Axiom About Envy

"We can often be vain of our passions, even the guiltiest ones; but envy is so sneaking and shameful that we never dare confess it"
Francois de la Rochefoucauld

"It is better to be envied than pitied"
Herodotus

"Envy is the basis of democracy"
Bertrand Russell

We perceive the world with nothing but our feelings. My opponents say that I’m concerned with something ephemeral, not material. I believe that material is much more ephemeral than feelings, which never abandon us and can be used to judge whether I’m right or talking nonsense.

Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

We have already discussed seven axioms. Today it’s turn of the eighth axiom—about envy.

We don’t sympathize to the success of rich strangers. Not only it doesn’t bring joy, when their powers increase, it even brings sorrow. Conversely, their losses bring joy. Dislike towards the richer and their acquirements, as well as joy of their losses is a performance of envy.

The majority sympathizes to Robin the Hood. He robbed the rich and shared loot with the poor. Politicians make use of sympathy of the majority towards heroic bandits and demonstrate willingness to rob the rich people to share the loot with poorer ones. Such demonstration gives them more votes on elections. The majority of voters does not like rich people; that’s why majority likes politicians who promise to make rich people more generous and force them to share with the poor ones. The faith in democracy lead to universal right of suffrage, which in its turn lead to progressive taxation, labor law, governmental social security, fight with big enterprises (monopolies) and so on.

Envy is much more mean and dangerous feeling than insatiability or egoism. Insatiability and egoism may prompt to seize other’s property despite of will of its owner. But insatiable egoists do not have to destroy the property, kill or cripple its owners, if owners do not resist such seizure too much. Expropriators may even love their victims in certain sense, as farmer loves his cattle that give him milk, wool and meat. But envy makes people enjoy other’s suffering, or makes them suffer because of other’s joy. Envy may prompt the enviers to eliminate the property of those who they envy. It may lead not only to elimination of victim’s property, but also to elimination of victims themselves. This makes envier more dangerous than a robber, whose main target is to seize—not to destroy. Destruction without seizing is a waste of time for robber. Envier enjoys destruction even when he doesn’t take advantage of victim’s property. Unlike insatiability or egoism, envy is always inhered with hatred, enmity.

Envy is a shameful feeling. That’s why it is being disguised or denied. This is how Paul Krugman—a winner of Nobel Prize in economics—disguises and denies his envy:

“The fact is that vast income inequality inevitably brings vast social inequality in its train. And this social inequality isn’t just a matter of envy and insults. It has real, negative consequences for the way people live in this country. It may not matter much that the great majority of Americans can’t afford to stay in the eleven-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suites popping up in luxury hotels around the world. It matters a great deal that millions of middle-class families buy houses they can’t really afford, taking on more mortgage debt than they can safely handle, because they’re desperate to send their children to a good school—and intensifying inequality means that the desirable school districts are growing fewer in number, and more expensive to live in” (Paul Krugman. The Conscience of a Liberal. The Costs of Inequality).

Insulting comparison with rich people, who are popping up in luxury hotels around the world, prompts Krugman to dissolve justice, dissolve the bounds to declare the “right” of middle-class on someone’s wealth. In order to do so he writes that “the lion’s share of economic growth in America over the past thirty years has gone to a small, wealthy minority, to such an extent that it’s unclear whether the typical family has benefited at all from technological progress and the rising productivity it brings. The lack of clear economic progress for lower- and middle-income families is in itself an important reason to seek a more equal distribution of income” (same as above).

Nietzsche called envy “the privy part of the human soul” (F. Nietzsche. Human, All Too Human. Man alone with himself). No one would confess that he is driven by envy to successful people. This is why projects inspired by envy are called income equalization, antitrust policy or anti-globalization. The list can be extended.

The most dangerous part of envy is that the vast majority of contemporaries mistake envy for justice. This majority is ready to believe any nonsense about rich people only on the ground that they are rich. Absolutely illogical, false “proof” of capitalists “expropriation” of workers works just fine because it’s being nurtured by envy.

All humans are insatiable and egoistic, but envy distorts the picture, endowing only rich men with insatiability and egoism. Left politicians use this distortion, encouraging to rob the rich ones by the means of nationalization or progressive taxation. Successful struggle against left political views is impossible without exposure of envy to the rich, inherent to these views.

Envy and justice are essentially different feelings. To substitute justice with envy is to harm the justice. Envy prompts to confront successful people, while justice prompts to confront wrongdoers, not the rich people. Enviers’ struggle against rich people makes richer those who in charge of this struggle, not the poor ones.