"Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger"

It's just a memorandum and some footnotes in reference to "THE SPIRIT LEVEL -Why Greater Equality Societies Stronger-". This work is written by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and published in 2009 for the first issue. In fact, what makes me feel like reading this one is David Graeber's"Bullshit Job" and a report from The New Economic Foundation in UK. So it's a kind of endless chain-reading.

・Section of "Clinging to the ladder"

So why do more people tend to have mental health problems in more unequal places? Psychologist and journalist Oliver James uses an analogy with infectious disease to explain the link. The 'affluenza' virus, according to James, is a 'set of values which increase our vunlerability to emotional distress', which he believes is more common in affluent societies. It entailes placing a high value on acquiring money and possesions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous. These kinds of values places us at greater risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and personality disorder, and are closely related to those we discussed in Chapter 3. In another recent book on the same subject, philosopher Alain de Botton describes 'status anxiety' as 'a worry so pernicious as to be capable of ruining exntended stretches of our values.' When we fail to maintain our position in the social hierarchy we are 'condemned to consider the successful with bitterness and ourselves with shame'. (p.69)

・A past example of how reductions in inequality can lead to rapid improvements in health

A dramatic example of how reductions in ineuqality can lead to rapid improvements in health is the experience of Britain during the two world wars. Increases in life expectancy for civilians during the war decades were twice those seen throughout the rest of the twentieth century. In the decades which contain the world wars, life expectancy increased between 6 and 7 years for men and women, whereas in the decades before, between and after, life expectancy increased by between 1 and 4 years. Although the nation's nutritional status improved with rationing in the Second World War, this wwas not true for the First World War, and material living standards declined during both wars. However, both wartimes were characterized by full employment and consderably narrower income differences - the result of deliberate government policies to promote co-operation with the war effort. During the Second World War, for example, working-class incomes rose by 9 per cent, while incomes of the middle class fell by 7 per cent;rates of relative poverty were halved. The resulting sense of camaraderie and social cohesion not only led to better health - crime rates also fell. (pp.84-85)

・The relashionship between aspirations and inequality for children

More children reported low aspirations in more equal countries; in unequal countries children were more likely to have high aspirations. Some of this may be accounted for by the fact that in more equal societies, less-skilled work may be less stigmatized,in comparison to more unequal societies where career choices are dominated by rather star-struck ideas of financial success and images of glamour and celebrity. (pp.116-117)

・About the bicycling reaction

Displaced aggression among non-human primates has been labelled 'the bicycling reaction'. Primatologist Volker Summer explains that the image being conjured up is of someone on a racing bicycle, bowing to thier superiors, while kicking down on those beneath. He was describing how animals living in strict social hierarchies appease dominant animals and attack inferiors ones. (pp.167-168)

In more unequal societies, more people are oriented towards dominance; in more egalitarian societies, more people are oriented towards inclusiveness and empathy. (p.168)

Bigger income differences seem to solidify the social structure and decrease the chances of upward mobility. Where there are greater ineuqalities of outcome, equal opportunity is a significantly more distant prospect. (p.169)

・Difficulty for the greater equality

Evidence that material self-intrest is the governing principle of human life seems to be everywhere. The efficiency of the market economy seems to prove that greed and avarice are, as economic theory assumes, the overriding human motivations. Even the burden of crime appears to spring from the difficulty of stopping people breaking the rules to satisfy selfish desires. Signs of a caring, sharing, human nature seem thin on the ground. Some of this scepticism might be allayed by a more fumdamental understanding of how we, as human beings, are damaged by inequality and have the capacity for something else. we need to undersrand how, without genetically re-engineering ourselves, greater equality allows a more sociable human nature to emerge. (p.199)

・Hobbesian problem

... Thomas Hobbes made the danger of cnflict, caused by rivalry for scarce resources, the basis of his political philosophy. As we all have the same needs, competition for scarce necessities would lead to a continuous conflict of 'every man against every man'. Hobbes believed that, because of this danger, the most important task of government was simply to keep the peace. He assumed that, without the firm hand of government, life 'in a state of nature' would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. (p.201)

But perhaps Hobbes missed an important part of the story. As well as tbe potential for conflict, human-beings have a unique potential to be each other's best source of co-operation, learning, love and assistance of every kind. While there's not much that ostriches or otters can do for an injured member of their own species, among humans there is. But it's not just that we are able to give each other care and protection. Because most of our abilities are learned, we depend on others for the acquisition of our life skills.Similarly, our unique capacity for specialization and division of labour means that human beings have an unrivalled potential to benefit from co-operation. So as well as the potential to be rach other's worst rivals, we also have the potential to be each other's greatest source of comfort and security. (p.201)

