Person claims its immoral to be rich

[Tommo]

You gotta open your mind to the fact that this dipshit is ironically making money by causing two reactions:

• Making losers feel better.
• Making others feel outraged.

It's the Michael Moore business model.

Read Trust Me I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday. It's the business model that made outlets like HuffPo and Breitbart into monsters. Outrage is the currency of the internet news cycle.

Like @MidwestLandlord hints at... the best thing you can do is not read this shit. Better yet, don't even click on it or visit the page when you see a headline like that. Deprive that F*cker of his 1 millionth of a penny in ad revenue.

Just bought it, will start it tonight, thanks, finished his Ego is The Enemy so I'm impressed by his writing already @G-Man

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Tommo]

The OP (of the excerpt) was just some random dude on the internet.

It's easy to ignore and just say "didn't read" and move on with your day.

The actual problem is that there are real people out in the word, real leaders and influencers, who have this same philosophy.


Perfect examples below...both within the past week...

Professors who teach the next generation spreading this same garbage, and politicians who want to mold society in this view. THAT you can't ignore so easily, because eventually it will affect you.

'Practice What You Preach': Tucker Battles Prof Who Wants Higher Taxes For Rich

French candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon wants a 100% tax on the rich

I thought it was going to be Jeffrey Tucker not Tucker Carlson. Bugger.

 

[AlexandreGoulart]

What's funny about that is that being wealthy is biblical.

It's also necessary for the investment of capital into things that advance our world.

The rich are typically better at investing and allocating money than the rest of us.

Exactly. All the patriarchs and other important servants of the Lord were rich. Had cattle, servants, land, some had even military force. Some were kings and so on.
There's nothing wrong on being rich.

 

[Imgal]

I'm not going into the specifics of the article because the great and good of this forum have done it much better than I could ever do. I do think though even from the headline, this article displays a issue that a lot of us have, not just with money.

Justifying why we are where we are (and if we're justifying it's because we're not there and want to be).

It's like bullies at school, they don't attack unless they feel attacked. My grandparents were the people I was closest to and amazing people, but they resented the "rich" because they weren't. They'd always talk about how different those people were from us and we had to live with what we've been given. I've realised looking back on a lot of things in my life that this profoundly impacted me and how I've approached different things in life. It's no concidence that every time a business venture was starting to blow up and do well I walked away from it. I'd have come up with a 101 reasons why, but the more time I spent reflecting on it, I can see the influence of them and by becoming one of the rich, I'd lose them in the process.

Money is just money. It's not good, it's not bad and its not evil. That comes down to the people who have or don't have it and what they choose to do with it.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Icecreamchild]

Actually what he says in the article is true if luck ( aka being in the right place at the right time i.e Events) is the only difference between the rich and the poor. But, we know that's not true. We know it's very hard to earn a lot of money. So, the rich have all the right to keep/do whatever they wish with their hard-earned money. The rich deserve their money. This image posted somewhere on this forum explain it clearly:

 

[Jon L]

I read the article. (I guess I needed to be outraged this morning). The guy writes like he's in high school.

I was going to write out a response to him, but honestly its not worth anyone's time. He has no arguments to make that are worth responding to.

 

[BellaPippin]

Not to derail the thread or anything, but is this a reference to Atlas Shrugged? The reason why I ask is because I bought the book forever ago along with The Fountainhead and only made it half way through The Fountainhead because it was a really long book.

I heard Atlas Shrugged was much better. So, if your comment was in reference to Atlas Shrugged, do you recommend reading it?

Join us at www.thethreadwherewereallreadingatlasshrugged.com


Edit- Oh sweet baby jesus this is a 2017 post. Why don't you tell me these things.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[InspireHD]

Join us at www.thethreadwherewereallreadingatlasshrugged.com


Edit- Oh sweet baby jesus this is a 2017 post. Why don't you tell me these things.

I picked it up again after the group discussion started. I'm a little further ahead than the group at the moment since I started reading awhile ago and I don't always have the time to read consistently every night. I've been loosely following the discussions, but I don't remember the exact chapters to be able to discuss them. Maybe I'll get in once the group catches up and passes me.

