Who are 'They?'

When a person says 'they' it is assumed that person is referring to a particular or specific group of people. For instance if a person says "They've cured cancer!" that person is probably referring to scientists or even a specific group of scientists. I, on the other hand, tend to think a little differently on this subject. When a person says 'they' in that manner I consider that person is referring to the entire human race as 'they.'

It might be that a particular group of scientists got together and figured out how to cure cancer, but how did those people do it? Those scientists could not have done it without the farmers to produce food for them, nor could they have done it without computer programmers to help them with complex calculations. Better yet could they have done it with out a janitor or two? You might think so, but I think not. You see imagine the scientist's working environment without a janitor. Imagine overflowing filthy toilets, trash receptacles overloaded with month old half eaten sandwiches covered in maggots. The stench from the facility would be unbearable, not exactly what I picture when I think of a productive working environment. So it was not just the scientists that cured cancer, it was the group of scientists plus everyone that helped them, literally EVERYONE. If cancer were cured it would be WE who cured it, not just them.

So if the the janitor, the computer programmer, the farmer and the scientist cured cancer why is it that the scientist is 'worth' so much more? That is why do the scientists make so much more money when they, we, need all the others just as much as we need the scientists? You see, in the USA at least, it is said that everyone is equal, but that's not true in practice because everyone has a price tag on their head and each of those heads holds a different value. Some people are worth $5 an hour and some are worth $14 million per year, even though they're all equally important to the operation of the human race as a whole. A CEO might make $14 million per year and most of their employees make around $35 thousand per year, even though the CEO could not possibly run a profitable corporation without their employees. A corporation would not have a help desk position if it were not needed. If a CEO cannot accomplish their goals without their employees then are the employees not equally important to the operation of the corporation? If they're equally important then they should not be worth less, they should be worth the same.

If everyone is equally important then everyone is worth the same amount of money. If everyone makes the same amount of money then why have money at all? Everyone is equal to everyone else, no one is more valuable to the human race than any other person. Since each and every person is of paramount value to the human race as a whole that means each and every person is of paramount value to each individual too. If a person is that important then it is in our own personal interests to make sure that person is able to do whatever it is they do. We live in a world where everyone competes against each other rather than help each other and I find that to be incredibly unhealthy to everyone because we NEED each other. So instead of buying and selling things, buying and selling ourselves even, why not simply share with each other? You need those other people so when you deny them something that they need because they have not the money you are hindering their ability to do stuff and thus hindering your own life which benefits from the things that person does.

It is a fundamental flaw of our society that one person should be worth less than another when both are equally important. If we do not seek out our flaws and aim to fix them then our problems will never cease. Continue to ignore these problems and you will find that your life will never see peace.

P.S. Interesting to note is that a CEO cannot rule his followers without food to eat, but a farmer can farm without a CEO to follow. A CEO cannot rule his followers without a computer program to facilitate spreading his orders, but a computer programmer can program without a CEO to follow. A CEO cannot rule his followers without a mechanic to fix his over abundance of things, but a mechanic can fix things without a CEO to follow.

They need us, but we do not need them. We do not need the CEO as a CEO, but we do need them as an EQUAL member of the human race, we need them to be human, not pretend prophets with millions of followers. THEY do nothing, WE do everything.

This should probably be in the science and technology section.


I understand your point.

Without the farmer, you cannot have food. Without the builder you can not have buildings. Researchers need that and more to function.

However, let me know when a janitor or a farmer can do research. Jobs such as those are never scarce because anyone can do it. As long as you are not physically handicapped.

A person who has the gift of knowledge and credibility (can be in the form of a college, or equivalent) can only do research. Those people are considerably more scarce than the farmer or the builder.

- Fluid mechanics researcher, Mechanical Engineering

reply to post by fordrew


Just because they are 'scarce' does not mean they are more valuable. As equals there would still be researchers because some people simply like to do research. We do not need to reward them more. Go and ask a scientist if he would rather be a farmer if he made the same amount of money. Ask a scientist if he would rather be a janitor if he made the same amount of money.

I didn't notice the end of your post said fluid mechanics researcher, does that mean you are a fluid mechanics researcher? Would you personally rather be a janitor if you made the same amount of money? If so then I would say you are in the wrong field, I say that because work seems to be of much higher quality when done for love as opposed to for the money.

It sucks to be on the bottom of the wage scale, huh?

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but not with the logic. No doubt some CEO's are paid more than they are 'worth'...but, were they not there telling people what to do and how to do it, large companies would be in complete disarray. People would do as much or as little work as they pleased and they would each follow their own personal timetables and projects would never come together in a cohesive manner. Managing groups of people IS work, and it is important work.

