help me.
My theory is that poor people rely on cooperation with others to survive, and this forces them to develop compassion and learn good human relations at a young age. Rich people on the other had don't need others so much, and instead are much likely be in competition with them.
Even in family relations this applies. Siblings in poor families offer much needed support to each other. In rich families siblings seem more likely to be considered as competitors for parental affections at a young age, and competitors for inheritance when older. This mentality of constant competition is poisonous.
Honestly, I think that being rich is a pretty clear path to ultimate unhappiness. Better to be slightly poor in money and rich in the things that actually bring happiness, like family, health, friends, spare time, and a clear conscience.
In the UK a lot of door to door collecting for charities is done by private companies who take a significant chunk of the donation for themselves.
Perhaps richer people are more likely to know this and be sceptical of door to door collections. They may also value their time more and not like being "hassled".
This does not necessarily mean that they do not provide charity donations. They may just do it in a smarter way, for example attending charity dinners/events where they get to rub shoulders with other affluent people.
Exactly. I live in the Czech Republic and give a part of my income to a non-profit of my choice. The organization’s well known, they promise to give at least 90 percent of the money directly to those in need, and they have a regular audit to check the money flow. That’s why I refuse to give money to charities collecting on the streets, where the guarantees are much smaller and the way of collecting much more intrusive.
> This does not necessarily mean that they do not provide charity donations. They may just do it in a smarter way, for example attending charity dinners/events where they get to rub shoulders with other affluent people.
people don't donate (at least, not those huge donors who throw lavish dinner parties) out of the kindness of their own hearts. They do so to appear charitable, and to show off their status. THis is why you don't often see private, undisclosed and anonymous donations in large amounts.
When a rich elite donates money, they are doing it to sing praises for themselves - whether they admit it consciously or not.
The end result is still good - i don't care whether their charitible activities are self-serving, provided that it achieves the results of helping those who needed the charity.
I don't think it's that the rich don't want to help, but they are accustomed to fending off people trying to take their money. Deal with it often enough and everyone looks like a swindler--it's a bit like the experience of moving to the big city, and learning that it's better to brush off 100% of the people on the street who have a sob story, just need bus or subway fare, or claim to have gotten their car towed.
Also, in rich neighborhoods, the police have the time and inclination to speak with unlicensed door-to-door peddlers. It is unquestionably in the wealthy homeowners' interests to discourage both solicitors and burglars from wandering the neighborhood, knocking on doors, seeing who's home and who's not...
Nietzsche and The Last Psychiatrist[1] would have a field day with this.
The article tells a story we love to believe: we may be poorer than the people the article talks about, but we are nicer, more empathic, better people. We love to believe it, because it makes us feel good about ourselves and provides a sense of justice: nobody has it all and if someone has more of one thing, he will have less of something else.
We also love to believe it because that way we don't have to consider a far more disturbing possibility: that these people aren't accidentally rich and their moral shortcomings aren't a result of their riches. That they are rich exactly because they are capable of the repugnant behavior described in the article. That our capitalist system is fallacious, can be gamed and is being gamed by these people. The system we are so infatuated with allows people that are undeserving, cheaters, to get the prize.
Yes, people who you believe are undeserving can obtain wealth. No, that doesn't mean that all wealthy people are like that or that it is necessary to behave badly to become wealthy.
The last psychiatrist is an ok writer, and a lot of his stuff is fun to read, but he draws some really erroneous conclusions. I'd be careful about being drawn in by that.
I assume it's either a man or a misogynistic lesbian; there are several references to watching porn from a male perspective, that the writer finds women attractive, and the writing style is masculine.
I've never bothered to check before but a cursory google shows no real evidence either way, though most others think it's a man as well.
Or if you're referring to me and saying I drew an erroneous conclusion, I didn't draw any conclusions at all, save about the last psychiatrist.
I definitely agree with you that the current socioeconomic system is suboptimal, and rife with perverse incentives and loopholes. It can be fixed though.
i don't believe the assertion that the "system" can be fixed - in a very complex system, there necessarity exists optimal strategies for "advancing" (in this context, it means getting more money faster). I compare it to making sure a complex computer system is secure from attack - the surface area is just so large, that you can't plug every single possible hole, you can't plan for every single eventuality.
To fix socioeconomic problems means to redivide the pie more evenly, and there are just way too many vested interests in keeping things the way it is.
Am I the only one who sees this exact same behaviour here in North America, and indeed, here on Hacker News? A sense of entitlement? A feeling that things like anti-discrimination laws are an inconvenience to be brushed off, taxes are a way of stealing the hard-earned wealth on entrepreneurs, and so on?
I see nothing particularly Indian about this story. It seems like part fo the human condition. That being said, we have abolished slavery. Women have the vote and are struggling to control their bodies. Although the rich control the media, the poor still have a vote.
> anti-discrimination laws are an inconvenience to be brushed off, taxes are a way of stealing the hard-earned wealth on entrepreneurs,
I personally also see a massive amount of entitlement in the inverse...
A never-ending creation of new laws and controls over citizens lives from "philosopher kings" [1] who think they know how to run peoples lives better than they do via "social engineering and idealism".
Or attempting to create some highly idealistic society of total safety....via as security theater, strictly enforcing victimless crimes [2] (such as owning a pitbull or drugs)... and the constant erosion of basic civil liberties in the process to achieve the former.
I have seen this kind of behavior going on in India for so many years. There are countless cases of where rich people would push poor people on bikes off the road and into ditches with their cars.
I'm convinced that this stems from the religious caste system which has now become the monetary class system in these new times.
I always wondered why don't the poor just revolt, they're treated so badly, almost like slaves and everyday they lose more and more. They have their kids run over and police will do nothing about it because the rich will pay them off to make the case go away. It truly is sad.
The worst part is poor people will do the same to other poor people given the opportunity. We (Indians) have learned nothing from Gandhi on how to treat our fellow men.
> There are countless cases of where rich people would push poor people on bikes off the road and into ditches with their cars.
This is just one part of the story that helped your narrative. It is always the fault of the person with the larger vehicle in India, from what I know about the society. If you are involved in an accident and survived, pray to God that you were in the smaller vehicle, otherwise the crowd might beat you death - if they feel like it [1,2,3 and countless others]. From my own anecdote, I was almost hit by a motorbike while being on a cycle, due to my own fault. Not even a scratch, but I had to help the other man not be bullied by the crowd to pay me money.
And pushing people into ditches has nothing to do with being rich, it has to do with being an asshole. Yes there is widespread casteism (religious or economic) but not every unlawful, unfair act has be attributed to the same evil.
There are countless cases of where rich people would push poor people on bikes off the road and into ditches with their cars.
That would be a serious crime in the USA. If you did that, and you got caught, you would be in very serious trouble. And, it would not matter how rich you were. That's assault, perhaps with intent to harm or kill and civilized society does not tolerate it.
The USA has mostly evolved (I use that word advisedly) beyond that.
There's certainly all kinds of horrific things about the USA's class system. But the USA has to a large extent depersonalized them: if you as an individual commit physical violence against another individual, you go through our legal system and you get punished.
Where the USA's class system goes wrong is in vaguer systemic issues. Everyone equally has the chance to get an expensive lawyer to argue you down to a lesser sentence, but few can afford the best. Everyone equally has the chance to purchase a house that's not in an ex-radiological waste dump, but that's mighty abstract to the folks in Hunter's Point.
It's pretty brilliant, because you really can't focus on any individual in particular to punish for its sins. Which in the end makes the USA's class system much more fault tolerant, because revolt against it has to take the form of amorphous, unactionable rants about the System.
That county DA doesn't give a shit how rich you are. Being rich doesn't get you out of "poor people" crimes that revolve around physical evidence (as opposed to "rich people" crimes that revolve around knowledge/intent).
There's a great scene in "Michael Clayton" where a rich banker calls his lawyer because he hit a bicyclist in his car and fled the scene. The lawyer basically tells him: "I don't know what you think I can do for you, you're fucked." It's a realistic depiction of this situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-ckEptxp3s.
The lawyer can give legal advice on what to say and not say, how best to approach the issue, what looks best when taking it to court. Maybe not get off scot-free, but minimise the punishment. Are there any options other than fronting up to court? Mediation? Medical costs? Perhaps filing your admission in a different jurisdiction might help (though I doubt it in the given case)?
Even just having someone who's calm, collected, and dispassionate speak at the trial can be an advantage.
In a criminal charge for something like battery, a lot of the usual legal maneuvering isn't available. There's no mediation, no settlements, no forum shopping jurisdictions, no expert witnesses. All you've got is a prosecutor who is trying to make an example out of you and police with evidence showing you did it. Ultimately, you're going to get the punishment the judge and the jury think you should get.
Now, that doesn't mean you're going to get the same punishment as the poor black guy, but that's not because it helps to be rich, but because it hurts to be poor or black. Juries don't give poor black guys the benefit of the doubt, they have trouble empathizing with people of a different race, their character witnesses don't come across as sympathetic, etc.
As a bicyclist, I can tell you as a matter of personal experience that Americans do in fact run bicyclists off the road frequently. I have never heard of such things being prosecuted, even when the cyclists were seriously injured, or when their bike is ruined.
Now, why does this happen? It's because the American in his expensive 4-wheel drive Porsche SUV abomination has a certain mindset that he's entitled to something, because he paid a lot of money for his car. When someone is walking or cycling down the road at less than 60 MPH, that person's sense of entitlement becomes enflamed, and they sometimes reach the point of violence. Don't take my word for it. It is a proven fact that people in more expensive cars break the law much more frequently than those in less expensive cars.
So you see, sense of entitlement is not just for India. In America, cars are for real people, and anyone on a bicycle must be in the lower caste.
I appears you have not heard about the man sentenced to 10+ years in prison for hitting and injuring a bicyclist in Healdsburg, CA (about 70 miles north of San Francisco). The article also mentions two other ongoing prosecutions of drivers for hitting bicyclists in the same area.
