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A big fundamental strategic problem is occurring among people in rich countries who want to make the world a better, more just and more fair place, which is summarized as social justice. The problem stems from almost nobody standing back and viewing the big picture, and doing a bit of easy math. The average person in the world lives on about $1,700, when adjusted for costs of living and exchange rates. That means that anything that increases the income of people getting more than $1,700 per year that does not also increase the income of the poorest 50% is increasing inequality. 

Moreover, increasing the incomes of Americans, almost all of whom make more than $15,000 per year, results in rather dramatic increases in inequality. For example, an American getting $15,000 a year is already getting 880% more than the average person, and is getting 1,960% more than the billion people who get less than $762 per year. If social justice advocates do nothing for the people in the bottom half and increase the income of people making $15,000 to $30,000, the inequality between them and the person in the middle doubles from 880% to 1,760%. The inequality between them and a billion people increases from 1,960% to 3,920%.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buffett-best-time-to-be-alive-184722653.html

An equally large issue takes place related to climate change and other environmental problems. People who care about social justice tend to say: “Well, we’ll simply double the income of people making $15,000 and we’ll also increase the income of everyone else to $30,000.” However, the planet is already in the middle of a terrible climate emergency due to the consumption that comes from the fact that 15% of humans make over $15,000 a year. If we increase the income of the bottom 50% (people making less than $1,700 per year) to $30,000, that would be an increase in emissions of about 1,760% for the people in the 50th percentile of poverty, an increase in emissions of 2,600% for the people at the 25th percentile, an increase of 4,800% for the those at the 10th percentile and about 10,000% for those in the 5th percentile.

When presented with the stark reality above, it’s somewhat natural to have an initial reaction of saying that we will simply move the energy industry away from oil. While that clearly needs to be pursued vigorously, it’s not at all a panacea for social justice for three reasons. First, it’s expensive to convert to renewable technologies and even people in the upper 15% (those making over $15,000) aren’t willing to spend to do it. People in the bottom half (making less than $1,700) are mostly unable to do it.

The second problem is that even if the whole world could magically change to renewables at no cost tomorrow, a huge number of other environmental problems would occur if we increased consumption of half the world by 2,600% AND we also doubled consumption of people making $15,000, AND also increased consumption of people making $5,000 by 600% to $30,000. In other words, getting everyone in the world to $30,000 a year would mean that consumption of 85% of people increases between 100% and 10,000%, with the average increase being about 2,000%. 

If the whole world became powered by solar right now, it would be about 200,000 square miles of solar panels. Increasing that by 2,000% would be 400,000,000 square miles. The United States is 3.8 million square miles including lakes, rivers and other water. Europe is 3.93 million square miles. Combined they would only hold 2% of the needed solar panels. In fact, all of the land on the planet is only 200 million square miles. So if we covered every inch of land with solar panels, we would still only have half the energy needed for everyone to be making $30,000 a year. 
On top of this, we would have to demolish serious portions of the landscape of the world to mine enough raw materials to build the solar panels PLUS have enough raw materials for all of the other consumption that entails everyone earning $30,000. Further, the amounts of other types of pollution including plastics in the ocean, acid rain and ozone layer destruction would skyrocket to mind-blowing levels with consumption increasing by 2,000%. While increasing the income of everyone to $30,000 is alluring, any way you slice it, it’s really a dangerous pipe dream and a sort of escapist fantasy that we need to avoid. 

The reason it is so darn alluring is due to what is known as “Empathy prejudice.” It’s sometimes also called “The empathy problem.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/474588/why-empathy-is-a-bad-thing/

Empathy prejudice occurs because humans have a tendency to feel far greater empathy for people who they identify with than they feel for other people. It was a key pillar in racial discrimination and sexist discrimination for hundreds of years, until people thought about it rationally and realized that it was incredibly wrong. White people felt more empathy for other white people and as a result gave them preference for jobs, for access to social clubs and for receiving charitable support. Men felt more empathy for other men and gave the preference over women for the same types of things. These types of empathy-based prejudices are correctly now considered wrong by most people.

However, one of the greatest and most devastating empathy-based prejudices ever is flourishing today and is few people are even aware of it. Similar to how people of one race feel more empathy for their own and men feel more empathy for other men, people located in one country or one place feel more empathy for others who are in the same place and rather massively give them preference over people who happen to be located in another place. As a result, 95% of donations by Americans go to the richest 35% of people in the world, while only 4% go to help the poorest 50% of the world based entirely on where the potential recipients are located. 

Similar numbers are true for the amount of time that Americans put towards helping (via volunteering, via protesting and via advocating online): almost all of it goes towards the richest 35% and almost none goes towards the poorest 50% based entirely on where people happen to be located. Their feelings of empathy towards their own kind (people located in the same country) result in prejudice in favor of their own kind and discrimination against other people.

