The full measure of one's humanity

I know... that's a fancy sounding title.

I spent time on some bad bosses yesterday because it is interesting how much one individual's desire to have more can affect their estimation of how much someone else deserves. I added an article about Amazon employees on food stamps yesterday, but Wal-mart employees being on public assistance has been the status quo for years. More recently there have been many stories of homeless people with full time jobs working for Disney or various Silicon Valley companies.

What I see looking at our local homeless issues is that income inequality is a strong underlying issue. As long as there are people who can pay more, it shuts out the people who can't. At least for housing, supply is not growing fast enough to bring down demand, so the limited supply drives up demand. The people who can compensate with more money do that. A lot of people get left out. That doesn't always result in ending up on the streets, but it does not help economic well-being.

That can lead to a very complicated discussion, but generally the favored response against a living wage is that people should be learning better skills so they are worth more than a minimum wage employee. It is the individual worker's responsibility to earn enough to live - and to adjust their lifestyle accordingly - and other factors beyond that individual's control should have nothing to do it.

There's at least two longer discussions there.

It's easy for a corporation to be heartless (it's technically built into a corporate charter), but in smaller companies you still see it: if I pay you more, I can't go to Aruba for two weeks. If I pay you more, I can't afford the labels I want. The interactions with the employees should help, but in a company small enough for that LL the numbers are smaller. the impact of an increase in employee benefits is in some ways more measurable.

Looking at African-American history -  not just during slaver -, you can see this clearly. There was professed fondness for the property at times, but there was a shocking ease of disregard too.

One of my most disturbing reads was Medical Apartheid: The Dark Side of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present by Harriet A. Washington.

I am not going to give examples from it. The book is worth reading, and Washington does a great job with her handling of the material and finding a path forward. Also, a lot of it is becoming better known anyway - I have seen more articles recently on J Marion Sims lately that talk about his "methods".

I finished the book on March 6th, so it's been a few months. I remember thinking during the time that the people who would do this clearly could not have seen the people they used as fully human. I now think that was an oversimplification.

For example, one reason Sims used Black women for his experiments was that it was supposed that they didn't feel pain the same way. Okay, except that if other doctors eventually stopped participating in restraining the women because it was so disturbing, that indicates demonstrable pain, right? Similarly, if to punish a slave you whipped brutally, and it was the only way of getting through, you must still believe that they are feeling something. Unless it's just for spite.

Honestly, I don't completely understand how it works. I know it is common for dehumanization to be used as a tactic in war. I see dehumanization as an aspect of sexism and racism: they are stupider or more corrupt or something where the effect on them does not matter. Except it feels like there is an underlying satisfaction in it mattering. It feels like it isn't as much about the other being less as it is about abusing the other making you more.

Maybe a structural inequality tempts those with any inclination toward sadism. Again, financial success has made some people worse people. Being worse has also helped some people become financially successful.

It just seems worth pointing out once again that after reading a lot of true crime, it was fascinating how much of a common factor greed was in sociopaths. It's hard not to think that was the motivation that moved them to antisocial behavior, where otherwise they might have stopped at thrill-seeking easily bored narcissist.

Yeah, I know that sounds like someone, but he's greedy too.