That was a hit-and-run. If you kill someone with a car, stay at the scene, and aren't obviously intoxicated, police officers will publicly exonerate you in front of local television reporters. This is not true for any other class of crime in America.
It may not be as bad as some countries where you can just pay the cops but the rich and well connected in America definitely play by a different set of rules, especially with regard to punishment.
Example: a rich old woman in my hometown was drunk in the morning and ran over a guy riding a bicycle and killed him. She ended up getting probation. Not a day in jail. Put a poor minority behind the wheel of that car and they are going to prison for a long time.
That's an entirely different problem set from what seems to be happening in India. What you're describing in the US is a system where perceptions and punishment of superficially similar behaviour vary based on your position with society, namely based on whether you activate the sympathies or antipathies of the mainstream establishment. I.E. that old lady is much less likely to be perceived as aggressive and anti-social in court than a young minority member. The system is not completely fair, and you can argue about the extent to which the system is unfair, but the system at least holds fairness as an ideal, and the mainstream establishment identifies with this ideal. Cops and judges may not perceive it as unfair if a similar crime when committed by an old rich lady is more likely to be viewed as a regrettable mistake (especially if she appears distraught and repentant in court) than when committed by a minority member.
In India it seems like fairness is not even part of the equation. It sounds like a seriously dog-eat-dog environment, where there are few if any checks on raw, ruthless antisocial behaviour. Society lacks even the value system which would encourage the privileged to feel guilt and regret over their treatment of those beneath them.
Basically it is the difference between a society where people are shocked and angered by unfairness and a society where people are desensitised or even perversely excited by unfairness.
> ...lacks even the value system which would encourage the privileged to feel guilt and regret over their treatment of those beneath them.
i'd like to talk a bit about this "value system". While i'd like to believe that in a western society that the value system for me to not steal and murder is built in, i really doubt that's the case.
The value system is one which is enforced by laws - and actual enforcement, instead of lip service. I assault a person, i get to go to jail. Imagine if the enforcement isn't there - i'd steal my way thru life! Forget about the morals, when you can have the latest shit for free! This is the exact psyche of a software pirate - because it is unenforceable.
I would say that the value system is so poor or non-existent in india could be because they are unable to enforce their laws, or that those with money can get away from the punishment etc. Hence, the poor sees that and assumes that the laws are selectively applied, and that its OK if you get away with it.
I m sure things will improve (as things have improved in western society over the past several hundred years - you'd see similar behaviour in the middle/dark ages in europe). It just takes time, and takes wealth build up in such a way that those who are most desperate aren't anymore.
Depends who his lawyer was and how many people he and his lawyer know in the local criminal justice system. Connections are just as important as wealth - sometimes moreso. See George Zimmerman (father is a judge) who would have walked were it not for the Worldwide media shining a spotlight on the case.
A valid question. I don't think someone would be able to get away with that in my USA (SF bay area) irrespective of wealth. But perhaps in a more provincial part, like, say Alabama...
Krishnamurti: That is really an innocent question, is it not? To see facts without opinion is one thing, but to have opinions about facts is totally another. It is one thing just to see the fact that a whole people are caught in superstition, but quite another to see that fact and condemn it. Opinions are not important, because I will have one opinion, you will have another, and a third person will have still another. To be concerned with opinions is a stupid form of thinking. What is important is to see facts as they are without opinion, without judging, without comparing.
To feel beauty without opinion is the only real perception of beauty. Similarly, if you can see the people of India just as they are, see them very clearly without fixed opinions, without judging, then what you see will be real.
The Indians have certain manners, certain customs of their own, but fundamentally they are like any other people. They get bored, they are cruel, they are afraid, they revolt within the prison of society, just as people do everywhere else. Like the Americans, they also want comfort, only at present they do not have it to the same extent. They have a heavy tradition about renouncing the world and trying to be saintly; but they also have deep-rooted ambitions, hypocrisy, greed, envy, and they are broken up by castes, as human beings are everywhere else, only here it is much more brutal. Here in India you can see more closely the whole phenomenon of what is happening in the world. We want to be loved, but we don't know what love is; we are unhappy, thirsting for something real, and we turn to books, to the Upanishads, the Gita, or the Bible, so we get lost in words, in speculations. Whether it is here, or in Russia, or in America, the human mind is similar, only it expresses itself in different ways under different skies and different governments.
Krishnamurti truly gives all the tools to free oneself of the very root of culture.
Indians are also known to be highly tolerant of different types of behaviours; they usually believe that this world is "maya" - a virtual reality. Depending on one's own predicament, they will create and experience their realities. All this comes from the core Indian philosophy, and those who have read Krishnamurti, know that he very well represents that philosophy.
While this view may not mean all Indians are philosophical; I would say, it may be higher % wise than other cultures. Even the most popular religious channels and their gurus hold extremely engaging philosophical discussions - very different from other cultures.
Humans are apes. It happens right here in Silicon Valley too.
Atherton has nice little yellow signs that say 'No Through Traffic'. Why? They don't want the poor people from Redwood City coming through. In fact, one Atherton gentleman went to a RWC City Council meeting complaining about it and asking RWC to put up signs on their side too. The folks at RWC apparently told him to go stuff himself, that those little yellow signs were potentially illegal and if Atherton kept pressing, they would disallow traffic from Atherton through RWC. This was about two years ago.
The rich are different from you and me - they take because they can and because they can then get away with it.
[This is not to say that all rich are evil, nor all poor virtuous. Just that as money accumulates, so does power, and this when left unchecked by self-imposed moral constraints leads down this path.]
Those are public streets in Atherton, that they want to treat as if it was their private property. If it was all private they can do what they like. The roads belong to the public - including the folks from RWC.
Define "public". Public to Atherton residents? Public to Californians? Public to Americans? If it's built and maintained from local Atherton taxes, they should get a say in who uses it.
Sure, they have a say. That's why the Atherton home page has this text:
> The Town of Atherton desires, insofar as possible, to preserve its character as a scenic, rural, thickly-wooded, residential area, with abundant open space with streets designed primarily as scenic routes rather than for speed of travel.
Notice the "as possible?". Cities only exist because the states gave them a charter. Cities must work within state law. The relevant state law is the California Vehicle Code.
You requested: Define "public".
Public here means anyone. "Public to Atherton residents" is not public. Palo Alto has its own openspace area which is only open to Palo Alto residents but not to the public. "Public" even includes a visitor from another country who has never paid a penny in US taxes. Any other interpretation is incompatible with current legal use.
The CA VC says that local officials can close or divert traffic on a road, but only for certain circumstances. (Regulation of Highways, §21101 if you want to read it yourself.): Local authorities, for those highways under their jurisdiction, may adopt rules and regulations by ordinance or resolution on the following matters:
Reading the CA code, there are public roads and private roads. A private road may be open for public, in which case the CA Vehicle Code still applies. If a private road is truly a private road and outside of the CA Vehicle Code, then the city of Atherton will need to make a lot of work to prove that, and a lot more work to develop its own regulations for how to manage those roads. So it's safe to assume that all of the streets under discussion are "public streets" covered under the CA Vehicle Code.
The VC takes a dim view of restricting access to streets. There's only a few ways for local officials to designate something as "not a through street." The most likely is if "The street has an unsafe volume of traffic and a significant incidence of crime." and "The local authority makes a finding that closure of the street likely would result in a reduced rate of crime." That doesn't seem to be the case here.
By "dim view" I give as an example §21101.6.: Notwithstanding Section 21101, local authorities may not place gates or other selective devices on any street which deny or restrict the access of certain members of the public to the street, while permitting others unrestricted access to the street.
I think that helps show that "public" means "public to everyone", and not limited to certain members.
This "dim view" is even more so for arterial streets, which is now almost the only want to get through Atherton from Redwood City.
Earlier you wrote: "maybe they just don't want people using residential streets as highways?"
There can be a lot of things that they may not want. They may not want any streets at all. However, they have to work within the law. The law doesn't seem to allow a posting of "no through traffic."
If the traffic is dangerous because of excessive speed, then they can set up police to enforce the speed limits, or they can get the roads evaluated to see if the speed limit is too high. However, that does not appear to be the case here.
I think it's more useful to read what the law actually says than to try and guess what things might mean. For situations like this, the definitions have been worked out in far better details than I would ever have considered had I just stuck to debating about what "public" might mean.
I agree with you, RWC should disallow Atherton residents from driving on their streets -- possibly enforced through randomly pulling over cars (richer cars will probably yield better results) and ticketing anyone with an Atherton address.
Humans are not apes. Neither literally, nor figuratively. That's not only incorrect, but it's a vicious thing to say, and it has dangerous implications.
That was more figurative, and perhaps too much of a literary flourish. My point is that this behavior is endemic to our species, and not unlike that observed among chimps or other members of Hominoidea, as detailed in: http://evolvingthoughts.net/2012/03/are-humans-apes-monkeys-...
That is to say, the rich in all societies take and do what they like, modulated either by internal moral codes or external legal enforcement.
I loathe pop sci interpretations of animal behaviour applied against human behaviour (which includes the context of the parent of your comment) but humans are apes. The 'Great Apes' are chimps, gorillas, orangs, and humans.
Thanks for the correction, I guess I was wrong on that point, though hopefully the actual intended meaning of my statement remains intact.
EDIT: Well, according to Wikipedia, "Great Ape" is a common name, not a taxonomic label, and is only sometimes used to include humans. I, personally, would advocate not equating the term "great ape" with the hominidae family.
"Bill Goldman, the great screenwriter, said to me when I was pathetic enough to ask what Robert Redford was "really like" - ‘what would you be like if you hadn't heard the word “no” for 30 years?" - Stephen Fry
I highly doubt the veracity of the article about the SUV driving young man and the vegetable seller; this story confirms your worst stereotypes about India and gets eyeballs but it is bullshit.
