There are people believing “the others” to earn from everything harming “one’s own”. That they would earn from everything I consider a myth. I think it is rumouring which has corrupted the concept of conflicting goals. Something being in the interest of someone is never as simple as that. There must be a connection between “we are harmed” and “they benefit”. Oftentimes this connection seems to be missing. Is it taken for granted one has probably never thought about this.
Certain myths about crime make this particularly clear. This is about individuals of noticeably recent decent from a different part of the world. Such minorities are believed to have made it into a system to physically attack the majority. It is supposed the minority earn from members of the majority being harmed. Any explanation of how seems in such a case entirely missing.
Now it is entirely possible to earn from harming others. Robbers and burglars earn short-term from this. Short-term because they don’t expect to ever get caught for it. Something which could very well happen. Anyway it is physical objects which they are out to. The harm they cause they don’t earn anything from in itself. Presumably such would prefer to just steal if they could. Then they would be able to avoid the additional effort of threatening or breaking in.
Another group earning from harming others are drug dealers. Such make a living from selling harmful products. If they were not harmful they would not be illegal. It is not the harm in itself but the money they earn from selling which consists the benefit from them. Please note that real drug dealers don’t push drugs on others. It is a bad idea for them to sell their drugs to children. The risk with that would be too great. To force drugs into others would be outright counterproductive. Not only does it waste the wares they sell. The victim would not automatically want to take the drug again. At worst the victim does not even know which drug it is. I think drug abuse spread through their customers offering others. If someone wants to take the drug again the customer tips about the drug dealer.
Sometimes it does not matter if the product is harmful in the long run. One example is the tobacco industry. It sells a drug which is more or less accepted. Tobacco is addictive which makes the manufacturers usually able to keep their customers. That they die ten years earlier on average does not matter. It is still profitable enough to sell tobacco to them.
In some cases a group is claimed to earn money from something. Then one has to ask if the money they earn is in proportion to the effort. Money and effort being invested have to give a high enough profit. Otherwise it is not worth it. That it would be worth it can’t be taken for granted. Moreover it is not certain that such things as orders and bribes work. Neither can one ever get 100% of a group to accept something. Humans vary too much mentally for it to be possible.
Otherwise a certain group is claimed to earn politically from an event. Far too often the benefit then does not seem to turn up. Or it is very small compared to the harm having happened. Still it is taken for granted the group would consider it to be worth it. To me that appear to be based on misunderstanding around how people in general function. All are in fact not ready to sacrifice as much as one likes.
It does not help that some believe the same group to be behind everything. Even when this very group suffer the worst of the event. The group is still in some way supposed to earn from what happened. At worst an entire religion is supposed to be willing to let more than half of its members in one part of the world die! To me that idea is patently absurd. Not only is the willingness to die for one’s cause by far too rare. Moreover the religion in question is not even centrally controlled. Some treat collective nouns as if they referred to organisations. Something they don’t at all have to.
This faulty way of thinking goes the other way too. If a minority gets equal rights it is supposed to harm the majority. How that would happen usually seems to lack an explanation. I think the idea is based on older arguments for privileges. Small minorities had legal monopoly on certain positions in society. They have justified that by only themselves would be suitable for this. When someone wanted to extend this right it was seen as a threat to the position in and of itself. It was believed to automatically get worse from more getting access to it. However, this development could not be stopped. Sooner or later the majority got opportunity to reach such a position. But the myth of social institutions getting worse from more getting the right lives on.
Oftentimes an imagined elite is supposed to be behind the extension of rights. Historically it was rarely how it in fact happened. Take for example the abolishment of slavery in the Americas. Was this something forced by a small number of rich to harm the rest of the population? No, it was the middle class which attitudes changed. The middle class started to view slavery as something they should not have. Of cause society was affected by slavery disappearing. In some countries slave-owners got economic compensation for this. In others they did not but lost fortunes. Former slaves were now paid for the work they did. Oftentimes they lacked skills which they had never been allowed to acquire. This has led to a destructive cultural heritage which descendants of slaves still live with. Please note this is something first and foremost affecting themselves. When others are affected as a bi-effect it is their desperacy.
Other groups have got equal rights because they themselves demanded this. Men outside privileged groups demanded political influence. It was mostly women demanding female right to vote. In the same way it was the forcibly segregated which demanded to be integrated. The handicapped and their families demanded accessibility to them. LGBT people themselves demand to get equal rights. Why would such rights harm the rest of the population? I think claims of that come from misdirected fear of potential sex offenders. Or the above mentioned myth of institutions becoming worse from this.
How would for example gay marriage destroy marriage as an institution? World an older form of marriage get worse just because one knows a new exists? If a marriage works only depends on the two being married to each other. Possibly their interactions with others may matter. Entirely irrelevant is which strangers are allowed to marry which. Gay marriage only gives equal rights to same-sex couples. Such has existed all the time. They has just not been noticeable to the same degree previously.
Just coming into contact with a group is supposed to make a person worse. To me that appear as an expression of the myth of contagious sin. Of cause there are individuals which are bad role models for children. Fore example drug dealers, the violence-prone and fanatics. Such can fool children into believing their behaviour is desirable. However, members of other populations don’t at all have to be such. Why would we become worse people just by contact with them? People don’t become handicapped themselves from meeting the handicapped. In the same way being LGBT is not some external behaviour which would rub off. To belong to any of these groups is an inborn characteristic. This has nothing to do with which someone comes into contact with.
Uploaded on the 8th of October 2026.
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This site was last changed on the 8th of October 2026.