200 years ago, nearly all white Americans would have said that because it was natural for them to identify with other whites, it was therefore completely acceptable for them to give more jobs, rights, access and help to other whites. They would have said you were crazy to say otherwise. In fact, they often would tar and feather you, or beat you up for saying so. Today, your initial reaction will likely be to think it crazy for us to say that giving preference to people located in your country over people somewhere else is unfair and wrong. 

But 100 years from now, people are going to look back on us the same way we look back on whites from 200 years ago. They will wonder how we could have been so biased in favor of people located in our own country (when almost all of them were already in the top 35% and earning 2,000% more than the bottom 10%) and so biased against helping people in other places, especially the worse off amount them. Just as we don’t see this is as valid: “Well I felt more empathy for other white people, and some of them needed help and I couldn’t help everyone”, people in the future won’t see this as valid, “Well I felt more empathy for others in my country, and some of them needed help and I couldn’t help everyone.”

We would say: “White people were far better off than blacks, and the less well-off whites were doing far better than the less well-off whites, so most of your help should have been focused on black people, especially the ones who were worse off.” The same is true today: “Americans are far better off than people in poor countries, and the less well-off Americans are doing far, far better than the less well-off in poor countries (a difference of about 2,000%), so most of our help should be going to the less well-off in poor countries. This includes donations and it includes the free time we spend raising awareness both offline and online, including time we put into politics.

Another challenge that arises for many of us in moving to do the above relates to what sociologists and psychologists call the “sunk cost fallacy.” Here is a summary of it:
 “Individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort). This fallacy, which is related to loss aversion and status quo bias, can also be viewed as bias resulting from an ongoing commitment.”” https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/sunk-cost-fallacy/ For most of us who spent some portion of our money, free time and work time trying to increase the income and resources of less well-off Americans, it can be hard to shift from that to putting most of our effort to helping the less well-off people in poorer countries … due to various aspects of the sunk cost fallacy.

Adding to this is that sometimes much of our identity is tied to the former, so we have to undergo a shift in internal and external identity in order to move to an evolved identity.

A further challenge is that about 97% of the nonprofit jobs in the U.S. are focused on improving the income and resources of the richest 35% in various ways. This is a conundrum for those of us whose job is at one of those nonprofits. Do we move to doing private sector work that pays better that lets us donate more to the very poor in poor countries, or do we stay at the current job, and shift to putting most of our non-work help (donations, raising awareness and advocating) to the very poor?

Another thing to overcome is that the social connection, peer encouragement and praise we can get from helping people located in America is far higher and far easier to get than from helping the very poor in other places. There are lots of people willing to praise us and like us (which has some ramifications for our social lives and standing) if we’re donating to or advocating for less well-off Americans. There are far fewer if we’re helping extremely poor non-Americans. You’re also much more likely to get criticized for doing the latter. A historical example is that a person helping white people in 1820 in America would have his or her social standing go up. The first Americans who tried to focus on helping black people over helping whites were seen as a radical fringe people and were disliked and sometimes even physically attacked. 

The initial people who joined them in their focus on helping the worse-off black people over helping the less worse-off white people were hugely important not just for the help they gave, but because of the social re-enforcement and encouragement it gave to people in the movement. Today you might think something like, “Well I can’t donate much, so it won’t matter if I give it to Americans or to the very poor non-Americans.” Your contribution will be far more than monetary: what matters most is winning over mindshare and winning over the hearts of more people because some of those people will inevitably be very wealthy and can make a huge difference. You putting most of your giving (of money, time and words) to the very poor will increase the amount of mindshare for that.

A good example is that early on, only a tiny number of people recycled and it was a fringe thing with little mindshare. To do it, people had to split their trash into 7 different bins and transport the separate bins to a recycling center, and dump the 7 bins in 7 different receptacles. Every person who realized it was right to do and shifted to doing it (even if the majority of people thought the person was being “excessive” or too radical) helped increase mindshare. This increase reached some people in power who started making it easier for people to recycle by initiating curbside pickup in their towns and cities once or twice a month. 

Then every person who joined in recycling that way further increased mindshare because they influenced other people like family and friends in various ways. This larger mindshare made almost all cities and towns offer curbside recycling pickup. As more people joined and increased the mindshare further, it resulted in many cities and towns offering single stream recycling that made recycling even easier. Likewise, many began weekly recycling pick-up so recycling pick-up was as prominent and as easy as trash pick-up.

Mindshare means everything. But mindshare comes largely from you doing and speaking. Many of us remember seeing other people recycle and mention recycling, so that over time we felt like we should too. If you only think to yourself “yeah I think the very poor non-Americans should get a lot more support than Americans,” and you don’t do something and also speak in favor of it, you’re not contributing to the mindshare.

