The Chewbacca defense of inequality

[pataphor]

I wasn't going to post today since there hasn't been a sufficient "topic
buildup", or whatever one would call it, in my mind, that would justify
my taking the attention of the non existent readers of this newsgroup.

However there is one single thing, that is not so much a positive
contribution, as well as lacking in diversity, that I feel justified
in addressing, even if it is only for at least making a formal attempt
to quash and exterminate this recent meme, don't say the Internet never
warned you.

This concerns some kind of research that seems to be popping up, with
people reacting to it in an earnest way as if it had any substance,
but it doesn't, so this post claiming that Chewbacca lives on
planet Endor, which doesn't make any sense, is entirely justified.

What does a Chewbacca defense amount to? In essence it's an attempt to
confuse matters by bringing up unrelated stuff to the point of
convincing one's audience that the whole matter makes no sense and the
whole trial should be declared void.

I am not sure if this research about humans being naturally averse to
upending the social order, which would explain why we are satisfied
tolerating the rich amassing billions and billions is the product of
some conglomerate think tank or just the result of people being afraid
to speak truth (by clicking some buttons in an experimental setup) to
power (a Chinese research institute).

The experiment goes like this: people are presented with some random
assignments of money to (virtual) other people and they are asked if
they agree to transfer some money from one to the other to make the
distribution more equal between them. The result is purportedly that
people resist taking so much money from the initially 'rich' person in
the experiment that they in turn now become the 'poor' ones, while they
generally do agree with money transfers that make the outcome more
equitable.

The explanation seems to be one along the lines of people don't liking
to disturb the social order as they 'instinctively' fear for some kind
of revolution from the former rich that would result from them
being dissatisfied with suddenly becoming poor.

The disingenuity of the experiment lies not only in mistaking people
that do not want to repeat the errors of the rich, like becoming
criminals themselves to rectify criminality, but instead
preferring an outcome that would once and for all settle things to
everyone's satisfaction, for people that would be afraid to reverse
things from a distribution like say 10 to 1 to, say, one having 5 and
the other 6, but also, and more importantly, in comparing people
becoming rich and poor in society via some random process, with
what is actually happening in reality: a situation of exploitation,
misdirection and force, whereby those that align themselves with the
winners start to think of themselves as the rightful owners of the
appropriated goods.

So, if the experimental condition was phrased a bit more according to
reality, like would you care that person x, who has cheated by asking a
friend to rob people of their money and put it in his account while
also removing all traces of what happened (white collar crime), would
you care that this person now ended up with nothing instead, I highly
doubt the experiment would yield the same outcome as under the
"randomly assigned money" condition.

We see that the very way people look at this stuff and surround the
experiment with their interpretations and explanations makes all the
difference. In my more realistic comparison of what is really going
on in the world to the experimental condition, people would be
inclined to let the appropriators end up with nothing, or even
with negative outcomes, as we can easily analogize from for example the
many people that are in prisons.

The question that remains is why do so many people still think wealth is
acquired at random and why are people so blind to the very scope of
inequality, like comparing an experimental setup where one or the other
person gets a few more sheep than the other, with a situation where
people 'accidentally' end up owning virtually all sheep on the
continent?

P.

"Roooarrgh ur roo"