Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[orange]

Aria, so you are saying that it is both inter and intra generational for you?

Social mobility can be the change in status between someone (or a group) and their parents/previous family generations ("inter-generational"); or over the change during one's lifetime ("intra-generational").

edit:

I also have to dig into the numbers presented in the studies the wiki article sources and understand the magnitude of the differences in social mobility.  A society with greater equality should have lower magnitude of social mobility, while one with less equality provides the potential for large magnitude change in social standing.  For example, someone moving up in social standing in Denmark is unlikely to go from living in a trailer park to owning a mansion, the quantity of either in a high equality society is much lower.

[Vikarion]

See, the thing is, Aria, I know quite a few successful businesses around here where that Korean's attitude would be considered positively benevolent.

Much of the attitude I have managed to extract from many employees is essentially that they owe it to their company to make it successful, while the attitude of many bosses (including me, to be honest) is that employees are a resource, and nothing more.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

(Caldari) have a lot more social mobility than the US.

lol what?

The US has one of the worst social mobility ratings in the Western world. The Rich stay Rich and the Poor stay Poor. The demographics entry for the Caldari specifically states that families have gone from Executives to Janitors in three generations and vice versa.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571417-how-prevent-virtuous-meritocracy-entrenching-itself-top-repairing-rungs

[Kunarian]

I've not read much of this but what I have seen is the proposed notion that the Caldari=Future US or simply the Caldari are most like the US. I've also seen the idea that the Caldari are more like the US than the Gallente.

To address these:

• Caldari=US - wrong on so many fundamental levels, Japan or Germany are much closer to becoming Caldari. Let me explain in what may be a drawn out way. Personally I think that the most interesting part of a culture is the way they work, the entire attitude to it and the structure around the person and how work gets done but of course that isn't the only part of a culture. So lets do some culture comparisons to work out whether the Caldari are like the US or like let's say Germany.
  
  Firstly lets look at law enforcement, the Caldari mega corporations have private security firms which are composed completely of employees who answer to their megacorp not the state judicial body, in the US they have elected officials amongst the forces and are tied into the judiciary and they have a federal division, in Germany the police have zero elected officials and are answerable only to their corresponding German state and state judiciary. Germany - 1, US - 0.
  
  Second, let's look at the education and employment system. In the Caldari state you complete your education and start working (full time) with a company under your megacorp that you normally work with for the rest of your life slowly working your way up and you can't be unemployed unless you want to fall through the cracks, In the US you do education and get a degree then mope around for a year then get a job for 5 years then mope around for a year and get a job based on previous experience and such and such also you have part time work to some degree, In Germany you do education do an apprenticeship or university then start working with a company you'll work with normally until you die or the company does you rarely switch jobs and you DO NOT have gaps in employment if you do you're considered lazy and people simply won't hire you, also practically no part time work is offered in Germany full time is the vast stretching majority. Germany - 1, US - 0.
  
  I mean, do you get what I'm saying yet, I know I haven't even done the standard at least three points but do I really need to. Of all western nations the US is a terrible example, especially with their focus on the individual and short term and not to mention their religious beliefs. Germany is so much closer, just comparing the things I mentioned about the US. Germany has a much greater focus on the collective and the long term (their political system is built to create long term planning) and the extent of their spirituality has only added to the nature of their collectivist attitude and isn't in your face religious like the US is.
  
• US is like Caldari more than Gallente - this is like saying that ancient Kazakhstan is more like Switzerland than ancient Siberia. The Caldari and Gallente are more like each other than they'll ever be like the US from my point of view. What I'm trying to say, and lets go super simple, is saying a banana is more like a machine gun than an orange is isn't really saying much at all and thinking that that somehow makes the banana a machine gun in any form is probably not the best development you could have made from the situation.

I may just be temporarily hopping in, I'm tired so if I'm made any spelling mistakes forgive me.

[orange]

deleted - discussion is entirely tangent, I would have to generate graphs and stuff to explain my questioning of the data.

[Vikarion]

I don't desire to do a full reply at the moment, Kunarian, but I do wonder if you've looked at some of the things regarding law enforcement in the U.S., as well as private military organizations.

First, we have privatized security forces of one sort or another all over the place. Second, many, many of our prisons are actually privately run. For example, Corrections Corporation of America alone has responsibility for at least 70k inmates. Third, I don't know if you've noticed, but America is HUGE on private military contractors. Also known as, essentially, corporate soldiers. Blackwater, or whatever it is now, announced not too long ago that they could field as much as a brigade - that is, an average of around 4000 troops. And if you think that American megacorporations aren't willing to use force, or to hire contractors/build their own, then you really do need to research some of them.

Oh, and yes, if it is truly a megacorporation, it probably lives in America, or at least has a second home here. 

[Lyn Farel]

(Caldari) have a lot more social mobility than the US.

lol what?

