Ahmad Murtada

6/8/2020

Society
What is Society?
According to sociologists, a society is a group of people with common territory, interaction, and
culture. Social groups consist of two or more people who interact and identify with one another.

We have many arguments about public policy, taxes, welfare, government, etc. But they’re all
pointless if there’s no agreement about what kind of a society we want to end up with. We can’t make
the rules until we agree on what kind of society we want to have. The rules we have define the society
we get.

Groups

Forming groups allows people to achieve things they couldn’t do as individuals. One advantage
of being part of a group is that membership lowers the individual’s risk of loss. If you’re on your own and
your house burns down, you’re on the street. If you join with millions of other people, buy insurance,
and your house burns down, then you get a new house. Living in a society provides benefits that are not
available to isolated individuals — utility and sewage systems, fire, police, clean restaurants, safe
buildings, public transportation, bridges and roads, and some sort of a social safety net. But what kind of
a social safety net? To answer that we first need to address the more basic question: Who is your society
designed to benefit?

Societies Designed for The Benefit Of Winners

At one extreme, societies are designed to benefit rich people, successful families, smart people,
and talented people— the “Winners”. These societies have rules that allow most of the country’s wealth
to be collected and kept by the winners. For those winners, that society is great. For the majority of the
population who are ordinary people or below, not so much. Take the United States today for example.
85% of the country’s private wealth is owned by the top 20% of the population. 96% of America’s
private wealth is owned by the top 40% of the population, while the bottom 40% owns zero percent of
the wealth and the bottom 20% has a negative share of the wealth, their debts outweighing their assets.
Fifteen percent of American families are on food stamps. Half of the American families are essentially
broke. The minority of winners, the top thirty percent or so, are doing great. The bottom half of the
country is on the ropes.
Societies Designed For The Benefit Of Losers

At the other extreme are the societies designed to benefit the losers — poor people, people
without successful families, untrained people, untalented people. It only takes a brief study of any
communist country to confirm that such societies don’t share the wealth as they equalize poverty.

The Extremes

So, at one extreme you can have a society where the people at the top keep pretty much all of
their money and that ten or twenty percent does great. The next twenty percent gets by OK and the
remaining sixty percent are just hanging on. This is America today pretty much. At the other extreme,
you can have a society where the people at the top keep relatively little of their money. In that society
the top 10% does pretty well, the next 10% does OK, and the remaining 80% are more or less equally
poor.

Those who consider themselves winners advocate for the “Protect The Winners” society while
some others want the “Help The Losers” society where a few people are doing pretty good and
everybody else hovers just a little above bad.

Something For Nothing Is A Bad Idea

Just giving people money for doing nothing always ends badly. The people paying the money to
resent working for something, others get for free. Most of the people receiving free money don’t like
living on hand-outs. Most people want to feel useful. Most people want to be able to respect
themselves and feel that they are doing something with their lives, that they are valuable in some way,
that their life has some meaning.

Everyone Contributes Something

Think about how you raise your kids. If you’ve got a brain in your head you don’t just give them
money for nothing.

“Dad, I want a new iPhone.”

“Sure, Tommy. I’ll buy you one right away.”

Bad idea.

No, you make them do something in exchange for what they get. You teach them that they have
to earn what they get. They have to mow the lawn or do the wash or clean the kitchen or something.
They have to do their homework and work hard in school. They learn that they have to expend some
reasonable effort or they won’t get money or games or a cell phone or whatever they want. Just like kids
need to contribute to their families, people need to contribute to their society.

Don’t Expect to Operate at a Profit

 On the other hand, you don’t keep track of the number of hours your kids spend doing chores,
multiply that times some dollar-per-hour amount, and pay yourself the result to recoup the cost of
feeding, housing and clothing your children.

You expect your kids to contribute so that they don’t get the idea that they’re entitled to a free
ride and so that they feel that they are doing something useful, but you can’t expect to make a profit on
your children’s labor.

It’s about contributing, not a for-profit exchange of goods and services. People in society are the
same. They need to participate to the extent of their ability and in return for their full-time work, they
earn a decent, basic standard of living. Everybody who can work does work. If you can work, but you
choose not to work there is no free lunch. But, if you do work then no matter what the job, you receive
enough in exchange for your labor to fund a decent, basic standard of living.

Everything Has a Cost

That level of wages means that some products will cost a little more. That’s part of the cost of
paying wages that are high enough to provide workers with a basic, decent standard of living. It means
that people at the top will be taxed to fund non-profit corporations that will hire people for whom there
are no jobs available from private employers. So, yes, people and businesses at the top of the wealth
pyramid are going to have a little less money so that the people at the bottom will have decent-paying
jobs. That’s one of the costs of maintaining a society that works not just for the people at the top of the
people at the bottom but for pretty much everyone. That’s one of the core reasons you have a society in
the first place. It’s an institution, a mechanism, whose purpose is to create an environment that works
for most everyone. That cost is the insurance premium the people and businesses at the top are going to
have to pay so that their society will work for pretty much everyone.

There Is No Free Lunch for Winners or Losers

In the United States, we’re now starting to see the flaws with the “For Winners Only” society.
Just look around. Listen to the ordinary people who voted for Trump. They were wrong in thinking he
would do anything that would actually make their lives better. He will do just the opposite.

When they voted for him they were like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. But their vote was a
response to a society that no longer economically works for at least 40% of its members.

A Cost to Have a Society that Works for Everyone

We can have a functioning society, one where the people at the top can have a great life but
also where the people at the bottom can also have a decent life, but there is a cost for that. There is a
cost for having a society that works not just for the winners and not just for the losers, but for pretty
much everyone.
 There is a cost in having a healthy society in the same way that there is a cost in raising kids, a
cost for insurance coverage, a cost for roads, fire departments and all the other things that go with living
in a prosperous, free, safe and economically and socially mobile society.

There is and can be no free lunch for the people at the top any more than there can be one for
those at the bottom.

How do you Estimate that Cost?

For what it’s worth, the cost of providing a living-wage job for everyone who is willing to work
should be contributed to by every member of society on the same, identical basis.

A reasonable action would not only abolish the graduated income tax, but would also abolish
the entire income-based tax system (wage, capital gains, gift, and estate taxes) and replace it with a
completely different tax mechanism.

Does Faith Matter in a Society?

Faith can certainly be an important factor in society. It brings communities closer and people
become more social and interactive. Such activities can be congressional prayers, charity programs, and
helping out the homeless.

But faith doesn’t have to be the only thing that connects everyone together! Working out
together with food drives, programs, and services are other great ways to be around your neighbors.

The Mixture of Cultures

Usually, immigrants will move into the US for better opportunities, better education, refuge, or
so on. When they give off their offspring, their kids tend to adapt to the culture that surrounds them,
while keeping their identity. This isn’t wrong at all and is actually encouraged to do so. This is because
blending cultures is a good step in creating a more diverse society and letting others learn more about
foreign culture. It also lets the child who has mixed cultures give his/her parents more information
about the other culture, hence, spreading more knowledge about each other.

Sources

https://umairhaque.com/what-is-a-successful-society-8e720b614b3e

https://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/combined_executive_summary.pdf

https://eand.co/how-and-how-not-to-manage-a-society-well-946f0769c345