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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.
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.
Thanks. That was… interesting but depressing to read.
Anyway, here’s the link in case anyone else happens to be curious.
King
We live in a democracy.
You might, I’m stuck in the United States.
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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Yep 100%
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.
Justice is a luxury the poor can’t afford because the rich pay to evade.
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.
Where I come from, there’s a saying that goes something like this: ‘There are only two kinds of people in jail: the very stupid and the very poor.’
😢
Oh, this post is turning out to be a sad one.Anyway, I’ve heard that mental illnesses and other psychological issues often lead to jail and only get worse in there. Modern societies are not at all prepared to handle these kinds of problems.
Insofar as “modern societies” refer to the people who hold power in them, I’m not so sure modern societies are interested in handling these kinds of problems.
Totally agree. It’s all about not being interested in handling these problems. That’s a bit strange though, because the current style is really expensive.
This is the endgame of uncapped lawyer fees.
That’s why you all should know that Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Pretty much sums it up
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.
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.
they use it as a cudgel and beat the poor with it until they submit.
The cost of justice is too damn high!
That made me think of a riddle.
The poor beg for my arrival.
The rich never want to see me.
The poor can’t afford my visit.
The rich pay block my entry.
Who am I?The sweet release of death.
Oh. Good point.
Well, that works too, I guess.I don’t know the intended answer!
Not a problem. I like your thinking outside the box solution too.
Justice?
Adult Santa Claus
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.
Hello, I’m not sober and can’t figure out what this means. How do the rich “pay to evade” juice?
Epstein Files is the most recent example of how the rich and powerful evade prosecution.
They know a guy, the guy they know also knows a guy and so on… In this chain of events words goes around from top to bottom to do nothing against these certain special people or there will be consequences.
And those guys who did nothing get secret gifts or have cushy jobs in billion dollar companies after they decide to go to private sector or get financial support when they decide to join politics.
If you can afford fancy layers, 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.
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 in an expensive hotel.
