Upper class: often flawlessly ethical, never moral.
Working class: sometimes moral, often indifferent to formal ethics that they feel were set in place without their consent.
The social language of appearing to avoid conflicts of interest and self-dealing is one in which upper-middle and upper class people are fluent. In terms of morality (avoiding harm, rather than avoiding violations of semiformal social principles) there is a negative correlation to SES, but it’s very slight because it turns out there are also scoundrels at the bottom.
Yes, those yacht upgrades are quite restrained and are a good example for us all.
The cynic in me wants to agree with this but im not so sure, ive seen all sorts of behaviour from all sorts of people.
I agree with the sentiment but I would like to push back against this a little bit. I think that there is a common set of human needs / principles that we can all agree are good, such as the golden rule, etc, etc.
But here's what I think happens: people with more power can more easily hide their transgressions. So in practice its easier to enforce rules against people with less power.
Second, a known and agreed upon good is really useful when seeking to manipulate people and generate "thought terminating cliches". Certain organizations / groups have gotten really good at taking known good things, and weave in their agenda and propaganda, linking something obvious with something that seems to make sense but actually doesn't.
History is rittled with how a call to ethical behaviour has been abused by the rich and powerful to keep the lower classes down. In Europe the Church used this to extol the virtues of poverty to the poor while selling pardons to the rich.
In China, the richness of Confucian philosophy was distilled down to obey orders from above / filial piety above all else, etc etc.
The fact that bad actors have taken something good and done bad things with them does not take away the value that can be found, it just needs to be on our own terms, and not someone else's.
When you're rich enough there is always someone willing to take the risk of doing your dirty work.
Yeah. It's uncomfortable, but I have come to a similar conclusion. Part of the self-policing apparatus in my eyes is to also: a) keep the lower classes sicker and busier thus less able to make time and energy to change their environment b) condition them through education systems and social & cultural norms to be naive, gullible and approval-seeking and c) trigger fear and danger as much as possible to provide the solutions and thus be the needed entities in problems they create and have an edge in solving.
It isn't quite a conspiracy as much as it's a lower-level animalistic behavior. You see this sort of behavior occur in monkeys in tribes where alpha chimps will create conflict, drive war, and cut off competitors from resources to secure their edge and position.
