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while the anarchists and communists were definitely not okay

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with the rise of industrial capitalism in the Gilded Age there were those who [anarchist and communist signs]

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just didn't see the problem with it some of these people took a shine to a

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philosophy called social Darwinism when we hear this term we sort of imagine a

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bunch of Darwin lovers pleasantly chatting about evolution while eating [Darwin lovers appear]

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cucumber sandwiches and sipping tea but that's not what it's about

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in fact social Darwinism was only loosely based on Charles Darwin's idea

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of evolution well Darwin's theories tried to explain

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how life-forms slowly evolves over long periods of time like millions of years [Life forms evolving]

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like according to Darwin bugs that look like sticks are less likely to get eaten

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than bugs that look like tasty bug dinners so bugs that look more like [Bug appears as steak on a plate]

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sticks survive longer and are able to have more stick bug babies and post cute

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stick bug baby videos on YouTube but social Darwinist took the idea that [Stick insect using iPhone on leaf]

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animals with more advantageous traits were likely to survive and copied and

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pasted it onto human social relations well the idea basically went like this

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life is a ferocious battle to the death in the jungle and some genetically [Rabbits fighting]

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inferior people are just bound to lose and it's just not the problem of the

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people on top social Darwinist said that people were poor because they were not

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as smart or not as good as rich people people were poor because they just

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didn't have the skills to be rich or they just hadn't worked hard enough it [Poor man's head explodes]

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was the perfect way to justify the huge gap that existed between the rich and

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the poor during the Gilded Age picture the anarchists and the Communists

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streaming statistics about labor and poverty while the social Darwinist shrug

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and say well survival of the fittest bro one famous social Darwinist named [Man taking a bath surrounded by gold bars]

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William Sumner published a famous pamphlet that summed up a lot of these

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ideas the title was on a new philosophy that poverty is the best policy well

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it's not hard to imagine what the anarchists and communists thought of

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that here's a quote that kind of sums up summoner's ideas one man in a free state

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cannot claim help from and cannot be charged to

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give help to another well Sumner thought that any kind of social welfare system [Poor man appears and government entitlement piggy bank handed to him]

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help the poor was downright unnatural and bad for society if a rich person

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wanted to help out the poor then that was his or her prerogative but when a

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government starts putting into place programs that force this to happen and [IRS woman holding pile of cash appears]

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society is in big trouble these days all we have to do is flip on the news to see

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that people are still going at it over these issues on the one side people

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argue that the wealthy of a duty to help the poor and that when wealth gets

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concentrated at the top the rich fix the system so that it's next to impossible [Rich man throws barrels down to poor man]

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for the lower classes to climb the social ladder and if you dig into the

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news the real issue a lot of times it's just about the implementation of trying

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to lift the lower classes up that is most of them aren't stupid they're just [Poor kids stood against a wall]

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born into very difficult conditions and you don't have to fight some people

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these days channel social Darwinists like some are arguing that helping the

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poor actually hurts them why well because it encourages the poor not that

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help themselves someone who's making the room and board and bunch of other things

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for free well maybe that's okay if they just sort of stay where they are why

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would somebody want to go out and get a job if the government gives them [Poor man inside a house]

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everything they need and then of course there are people who argue that there's

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a lot of middle ground between a complete welfare state and one that

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offers no safety net at all we don't claim to know the secret answer here but

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it's important to see how these kind of debates continues for the years chances

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are that one day future schmoops will be talking about how things going on right [Shmoop robot talking to dolphin]

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now affected whatever will be going on then we're just hoping that the perks of

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working at future shmoop will include company hoverboard real ones not like [Man riding a hoverboard]

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those fake ones of weak

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