"Fair" and "Monkeys in a Cage Syndrome"

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a German friend of mine.

We were talking about how a recent seminar in Poland is going to cost 120€ for East Bloc residents but 150€ for "Westerners".

She said "Oh that's 'fair' because they can't afford it".

That was of course my cue, nothing pisses me off more than when "fairness" is used to rationalize cognitive dissonance - relativize rip-offs- and enable scammers! 

So I offered her a couple of examples , I did not want to steer a "crash course" with her but tried to use people skills á la Carnegie:

"OK if you think that's fair, then how do you feel when we go to Greece, and at the local shop a bottle of water costs 25 cents for my Greek friend, but when I want a bottle of water - it costs 1 full euro?"

"Oh , now that's a rip-off!" she replied!

Me "So do you see how the principle is the same? It's also a rip-off for the Polish seminar?"

Her "hmmmmm, mmm, uhhh, NO! Because they are paying the 'realpreis' ".

This translates to "real price" and is an intrinsic part of the "Labor Theory of Value" and was originally coined by Adam Smith but seems to be nowadays nothing but another form of marxism.

This was right up my alley because it is a perfect example of the psychological savvy upper level politicians and communists have when using words to actually convey the opposite of their actual meaning and rip people off.

So I had a smart one here, a college educated girl, this was going to be difficult indeed.

"This 'real price' you are referring to, is just like the word 'fair', they are both bullshit words designed to help you accept a rip-off. Why did you automatically without even thinking blurt out that the example of the Greek bottled water was a rip-off, but the Polish example is not? The math is the same. But you have been conditioned by your schools and colleges to replace your good sense and math with emotions, and this word 'fair' is the enabler whereby in this case it is the absolute opposite of fair".

She replied without answering the question of course "Well take for example Norway, gas is ridiculously expensive there, if we were to travel to Norway and were to pay the 'real price' you would be happy wouldn't you?" (because we would have to pay less, coming from Germany according to her model)

Me "What!? So the Norwegians have to operate at a loss - because I would 'feel good'? ! So according to your model, when we travel to Spain, we have to pay more for gas - you see how that's bullshit? You are taking the natural laws out of the equation and replacing them with emotion. Even worse - you are making a character judgement on the person at the time. You are penalizing or rewarding him based on YOUR misconceptions of him! That's intrinsically wrong."

She brooded over that, I offered more:

"So if me and you go into a Polish supermarket, and we buy some eggs, are they more expensive for us because we come from Germany, or do we pay the Polish price in Poland?"

Blank stare - the obvious fact is we would pay the Polish price just like all other Polish people do in their supermarkets.

I tried another angle - my college girl was smart but NOT closed minded. Yes she has been "educated" in some of the top German universities, which unfortunately today means you are conditioned to neo-communism and to automatically turn off your self-esteem and values in order to ignore facts and sacrifice yourself to the machine known as the modern European "Sozial-Staat". In other words Newspeak has once again showed itself as supreme and fully taken over!

"I don't want to criticize or attack you, but I was forced to look at this problem and look at myself very critically recently. You see I sell products in Etsy. Etsy has become very successful, so successful that they are now opening a branch in Germany. Now I have a product that costs 30$ in the American Etsy. So my American customers are paying 30$ plus postage and handling. Now when the German shop opened - I noticed I wanted to charge more for the German customers! And why was this? I said the same things you just did. I RATIONALIZED my thoughts, but why do I have to rationalize this? Why is it bugging me? The Germans can afford to pay more! I wanted to make the product 35$ in Germany OR charge 30 euros for the 30 dollar product (a net gain). I had to go deep inside myself, and I kept coming to the sentence 'because I can get more out of the Germans' . This finally led me to the conclusion that this is true cognitive dissonance, my core values were fighting with each other. My principles say, that 30 dollar product in America is the same value in Germany i.e. 30 dollars - YOU set the price! And I came to the realization the cause of this is GREED - 'I can get more out of the Germans'.  So the next day I offered my product in the German Etsy for 30 dollars and stayed true to my principles. But it really clarified things for me."

