[SwellJoe]

Government can definitely play a role, however, in how many kids grow up to become role models. We could talk about the prison industrial complex and the rate at which it imprisons young black and brown folks, compared to white folks, even for crimes that are committed by white folks at the same rate or higher (like drug crimes; white folks do more drugs and serve less time for it than black folks). Felons don't often become leaders in the business world.

There are systemic changes that are needed to fix this problem. I didn't think it was particularly relevant to this article so I explicitly excluded it from my comment, but one cannot deny that government plays a huge role in all of this.

[meric]

The problems of today are only due to the roles government was playing yesterday. The government only needs to do less and society will fix itself. The people are in prison only because of government in the first place. Felons are only restricted from working because of the government. The danger of saying it's the government's job is we as individuals begin to absolve ourselves of responsibility, because we start to think its someone else's problem.

[Florin_Andrei]

> The government only needs to do less and society will fix itself.

And by "fix itself" you mean it will shift even more wealth from the lower 75% to the top 1% - who will step in to fill the power void.

"Money begets money, power begets power." Society is full of self-reinforcing feedback loops like that. You need a damping factor that prevents any single individual or corporation from amassing too much power.

[meric]

Look above and you see the more rich and powerful stacked one after another, wealth and power increasing seemingly infinitely the higher you look.

Look below and you see the poor and powerless, stacked one after another, poverty and powerlessness infinitely desperate the lower you look.

Unless you're near the very top or the very bottom, at every level of this power ladder the view is the same.

"I recently asked a wealthy political donor why he was supporting Bill de Blasio and his attacks on the wealthy."

"Because inequality is a problem in New York," he said. "The rich have gotten their way for too long."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/10/...

Compared to the poor in developing and undeveloped countries where people earn $5 a day, your wealth and power relative to them might as well be the same as the wealth and power from 0.1% percenter relative to you. Them looking at you would feel the same as you (assuming $100,000 income) looking at a CEO making $5 million a year.

The only question is, with your wealth and power, how will you diffuse your power to reduce the world's inequality? If you can solve this problem, you can show the example for your family and close friends. If your family and close friends can solve this problem, so can your community, your neighbourhood, the rest of your city and nation.

[Florin_Andrei]

It's not a problem that can be solved by my "wealth and power" (both of which are in rather meager supply).

It's an issue of mentality. A society is what it is because its members share a set of assumptions, ideas, mentalities. The one-percenters get even more one-percent-y every year because we all hold certain "truths" to be "self-evident".

For starters, we need less individualism. I'm not saying less individual freedom, mind you.

[meric]

> It's not a problem that can be solved by my "wealth and power" (both of which are in rather meager supply).

You have an observation shared with thousands of millionaires in NYC.

I'm helping my company setup a software development office in South Africa. It won't do much, but it'll provide half a dozen individuals with well paying jobs and diffuse some wealth we collect from Fortune 500 companies.

I'm also planning a trip to a developing country, paid for by that government, to deliver a class to local CS graduates there on how to become a contractors working with projects paying $50+ an hour. It won't do much but if I can help one or two individuals do this I'd be very happy. I was lucky when I traveled there for vacation, managed to talk to someone who works with the government's ministry of education.

I've only been working full time as a software engineer and formally graduated only last May and this is what I'm doing.

My wealth and power is likely more meagre than yours - but it is a lot less meagre than many others.

I hope one day you'll find your own way to help solve problems you see in this world, too.

> It's an issue of mentality.

I agree with you. See my reply to SwellJoe.

[SwellJoe]

I'm an anarchist. You're preaching to the choir on that front. I think the police soft strike in NYC is the most fun thing in the world right now.

But, until the rest of the world is convinced that police are an outdated artifact of a dark age in human history and should be abolished, we have to reform the laws that inflict "justice" dramatically unevenly across races and classes.

[meric]

I think, to improve the environment around us, what matters most is our mindset. If the way we think is best suited to the environment we aspire to live in, the environment will change. To reduce the people's dependence on the government, independence as a trait must be promoted. That means convincing people their lives are up to them, and not to wait for the government to do something. You know as well as I do the governments of 2015 are dysfunctional and power hungry enough they're not going to do anything of the sort you're hoping for, even if it earnestly tries, even ObamaCare as well as interference in Syria and Iraq was a mess.

To change the world, we first cultivate ourselves, and then our family, community, and radiate outwards, and finally the world will be changed.

Confucius

When things are investigated, then true knowledge is achieved; when true knowledge is achieved, then the will becomes sincere; when the will is sincere, then the heart is set right (or then the mind sees right); when the heart is set right, then the personal life is cultivated; when the personal life is cultivated, then the family life is regulated; when the family life is regulated, then the national life is orderly; and when the national life is orderly, then there is peace in this world.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 54.

What is firmly established cannot be uprooted.

What is firmly grasped cannot slip away.

It will be honoured from generation to generation.

Cultivate Virtue in yourself,

And Virtue will be real.

Cultivate it in the family,

And Virtue will abound.

Cultivate it in the village,

And Virtue will grow.

Cultivate it in the nation,

And Virtue will be abundant.

Cultivate it in the universe,

And Virtue will be everywhere.

Therefore look at the body as body;

Look at the family as family;

Look at the village as village;

Look at the nation as nation;

Look at the universe as universe.

How do I know the universe is like this?

By looking!