BUSINESSPERSONS, RICH PEOPLE ARE EVIL OR SELFISH OR....
INANE, NON-THINKING, NON-INSIGHTFUL BELIEFS THAT ARE HARMFUL
Draft
It has been my experience that rich people who have created their wealth and worked hard for it are more thoughtful, more hardworking, more appreciate of hard work and merit, and more aware of how people feel and what motivates them than any other group in our society. They can appear to be harsh, because they know that pity and sympathy result mostly in victim behavior and that integrity and the willingness to work hard to create value that will increase one's earnings is what it is all about - responsibility versus entitlement. The irony is that the seeming harshness is actually what ends up being compassionate, in that the resulting work ethic causes people to be better off, thereby reducing their suffering.
Yes, there a a few bad eggs and it is true that only bad news has the attention of the people, but it is only people who don't understand Critical Thinking as a skill that would take the selective evidence and make the common thinking error of overgeneralizing from a small prejudiced sample. (Some people
Businesses create what people "value" - they are not moral judges, but some people (who don't follow their own morals often and do bad things to their own body) put themselve in judgment. That is what laws are for - a line that should not be crossed - "but I am superior to the stupid judge, etc.". Otherwise it is all a judgment.
In general, businesses create value - and in so doing they employ people, which gives them value (paychecks) - then people judge that, saying they are manipulative and unfair and should, out of their goodwill pay more - which would mean many businesses would go out of business, and people would lose jobs. The wage is determined as a contract between two consenting entities, who accept the conditions - and it is absurd to blame someone for not giving enough when the other side has essentially said they will accept the pay that was offered!
Although I cannot claim to know all businessmen, I do, having been trained in the area, have considerable experience with them, from the non-businessmen dentists running their own business to the highly successful entrepreneur. I find that the highly successfule got that way through “thinking”, through asking “how can I do this better”, “how can I serve my customers better”, “what kind of a product would provide value”, etc. And it is true that most of them were not thinking “now how can I create jobs for others and have them prosper.” But that, again, is not their job – and imposing a moral judgment about a non-existing obligation is at the very core of harmful ignorance.
Despite watching the movies and seeing the evil, corrupted, powerful rich people and the noble battle of trying to win out against them, there is no “evidence” that this is true of the group overall. This is as ignorant as thinking all of Islam is as evil as the terrorist-murderers that are sucked up into believing that jihad is righteousl although such thinking varies in its ridiculousness, it is all on the same spectrum of what ultimately is harmful.
Yes, in all groups there are a few who seek the easy way. They cheat and steal and manipulate. But the number of them is quite small. But the unthinking mind will take a small number of incidences and then generalize them (a common thinking error). Their “evidence” is that the great majority of news coverage is about crooks and bad people because bad news is good news, in terms of what the media can get attention from. Good news is, unfortunately, seldom news, in terms of interest or excitement.
Politically, there is a question of whether some politicians don't understand economics or the realities of business and/or of wealthy people. Whether it is from misunderstanding of how reality works or for political exploitation purposes, they have contributed strongly to a class divide (called by some a "class war") where more people are encouraged to fight against the "unfairness" and "exploitation" of and by the rich. All of that is pure bullbleep, but any uninformed person could easily buy into it. The right/wrong of it is a pity, but the economic harm of such a way of viewing things is great. And not from a "trickle-down" point of view, but from the fact that the discouragement and impairment of business causes less growth and fewer jobs for the people who need the jobs (ironically many of them are the ones protesting and fighting against businesspeople and/or "the rich" - they are harming themselves!).
Notes for the article:
Are rich people evil, especially if they are businessmen, which are believed to have been ruined by greed?
Did most of them cheat to get there? Are they just getting away with it? How do we judge them, by how many go to jail????
"Rich people don’t care." Really?
Even if this were true of more of them than the average population is it true of all of them? Should they be trarred with the same brush? Should all Muslims be tarred with the terrorist-murderer jihad extremist brush?
Should all poor people be tarred with the brush of the larger than avareage percentage of laziness and entitlement?
A great example of most likely prejudiced “scientific” “thinking” is in Are Rich People Unethical? where the author puts forth lots of “mays” as if they were purported facts, cloaked in intellectual clothing. Any example of a conclusion first and then selective evidence as in The Believing Brain.
Yep, I would guess that some people who have hard-slogged their way to riches might have been so narrowly focused that they are not aware of many things. And it is possible that some of them feel a sense of entitlement.
But the generalities and labels about them overall are a sad case of bad thinking and poor logic - and one of the worst examples of prejudice. Ironically, the people who are so prejudiced, but certain of their beliefs, are the ones who often protest how prejudiced others are and how awful it is!
Is Bloomberg evil?
Barack Obama? (He's rich.)
Jon Huntsman, Sr. (the great philanthropist father of the presidential candidate)
About a week ago, Gallup informed us that half (48%) of Democrats believe rich people offer no benefit to society, but most people think they are of benefit.
It is almost an iron law of government that bureaucracies, lacking the discipline of bottom line accountability, are wasteful and expensive. (This is another why limited government is a good idea.)
