[borissk]

Actually compared to the economies of past societies, the modern economy in the West is amazing. If you work hard, have a little bit above the average intelligence and potentially a bit of luck you can make a lot of money. If not I guess you can make excuses.

The simplest way to organize a group of people, animals, organisms is to make one of them leader and have the rest follow him. This is the way our ancestors behaved for hundreds of millions of years and it's hardwired into our brains.

[mym1990]

The fact that you think our ancestors go back hundreds of millions of years…is wild.

[borissk]

How far do you think our ancestors go?

[mym1990]

Homo sapiens are about 300k, homo erectus about 2 million and if we are going back to chimpanzees and gorillas, 10 million max.

[bombolo]

I'm sure you're completely unaware of the fact that your world view comes from protestant religion, which equates richness with god's favour, thus ending up considering poor people as worse sinners who don't deserve a better life due to their moral failings.

People of other religions and cultures don't necessarily share your same faith (I realise you think you're being completely rational, but to an external observer you are not).

[trashtester]

I'm an atheist, but this is what I learned in school (by Protestant Christian Socialist teachers):

  Matthew 19:23-26 American Standard Version (ASV)
  And Jesus said unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, It is hard 
  for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say 
  unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than 
  for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

[bombolo]

In my experience that bit is more forgotten in protestant countries rather than catholic ones. As in, in catholic ones rich people aren't seen as model of virtue and everybody knows that "hard work" won't get you there.

[trashtester]

> In my experience that bit is more forgotten in protestant countries rather than catholic ones.

I think you're misunderstanding the "hard work" part. Unlike (perhaps) in the US, the work ethic part of northern/Germanic countries is not about working super hard to get rich, but rather to do the job with the integrity and effort that is reasonable, given your health and abilities.

The typical reward is not to get super rich quickly. But if you uphold the ideal, you deserve respect, even if you're cleaning staff or the janitor.

Similarly, NOT living up to the ethical standards will be damning regardless of social status. Cheating and corruption comes with harsh social punishment, especially for those near the top.

Remember that we're talking about the part of the world that pratically invented both Social Democracy and the Nordic Model.

Now, I also have family and contacts in various places in Southern Europe and South East Asia, some of which as very wealthy. What these ALL have in common is that various types of corruption and plutocracy are just facts of life that are taken for granted, and nobody cares.

Now my own hypothesis is that religion plays only a small role in this difference, and that this is mostly a consequence of the difficulty of surviving as a farmer in Northern Europe during the medieaval era, and especially in Scandinavia.

People used to live on isolated farms or in small villages, where the farms would barely produce enough food to sustain the family of the farmer. Those who did not work at least moderately hard usually would not survive, and there was little left over to give to either the poor or the nobility.

This led to an egalitarian outlook, where people who wanted to live off the produce of others were not tolerated easily, regardless of whether they were beggars, thieves or barons. And since production was low, there was little to tax or steal, anyway.

In warmer climates, farm yields were much greater, which caused success to be much more about social relationships than hard work at the farm.