I would like to point out that poor people in India are a very well represented : Communist part and Marxist parties are doing very well in India. Every political party courts the votes of poor people. If you pull shit like that SUV kid , the vegetable sellers would swarm your car and fuck you up good.
I grew up in Delhi. The poor people in Delhi day are very well aware of their rights and exercise them -- sometimes with violent consequences for the brash rich.
The feudal India that you allude you is gone and good riddance to it . One has to be super fucking powerful to get away with shit like that in India.
Btw , Salman Khan (the actor) is facing jail time. So yeah !
Stereotypes often ring true, no one attributes this kind of stuff to northern Europe and there's a reason for that.
As to your claim that he's lying about the vegetable cart story. In order for his car to get swarmed, at least one of those vegetable sellers has to make the first move, sometimes this happens, but 9 times out of 10 people look out for their own skins ahead of righteous vengeance.
A rich man or the bigger car banging into a smaller cart, especially in a poor neighborhood, will get swarmed 9 times out of 10.
You drastically misunderstand the level of righteous vengeance and drama centrism in such a situation. On top of that many people will look at a richer person as someone who is likely to have connections and hence escape justice.
I am not excusing the appalling behavior of some of the rich in India. All I am saying is that this article is highly sensational and is merely backed by anecdotal evidence.
>>no one attributes this kind of stuff to northern Europe and there's a reason for that.
Could the reason be a willingness of the those societies to overlook this kind of behavior towards people with ..umm higher melatonin levels ? Slavery / colonialism / apartheid ring a bell ?
>You’d think if people had more than they need, they would be generous about it, and would see, reflecting on themselves, that others might want to have more as well.
This doesn't really make sense to me. People who value relationships or are compassionate generally, in my anecdotal experience, value money less. So of course they'll have less. Th people who rich are the ones who value spending their time getting money over helping others (empathy, essentially). At least, that's how I feel about money, and I assume other people who are rich/desire to be rich feel the same way. More precisely, it's not that people who get rich lose their ability to empathize -- people who never developed the ability to empathize have an easier time getting rich.
Strange. When I have money, I feel generous about it, and want to use that money to help others. I thought most people felt that way. It's one of the reasons that a progressive tax system makes good sense to me.
There are many ways that people get to be rich. Some are born into it, and stay rich because of systemic biases. Others "value spending their time getting money over helping others" and get rich that way. Still others get there by luck - winning the lottery - or by semi-luck - getting paid in pre-IPO shares of a wildly start-up.
Based on the various stories I've heard, those who win by luck tend to be the most generous with their money.
This essay is about those in the first category; those who are rich because of systemic biases, where society "is so deeply hierarchized along both class and caste lines" and "wealth is so completely tied in with political power, and often to crime without punishment." It's not really the one you're possibly thinking of, where someone starts average and ends up rich.
My income does tend to fluctuate. Some years I make really good money as a consultant. Other times I don't. I don't have much control over it. That would fit with the semi-luck category, since I don't get the feel that my income level is a good reflection of how much effort I put into things; income isn't a good measure of my self.
The difference is that you acknowledge that you 'have' money. Also, you possibly acknowledge that you had certain opportunities that other people could ill afford and therefore have this money.
Unfortunately, the difference in opportunity in India is considered (by both rich and poor) to be something that God has handed down and therefore it's fair. By the rich because it's convenient to think that way and by the poor because they feel like they have no escape apart from reincarnation.
I was traveling in Brazil last year and found that the poor in Brazil (also due to drug issues..) actively blame the rich for their poverty and are also to a great extent violent against wealthier people. (at least in the cities that I was in..)
However, the difference in India is that poor people more often than not attribute their poverty to God and therefore do not blame the rich or seek retribution. I honestly believe this is what keeps the poor in India from revolting en masse. If the Indian belief system was like the Brazilian system, over here there would be a civil war.
> attribute their poverty to God and therefore do not blame the rich or seek retribution....If the Indian belief system was like the Brazilian system, over here there would be a civil war.
that's interesting. I've always considered religion to be a form of control over people by a certain elite group. This gives me more anecdotal confirmation.
I wonder if indian society could be better served if there was a civil war, where the poor raise up, and appropriate the land from the wealthy. I keep reading articles like http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/08/generat... and it sounds like that would be a painful fix, but may be the end justify the means...
The class system might also interfere with other motives that sometimes lead wealthier people to act generously even when they aren't particularly altruistic or compassionate. In societies where people see each other as roughly part of the same community, one of the advantages of being rich is that you can be munificent with your money, which gains you social status and prestige. You can see that in smaller American towns, for example, where, at least traditionally, the preferred way of demonstrating wealth was to do things like sponsor a library, host a 4th of July party everyone's invited to, etc., not more "separate" displays of wealth like buying a Ferrari. Some people would no doubt do so out of genuine concern for libraries, the 4th of July, and their neighbors, but there's also a bit of social reinforcement in that serving in that kind of "civic benefactor" role is a high-status position: you're not just giving your money away purely altruistically, but in a way buying a certain social role.
Indeed, and selling "personal advertising space" on the sides of libraries, and "putting a price on social status" are perhaps the only way to achieve some measure of equality.
(Almost) everyone craves social status. Let people earn it in healthy ways, by their contributions, not their accumulations; don't envy their Jaguars, be dismissive of them. And don't resent people who contribute because "yeah, they should have, they are rich". Congratulate them for doing good and encourage competition to be the largest philanthropist.
I think you've misread trhtrsh. 'Let people earn it in healthy ways, by their contributions, not their accumulations.'
This view is that rich people should only be respected for their contributions "back to the society which has enriched them." Not for their ability to acquire and hold $100+ million.
I believe also that the point about 'selling "personal advertising space" on the sides of libraries' is meant to include the Carnegie libraries. Some 2,509 were built between 1883 and 1929. It coincided with a big increase in interest in town planning and personal enrichment.
I think the Carnegie libraries example highlights possible limitations to trhtrsh's optimistic views of philanthropy. The libraries were successful in part because of the Carnegie Formula. For example, towns had to "demonstrate the need for a public library" and "annually provide ten percent of the cost of the library's construction to support its operation."
This was chosen instead of, say, an endowed institution because "an endowed institution is liable to become the prey of a clique. The public ceases to take interest in it, or, rather, never acquires interest in it. The rule has been violated which requires the recipients to help themselves. Everything has been done for the community instead of its being only helped to help itself." (I'm cribbing directly from Wikipedia for these quotes.)
That observation from 150 years still rings true today. Some types of philanthropy aren't good for the society. Any sort of "social status" must bear that in mind. Alas, social status is not easy to define, and mistakes or problems caused by a case of bad philanthropy may easily be misattributed.
I agree it's tricky to get right. The art world is one example where some philanthropic spending is arguably for the public benefit, but other philanthropic spending has arguably fallen "the prey of a clique".
I wasn't thinking in my comment upthread as systemically, though, in terms of whether philanthropy or, say, taxation, is a better way to tackle inequality. I actually lean a bit towards the latter myself, and am skeptical of whether very wealthy people are actually good at directing large philanthropic projects on average.
I was thinking more small-scale at just a cultural level, like the anecdotes this article is describing. The article paints a picture of some wealthy people in a certain set of circumstances who are quite dismissive of poor people, even contemptuous towards them. But in other circumstances, it's seen as one of the rewards of wealth that you can act as a sort of magnanimous benefactor, gracious servant of the public. Whatever causes that cultural difference strikes me as interesting. One guess is that it relates to whether wealthy people feel some sense of community with poorer people in the same area, so they gain something socially from being a town's benefactor, because the poorer people they're helping out are in the same social circles. But I imagine that's only one aspect.
Your upstream thread reminded me of an essay I read a few months back. It concerned Downton Abbey, which is a show I've not seen so anything I say here is second- or third-hand.
In the British style of the 1800s, the system was set up so the lord of the manor (or whatever the title might have been) was the caretaker of the wealth and the people. For example, he would build housing for the people of the manor, provide money to the church, support the sick and elderly, and so on. In return, the people would work for him.
This makes the system dependent on one person. If that person should invest heavily in a sugar cane plantation in the Caribbean, which goes south, then that may mean economic hardship for the entire area.
It's hard for me to say that this model is either philanthropy or taxation. It's remnants of feudalism. That makes me think that the issue actually one of centralized vs. decentralized power, or of resilience vs. fragility. (After all, towns and cities also go bankrupt.)
Wealth is a force multiplier, which can be used for good and for bad. There are ways to attenuate its use for bad: equalize wealth (eg, through progressive taxes or increased philanthropy), strengthen laws (so those with less wealth seek remedy in case of bad treatment), inculcate (eg, through the Carnegie Formula) an ethos towards "good" philanthropy, and so on.
Progressive taxation to me is the easiest to accomplish. It does require a transparent, responsive government, but then again, so do the others.
Ooh, no comments, I'll bite. The last time I said something negative about Indian society I had my personal details thrown all over HN. Wonder what's going to happen this time.
So here's the thing. This article is pretty spot on. We, the privileged of India, do indeed feel entitled. There's absolutely no doubt about that.
My theory is that the population pressure in India is so very high that you're always fighting for your piece of the pie and over extending yourself (such as the man with the large house who took over the pavement). Yes, it's greedy, but it's a particular mentality that comes out of being part of this massive rat race with millions.. billions.. of competitors. I have several friends in India who I would call upper class. You know, rich people with 4 bedroom apartments on the 17th floor in and around the capital.
You know what these people call themselves ?
Middle class.
They refuse to acknowledge that they are wealthy. That they are privileged. That they are truly upper class. I have a friend who drives an Audi presented to him by his father who thinks he's middle class.
These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that. Perhaps that is why they seem to lack compassion and empathy. Maybe they feel that they are still struggling to survive and therefore can't spare a moment for someone else ?