She was listening, she was not "shutting off" to me in typical modern European neo-communist fashion - when you hear the truth - shut your ears.

"So here is another example, let's say this seminar in Poland is not open to west Europeans. Only locals are going. What is the price of the seminar then? Will it still happen or are they going to NOT have it because the westerners are not coming?"

More staring and thinking on her part, I hope I really reached her. When talking or arguing with people, I have learned there is absolutely no point in arguing or trying to force your point. 

YOU WILL NEVER CONVINCE ANYONE! 

Especially people who are totally on the other side of your spectrum.

But what you can do - like Dale Carnegie said - is get them saying "Yes - Yes" (see his book How to Win Friends and Influence People)

NEVER go head to head, you have to be on the same side.

Now it is not my talent to get people saying yes-yes, but what I like to do is just offer examples and questions that force the people to confront their values or the problem at hand. 

Kind of like a Zen Koan.

We were at a crossroads, my friend was just sitting there, thinking, and I could see she was not closing her mind.

Then I kind of screwed up, instead of being real savvy and using this moment of deep immersion to plant a post hypnotic suggestion, I went off on a tangent:

"This is exactly the kind of stuff that pisses me off, how people use words to destroy the truth. Take for example the progressive tax..."

Boom! She woke up (me idiot!):

"Oh but that's fair too - the rich should pay more!"

Aaargh - we were doing so well!

My response:

"Wait a second - do the math. PERCENT is progressive already that's why it's called "per-cent", "Pro-cent" , or "per-centile" , per- person, per- unit etc.

So 30 percent of a rich person's pay check IS indeed more than 30 percent of my paycheck. Do you see that? That's why it is so important to speak in terms of per-cent sometimes to get at the real underlying value of a judgement. That's why even one tenth of a percent raise in a tax should be fought tooth and nail! The rich already are paying more in taxes. The progressive tax is pure communism - the more you make the more they take. This is purposefully designed to EQUALIZE people, admittedly by the communists. Where as percent is already by it's nature progressive. Once again you are penalizing or rewarding people based on your emotions and not on natural laws or math."

Then her neo-communist "modern European" conditioned response came in not one millisecond later:

"Oh but the money has to come from somewhere! What about the poor people?"

Man, just when we were doing so good, my college educated girl was breaking down to the lowest emotional level, no more reasoning or logic to be seen here.

"Look, I do not want to dismantle your 'Sozial-Staat', but the government has proven it cannot manage money. The answer to failing policies is NOT to keep on raising taxes. Do you agree that taxes cannot be raised indefinitely?"

Her "Well yes"

Me "We already have enough money, raising taxes just covers up a problem and performs a work around, but the poor people are receiving even less! But why do you automatically say 'the money has to come from somewhere' - is this a result of your conditioning?"

"Well I believe in the Social-State"

"OK - like said I don't want to take that away from you- I like the idea of a 'social-NET' but not enforced by the state, as they have proven bad managers of such. The problem we have now is that we are monkeys in a cage. If you put a monkey in a cage where there is a lever which gives him a shot of cocaine every time he pushes the lever - he will hit that lever continuously every 5 seconds until he is DEAD! This experiment has been done over and over again always with the same results. We are that monkey- forever voting for "free" money and handouts and 'social-programs' into oblivion. On the other hand, you got the politicians in the cage - forever hitting the lever and receiving taxes. We can't go on like this. Socialism is cannibalism - a system of death, nothing more. This is actually what happened when Lenin got in power, he tried to implement socialism exactly like in the book down to the smallest detail. The results were catastrophic and in the first week he had to start compromising and go against true socialism. His policies actually lead to the cannibalism which happened during the Russian famine of 1921. And for these reasons Socialism and all of its forms will always fail - they were designed to fail from the beginning by ignoring natural laws, math and good common sense and replacing them with buzzwords and newspeak lies.
And the word FAIR is the great enabler in all of this. Whenever you hear the word 'fair' nowadays - you know someone is trying to rip you off. In the meantime we keep sitting in the cage hitting that lever."

"Oh..." she said.

End of evening.