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Anyone interested in this area check out Ted Chiang’s short story It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning.
Premise: In the future, scientists conduct an experiment to genetically modify poor children to improve their intelligence, so they have a better chance to succeed in life. While the experiment proves to be successful, and the children’s IQ increases, they still fail to achieve social progress, because the entire state system favors the rich only.
Thanks. That was… interesting but depressing to read.
Anyway, here’s the link in case anyone else happens to be curious.
Where do we find this story.
Maybe in one of the two links that other commenters posted to it?
A professional audiobook version also exists within Chiang’s collection Exhalation for all the homies with eye problems from blindness to convergence insufficiency.
Makes sense. Not just because our system is shit, but also because money is only up to a point a motivator for ‘more intelligent’ people and overall doesn’t matter as much as intrinsic motivation.
There are a couple of studies on this:
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Bénabou & Tirole (2003) – Shows how external incentives (including money) can undermine intrinsic motivation, especially in cognitively demanding tasks.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-937X.00253 -
Cerasoli, Nicklin & Ford (2014) – A 40‑year meta‑analysis demonstrating that intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of performance quality than monetary incentives, which mainly increase quantity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035661 -
Morris et al. (2022) – A comprehensive review of the neurocognitive basis of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, showing that intrinsic motivation is tied to cognitive engagement and autonomy.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291722001611 -
Kreps (1997) – Explains how economic incentives interact with social norms and why money often fails to motivate when intrinsic or normative drivers dominate.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2950946
Big thanks to 🫵. I love getting a collection of PDFs like these, feeding them into NotebookLM (made by Google unfortunately), and have it generate a 30-minute audio sumnary in podcast format. It fills an important vacuum for wannabe nerds that have problems reading visually. 🤙
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Justice is a luxury the poor can’t afford because the rich pay to evade.
Justice is a spider web.
It’s made to catch small bugs.
Bigger animals just trample the damn thing.That’s a very good way to think about it.
That’s why you all should know that Epstein didn’t kill himself.
I wonder if he was allowed to kill himself, as an alternative to something much worse (e.g. being killed in a much more painful or gruesome way). It’s clear that the truly powerful people couldn’t let him testify against them.
That could be possible in a hollywood movie, in real life, Epstein did not kill himself
In other news: fire is hot.
What autocracy and plutocracy are: functions of government are only the province of the privileged capable of cruel manipulation.
Totally.
Also, it’s kinda funny to strictly follow this logic, because it means that the rich still struggle to get justice if the criminals are the rich.
When a rich person screws over another rich person, the one with more money will be able to inflict greater injustice on the other. Either way, this equation involves no justice, and people pay to keep it that way.
I begged to know if justice
is a form far-out or in
he said son, there is no justice
there’s just what
and that just is.
So that means I can start woodchipping criminals, right?
After all, there is no justice.
This is the endgame of uncapped lawyer fees.
Any law that is solely enforced by a fine is simply a pay-to-do activity for the rich.
Some fines aren’t a fixed amount. Could also be a percentage of your annual income. There are ways around that as well, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
Could also be a percentage of your annual income
But the truly rich have no “annual income” so wouldn’t their fine be even less than yours?
The guy who sits at the back of a Phantom has no money or income so he pays no taxes, and he would pay very little fines. The guy who drives a BMW would end up paying enormous fines.
Yes, this system has exploits.
During vacation time, you can see other differences too. Strangely though, the first travels to a private island by a private jet. The latter would fly in first class and stay at an expensive hotel.
What do the police do with it then ?
They have nothing to do with it.
I disagree. The rich house the police in the USA. The police in the USA don’t own homes frequently in the USA because that information is frequently publicly available. Property records would tie police officers names to an address publicly. So rich people house them for cheap rent in their extra homes to act as protection. No muss, no public records, no fuss, and rich guy has a knight errant available all the time.
Too bad the poor can’t afford to do that.
I was saying the police have nothing to do with Justice.
they use it as a cudgel and beat the poor with it until they submit.
Their job is to enforce the law. That may or may not be associated with justice. No guarantees though.
If there are reforms, I think that one of them is access to lawyers. Rich or poor, you shouldn’t pay for lawyers. Instead, they are all placed into a common pool, where each side picks their representatives. If both sides happen to pick the same lawyers, they roll a dice in front of the court until someone has the higher number. That person gets the lawyer, and the other side draws someone else of choice from the pool.
I also think that lawyers should rotate in the role they may serve after every case. Prosecution -> Defense -> Prosecution -> Defense, for their entire career as courtroom representatives. If a lawyer refuses to represent, they are barred from serving as a lawyer for four months, and their refusal goes onto a common dossier that anyone can see.
This encourages the whole profession of lawyers to ensure that the courtroom is fair to both defense and prosecution, and that both roles are equally valid when it comes to reputation.
Regardless, if you are a defender or a prosecutor, if you want to win, you have to know how the other side works. New lawyer normally need to do pro bono (represent for free) in order to gain experience. Large law firm also dedicate a chunk of their business for pro bono, for public good.
There are many different types of lawyers out there. I’m not sure if it’s helpful for an intellectual property lawyer to represent a person accused of murder in court.
Not saying I have an answer. Just something to think about.
Hello, I’m not sober and can’t figure out what this means. How do the rich “pay to evade” juice?
If you can afford fancy lawyers, you can exploit loopholes in the legal system. It’s not ethical or right or fair, but money makes it technically legal.
Also the Public Prosecution Office (or whatever one’s country equivalent) are almost almost always arbitrary gatekeepers of the Criminal Justice System, so if they chose from somebody not to be prosecuted for something, they’re not prosecuted and similarly, they can chose to crack down on somebody for something minor and that person will be dragged through the coals for it (they might or not win in the end, but of they can’t afford good lawyers they’ll probably lose).
So people with enough influence often never even got to court when they commit a crime because the public prosecutors simply don’t prosecute, which they can since they have arbitrary power.
This is what we’re seeing with all those in the Epstein Files, by the way.
Pretty much sums it up
Hypothetically, how much wealthier do I need to be in order to pay to lock up a racist white dude?
You mean those broke warehouse workers who spend their pennies on ugly tattoos and cheap beer? If you have a decent insurance that covers legal bills, you should be fine.