The rich do need to take a moment to feel rich and then feel responsible. Unfortunately, as the article mentions the rich in India - to a great extent - are failing at this. Maybe it's desensitization due to the immensely large number of poor people. Maybe it's something else - further study is required.
Of course, I'm not even going into how hierarchical and class oriented Indian society truly is. Most people who the 'middle class' perceive as lower class are almost sub humans in their eyes. This is another reason in my opinion the Delhi gang rape case was such a big deal. The middle class got to point fingers once more at the lower classes who 'rape us'. They got to ask the government what they are doing to protect them from these 'evil immigrants who come into New Delhi and ruin our fair city'. I've had statements from rich girls in New Delhi who don't like 'these poor people who stare at us', but are completely fine with spoilt rich brats driving circles around them while honking away.
On the flip side though, this article mostly covers behavior in New Delhi. I'll go as far as to say that New Delhi is possibly the most horrible city in India when it comes to these things. Other cities tend to be more relaxed. There are far far better places than New Delhi.
The class system in Delhi is enforced and reinforced by the rich and poor collectively. I had a reservation at the Hilton for one night two years ago and I arrived on a friend's motorbike. The security at the hotel wouldn't let me through because I didn't look 'rich enough'. The security at the hotel by this logic, wouldn't let in people who looked like themselves either.
Situation's complicated.
EDIT:
There are a lot of replies to this post comparing the mentality I've mentioned above to that which exists in the west. I can see where that is coming from, but the main factor that needs to be taken into account is the kind and scale of poverty that exists in India. In India we say that if you have two meals a day, and a roof over your head, you're already rich!
Consider that, some posts here say that SV millionaires do not consider themselves upper class. That would be absolutely ridiculous in India! But, there are people here who go by the same ideals.
It's VERY EASY in India to make a difference in someone's life. Even if you're middle class, you can make a difference because people around you are way poorer than you. The problem is one of large scale apathy and complete indifference.
As an example, being middle class in the west, it's impossible to think that you could change someone's life by just hiring them to work in your house - by giving them reasonable pay and good working conditions. In India this is quite possible, a middle class person could easily hire 3-4 people and therefore start to create change. Maybe not the best example of how you can make a difference but the article is about how the privileged in India should feel more responsible and try harder to make a difference. For example, if you do hire people to work in your house, make sure that you encourage them to educate their children ? (stuff like that helps us move forward with these problems..)
My point is, being privileged in India is not really like being privileged in the west. You may not have government and industry connections but you can still make a massive difference at a personal level and if enough people start doing that, there will be a change. It's probably our only shot at it.
> You know what these people call themselves? Middle class. They refuse to acknowledge that they are wealthy.
No, they've got it right. The distinction between middle class and lower class is entirely about wealth, but the distinction between middle class and upper class is not. Wealth is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for being upper class; the distinguishing features are flexibility and power, not money. It is possible to convert money into these things, but most middle-class people who acquire sufficient wealth nevertheless fail to become upper-class because they lack the mental toolkit, or are embedded in power structures that won't let them.
You're 100% correct. However, the poor in India are truly trapped, almost like slaves to their own poverty (http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/08/generat...). By comparison those who have acquired sufficient wealth are free to do whatever they please!
With that freedom comes a responsibility to acknowledge it and to not act like complete idiots. Unfortunately, even the rich to a large extent aren't aware of how rich they truly are.
>>You're 100% correct. However, the poor in India are truly trapped, almost like slaves to their own poverty
Sorry I refuse to believe in this victim hood mentality. We seriously need to get out of this 'Somebody needs to do it for me' ideology. Nobody is going to help you and shouldn't. Because frankly no matter whom you can speak to is going through a little battle of their own.
I am working hard here pushing 19 hour schedules to ensure I have a good life. Somebody else is all welcome to do so. I can understand if the person is ill or is physically disabled. But a healthy person who doesn't work hard deserves his condition.
And in a country like India, expecting somebody to come and help is not a unrealistic expectation but a 'unjust' expectation.
>>By comparison those who have acquired sufficient wealth are free to do whatever they please!
You make acquiring wealth sound like somebody just woke up one day and found a sack of gold biscuits at their door step.
>>With that freedom comes a responsibility to acknowledge it and to not act like complete idiots
Exactly.
There by each man for his own and shall deserve net result of his own work.
>>Unfortunately, even the rich to a large extent aren't aware of how rich they truly are.
Because nothing is really enough but that's a totally different discussion altogether.
>Sorry I refuse to believe in this victim hood mentality. We seriously need to get out of this 'Somebody needs to do it for me' ideology. Nobody is going to help you and shouldn't. Because frankly no matter whom you can speak to is going through a little battle of their own.
> I am working hard here pushing 19 hour schedules to ensure I have a good life. Somebody else is all welcome to do so. I can understand if the person is ill or is physically disabled. But a healthy person who doesn't work hard deserves his condition.
> And in a country like India, expecting somebody to come and help is not a unrealistic expectation but a 'unjust' expectation.
I think you misunderstood what he's talking about. India isn't the United States.
Until recently India had a rigid caste system where it was simply impossible for people to move outside of their caste. If a person's parents were laborers, they became laborers - that was their caste. It had nothing to do with how hard they worked or if other people helped them. Their caste was "laborer," so that's the only job they'd be able to get.
It's not as strict as it used to be, and it's slowly dying out, but it does still exist.
I am an Indian and I have never been to any other country so far. But I wrote stands true for India.
Caste system is a option, you can either associate yourself to it or leave it. This is true at least in modern day India and has been the the case for nearly 20 years now. You can easily ditch your caste, just like atheists ditch their religion.
The fact is caste system offers a comfortable cushion of victim hood and gives you enough reasons to justify failure or even not trying.
These days belonging to a lower caste is a gift because you get reservations nearly every where. There are protests by many communities to include them in back ward communities because of the reservations. People are fighting to be backward, Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Gurjar_unrest_in_Rajasthan
The situation is such that people want to belong to backward communities and castes.
True freedom is dangerous, many people know it, and they don't even want it.
In the US slavery was outlawed over 200 years ago and we still suffer with the socioeconomic consequences of it to this day, and for many days to come. To say the caste system was done away with 20 years ago and think it doesn't have a strong influence today I think is folly. I say that having no experience with India but knowing precedence strongly implies this to be the case.
One should travel, Kamaal. Perspectives change with travel (Even within India, but not the temple hopping travel). You will understand so much more of the world from travel than from being in front of the screen for 19 hours every day. Life does not begin after you retire.
Caste system is not just reservations/backward communities. It includes the different sub-castes (Ex - Different sub-castes in the Brahmin caste). This is very relevant in vote bank politics. A candidate belonging to sub-caste X will not get elected if the region has majority people from sub-caste Y, even if the candidate is known to be capable.
The main reason for the terrible infrastructure conditions in India is politics and corruption. These are strongly rooted in the caste/sub-caste system. Money has always been flowing freely in politics and it is what makes politics attractive.
The terrible infrastructure I refer to is basic - water, electricity, medicines. Malls, fancy cars cannot substitute water. In India, People are dying for water these days. This will only increase exponentially. There has been research showing that 24 hour water supply is possible with the current fresh water resources in India, but it won't happen, thanks to politics, corruption and the caste system.
The SUV situation brought up in the article is not caste based. It was money based and money is the new, bonus caste system on top of existing ones.
Perhaps true in some metros but even as of 5-6 years ago I know of caste based discrimination in villages. People weren't allowed to drink from the village well because of caste and I recall something on the lines of not being allowed to let their shadows touch others.
There are people (more often than not children) in the world that work 20 hours a day in small crowded rooms and make less than living wage.
They don't really know another way of life. That is all they have ever been exposed to. They don't know about Apple/Google/iPhone or Steve Jobs or what a computer is because their village is so fucking remote that the Government of India decided it would be a hassle to provide electricity, and their parents decided to make additional income by renting out a few kids to make ends meet.
These people don't really consider themselves victims, because they don't think they have been wronged. They were mostly unlucky in the lottery of life and born in poor circumstances.
You can refuse to believe whatever you want but the fact is that you were extremely lucky in life to be either born in a relatively well to do family or in circumstances that exposed you technology, educational experiences over the course of your life. Having an internet connection can be a life changing effect, because of the access to information it provides.
>> Nobody is going to help you and shouldn't.
>> But a healthy person who doesn't work hard deserves his condition.
>> expecting somebody to come and help is not a unrealistic expectation but a 'unjust' expectation.
>> There by each man for his own and shall deserve net result of his own work.
^^ I am glad that everyone doesn't think like you because the world truly would be an awful place if they did.
>>They were mostly unlucky in the lottery of life and born in poor circumstances.
I never denied that. My whole point was, now that you are- What next?
If you think you are happy with poverty then the story ends there. If you aren't then, the government can do little, Sorry but there are simply too many people in our country. The ordinary citizen will not and can't do anything about you.
It will be your and your problem alone.
It will be difficult, hard and a tiring lifelong worth of work. Just like it is for everybody else.
Kamaal makes a valid point. He is simply stating things from the perspective of a poor person, and is describing reality. It would be a big mistake for a poor person to rely on somebody else to improve his situation.
The situation is very similar in South Africa. The poor makes up such a large proportion of the population that their situation cannot be improved significantly without major wealth redistribution (combined with a massive reduction in government corruption, preferably). Neither of these things are likely to happen (unless there is a revolution), so a poor person can only realisticly rely on himself to improve his situation.
Kamaal's point does not contradict the OP's. It's just a statement of reality from the perspective of the poor.
I wouldn't agree with this. the poor (generally) on their own: Have no chance. They can work endlessly, and their situation will not change. Kamaal seems to be blaming them for being 'victims'... But they literally have no chance on their own. They need others (poor and higher classes) to change the institutions that cause their helplessness.
Arguing they have only themselves to rely on, feels like a rationalisation to not help them.
Which part of Kamaal's post blames anybody for having the 'victim mentality'? All I see him saying is that 10:1 nobody will help you so you need to either accept poverty or work towards getting yourself out of it.