And of course the janitor's job is important. All work has worth and importance but all work is NOT created equal. And those who spend years training/studying to perform a specific task certainly deserve to be paid more than those who choose work which requires no particular skill sets.

reply to post by kalunom


There may be a slight misunderstanding when I say that CEOs are not needed. I believe we do need organizers and a person that is a CEO today would most likely fill that role extremely well, but there is a difference between an organizer and a CEO. An organizer coordinates groups of people so that they may work together cohesively. A CEO rules over groups of people with an iron fist, anyone that does not fall in line has their money taken away, their belongings taken away and their food taken away. You see an organizer does not TELL people what to do and does not THREATEN people if they do not follow their SUGGESTIONS. If a person is doing something, such as research, for the love of the work then they want to produce something useful and of great quality. Because of this they will want to take the organizers suggestions to help them better coordinate with their partners, they do not need to be threatened.

Also organizers are NOT researchers, sometimes their suggestions might not be that great and if that is the case the researcher, in this example, can simply not follow that suggestion. A CEO might make a bad suggestion, but if the researcher, follower, chooses not to follow that rule then they are punished even if they were right not to follow the rule.

By the by MODS, I won't be offended if you move this thread . I wasn't sure where to post it, but I figured the subject of THEY sounded good in Secret Societies.


Edit: I also want to make perfectly clear that I believe CEOs, the actual people not the position, are worth every bit as much as anyone else, that we are all 'worth' exactly the same. Though I feel that the function of CEO is worthless, the actual person has value, an equal value, if they would simply choose to be something that is worth something such as an organizer instead of a dictator.

Well let's see i have a degree in Economics and work is so hard to find being a young college graduate that i may indeed be taking a Janitorial position. I find some of the posts ironic, because here I am, a guy that, while i try not to toot my horn too much, is capable of research, analysis, manual labor, among many other things. How do i know this? Well, i come from a long line of familial capability, ATandT CEO's, NASA and JPL employees, professors and heads of major University departments, surgeons, designers, and managers of energy and utility companies.

Maybe this is just a wee bit of a guess, but i am equally capable, if not more, much more capable, then many of them in certain senses. Yet here I am, about to possibly work as a humble janitor at a local store.

So if you want a somewhat legitimate answer to the question of valuation of one's work and the discrepency between say, CEO of Apple and the legal Mexican immigrant working three jobs to barely support his family, i have two main things to consider:

en.wikipedia.org...

and

Flawed socio-economic system.


See, here's the problem, these "decision makers", these "leaders", these "corporate executives" are not stupid, obviously. They have the judgment and clarity of mind to successfully sustain or increase profits for the companies, allowing their companies to sustain and/or flourish. Now, one would assume by logic that individuals this capable and presumably intelligent would also realize their own/family's own basic needs in terms of shelter, goods, and of course, income. This is where the aspect of greed comes in. These individuals absolutely know they do not need much survive, but they want to live "nicely", fair enough! This is where the distortion comes in. We have these men and women applying gross incomes to themselves, far more than they could need in any sense, whether it's basic survival, or gluttony to the utmost, they couldn't even keep up with the amount of money coming in terms of their own spending.

BUT! Can we really blame them too much? No, because in reality they are not as smart as suggested earlier. Relatively speaking, they are not much more capable than any one of us, if at all. Many have simply fallen into the right place at the right time, and with the current socio-economic system which is largely based in the concepts of mass consumption and greed.

Wonder why there are so many commercials for pills that make you "happy"? It's because we're living in a slave-like system that has created a small army of powerful, greedy assholes with subservient people that are kept down and dumbed for the most part.

Don't worry though, those that actually are highly intelligent/capable/empathetic will fix this. My own father attempted to get the executives of one of his previous companies to reduce their salaries by 50-75% and allocate the rest to the lower earners of the company, precisely because of the idea that the way we value the work of individuals is severely flawed. He was promptly fired within a few months by the head executive.


To analogize, think of it like this, the human eye is an incredible instrument of biological evolution, pushing the envelope of intelligence and creation/evolution. Our eye, while incredible, can only see a miniscule fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is useful to us because it is easier for our minds to take in, less chaotic for our biological set up.

Similarly, we have the system of incomes. Unlike the human eye, we don't have a narrowed set of salary spectrum, no sir. We have a widely uninhibited system that has the potential to lead to disastrous results, and we're already seeing it in the form of greed and "power". Wouldn't it be great if the income system was like that of our own sight? Would it not be nice if there were varying valuations of income, some making less or more than others, but with this salary spectrum being limited, just as our sight is?

This is a solution, along with sharing, trading goods, and reasonable consumption. Along with researching alternative energies, and co-operation, great things will happen. Revolution is the next option. Either way the people will get what the deserve because the planet gets what it deserves.

"They" are the ones who keep killing Kenny.