 

[BellaPippin]

I picked it up again after the group discussion started. I'm a little further ahead than the group at the moment since I started reading awhile ago and I don't always have the time to read consistently every night. I've been loosely following the discussions, but I don't remember the exact chapters to be able to discuss them. Maybe I'll get in once the group catches up and passes me.

Oh okay, good. I'm ahead too because I started years ago and put it down somewhere in part two.

 

[PizzaOnTheRoof]

If you want a headache and a few hours of your life gone then visit: r/CapitalismVsSocialism

I’m speaking from experience...

OTOH, you might enjoy a lively debate with some career redditors.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[BellaPippin]

If you want a headache and a few hours of your life gone then visit: r/CapitalismVsSocialism

I’m speaking from experience...

OTOH, you might enjoy a lively debate with some career redditors.

And if you want a reason to get drunk head to r/latestagecapitalism

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

This is called slave morality. Read Nietzsche for more. Or listen to the audio from this video.

The gist (and I am far less elegant than Nietzsche) is that losers rationalize their incompetence into virtues (morality). It is a very elaborate game of sour grapes, and frankly if they were as creative with desiring to win as they are with justifying failure they would be quite successful. Slave morality is a more developed version of the victim complex.

The reality is that they loathe themselves for being unable to get what they want, and they project that self-loathing onto those that have what they want (ressentiment).

And it isn't limited to money. Money is just a game that acts as a medium for human nature to play out on; if money wasn't as important today as it is we would see identical behavior centered around other things. In fact we do! "Beautiful people are shallow." "Muscular people are assholes."

If people are competing then you can bet that the losers are gonna whine about how the game wasn't worth playing anyway.

Though fair warning: all of us exhibit some level of slave morality. It is an inescapable part of human nature. The important part is the degree to which you exhibit it.

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

Actually what he says in the article is true if luck is the only difference between the rich and the poor. But, we know that's not true. We know it's very hard to earn a lot of money. So, the rich have all the right to keep their hard-earned money. The rich deserve their money.This image posted somewhere on this forum explain it clearly:

View attachment 28717

Images like this are garbage. They dump tens of millions of people into 3 categories and assign lazy generalizations to each.

You can defend the rich without slandering the poor.

I hold no animosity towards rich people simply for being rich; but I do hold plenty of animosity towards rich people who engaged in scummy behavior to become rich, and those people aren't rare.

While I have been more of an action-faking slowlaner myself (breaking that habit), I consider myself very lucky to have even come across the information that I found on this forum and elsewhere. I guarantee that there are plenty of people who are smarter & work harder than I do who will never receive a fraction of the success because they did not come across the right opportunities.

While you can't get rich without taking risks & working very hard, you need some degree of luck to escape the massive conveyor belt that spits out lobotomized individuals who exist purely to serve the economy, in whatever capacity, rather than have worthwhile lives (the script as MJ calls it).

There are plenty of poor people worthy of respect - in fact there are likely many almost-fastlaners among them who things did not work out for. One or two breaks differently and they could have been very rich. To quote Rich Cohen on the thoughts of Sam "The Banana Man" Zemurray, one of the richest & most powerful men of the 20 century, when reflecting on the plight of the poor during the Depression:

"It was not that looking at the crowds he thought 'that could be me', it was that he thought 'that is me'. If the dice took one more turn, if the switchman slept through the morning call, and the ripes turned brown."

To borrow from Nassim Taleb, here is a better way to think of the rich vs poor dichotomy.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1185178176521199621

View: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1185178176521199621

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Jack Hammer]

Images like this are garbage. They dump tens of millions of people into 3 categories and assign lazy generalizations to each.

You can defend the rich without slandering the poor.

I hold no animosity towards rich people simply for being rich; but I do hold plenty of animosity towards rich people who engaged in scummy behavior to become rich, and those people aren't rare.

While I have been more of an action-faking slowlaner myself (breaking that habit), I consider myself very lucky to have even come across the information that I found on this forum and elsewhere. I guarantee that there are plenty of people who are smarter & work harder than I do who will never receive a fraction of the success because they did not come across the right opportunities.