EDIT: I see where you're coming from now that I've seen his higher-up posts.
Half of the problem of being poor is even being aware that you are able to change your status. It's intellectually lazy to pull the 'just work hard' line, when most of what gets you wealth is what you know, not how hard you work.
Not to mention that in the end, even if everyone did 'just work hard', there isn't enough wealth to go around. The civilised thing is at least to give people basic services and let themselves work to higher wealth from there.
I never said "just working hard" will solve the poor's problems. All I said was that it's better to do all you can than to expect help to come from the government or charity because that is unrealistic in countries with such a large poor population and would most likely only get you a lifetime of false hope.
And I am not saying that most poor people expect handouts. If anything I would guess that most of them are hard-working. I only brought it up because of the parent post. I realise I owe my own middle-class status to the fact that my parents are middle-class.
And I am all for the well-off helping the poor. I only wish the (South African, in my case) government would do their part.
No, but your parent did. My point is that merely knowing that you can work to improve your position, build on it, is novel information in and of itself for a great many people, not to mention how to do that.
My position is less about handouts, and more about the assumption that poor people know how to get out of poverty and all that's missing is the elbow grease. Yes, relying on the government for handouts isn't going to work, and you also want to be careful of welfare dependence. But education is a significant wealth-enabler, and merely knowing how to deal with various things can give people a leg up. Kamaal's point is about giving a giant shrug and saying "eh, what can you do?". It reflects the current realities of the situation, but the lazy part is not bothering to think of better ways forward.
It definitely isn't a zero-sum game - more basic medical skills in a demographic will improve quality of life, for example, and that's just (almost) free knowledge - but it still doesn't mean there's enough wealth to give everyone a comfortable life.
(a) working 19 hours a day will ensure you do not have a good life.
(b) to recognize the caste system, you have to go somewhere it doesn't exist. Right now you know as much about it as a typical fish knows about water.
(c) we're human beings, and none of us gets ahead alone; we all have people to help us. We can't even survive infancy without help from other people. The people a kilometer from you who have expensive SUVs without having to work 19-hour days? That's mostly because they got a lot of help from other people, such as their parents, and only partly because they worked hard — in some cases, not at all. Working hard is really, really important, but far from enough.
In India being upper middle class can provide you with a lifestyle (and I think therefore mentality) that resembles upperclass in the West because of cheap labor and weak labor laws. I know doctors in India who have live-in servants, chefs, drivers, etc.
Many unmarried techies live in the same apartment and share a room and still have a maid/servant. These guys earn $500-$1000usd a month. They have a TV but it isn't a flat screen. They have a decent mobile phone but it is not an iphone 5. They might have a decent motorcycle but not a car..
They split the cost of the servant who comes from another part of India. The servant might cost $150 a month, split 4 ways. The techies are not above middle class at all. The guy they employee is just really poor.
In the UK we would call them the Upper Middle Class instead to clarify that they are merely rich merchants, not actual aristocracy. It's a matter of blood, don'tchaknow.
I agree: upper class isn't about wealth. So much of it is about culture (in the sense that culture breeds character traits). And the ambition to obtain wealth in the middle class breeds character traits that impose a barrier for entering the upper class.
This is what folks in the upper class like to believe so they can feel like there's more separating them from the middle class than just money. It's also a comfort to believe that even if you end up bankrupt, you're still "upper class". (And often, that people who are new money and richer than you are somehow not "upper class.")
Make a million dollars a year, and you can go to all the charity balls and opera galas you want. And your kids can go to whatever prep school you want to send them to. That tells me it's about your wallet, not where your parents went to school.
It is quite possible for the middle class to move into the upper class. It is just ironic that the desire to entire the upper class is often part of neuroses that make it impossible to enter.
An ambition to achieve wealth breeds an inferiority complex? Actually quite the opposite. In the states snobbery of any kind is severely looked down upon, as it should be.
My family is from Bangladesh (we take our cultural cues from India) and I agree with you 100%. The society in Bangladesh is unimaginably classist. Sure, here in the U.S. lots of people have classist notions but people have the shame to not talk in public because it's not culturally acceptable. No such thing over there. As you said, the upper classes treat the lower classes as not even of the same people as themselves.
Yes. And unfortunately it is a bit of a problem even in the US. Recent immigrants (a few of them) continue the rat fight even when there is absolutely no need. It goes away of course, with the time, but in the first few years a lot of harm can be done.
You know what these people call themselves ?
Middle class.
You see the same thing here in the U.S., and to be honest, I think it's somewhat accurate. The vast majority of the United States is middle class, and there is a huge range of privilege within it. Some parts of the middle class are virtually inaccessible from other parts. The mistake is not in labeling those rich, privileged people "middle class," but rather in thinking that there is no such thing as middle class privilege. In fact, being born into the middle class is a privilege, and there is a vast range of privilege within the middle class. In the U.S. a middle class kid could have parents with high school diplomas or parents with PhDs, parents with no connections or parents with Ivy League connections, parents who have never been more than a few hundred miles from home or cosmopolitan globe-hopping parents, parents who force them to take out loans for college or parents who pay the entire cost of an Ivy League education with a break year plus professional school afterwards and apartments and cars the whole time. The label "middle class" just doesn't mean much these days.
Many SV millionaires still consider themselves to be "upper middle class" (rather than say, lower upper class), and while it may be a bit inaccurate in an absolute monetary sense, the sentiment may actually be somewhat justifiable considering their relatively lack of influence/status/connections that really drive the country (the "old money", for instance).
In that sense, even the SV millionaires are outsiders to the real power brokers, the real upper class, the real movers of the country.
That's because a million bucks in the Bay Area will only buy you a 900 sq. ft. bungalow on the brink of collapse. A millionaire stopped being remarkable quite a while back.
I don't think "old money" really "drives the country" in the US.
Although that is probably also a bit of an overstatement in Europe as well, this issue is really one of the major historical distinctions between the US and Europe.
oh I don't know America likes to think it doent have a class system but look at the Bushes old money also Bill Gates fits into this class where as say Larry Ellison doesn't
Just because there are old-money families doesn't mean they're a major part of the class system. Larry Ellison doesn't have fewer privileges than Bill Gates. The Clintons don't have fewer privileges than the Bushes.
>These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that.
If these are people who have "made" the money themselves in their own generation, I can see why/how they still view themselves as middle class. It's a mindset.
I have had the fortune of getting to know many SV millionaires who grew up in modesty/poverty, and still buy shorts from Target and pinch pennies madly. They have their mansions and their fancy cars, but they're still bound by the mindset of their lower/middle class background where they fought ferociously and squeezed themselves and their financial abilities to get to where they are today.
As long as that mindset persists, even very wealthy people won't consider themselves to be "upper class".
Give it one or two generations though. Their kids and grandkids will probably behave and believe that they're upper class.
I don't think it's just about money though. There's this entitled class who just fundamentally believe they are superior, the example from the article being the guy who threw over the fruit stall because the crowd wouldn't move.
It's actually a problem in Australia where we all sort of treat each other as equals, for example our hospitality classes won't scrape and bow and call you sir, and everyone is ok with that. Racism has started to emerge because the only Indians who can get to Australia are the rich ones. All it takes is a few bad interactions and people start to write off the entire race, when I'm sure that 99%+ of Indians are actually pretty damn nice people.
I just wonder if those new generations will be less cheap but more entitled than ever.
Wait, you're seriously arguing that Australia didn't have a racism problem until Indians reached there? Australia, where the Government systematically removed Aboriginal kids from their parents in an attempt to wipe out the Aboriginal communities? Where the police can and do still get away with grabbing Aboriginal people off the streets and dumping them in the middle of nowhere to die just for being the wrong race? That Australia?
> Give it one or two generations though. Their kids and grandkids will probably behave and believe that they're upper class.
I don't know about India, but in the US there is a bizzare cultural phenomenon where everyone wants to see himself as middle class. Being identified as rich is somehow faintly embarrassing.
You see all kinds of strange verbal gymnastics in trying to justify middle class status. Heck there is plenty of it in this thread!
So I suspect that is going on with your wealthy friends, and that it will continue in thier kids and grandkids (unless the overall culture shifts).
The people who claim that $X million in Silicon Valley is still just middle class are annoying, but it's true. I have $8 million and it honestly changes very little. I'm living a middle class life, working a middle class programming job, my friends are middle class, I buy middle class stuff, and I have no special power or respect. I'm not sure how to convince you that this isn't just verbal gymnastics, but real.
There are a few advantages. One difference is I don't worry about how I'm going to pay for e.g. a $1000 car repair (but it's still painful). I'm also more likely to hire someone for maintenance or gardening. Also, I theoretically could quit my job and live off my investments, but that's unlikely to happen.
Of course this is partially a linguistic argument. If you define upper class as the top income quintile, for instance, than I'm upper class, but that's meaningless.
I do wonder if I'm doing things wrong, and there's some secret for admission to the upper class. Maybe I should start flying first class, buy a Ferrari, stop shopping at Target, and hang out with rich people. (Although I think that would just make me nouveau riche, not upper class.)
(My motivation in this comment is that these HN threads tend to be entirely speculation, and the semi-rich never comment, so I hope to provide a useful perspective.)
I agree it's definitional, so ultimately there isn't much to argue about.
What I wonder is what you think the upper class (as you define it) have that's so great or special that you don't. Sure you could cabin it so narrowly as to be people that e.g. get personal access to the President, or can get there kids into Harvard with a single phone call or something, but that definition is so narrow as to be useless (which gets back to the whole all Americans are middle class thing).
Having known several people with net worths in the 7-9 figure range, from brand new money through came over on the Mayflower, it really is a continuum. There's no secret handshake.
