Judgement

So, recently I've been seeing a lot of posts on why we shouldn't judge people. Generally these come with a number of case studies which make Occham spin in his grave so hard we could generate electricity. Instead of arguing about those (which I've done, repeatedly), I will instead suggest that judging people is necessary for society.

So, firstly, in order to ensure there's no misunderstanding, we're not talking about legal judgement. We're talking about people looking down upon a person or set of people based on a particular trait, by linking that trait to a negative label. So for example a teenage mother would be promiscuous, or whatever.

Now I'll explain my point. It is my opinion/observation, that judging people is an integral part of how society ensures its values remain static. Because the judged set are treated negatively, they will attempt to move out of that set. This can be a good way of keeping certain things down.

Does it work? Lets me an example which I hope will show that when something becomes more accepted (aka less judged) things will increase.

50-100 years ago, if you happened to be female and happened to become pregnant before you were married, you would be judged eight ways to Sunday (what a silly expression). The main policy over here in Malta was to either get married real quick, or to disappear to Gozo and give birth in a place where nobody knew you. My grandmother knew a woman who used to carry around a pillow under her dresses because her daughter had gotten pregnant and they wanted to pretend the future baby would be the mother's.

Nowadays, we have cheap access to contraceptives, more effective contraception and sex education in school. And yet the amount of kiddies born out of wedlock is increasing, to very large amounts.

I believe its because having kiddies out of wedlock is no longer shameful. In fact a certain tv show on a particular crappy channel which should have stuck to music, seems to glorify it.

Same thing for other things, more accepted they are, the more common they are - even though they are bad for society. See also: Divorce Party.

So I think allowing everyone to do whatever they want without judging them, is a good way to loosen society to a number of individuals pulling their own ropes.


Now I'm not suggesting we judge people for things they can't change or things they're not in control of. There's no point in judging people over the colour of their skin, or background. But there is a point in judging people who cross the line socially.


Discuss. I'm quite interested to hear what my local anthropologist thinks.


Llama

Idea: Mass Feeding

So here's an idea I had a while ago which I am going to share with you, maybe someone wants to execute it.

Lets take a look at something. Assume there are say 500 people living around you (by some metric), divided in 215 families. Every day, at least once, at least one member of that family takes food out from storage, wastes some time preparing it and feeds the family.

If we accept the assertion of 215 families, we realise how much of a waste of time, money and resources it is to have 215 different storage, purchasing and preparation units every day. So the idea is to centralise it.

Imagine you have a 'subscription-based' take away of sorts. To join in on this you pay some money every month. In return you're guaranteed a meal (two?) a day. With the money the company could afford to buy in bulk, hire a professional chef and offer a balanced diet. Theoretically, if enough people take on the offer, the cost required to purchase, store and prepare the food will be less than if everyone made it themselves.

"But they already invented that," I hear you say, "It's called a restaurant". Well this idea is different in two ways.

Firstly this idea is non-profit and intended to save the community money. Its a more efficient way of doing things, and it'll save people time.

Secondly, restaurants are there to offer attractive food as a form of entertainment. This idea would offer well-cooked balanced food instead of fancy stuff which is bad for you and which would be eaten irregularly.

Please feel free to Discuss.

The Llama

Economics

Once upon a time, a new species came upon this earth. Didn't have too many special abilities to survive, except for its larger brain. However they formed communities and tribes and they survived. A large part of this I believe was the ability to work in groups - they could hunt larger creatures and survive against predators. Unfortunatly once they mostly settled down, they started to prey on each other instead.

The way economics works is a brilliant example of how we prey and abuse each other for our own personal gains.

A 'rich' person is one who has a lot of money. You need these magical pieces of papers to get food, lodging and other things. Assuming that the world has a fixed amount of magical pieces of papers (ignore inflation or other things). Therefore whenever you are gaining some money, someone else is losing money - a zero-sum game. So by extension, there are ALWAYS going to be poor people, there are ALWAYS going to be people who can't afford anything, and we like it that way.

Lets take a theoretical example. You have a group of poor people living in a country. They lack basic sanitation, food and water. While many people would hate to live there, and feel sorry for the people there, they are a necessary part of the economy - they can be given rubbish jobs for poor pay. If they were richer, they wouldn't want to do those sorts of jobs - so they shouldn't be paid much either, we don't want them to crawl out of that hole. So when people collect money to save children in Africa or whatever, they're not treating the cause, they're slightly treating the symptoms. And the economy doesn't want those causes to be changed.

While as technology increases certain basic things will become affordable, there will always be people desperate enough to work for rubbish pay.

And this situation isn't likely to ever get any better. Rich people like staying rich, and rich people spend money on things which gives lots of profits to richer people - while a poor person might spend the money on food, a rich person will buy items which are produced by larger companies and which have a larger profit point - think about how expensive a luxury car is - how much of that is the actual cost of the materials and labour?

Sure you could argue that wealth will 'trickle down', but lets take some real life values - a particular company had the following values last year:

Revenue: $ 65.23 billion

Profit: $ 14.01 billion

So, lets take a look. The Revenue is the amount of money that people lost to buy this company's products and services. The difference of course is the amount of money it gave to its employees in return for their services. The difference is still a significant amount - where does that go ? To the pockets of shareholders who are already very rich.


So we can see the economy as a partition between the richer and the poor. The rich absorb more of the world's money - both though buying/selling of services amongst each other - and by giving not-so-much to those who don't belong in this special group.


And we fight and bicker amongst ourselves instead of living as a society which cares for each other.


Llama

For the People

(Note: This article is based on my experience in Malta, it may be different for other countries, so YMMV)

Elected Politicians have a tendency to be rich. There are many reasons for this, not-in-the-least the pay they get for doing their job (they got a nice pay rise a few months ago over here). One could argue that becoming an elected Politician requires money, which would imply already being rich. Bribery or 'lobbying' or 'donations' or whatever is the fancy word for it these days helps already. Either way, the end result is that Representatives (I will be using this term instead) are generally much richer than the people they're meant to represent.


Now this raises a question. In Representational Democracies, they are meant to represent the people. But the majority of people don't live in villas, don't have a private chauffeur, nor do they have large amount of shares or their own companies. So how is a Representative supposed to understand the plight of his people? If there is an increase in the price of a basic good, a rich person will not be effected, while the majority of the population will.


So in my opinion, if a person wants to Represent his people, he should live lie his people. He should suffer the problems that the people suffer, and he should work out what needs to be fixed. You don't understand your people from behind the tinted windows of a Limousine, you understand your people by spending 15 minutes waiting on the bus stop in the sun.


So in my opinion, elected officials should be forced to live like the lowest of low. Minimum wage, public transport, and a small house. This way I'm positive that many of the problems which plague us will disappear. In addition, this sort of sacrifice requires true dedication, and you can assume that this person will be enticed to help the country (by raising the bar) instead of helping himself.


Of course this has no chance of happening ever. If only citizens were allowed to pass legislature. I would be very content to see the prime minister waiting for the bus next to me.


Llama