・Bonobo's wisdom

Often dubbed the 'caring, sharing' apes, they engage in sexual activity - including mutual masterbation - frequently and in any combination of sexes and ages. Sex has evolved not only to serve reproductive functions, but also to relieve tensions in situations which, in other species, might cause conflict. As de Waal says, 'sex is the glue of banobo society'. It eases conflict, signals friendliness, and calms stressful situations. Bonobos use sex to solve the problem of how to avoid conflict over access to scarce resources. Feeding time is apparently the peak of sexual activity. Even before food is thrown into their enclosure, male bonobos get erections and males and females invite both opposite and same-sex partners for sex. Possible conflict over non-food resources is dealt with in the same way. (p.201)

・Reducing carbon emissons fairly

Improving the real quality of our lives at lower levels of consumption is only one of the contributions equality can make to reducing carbon emissions. There are two others. First, if policies to cut emissions are to gain public acceptance, they must be seen to be applied fairly. The richer you are and the more you spend, the more you are likely to contribute to global warming. The carbon emissions caused by the consumption of a rich person may be ten times as high as the consumption of a poorer person in the same society. If the rich are the worst offenders, then fair remedies must surely affect them most. Policies that squeezed the poor while allowing the rich to continue to produce much higher levels of emissions would be unlikely to gain widespread public support. (p.222)

・Income inequality and innovation

It is often suggested that invention and innovation go with inequality and depend on the promise of individual financial incentives. However, Figure 15.3 suggests the contrary - that more equal societies tend to be more creative. It shows that there is tendency for more patents to be granted per head of population in more equal societies than in less equal ones. Whether this is because talent goes underdeveloped or wasted in more unequal societies, or whether hierarchy breeds conformity, is anyone's guess. But is does suggest that greater equality will not make societies less adaptable. (p.225)

・Inequality and consumerism 

Inequality does indeed increase the pressure to consume. (p.228)

→So inequality can be a latent tool to entice ordinary people to consume more than they should be affordable? This might be the case, if any sometimes.

So rather than assuming that we are stuck with levels of self-interested consumerism, individualism and materialism which must need to recognize that these are not fixed expressions of human nature. Instead they reflect the characteristics of the societies in which we find ourselves and vary even from one rich market democracy to another. At the most fundamental level, what reducing inequality is about is shifting the balance from the divisive, self-interested consumerism driven by status competition, towards a more socially integrated and affiliative society. Greater equality can help us develop the public ethos and commitment to working together which we need if we are going to solve the problems which threaten us all. As wartime leaders knew, if a society has to pull together, policies must be seen to be fair and income differences have to be reduced. (p.233)

→the last sentence over the wartime cooperation force, this still might be the case in Asian countries, especially in China, in a way that, better or worse, ordinary people tend to be genuinely patriotic under the influence of Communist'regime and its propaganda. In this way, they are urged to be massively coordinated and integral when being against all odds. 

・The corporative way to create a more egalitarian society 

As a way of creating a more egalitarian society, employee-ownership and control have may advantages. First, it enables a process of social emancipation as people become members of a team. Second, it puts the scale of earning differentials untimately under democratic control: if the body of employees want big income differentials they could choose to keep them. Third, it involves a very substantial redistribution of wealth of the income from that wealth. In this context, that is a particularly important advantage. Fourth, it improves productivity and so has a competitive advantage. Fifth, it increases the likelihood that people will regain the experience of being part of a community. And sixth, it is likely to improve sociability in the wider society. The real reward, however, is not simply to have a few employee-owned companies in a society still dominated by a hierarchical ideology and status-seeking, but to have a society of people freer of those divisions. And that can only be achieved by a sustained campaign over several decades. (pp.260-261)  

→This system actually already adapted in Huawei Ltd. in China, which works well and is up and running quite a lot to the extent of which has been rolling out their business all over the world. Huawei's kind of the most exemplary one.

・Freedom  and equality

The scale of ecnomic inequality which exists today is less an expression of freedom and democracy as of their denial. Who, apart from the super-rich, would vote for multi-million dollar bonuses for the corporate and financial elite while denying adequate incomes to people who undertake so many essential and sometimes unpleasant tasks - such as caring for the elderly, collecting the trash, or working in emergency services? The truth is that modern inequality exists because democracy is excluded from the economic sphere. It needs therefore to be dealt with by an extention of democracy into the workplace. We need to experiment with every form of economic democracy - employee ownership, producer and consumer cooperatives, employee representatives on company boards and so on. (p.264)

→The middle part of this sub-section is fully reminiscent of "Bullshit Job" and its author decd. David Graeber. Pray for him.

Possible exntensive reading will be on 

・Marshall Sahlins, "Stone Age Economics", London: Routledge, 2003

・F.B. de Waal and F.Lanting, "Bonobo: The forgotten ape", Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 

・P.Bourdieu, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, London: Routledge, 1984