But that doesn't mean that somewhere along the continuum you really are living a different lifestyle than a family of four living in Northern California with both one parent working as a teacher and the other as a hygienist, each making $40,000 a year. They've got credit card balances, student loans, a long commute because that's where the affordable houses are, stress over how they are ever going to pay for college, and so on. You may shop at the same stores, but is that really a good indicator? Call what you have upper middle class if you feel like it, but that family is solidly middle class by any reasonable definition. So if there's a difference in kind, and someone has to give up the label, it shouldn't be them.
Finally, I should note that I find this little quirk of American culture fairly harmless. The one area where it can be pernicious is when it effects certain policy areas. For example, many people agree that the "rich" should be paying higher taxes, but since hardly anyone sees himself as rich, it is always a little farther out that the tax burden needs to fall. A good litmus test is the home mortgage income deduction, which is massively tilted to the high end of the income scale. If in justifying a high phase out you start to hear yourself say things like $1.5 million doesn't really buy you that much -- then you may be in the problematic zone.
Yep. People who serve the upper class wear suits. When the upper class was the nobility, they wore piss-stained tweed (yes, it's actually manufactured with urine). Now they wear whatever they want.
"Let me tell you another story: my neighbour in the upper-middle-class area where I live is a man who owns luxury hotels. His house is huge, but no sooner had he moved in than he appropriated about half of the pavement space to the front and side of his house, claiming it for his own. This means less parking for others, less pavement for children, less walking space for everyone. Of the 400-odd houses in this area, at least half have done this. At the same time they have also collectively seen off the only roadside tea stall in the area that served all the service providers – the guards, the drivers, the domestics, the sweepers. "
Both the writer and you are discounting the 200 odd houses in the area that have not claimed an entitlement on the pavement, by doing so you are discrediting the willingness of those who are playing by the rules to further an argument that does no hold scrutiny. Further more as others have stated in comments, there is nothing in the article that is uniquely Indian.
> In India this is quite possible, a middle class person could easily hire 3-4 people and therefore start to create change.
Most people do not have a need to hire 3-4 people. Growing up it was common to have a maid who helped with household chores due to the absence of amenities like a dish washer or washing machine. As these services become available there is no need to hire folks to do such work. Hiring folks and having them laze around only to take home wages is a ridiculous idea, moreover wealth saved by not hiring these folks is spent on other purposes (movies, restaurants etc.) that the so called wealth might consider a good return on investment. These in turn create jobs for services that are required (taxi drivers, ticket vendors, waiters, restaurant managers etc.). The fact that the so called upper class people do not hire folks to do their dishes and laundry is if anything a move towards a society with fewer artificial classes.
"Most people do not have a need to hire 3-4 people. Growing up it was common to have a maid who helped with household chores due to the absence of amenities like a dish washer or washing machine. As these services become available there is no need to hire folks to do such work."
I completely agree with this. When I was living in New York, I rarely felt a need to "hire" someone to do stuff for me. Apartment didn't get dirty so easily. Clothes didn't get dirty so easily. Very easy and convenient access to laundromats. Dish washer at home. Easy access to fairly high quality groceries. Lots of places to eat around which had healthy food options at reasonable prices (relative to your salary). Anything you wanted could be ordered online.
If on top of all this, you just hired a maid by the hour, for a couple of hours, to come clean your house like once in two weeks, you didn't need anything else.
Here in India, it's hard to get by without a maid. Clothes get dirty fast, house gets dirty fast, no laundromats, no dishwasher, no space to keep a washing machine at home, poor availability of healthy food options, groceries sellers have bad quality of food and vegetables so you need to spend time picking them out, supermarkets have massive checkout lines etc.
This is a common pattern with all articles about India. The west really likes to talk about how shitty conditions are here. The theme is to take a one-off incident and then exaggerate and generalize it so much that it must look like the norm. Then talk about about evil rich, selfish middle class and super poor farmers.
And then yes your usual dowry, caste system issues thrown here and there.
And those who leave India to settle else where too, find these topics indulging. It gives all them all the reasons in the world why they were right to leave the country.
The conditions are really shitty here. Even other south-asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand are doing so much better in almost everything. If you don't think India is one of the most pathetic countries in the world, a little travel will change that.
Dude I live in Brazil where we have dish washers and washing machines for decades and here the upper middle class really never let their maids go with a fair salary or even said they were unnecessary once these stuff became available, I doubt they will disappear overnight, just like they did not over here.
Guess it depends on your culture/background, but your description of upper class people who believe they are middle class sound like people I would call middle class - I'm English. So while you may be completely right in the context of India, your examples don't necessarily explain it well to an international audience.
Not even 0.005% of the Indian populace can afford the things I mentioned as examples. Maybe the problem is that we take our cues of what is considered upper class from international standards and therefore fail to acknowledge our own privileges in a local context ?
I think that being middle class is not about representing any kind of median level of wealth in a population (or other relative measure), but rather has something to do with the kind of resources and income you have access to relative to human needs in an absolute sense.
For example, if some, but not all (or even most), of your family members need to work in order to maintain a comfortable lifestyle (which includes healthy food, a home that is not crowded, access to decent education, and one to four vehicles) then you are middle class. If you have to work but don't have these things, then you are lower-income. If you can have these things without working at all in perpetuity, then you are well-off.
You're right. However, the difference in India lies in the fact that the lower-income people are .. middle class. Poor people in India are without any real income. Most of them struggle to get two meals a day. A lot of them live on under $2/day without access to food, shelter, sanitation or any type of medical facility.
The stark contrast between such a person and another that drives around in an air conditioned SUV is what often shocks people. By comparison, a western middle class person in India would be considered pretty well off! Unfortunately, the Indian upper middle class/upper class do not apply those standards to themselves.
There are some people commenting on this topic saying that SV millionaires are not upper class. That sounds ridiculous in India :)
There are some people commenting on this topic saying that SV millionaires are not upper class. That sounds ridiculous in India :)
Part of the issue is that lots of people talk about the USA being a "classless society". Some of them even believe it. More than most nations, America loves the idea that a person can arrive as a poor immigrant or be born the child of poor immigrants, apply uncommon drive and intelligence, and create a business that makes him extremely rich. (Whether that is the rule or the rare exception is another question.)
Perhaps its the other way round - as in the Indian scale goes from uber rich - upper class - middle class - lower class - impoverished - below poverty line - subsistence.
> Not even 0.005% of the Indian populace can afford the things I mentioned as examples.
Any references for that? The one I found, partly disagrees with your claims [1]. [1] also suggests that wealth disparity in India is better when compared to world. I am not saying the situation is good, but it is not as bloddy and fearing as you suggest it is. And there isn't something very particular about India in this case, I think the problem is a more widespread. And yes, the rich in India compare themselves to global standards when they determine if they are wealthy - because the world is more global now than we would like to believe. You suggest elsewhere that these people are upper class because it takes so little to help the lower classes. If that is any metric, most of the western hemisphere should be categorized as upper class because it helping a significant majority of eastern hemisphere will not have significant negative impact on lifestyle or wealth of the west.
It's VERY EASY in India to make a difference in someone's life. Even if you're middle class, you can make a difference because people around you are way poorer than you. The problem is one of large scale apathy and complete indifference.
I agree but let's not lose track of the fact that empathy doesn't end at national borders. We Indians have a responsibility to help those of us who are less privileged than us, but so does everyone else in the world. And let's also not forget that our conditions are the way the are thanks largely to colonialism and that the British in particular and the western world in general profited massively from our suffering during that time. And finally let's also not forget that immigration and employment laws in the western world even today actively work towards denying economic opportunities to people in developing countries and this plays a huge part in countries like India staying poor.
My point is that it's a bit too simplistic to frame it as Indians need to do X instead of Y and then they will be fine. Indians are doing Y not because they're genetically deficient but because we've gotten stuck in a local maxima that is mostly not of our own making.
>are completely fine with spoilt rich brats driving circles around them while honking away.
I find it quite hard to believe that most (or any) girls would be fine with anyone driving circles around them and honking. All women I know from Delhi are quite sick of eve teasing and don't really give a shit whether the guilty person is poor or rich.
I have never been closer to India than San Diego, and most of the persons of Indian descent I know speak with either a Midwestern or a Mid-Atlantic accent. Evidently the point has been made about American entitlement, so I'll pass on that.
In general it seems to take a couple of generations of security for any given elite to look around and decide that it has obligations. In an American context, think of the Rockefellers, Harrimans, and Kennedys.
Actually, It took Rockefeller 0 generations to decide he had obligations to society. Massive philanthropy and libertarian-flavored egalitarianism was a hallmark of the old "robber barons". My hometown library was a Carnegie library, and the college I went to was founded by Rockefeller. Rockefeller also funded one of America's first colleges for black women (Spelman).
By contrast, the Indian elites described in the OP seem to consider themselves above humanity and the law. Wealth alone does not make you a horrible person, though it's fun to believe that it does.
Gandhi and the earlier India National Congress were finance largely by Indian elites. Today, the Indian elites finance much of the orphanages , temples and culture of India. TATAs are essentially run by a charitable institution. The once powerful Birlas built several colleges , schools and temples. My wife was born in a town largely built by a private business. Indian business sustain even the mos leftist publications by advertising. The Indian elites went out and built the whole IT industry of India. Infosys is leading a new way of philatropy in India. Feeding the hungry and poor is an integral a part of our cultural /religious rituals. In North America, check out the Langars at your local Gurudwara or Temples.
But of course, publishing an article that does not conform to the worst stereotyping of India will not get to to HN first page.
> These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that.
India definitely makes you feel this. I know this one senior guy who lived for a very long time in New York (~10 years) after his grad school and moved a few years back to Mumbai. He is very rich but he says that he feels poorer in Mumbai than he ever felt in New York, even compared with the time when he working in his first job, fresh out of grad school.
I just hope that this is not how we reason about things in general. I feel very sad reading your comment especially on HN. Not because what you are saying is right or wrong. But because the conclusions you draw are based on pretty much your personal experiences and those experiences are a very small sample set. My concerns:
1. "I've had statements from rich girls in New Delhi who don't like 'these poor people who stare at us', but are completely fine with spoilt rich brats driving circles around them while honking away."
