Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you, it's been a while now since I started improving things so it's easier to look at this more objectively. I was harsh on my parents in that post, they were dysfunctional but my mother loved all of us in her own way and spent her whole life arround us, and I can't say a lot of good things about my father - dealing with my mother in those days would break anyone. I'm on good terms with them now and they are in…
Was it in the Balkans?
Just Be Rich
491–500 of 1001 posts
Re: Just Be Rich
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up in a family of 7 (4 younger siblings), during civil war, father was into gamling and drinking, mother was unemployed and constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown (understandable given the conditions she was living in). To paint the picture, I have vivid memories of vomiting a boiled onion I ate after not eating for days (I think I was arround 5 years old). And we were poor well into my early 20s untill…
This is probably not the place to say the following, but I just have to. Reading your comment nearly made me cry, because it (strikingly) reminded me of my own story. You are not alone. Keep your head up (as you seem to always have done), and if you can, make peace with the past and your parents. This took me a LOT of time, but it helped me. Thank you for sharing your story.
I grew up in similar circumstances, and it still affects my mindset. It's changing, but slowly.
It helps a lot to read others' stories.
Re: Just Be Rich
#493Re: Just Be Rich
#494OP mentions PG’s article arguing against a wealth tax. That article is short, simple and to the point - Modelling a Wealth Tax ( http://www.paulgraham.com/wtax.html ). It is so compelling, but also misleading and wrong. Its not easy to spot the sleights of hand he uses. I wrote more about it here - Modelling a Wealth Tax Correctly ( https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/wealth-tax/ ). And yet, I think the simplicity of PG’s…
I will add one more thing to your analysis of the possible negative outcomes: the market effects of the government selling the stocks of a company. I suspect these two things will happen on the market: 1. You'd need to have a wealthy enough buyer for the assets - it's going to be kinda hard to convince the wealthy to buy back their own assets. 2. In the absence of sufficiently large market makers, the prices of these…
Why would that be? If an asset has a certain RoI people will want to own it.
Re: Just Be Rich
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up in a family of 7 (4 younger siblings), during civil war, father was into gamling and drinking, mother was unemployed and constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown (understandable given the conditions she was living in). To paint the picture, I have vivid memories of vomiting a boiled onion I ate after not eating for days (I think I was arround 5 years old). And we were poor well into my early 20s untill…
Unfortunately the dysfunction and poverty may go hand in hand a lot of the time. There is strong indication that scarcity affects cognitive function. "Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" is a great book on this. In essence it is not that people in poverty have less innate executive control / cognitive capacity, but that the situation of poverty causes anyone to lose some significant points of executive con…
Modern humans have existed for something like 100,000 years give or take a few tens of thousands, and yet we only started building anything particularly innovative in the last ~10,000 or so. So we spent 90% of our species' history doing very little in the way of cognitively challenging innovation.
I wonder if this might not be the reason. Some have observed that hunter-gatherers often had better nutrition and were healthier than at least early civilized humans, but maybe they also lived under a perpetual cloud of fear about the next famine, raid, or plague. Maybe that basically shut down their capacity for higher cognition. Maybe they didn't have any time to sit down and think and do so free of concern about the future.
Re: Just Be Rich
#496Can someone explain to me why "Wealth Inequality" is a problem? If my neighbor has more then me, how is that an issue? Now, I do understand that: * Doing something illegal is wrong, but if someone aquired wealth legally, I don't see the inequality a problem. * Poverty is a problem but poverty is a problem whether 100% of the population is poor, or is a minority of the population is poor, or the majority of the popula…
If you are rich enough, you can influence what is illegal. I don't know of a system of government that is robust to this kind of problem.
Re: Just Be Rich
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in success
In startups you have to be right only once.
Re: Just Be Rich
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously money will not change everything but if you get a monthly allowance to feed your children it will probably decrease the incidence of onion vomit for a substantial portion of them. Which seems valuable in its own right. Dealing with a large lump sum payment is inherently much harder.
I agree, I think some sort of universal income payment for each child would be the least controversial version of UBI.
-People who wait with having children till their situation stabilizes are now subsidizing those who don't. I think this is simply immoral and will result in more productive/responible/better educated people having even fewer children.
-the money goes to often dysfunctional parents and is spent on pointless consumption and alcohol. It's not a meme that if you want to see a lot expensive brand clothes or shoes you just need to visit a poor part of the town (I live in a very homogeneous country so no race/religion/culture undertones there).
I would much prefer the money to be spent on infrastructure making life better for the kids. Making sure children can get quality food, educational materials, help from social workers, can spend quality time outside of their dysfunctional homes and maybe get exposed to different ways life could be would be in my view way more helpful.
Making sure preschool children have their needs met is a more difficult problem. Still I think giving people free access to quality nutrition, clothes, medical care, toys etc would be a better way.
Sure there is a % of people who w can manage money and prioritize their children but those people would do well anyway if the money came as free stuff you can get for your children instead of buying it yourself.
Since (very modest for western standard) ubi like program was introduced we have seen huge raise in tourism and alcohol consumption. The numbers are there. It's just people who end up in bottom % economically are usually very bad with money and decision making.
I guess we can live with that one we can afford ubi for everyone but for now the priorities should be about giving children of shitty parents a fair shot at life. Good unfortunate parents will be able to use other programs as well.
Re: Just Be Rich
#499A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have family obligations that take priority. Because they live outside high-income countries. Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prev…
Re: Just Be Rich
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that I disagree with anything you said necessarily, but it's so much more complicated than this. Sometimes being less fortunate is what motivates people to become rich. The truth is I had a huge amount of stuff holding me back as a child, and still do, but imo that is why I managed to succeed (relatively at least) where others I knew who had similar intelligence and better backgrounds did not. Even in my own fami…
Being poor is only a motivator for an incredibly tiny number of people who are probably prone to risk-taking anyway. The unfortunate reality is that some of them shade into outright narcissism. https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-t... It's vastly easier to become rich if you don't care about employees, customers, tenants, and co-workers, or if you can persuade yourself that people who don't tak…
How would you address this? It seems that you're making a point that if a person became rich AND they didn't have a safety net — they are most probably toxic individuals. If I understood you correctly, it feels that such rhetoric penalizes the "smart, clever, inventive individuals" that come from poor background. As someone coming from poverty I find these statements unfair and paternalistic.