Those bastards!

reply to post by xacto


My views are not really the type where you can simply pick and choose which parts to implement and which not too, they are a package deal and would only work as such. Here is another post of mine that I would consider related to this post:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I suppose this post here might indicate that I am trying to lay blame on a select group of people, but in the post I just linked I think you can see that I lay blame for the current state of the world at the feet of everyone in the world. I think I make an excellent case as to why the problems in society are everyone's fault.

I mentioned there and I'll mention here that I do not believe we need an artificial reward system called money or economics. I see that everything the human race has accomplished has, in fact, already been accomplished by nature first and it was actually natures accomplishments that have inspired most if not all human accomplishments. Things such as flight or computers were done by nature first.

Nature has already accomplished the reward system for us and it is not called money, we call it dopamine which is the chemical released by the brain which causes us to experience pleasure or enjoyment. Mankind tries to reward someone for doing something he thinks is good and he does this by delivering money, but this reward is not always correct for it rewards not only hard work, but also rewards things such as murder, war and greed. A wife might kill her husband for the insurance money, a nation might invade another for oil, etc...

Nature's reward system is not flawed like our invented reward system is. If you enjoy researching then you are rewarded with dopamine when you conduct research. If you enjoy farming then you are rewarded with dopamine when you farm. Notice how people are rewarded with dopamine when they help each other, also notice how they are usually NOT rewarded with money when they help each other. People are often rewarded with dopamine when they are self sufficient, but they are generally rewarded with money when they are dependent upon the 'system.'

reply to post by VictorVonDoom


Hah, always nice to see someone add a bit of lightheartedness to the fray.

Technically this is true since I consider THEY to be everyone and whoever it is that creates South Park is responsible for having Kenny offed so many times.

Originally posted by Symbiot
reply to post by xacto

 

My views are not really the type where you can simply pick and choose which parts to implement and which not too, they are a package deal and would only work as such. Here is another post of mine that I would consider related to this post:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I suppose this post here might indicate that I am trying to lay blame on a select group of people, but in the post I just linked I think you can see that I lay blame for the current state of the world at the feet of everyone in the world. I think I make an excellent case as to why the problems in society are everyone's fault......

I hear you entirely, that is why i mentioned that i believe most people are just as capable as those of the "highly valued" positions. I enjoyed your dopamine addendum.

reply to post by xacto


Let's get DOPED

Originally posted by Symbiot
reply to post by kalunom

 

There may be a slight misunderstanding when I say that CEOs are not needed. I believe we do need organizers and a person that is a CEO today would most likely fill that role extremely well, but there is a difference between an organizer and a CEO. An organizer coordinates groups of people so that they may work together cohesively. A CEO rules over groups of people with an iron fist, anyone that does not fall in line has their money taken away, their belongings taken away and their food taken away. You see an organizer does not TELL people what to do and does not THREATEN people if they do not follow their SUGGESTIONS. If a person is doing something, such as research, for the love of the work then they want to produce something useful and of great quality. Because of this they will want to take the organizers suggestions to help them better coordinate with their partners, they do not need to be threatened.

Also organizers are NOT researchers, sometimes their suggestions might not be that great and if that is the case the researcher, in this example, can simply not follow that suggestion. A CEO might make a bad suggestion, but if the researcher, follower, chooses not to follow that rule then they are punished even if they were right not to follow the rule.

By the by MODS, I won't be offended if you move this thread

. I wasn't sure where to post it, but I figured the subject of THEY sounded good in Secret Societies.

edit on 12-7-2011 by Symbiot because: Added the note to mods

Edit: I also want to make perfectly clear that I believe CEOs, the actual people not the position, are worth every bit as much as anyone else, that we are all 'worth' exactly the same. Though I feel that the function of CEO is worthless, the actual person has value, an equal value, if they would simply choose to be something that is worth something such as an organizer instead of a dictator.

edit on 12-7-2011 by Symbiot because: (no reason given)

So organizers are more valuable than CEOs? OK, I'm down with that, since I am an organizer. But think, Obummer supposedly was a "community organizer" when he appeared out of nowhere and became President. So obviously us "organizers" are the MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE OF ALL. Especially if they just drop out of the sky like he did.

Sorry, just had to throw that in there.

reply to post by CaptChaos


I think you misunderstand. The people are equally valuable, the function is what I'm talking about. We have no need for dictators, CEOs, but we do have a need for people able to organize an effort. Those invaluable people that currently prefer to be dictators would be much better utilized in a different function, possibly as a person that organizes efforts.

Edit: Interesting signature. I would say the king's ideals should be strangled, but we'd be better off letting the person that plays the role of king survive so he can preform a different function.

Good call with the boats. Hike up your skirts boys and girls, ya gotta jump in with both feet.