How many "statements" did you get?
2. "These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that. Perhaps that is why they seem to lack compassion and empathy."
Based on what do you conclude this?
3. "You know, rich people with 4 bedroom apartments on the 17th floor in and around the capital."
Rich?
4. "Most people who the 'middle class' perceive as lower class are almost sub humans in their eyes."
Based on what do you conclude this?
5. "The middle class got to point fingers once more at the lower classes who 'rape us'. They got to ask the government what they are doing to protect them from these 'evil immigrants who come into New Delhi and ruin our fair city'."
Did you participate in any of the protests? You know, this is an egg on the face of all who spent days protesting after the incident. Again, what is this based on? Can you point to any news articles or any research/survey that got this out?
Yes, situation is complicated but people have started debating about a lot of things. There is a lot more participation from the common man. This never happened in the past. This evolution of 1 billion people to a developed and civilized society is indeed slow as much as it is unique. But I am confident it will happen - India is still a democracy, people still have a say in determining their future...
The middle class in India is growing quite fast. I can't imagine a programmer behaving this way, so I'll say no. The example in the article is very indicative of behavior in and around New Delhi however, it'd be hard to find that kind of behavior in say Mumbai or Chennai. (I currently live in New Delhi btw)
Areas around New Delhi suffer from an acute nouveau riche problem. Most well educated (programmer like..) people wouldn't act out in such a callous and insensitive manner. However, they will most likely still view people from lower classes differently, this may not be evident in the way people act but you can catch onto it if you pay attention to certain remarks that people may make. (eg: I can't ride with those smelly people in the Delhi metro)
Again, these are generalizations, not everyone is an asshole. Most people aren't. However, there is a great deal of prejudice and I believe the only way forward is for people to acknowledge it in the first place.
actually, you'd be surprised - i think those people who don't consider themselves upper-class are probably right in their judgement. the wealth distribution in america is very skewed : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ehzfQ4hAQ
unless you are with in the top 1%, i wouldn't say you are upper class.
> actually, you'd be surprised - i think those people who don't consider themselves upper-class are probably right in their judgement
I completely respect your opinion, but the fact that you think that doesn't "surprise" me, it's in fact the very phenomenon I was pointing out. Do you think that curve looks any different in India or Colombia?
This is not elite entitlement. This is right wing entitlement. The recent death of Maggie reminded me of what she really changed - she made it ok to be selfish and disdainful of "undeserving" poor.
India was a hybridised socialist country for a very long time - coming out of that will look at lot like Britain the in the eighties I suspect - and if you want to put bets on the next two term incumbent - they will look a lot like the drivers if the SUVs and will tell then its good to be hard working, it's what will get us to moonbase alpha
The "left" in India in the 1970s was dissolving legitimate governance, declaring martial law, and engaging in mass forced sterilization of undesirables.
If I were to take sides in what's worse... well, I wouldn't. Don't take sides on account of lesser of two evils. Just condemn evil.
The claim made (right or wrong) was that the problem was not being an elite, but having certain ideology. In other words, that class is not the real issue.
In a recent incident, three poor Dalit boys inadvertently caused a small fire in a local community centre where they worked.
The fact that children are labelled as anything other than children, that Indian society calls them "Dalit" at birth, to me, summarizes why the region will remain retrogressive for a long, long time.
No, Indian society does not label children anything other than children at birth. It is a label gratuitously applied by the author, likely as a short-hand to indicate poorer section of society. People from these self-identified sections have reached the highest post in the country - from writer of the constitution to president, to various positions in the political spectrum. There is a problem of equal access to education, yes. But
a) this problem exists all over the world - consider school districts in the US and
b) is more acute in India due to large, distributed population against a largely agrarian/human labor based economy. Active discrimination is a much smaller factor.
There is an implied causality in this article. Being rich -> Lose empathy.
I'd be curious to know if there indeed is causality in either direction (Less empathetic people get richer) or is it just correlation masquerading as causality.
I have always been a strong believer in the saying "Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them". Studying this area would be difficult though as you either need to know ahead of time who would be successful, or study such a large cross-section that you are statistically likely to snare future successful people in your population.
There is a fundamental moral conflict in desiring to own more than the next person. That requires less guilt or empathy, no doubt about that.
You can find elsewhere an study about how psycopaths are usually found in leading positions, like politicians (specially in 3rd world, where salaries are high) and CEOs, amongst others.
You're grossly simplifying things. A person may be driven to succeed and generate wealth for their family because they want to be able to send their children to the best schools possible, or they want to be able to access the best medical practitioners and technology if someone they cared about were to get sick. It may have absolutely nothing to do with owning "more than the next person."
I was waiting to find a comment like this! I tend to agree. I suspect being born with less empathy and concern allows you to acquire more wealth and my real life experiences have supported it. At least in the US (India seems to have deeper structural challenges) Be interesting to dig deeper.
The poor man whose cart was tipped, can't sue the rich guy. Neither would this be covered in the news. The police would simply refuse to register a case of loss against the rich (and probably powerful) guy. There is no insurance of the cart, of course.
When the poor know that every cog in the society is biased against the poor, people are quick to dismiss them and their misery. If it was another car instead of the cart, the SUV guy won't have hit the car, for the person riding the car would certainly be able to sue/ report to police, and might even have insurance.
This is about the lack of entitlement of the poor, rather than the ferocious sense of entitlement of the rich. The rich are just exploiting the absence of any entitlement to poor.
You can find examples anywhere, even in the US; years ago I read articles of affluent seaside communities erecting no trespassing signs fences and such blocking off access to public beaches.. I'm sure there are more examples of it, but here is one interesting site about the US entitled rich problem.
This... doesn't make sense at all, and is also simultaneous a True Scotsman fallacy.
For one thing, the vieux riche inspired entire revolutions with their compassionless, ridiculous, indefensible behavior. The wealthy nobility is a primary reason why so many countries are now democratic.
Clearly "being a complete dick" is not the exclusive purview of the nouveau riche. The notion that people who inherit their wealth are less likely to abuse it over people who earn it quickly also doesn't pass a lot of mental muster.
The distinction between "nouveau riche" and "vieux riche" smells like (and is) a classi No True Scotsman.
This is exactly it. If one is born into money, the sense of entitlement is in-bred and it doesn't need to be asserted explicitly, leave alone aggressively.
There may be a lot of misconceptions on the poor and class divide in India. I would like to answer some of them by posting some numbers and providing context.
Who are the 'poor' in India?
The poor in India, according to the Planning Commission, are people who live on 32 Indian Rupees/59cents per day.
How many people are poor in India?
The Planning Commission of India reports that there are 29.8% of the population who are 'poor' [0,1]. This roughly equates to 360 Million people who live below the poverty line.
Are the numbers for poor accurate?
May be, may be not. Some believe these numbers could be as high as 77% specially considering the inflation rate and other factors.
Is it possible to live on 59 cents per day?
No but that's not even the main problem. Here is a comment from Jean Dréze, an economist and former member of the National Advisory Council India [2],
“What is really shocking is not that the official poverty line is abysmally low, but that even with that abysmal
benchmark, so many people are below it.The belated discovery that it is impossible to have a dignified
life on the official poverty line draws our attention to the appalling living conditions of the Indian poor.” Taking a
position diametrically opposed to Mr. Bhalla and Mr. Panagariya, Mr. Drèze argues, “The message about the terrifying
nature of 'hidden poverty’ in India has been somewhat lost in the din of the recent debate.”
Even with such a low price point the number of poor in India are staggering.
Is there a class divide in India (in particular Delhi) and possess a sense of entitlement?
Yes. I would recommend reading on how the elite tried to stifle Delhi's first Bus Rapid Transit system by filing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Delhi HC [3]. Here is the reason from the petitioner's (a car owner in Delhi) on why he decided to file the petition
"Car owners are the creators of wealth. Do you realise that they get exhausted sitting in their cars due to traffic
jams and they reach office completely tired? It affects their efficiency. Do you want them to perform less?" asks the
main petitioner BB Sharan.You cannot keep a commander-in-chief waiting in traffic while his army is waiting for his
orders. How does it matter if a peon reaches office five minute before time?"
This is the attitude of the "rich" in India. The society doesn't matter as long as their work gets done.
Thanks for posting this since a lot of people have been asking for numbers and it was late last night and I couldn't really dig up sources for all the info I posted.
You're absolutely right about the huge gap that exists between people trying to just make it, and even the middle class who have a roof over their heads. Unfortunately, most city dwellers fail to acknowledge this.
I'm not from India but my parents are from Sri Lanka and when I went back there I was surprised to find what seemed to be middle class families having maids and butlers (they call them servants). Maybe some rich people in India must feel like they have the right to do it because they grow up having those people cater to their every need
You may not know this but you are touching a very sensitive issue.
Which is better for the country: asking people to employ domestic workers, or have higher unemployment?
Let's take South Africa, which I know better than any place in Asia. There's high unemployment. The government encourages people to hire domestic workers. Checking now the rates are about US$ 1/hour. These are maids/domestics, gardeners, childminders, caretakers for the sick and elderly, and so on.
I grew up on the US, and from my family learned a strong moral principle that it's best to do everything yourself, rather than have 'people cater to my every need' at home. As an adult, I followed that same moral principle.
Then I bought a house. With a garden. A quite beautiful garden that I wanted to keep. I couldn't do it myself. More importantly, my rates as a software developer were more than 8x that of a gardener. I fought that moral training and realized that it's little different than regularly going to a mechanic to maintain my car.
The position of the South African government is similar. If you have the money, then why not use it to hire people to help around the house? Living in South Africa for a short time, I learned about some of the advantages of having someone who would do laundry, including ironing, sweeping, or mowing the lawn. None are tasks I enjoy.