The US has one of the worst social mobility ratings in the Western world. The Rich stay Rich and the Poor stay Poor. The demographics entry for the Caldari specifically states that families have gone from Executives to Janitors in three generations and vice versa.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571417-how-prevent-virtuous-meritocracy-entrenching-itself-top-repairing-rungs

Concerning the Caldari State, I think both argument are valid, in either way.

1) Considering the meritocratic system it seems logical that professional advancement opportunities would be here and very real.

2) It is also worth considering that it's a very collectivist society where only ONE compagny, the mega, controls everything, then it obviously has to reduce a lot the opportunities for social mobility. You cannot obviously create your own business and be successful at it, you cannot bypass all the ladder, and the more you advance in said ladder, the less positions available.

Eventually I don't think social mobilities can be easily stated as superior or inferior when comparing the US and the Caldari State, maybe they are, maybe not. But I would tend to think that in the State you have a damn lot of opportunities, nothing is closed to you, but they are what they are : opportunities, where the actual accomplishment can be a lot more difficult to attain.

[Lyn Farel]

Second, let's look at the education and employment system. In the Caldari state you complete your education and start working (full time) with a company under your megacorp that you normally work with for the rest of your life slowly working your way up and you can't be unemployed unless you want to fall through the cracks, In the US you do education and get a degree then mope around for a year then get a job for 5 years then mope around for a year and get a job based on previous experience and such and such also you have part time work to some degree, In Germany you do education do an apprenticeship or university then start working with a company you'll work with normally until you die or the company does you rarely switch jobs and you DO NOT have gaps in employment if you do you're considered lazy and people simply won't hire you, also practically no part time work is offered in Germany full time is the vast stretching majority. Germany - 1, US - 0.

That is simply not really true. Part time work is the new curse of the german employment these days, that has appeared in the last decade to prevent unemployment to spike like in other countries. The real reason why Germany has such a low unemployment ratio is actually because something like a quarter of their workers actually work part time with misery salaries. Most are ok with it since they consider that part time job is better than no job. But that still means that a quarter of Germany actually live under the poverty line with salaries under 600-800 € per month (which is extremely low for a country like Germany) since I don't think they get much help from the state since they still have a job.

I can agree with the rest since it's the theory, even if in practice i'm not sure it's always true for the no gaps and the apprenticeship, but they are still praised as a model for that specific part of their jobs.

[Kunarian]

I can agree with the rest since it's the theory, even if in practice i'm not sure it's always true for the no gaps and the apprenticeship, but they are still praised as a model for that specific part of their jobs.

I'm not pretending to be an expert on German society but from what I know they are much tighter on gaps in employment and the like than other countries. Anyway I wasn't really trying to say that Germany=Caldari, rather that America is a bad example and just because you can go "look america has lots of private things!" doesn't mean they are Caldari at all. I'm not going to do any more replies to this topic simply because I'd rather not get into too much of a debate in my first few days on the forum (plus I'd rather put effort into my character development). I've given my opinion, have fun with the debate!

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Eventually I don't think social mobilities can be easily stated as superior or inferior when comparing the US and the Caldari State, maybe they are, maybe not. But I would tend to think that in the State you have a damn lot of opportunities, nothing is closed to you, but they are what they are : opportunities, where the actual accomplishment can be a lot more difficult to attain.

Well, i agree that direct comparisons are a bit 'apples to oranges' but we can probably say with some confidence that a fictitious nation state that is supposed to be famous for social mobility is not like a real nation state that is famous for not having social mobility.

Seriously. Go look at some figures. America has less social mobility than Britain, which still has it's entrenched class system. Read the Demographics article on the Caldari (which I see as being the new baseline for the State, taking precedence over older impressions, mentions, fiction etc) which says that the State is famed for social mobility (except for the VERY top and the VERY bottom.)

[Desiderya]

Regarding german (un)employment Lyn is partly correct. There are a lot of jobs that don't pay enough to get by, leading to the interesting predicament that you've got to go the job centre to request aid up to the same level as unemployment help would be - in jobs that do not serve as intermediates but are mostly created by an industry that is mostly using the fun technique of offering "full jobs" once you pass a certain time with them, but of course your contracts will get terminated just before that juicy threshold. Don't worry, you'll get an offer for a new job that'll have the very same benefit if you pass the first months! 

On the other hand, no one has to starve, live on the streets or outside the society (you get a lot of benefits for public transport and public venues (public bath, library/culture, etc) while being jobless in general.

[Lyn Farel]

Yeah I don't think a lot of european countries are already with tons of unemployed starving in the streets. That would be rather scary. I'm not sure how they do in countries like Spain or Greece, though... :/

[Silver Night]

Caldari are a lot like the the EU, actually, at least if Germany was simultaneously also BAE Systems and Walmart. There isn't really a solid model of the State's structure in RL though - even less than there is for any of the other empires or factions barring the Blood Raiders, Sansha, and maybe a couple others that are way out there. I think we may be drifting off topic though.