“Everyone’s special, Dash.” Dash: “Which is another way of saying no one is.”
Exactly. A person can only be high status by being higher-status than someone else; so one person’s high status must lead to another person’s low status. So status must be zero-sum.
I have no trouble visualizing a society composed mostly of people with high status, or a society composed mostly of people with low status, with very different sums of total status.
Many people may share social power, especially if they don’t choose to wield it often or to the detriment of others. I suppose you’d say that you count them as having it in exact proportion to their tendency to actually use it, or in terms of the power they’d likely have if they chose to war against one another.
No, the point is if someone gains social power, someone else must lose that power. Sharing of power is fine in this framework—if you share power over the tribe, for example, then you don’t have full power over the tribe. For one, you don’t have the same kind of power over the individuals with whom you are sharing power.
What if you construct more than one cake, then arrange distribution so everybody gets a bigger piece than somebody else on at least one cake. Thus, because of human tendency to emphasize what makes them feel good, people notice their privileged cake(s) and disregard their loss cake(s).
A real-world equivalent would be the religious concept of poorness as a virtue.
So it IS zero, since there is less cake for everybody else.
Helen Parr (to her son): “Everyone’s special, Dash.” Dash: “Which is another way of saying no one is.” —the Incredibles
Exactly. A person can only be high status by being higher-status than someone else; so one person’s high status must lead to another person’s low status. So status must be zero-sum.
I have no trouble visualizing a society composed mostly of people with high status, or a society composed mostly of people with low status, with very different sums of total status.
I think we might be using different definitions of status. So instead of status, I’ll say that social power is zero-sum.
Many people may share social power, especially if they don’t choose to wield it often or to the detriment of others. I suppose you’d say that you count them as having it in exact proportion to their tendency to actually use it, or in terms of the power they’d likely have if they chose to war against one another.
No, the point is if someone gains social power, someone else must lose that power. Sharing of power is fine in this framework—if you share power over the tribe, for example, then you don’t have full power over the tribe. For one, you don’t have the same kind of power over the individuals with whom you are sharing power.
You can gain social power that was previously held by natural randomness.
What if you construct more than one cake, then arrange distribution so everybody gets a bigger piece than somebody else on at least one cake. Thus, because of human tendency to emphasize what makes them feel good, people notice their privileged cake(s) and disregard their loss cake(s).
A real-world equivalent would be the religious concept of poorness as a virtue.