As you (and the essayist) point out, that's fraught with difficulties. At what point does that turn into a sense of entitlement? How can abuses in the workplace (that is, the home) be monitored and reduced?
The solution of course is higher taxation or philanthropy. The gardener should be paid to build a public garden, not private garden.
You should be paying someone who is more efficient than you at those tasks, so you can write software to solve problems more efficiently than your customers do otherwise. That is wealth creation across a community.
You should not be paying someone (x N) to work at a much lower hourly wage than you simply because you have accumulated more wealth.
Now, some dose of income inequality is healthy, to motivate individuals to better themselves and be valuable (education, skill, physical execise), but extreme inequality is to be remedied by rebalancing the income, not just making someone work for you.
"The solution of course is higher taxation or philanthropy."
I don't see the "of course." Using that argument, it sounds like I shouldn't hire a carpenter to work on my house but should instead pay more taxes so that the carpenter can work on improving the public buildings, and only use my own skills and time to improve my house.
I shouldn't ever hire a mechanic to fix my car but rather I should always pay more taxes in order to fund the mass transit system.
I shouldn't ever hire a gardener but should rather let the existing garden in my yard fall into disrepair - or learn the skills myself - in preference for a neighborhood garden.
"You should not be paying someone (x N) to work at a much lower hourly wage than you simply because you have accumulated more wealth."
I never held that position, and I don't know how you inferred that that I had that assumption in mind.
There is some boundary on where it's better for myself and/or the community that I do something myself, and better sometimes for others with more time and/or better skills to do it. My argument is that one of the reasons that people don't hire domestic help is because of moral qualms. Sometimes those qualms are unfounded, and in that case, an educational campaign to change attitudes may be an appropriate means to mollify those qualms and improve wealth creation across a community.
In your words, they are doing something less efficiently than they could, and need a reminder backed by a good argument for why they should hire someone else to handle those jobs.
"simply because you have accumulated more wealth"
That is part of a different argument. The mathematics I outlined are based on differential income, not wealth accumulation. That is, had I spent every penny of income or contributed it through taxes, such that I had less wealth accumulation than my gardener, it would still make economic sense for me to hire a gardener instead of tending to the garden myself. As you said, your goal is 'wealth creation across a community'. The scenarios I described are not incompatible with that goal. I can outline others if you wish.
Also, at that time my work was very bursty. I would sometimes visit a client site for a month or two, then not work for a few months. Her work was relatively constant, so she could maintain my garden while I was away. Even if I maintained the garden myself, I don't think it would be morally or economically objectionable to hire someone for that case. It can be even be worthwhile to hire someone on a continual basis, in order to ensure availability during odd times.
My own worry isn't so much about employing domestic workers per se, as about which kinds of power relations result from it. If it's just an exchange of services for a fee, that's fine. You can sell some hours of programming as a freelancer, and that's not particularly objectionable.
The domestic-help arrangement often seems to end up with weird power dynamics, though, where it's more like having a "servant" who is clearly of lower social status, and is supposed to cater to their employers' whims in some kind of old-fashioned aristocratic style. Feels less like "freelancing" and more like something more problematic.
You know, it's really interesting how people can become oblivious to the concerns of others. It's not necessarily wealth that does it either. It can be a job promotion, parents that always bend to the will of their child, or a variety of other factors.
The most shocking thing is that I don't think these people realize they are doing it either. Now certainly there are some who realize it and just don't care (psychopaths or sociopaths), but I think it is more common that people lose the ability to think about the consequences of their actions.
Evaluation of my actions is something I try hard to do with myself. It is very, very difficult to objectively evaluate yourself and how you come across to others. Something you may not even think twice about can have a lasting, negative effect on someone else. You don't know what that person is going through; maybe they just got laid off or lost a relative -- who knows what really.
Entitlement is a problem amongst many people who experience success, regardless of class or nationality.
Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky have shown this in numerous studies, but here's an easily relatable example of theirs: Financial advisors.[1]
Predicting markets is an inherently random game. We often point to those who have been successful for a long period of time as an example that it is possible to beat the system, but that analysis fails to account for the other end of the probability distribution: those who have failed for a long period of time (or failed so hard early that they had to get out of the game).
In other words, for every big winner, there is a big loser. The fact that some people win or lose can (mostly) be explained by randomness (or cheating).
But Kahneman & Tversky's stunning finding with Financial Advisors, and humans in general, is that those who are successful attribute their success mostly to skill, hard work, etc, while failing to adequately acknowledge how large a role chance played. For the humble, this is not a problem, but for the arrogant or uninformed, this can easily turn into entitlement.
(BTW I definitely believe that, in most fields, a person needs to meet certain thresholds of hard work, energy, intelligence, etc. to be successful, but the level of success after reaching those thresholds is largely a function of chance.)
We humans are very good at drawing false conclusions from random data. Have you watched a basketball game recently? If a good shooter misses a couple free throws, commentators seem obligated to explain that the reason for this is fatigue, or poor form, or this, or that. How about the fact that it just randomly happens sometimes?
Applying this thinking to Indian elites: they have a lot of money, probably through their families or their own success. They believe their status is well deserved and earned, either because of superior genetics or superior skills (or any other number of reasons), and as a result, the uninformed feel entitled (and act accordingly). The author's anecdotal examples aside, this is no different than how many (but not all!) people behave on Wall Street, in athletics, at the high levels of corporations, etc. This is not an Indian problem, or an elite problem; it's a human problem.
India is a banana republic in every sense of the word; where the mighty have their way and even basic amenities are denied to the poorer 80% of population. But do stay tuned - the Indian class war is yet to play out.
India has many wonderful things to offer but my biggest issue in that country would be the cast system. The untouchables! I think it's awful that any human is deemed less than human at the point of birth. Awful!
Actually, the caste system isn't that much of a problem anymore. Because of various affirmative action programs, many former Dalits have risen to high governmental posts and industry titans.
That's good to hear. My friend was recently in India some months ago and when visiting he was delegated a servant which he didn't even ask for or want. The kid was not even allowed to sit on the couches! Sad.
Change is already happening. One of the best examples I can cite is the Madurai based chef-turned social worker, Narayanan Krishnan. He quit his 5-star hotel chef job to feed the poor. He was one of the CNN Heroes in 2010.
Wow... very nice. While the rich are really mean and ferocious, the poor (normal) people are very generous and giving. That is the reason the country is still functioning. Fortunately there are millions of normal ( poor by western standards ) people in India, especially outside of the big cities. Still most people live in villages which is a very good thing, they are not yet corrupted by the greediness. I hope they don't.
I'd suggest that the elites from all societies have a ferocious sense of entitlement. However, some are better at hiding it and coming across as harmonious members of society.
Call me crazy but "taking"? The man scratching the mans car with his cart was Taking. The people in the street who wouldn't get out the way were taking.
Do you mean how the man in the SUV threw over someone else's cart full of produce (likely his only source of income/livelihood), and then throwing a large heavy metallic object at him in a effort to physically harm him is NOT "Taking" (with a Capital T)?
As opposed to charging the man for repairs and the man likely ending up in jail? I say the man got off easy. If the man had to pay for the damage to the SUV he would have been much worse off.
It doesn't matter if he got off easy or not. Two wrongs does not make a right.
If you wrong someone, and s/he tries to then injure you with a heavy blunt object but fails, it doesn't mean "you got off easy". You can then counter sue for attempted murder.
You don't see this in stable societies with more income/class equality, but it shows up in any place with large social inequality. Russia/ex-USSR after the 'wild capitalism' of 1990'ies is also a great example with similar situations as described in the original article.
You mean you don't see these things in countries with strong social safety nets (i.e first world countries).
While the US is a first world country (disclaimer: US citizen/resident), we have nowhere near the social programs other more progressive first world countries have.
Actually, in countries with strong legal systems where the risk of losing money is real, this sort of behavior is held somewhat in check. But when no one is looking, or the risk of being caught is low, it happens. One can make the argument that the entire mortgage crisis was one where the insiders (rich people on Wall Street) knew the edifice was crumbling, and went ahead and made bets against its survival, while selling instruments out the back door that were the opposite bets. These were promptly sold off to the hinterlands of the country. And of course the poor saps that bought overpriced houses paid the price. Those on Wall Street not only made obscene amounts of money on those bets, but never were prosecuted for it. It's good to be rich.
Unfortunately, this is quite an accurate article. I've only been to Delhi once, but in my parents' home city of Hyderabad, this behavior is commonplace. That being said, this article is being written from a feminist and classist perspective, so one should be careful when making generalizations about India. It's important to keep in mind everyone has an agenda, and this author has clearly delivered one.
In a country where the majority of people live in under $200/month - owning an SUV does make you elite. Part of the problem is that the privileged in India don't recognize how truly privileged they are.
Judging from your username, am sure you know this already, but there is a very strong but implicit class system based on the amount of wealth you appear to have. You could be worth 10 crores (100 million) rupees, and yet not be considered socially elite if you don't flaunt it. The reverse is also true, where you buy way more than you can afford comfortably for the sake of increasing your social status and to be considered as "elite".
You need to be part of a country's economic elite to be able to afford a vehicle that costs 10x the local GDP per capita, even if it is a practical choice for the local roads and considered a low-end model in richer countries. Owning an SUV doesn't, of course necessarily mean you have to drive it like an ass (or insist your driver drive it like an ass)
My theory is that poor people rely on cooperation with others to survive, and this forces them to develop compassion and learn good human relations at a young age. Rich people on the other had don't need others so much, and instead are much likely be in competition with them.
Even in family relations this applies. Siblings in poor families offer much needed support to each other. In rich families siblings seem more likely to be considered as competitors for parental affections at a young age, and competitors for inheritance when older. This mentality of constant competition is poisonous.
Honestly, I think that being rich is a pretty clear path to ultimate unhappiness. Better to be slightly poor in money and rich in the things that actually bring happiness, like family, health, friends, spare time, and a clear conscience.