The Earth would be better off were the human species to go extinct.
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I agree with your sentements on money, but as to everyone having the same opportunity to gain wealth? That is patently untrue, and completely absurd. You're telling me that an African child in Malawi has as much chance of making money through industriousness as one born in the USA? Despite having no access to education, to health care, to food, to water? That's very hard to justify.
OK, I should have specified the USA.
You're telling me that a child born to a single parent in a drug infested, crime ridden neighborhood in the USA, has as much chance of wealth through industriousness as someone born in a nice, safe suburb in a 2 income household? That simply cannot be true. The odds of the child born to poorer parents being able to afford college is just ridiculously low. The odds of them even surviving to that age is markedly smaller than those living in alternative areas.
The opportunity is there, but one has to take it. A black man came and asked if he could sleep in our barn, he was dirty and smelled and had little education but we didn't turn him away. Every day he went out with a shopping cart and collected scrap metal and other trash. At night he sorted it and when he had enough of anything worth selling, he sold it. The last time I saw him he was driving a new Caddy. There are plenty of other similar success stories. If one can do it, anyone can do it- if they WANT to.
My parents couldn't afford to send me to college, I paid my one way working two full-time jobs.
Given that only 1 in ten people in the world get to go to University, due purely to lack of financial means of not them but their family, and it's a well established fact that those that go to university gain higher paid jobs than those that don't on average, the deck is firmly stacked against those that don't come from moderately well off families with regards their access to opportunity.
The bottom line is, capitalism and money is a noble idea as Rand would argue, it's the measure of all the worth of all the peole that put anything into the manufacture of anything else. However, it only functions when everyone has equal access to education and opportunity within that globalized system. At the moment that is not the case.
While there are exceptional cases of those from worse off families doing very well for themselves, those are statistically verifiable, exceptions to the general rule that the financial well being of your parents has a much higher effect on your own wealth than your own talent alone.
The opportunity is available. The amount of effort one may have to expend is variable but it is still there.
You should have said in the USA? Well then your whole argument is bogus. Your point was that anyone can make it anywhere in the world, which is the subject of the post. Your idea of societal equality in the USA is still heinously incorrect but that's a side issue, the subject of this post is the planet. Money and this system is a problem, sadly.
Once again, you quote an exception. The fact is, the access to educational opportunity is not equal in the USA. Some people get stuck into inner city public schools with poorer standards and much tougher learning environments than others for the simple fact their born there. That's a problem. Their education tends to suffer. Statistics support this. They have a lower chance of being able to pay to get to University, as it is harder to obtain a job from a poor educational background, statistics support this, whether you want to believe them or not. Bottom line is, equal access to opportunity/education means equal access. Some lazy boy with rich parents bank rolls his way into Stanford, meanwhile fifty poor kids are busting ass and working just for the privilidge to go to a second rate college because they don't have the educational record to get into the job getting ivy league schools. That's not equal access. The very fact that the effort is variable means that it's not equal access to opportunity and the hard working aren't always rewarded.
Your whole speil is fantasy that's not supported by the facts and the statistical data. Not everyone that's poor is lazy. Spoken like someone that's been moderately well off for a lifetime.
Frankly, given our rote mismanagement of the planet, and our complete disregard for our place in nature (thanks in no small part to the 'man is higher than nature' belief posited by Judo-Christian-Islamic faiths) I believe that the world, and every animal on it would be significantly better off without humans.
The thread title proposition has some merit; it would probably suit the earth, its flora and fauna better if we were not here. However we are here and we want to survive. Therefore, the proposition of the thread is redundant.
What is not is how we are going to ensure our survival and that of as many species as we can, not only because we love to keep things nice and not damage them, but also because we now begin to realise that the environment affects us in ways we can't anticipate.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-13-2010 at 04:14 AM..
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