While you can't get rich without taking risks & working very hard, you need some degree of luck to escape the massive conveyor belt that spits out lobotomized individuals who exist purely to serve the economy, in whatever capacity, rather than have worthwhile lives (the script as MJ calls it).

There are plenty of poor people worthy of respect - in fact there are likely many almost-fastlaners among them who things did not work out for. One or two breaks differently and they could have been very rich. To quote Rich Cohen on the thoughts of Sam "The Banana Man" Zemurray, one of the richest & most powerful men of the 20 century, when reflecting on the plight of the poor during the Depression:

"It was not that looking at the crowds he thought 'that could be me', it was that he thought 'that is me'. If the dice took one more turn, if the switchman slept through the morning call, and the ripes turned brown."

To borrow from Nassim Taleb, here is a better way to think of the rich vs poor dichotomy.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1185178176521199621

View: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1185178176521199621


View attachment 28747

The image is fine. The sidewalk/slow lane/fast lane model is a good generalization of mankind's financial attitudes. Notice that under the description of the CEO, it says he worked at minimum wage jobs while struggling to build a business. That little nuance means the description of the minimum wage worker doesn't actually apply to everyone who has a minimum wage job.

 

[Bekit]

All is well for a couple years in the majority’s minds until societial progress stalls and we start sliding back to tribalism and we begin to lose the ability to make complex technologies because nobody was really incentivized to maintain the gears of production, much less innovate for new and better gears. Civilization withers and fails

I agree.

In fact, let's back up to before there WAS a civilization.

I was just thinking about this yesterday as I was eating some chili made with moose and elk that someone had hunted. They made the comment that it was "free meat." And I thought about back in the pioneer days when people didn't have refrigeration or stores as they crossed the country, and they also didn't have a $400/month grocery bill. They just hunted what they ate along the way.

I've observed the same thing with gardening. You plant seeds. And then FOOD grows out of the earth for FREE. Out of just sunlight, water, and air, the plants produce glucose, which is how we stay alive.

So really, GLUCOSE, produced by photosynthesis, is the true currency of the universe. That "free" meat exists because an animal ate plants and the glucose fueled their body. That apple you just picked off your tree didn't charge you any money to acquire it. We exist because our bodies are constantly consuming glucose and transforming it into ATP, which then fuels every nerve impulse, every muscle movement, every job in every cell that requires energy.

So glucose is basically a form of universal basic income. It doesn't cost any money to pick it, harvest it, and eat it. It's just there for the taking.

Thought experiment:
Let's put together a scenario where we take money out of the picture. Everything is free. We put together an environment where everyone gets the same amount of land and everyone gets the same amount of seed.

We're working with the true currency of the universe. Glucose is going to be handed out for free to everyone from their plot of land.

GO.

We should have the Utopia that the author of this article envisions, right?

Well, let's play this out and see.

Jim is a producer. He's out there every day, plowing his field, sowing his seed, digging irrigation ditches, making himself tools to make the work go more smoothly, enlisting help, collaborating with others, and sharing his knowledge.

Joe is a consumer. He spends the summer hiking in the mountains, wandering through the meadows, and talking in the town square.

Now it's the dead of winter.

Jim's pantry is full and he's eating like a king.

Joe is starving to death and might not survive until spring.

So Joe starts to complain that Jim should give away most of his food. Recognize where this is going?

It's one thing if Joe breaks his back and can't work. Then I would hope that the community would gather around him, treat him with love, and supply his needs. But it's another thing if Joe is clearly choosing not to bother.

I'll bet that within 6 months of starting this experiment, there will already be rich people and poor people. Within 20 years, there will be distinct classes of society. Within a generation or two, there will be a clear dynasty of rulers.

Why?

Because some people will work more and others will work less. Some people will take risks that pay off. Others won't. It comes down to the individual decisions that each person makes.

People who make better decisions will get ahead. And they will stay ahead. Or, if there are multiple redistribution events that even things back out, the people who make better decisions will continue to outpace others in their progress (that is, until they give up and stop trying out of the sheer demoralization of it all).

Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you."

Even in a hypothetical world where everything is free and everything is distributed evenly.