Another important thing is that it’s not an excuse to claim that we can only affect what’s in our own governmental area. That is the thinking that allowed slavery to continue for many decades in the U.S. after people in northern states realized it was wrong. Almost all people in the northern states used the excuse: “I should only worry about what’s going on in my own state. I can’t much affect what’s going on in some other states that are far, far away from me.” In 1790, it took 8 days to go from Boston to a slave state on a good horse. But most people couldn’t afford a horse and had to walk, meaning double or triple the time. By the 1830s, the small portion of people who could afford to pay for the new stagecoaches could get from Boston to a slave state in 72 hours. 

Today, the majority of Americans could afford to arrive in a region of a poorer country with a lot of people in the bottom 50% in less than 8 hours assuming one-stop over and in less than 2 hours for much of California, Texas, Arizona etc. So the biggest injustices in the today’s world are far closer to us than slavery was to people in northern states. The “it’s happening in other governmental jurisdictions far away from me” excuse was invalid for northerners in slave times, and it’s invalid for us now. http://www.teachushistory.org/detocqueville-visit-united-states/articles/historical-background-traveling-early-19th-century.

Lastly, a major problem is that most of us have a tendency to say something like, “Yeah I think this is a good cause that deserves support, but it’s not what I ‘feel called to do.’ I feel called to focus all of or most of my giving on something else.” We should notice that it’s a feeling: “feeling called to do something.” White people helping other white people in various ways in the 1700s and 1800s also said they “felt called” to do that. 

They felt called to spend their charitable money, time and advocacy on building and operating schools for white people, hospitals for white people, arts organizations for white people and sports facilities and equipment for white children. Meanwhile, most blacks on the continent were enslaved, and most of the free blacks in the north didn’t have access to any of the charitable things that nearly all white people felt inspired to support, called to support or moved to support.

The situation is essentially the same today. Most of us feel inspired, called or moved to support things that help people who happen to be located in the U.S., almost all of whom are more than 1,000% better off than the average non-American and 2,000% better off than a billion non-Americans. The extremely poor non-Americans have zero access to those things. Each day 31,000 of these people die of easily preventable things such as lack of having $5 immunization shots and lack of water that doesn’t kill you with a disease. 

Let’s not fool ourselves: a black child today in Africa who dies a slow painful death of starvation at the age of 5 has had at least as bad of a life than most slaves in America in the 1860s. That child never got to grow up, never had his or her first kiss, never fell in love, never got to have a child on their own, never got to develop deep adult friendships and so forth. The 5 year old has never left her village and has had almost zero freedom. The physical pain she has experienced dying of starvation is tremendous. The emotional pain is immense: each hour of each day for many weeks, you are wasting away to a slow death while you know there are many people in the world who could easily save your life and none of them are helping you.

That’s not to say that nobody should make more than $30,000 a year. It would be fair for people who are contributing much more than average to the world to make more than the average. This includes that a somewhat higher level of consumption helps to free up some of their time to do more good work. For example, if they hire someone to mow their lawn, they will have more time to contribute to the world. A person who is a president of a country should make more than the average person because they should be spending money on many things that save them time. 

But we should admit that we all have a tendency to over-estimate how much we contribute to the world and how much we deserve to have above the average. And to a degree we all spend money on frivolous things that we could easily do without. In fact, numerous studies have found that people who own less things are on average happier. This is because their lives are less cluttered and less oriented towards material things. As a result, they have more time for things like spirituality, making deep friendships and volunteering: all of which lead to happiness. So consuming and owning fewer things not only solves the core injustice problem in the world, but also is better for us.

A FEW THOUGHTS FOR CONSERVATIVES: This is not an excuse for American conservatives to do nothing about inequality and suffering. Too many conservatives use the “big government is not the solution” concept as a way to avoid doing their part. If a conservative says that, but is not contributing a sizable amount to rectify the problem, then he is helping to prove that government is required to make it happen. But if most conservatives contributed seriously to solving major problems, they could make a great case for smaller government. Saying that you already contribute through taxes is not an excuse: in the 1950s and the 1960s in the U.S. the richest in the U.S. paid as much as 72% in income taxes, and all of them still had capacity to donate. Also, for humanity to solve the main injustice of the world and treat people in the bottom 50% fairly, people in the upper 20% will need to contribute a lot more than 30% (or whatever their real tax rate is).

A FEW THOUGHTS FOR PROGRESSIVES: At present, politicians including progressive politicians are nowhere near being willing to vote for the levels of foreign aid that the U.S. should be providing to solve the core problem of widespread and profound injustice in the world. This is because politicians get elected primarily by promising to give people more resources and make them richer. If they don’t do that, they don’t get elected. This won’t change until we have a large percentage of people who have made the bottom 50% the focus of their giving of time, money and attention. The only way to do that is by growing the number of people doing that. So once again it comes back to growing mindshare. It will likely take at least 5 to 15 years for mindshare to grow large enough to cause Congress to put a serious focus on this problem and commit major resources to address it. That means that in the near-term, you should likely put your time and money towards directly helping the bottom 50% and or towards raising awareness … rather than expecting U.S. politicians to put big resources towards it. 
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