Our heavily capitalist society couldn't work without a certain amount of financial nihilism. How could you be a billionaire without being a financial nihilist ? What are the reasons for wanting to accumulate so much wealth, and keeping it for yourself while so many people suffer from poverty ?
On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash...
The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
21–30 of 165 posts
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#22The fact that money and wealth (and apparently housing) are a “game” is rather depressing, but to some extent it’s always been that way. At least it seems like we are (maybe?) moving in the direction of addressing the problem via political efforts to reduce financial volatility and wealth inequality. As the article mentions, money nihilism quickly gives way to other forms of nihilism when that other thing is less abs…
How old are you now? Have you tried PRP injections?
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#23The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…
Perhaps it's anxiety caused by people who want power. "Vote for us because things are getting worse"
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#24Our heavily capitalist society couldn't work without a certain amount of financial nihilism. How could you be a billionaire without being a financial nihilist ? What are the reasons for wanting to accumulate so much wealth, and keeping it for yourself while so many people suffer from poverty ? On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash...
> On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash...
No, this is incorrect. It doesn't matter who owns the stock as long as someone does. It's irrelevant if one person owns the stock or it's distributed equally among workers (or something in between.) The incentives are the same. In fact, distributing stock more widely could lead to better decision making by crowdsourcing wisdom.
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#25The flip side of this is sitting on a pretty good stable income, not playing high risk investment games, and needing to accept that your social class and wealth is more or less locked in for at least 20 years. Linear gains don’t move the needle. Savings do nothing once you have a house. It’s not a bad place to be, but it is a static one. If you have the ability to appreciate your circumstances it’s even a good one.
But amidst a world of games and progression systems it sure does feel like a failure in some regards.
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#26The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…
I have a different take on why we want to see the world burn: we can see the world on fire, but seemingly lots of people don't (at least, not enough to do anything about it). We hope that if the burn increases a little bit now, people will notice before it starts burn uncontrollably in a few years, so start working to stop the fire.
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#27The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…
Lots of people our age feel like the world is bad and unjust and destroying current civilization through revolution will result in a just and good society.
These people are idiots who aren’t aware of the death and destruction this will cause and things will likely be much worse after.
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#28The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…
"we saw our beloved parents struggle in old age with health and finance", This would vary from country to country but absolutely isn't the case in the UK. Most millennial's parents didn't have their income crippled by rent (with little chance of buying) and student loans (tuition fees only came in in the late 90s), and lived most their lives with a public health service that wasn't being aggressively gutted. If anything it'd be a resentment over how easy their parents had it.
It's possibly a direct reaction to the global response to the banking crisis in 2008. We were told all these bailouts and austerity and artificially low interest rates were the way to solve things and while stock markets bounced back it never felt like a genuine recovery. The stock markets and bitcoin booming during the pandemic would've added fuel to the fire too. There'd be something somewhat comforting to see it all fall apart in a way that's undeniable and couldn't be patched over. Not a very rational response but it's understandable after the last 15 years (and the entirety of most their adult lives)
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#29Our heavily capitalist society couldn't work without a certain amount of financial nihilism. How could you be a billionaire without being a financial nihilist ? What are the reasons for wanting to accumulate so much wealth, and keeping it for yourself while so many people suffer from poverty ? On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash...
> On the other hand, if billionaire's stopped wanting to earn more and more money, the economy would likely crash... No, this is incorrect. It doesn't matter who owns the stock as long as someone does. It's irrelevant if one person owns the stock or it's distributed equally among workers (or something in between.) The incentives are the same. In fact, distributing stock more widely could lead to better decision makin…
Well I do agree and hope that this will happen some day. And it will be nice that once the stock is distributed more equally, we get other goals than economic growth, like preserving the planet, eradicating poverty, stop producing useless things and creating bullshit jobs to lower the unemployment rate.
But for now the stocks are mostly owned by rich people who want to get richer not matter what and it seems to me that the whole market is so used to that, that it would take a radical system change to make it happen without the economy as we know it crashing hard.
Re: The Scandal of Financial Nihilism
#30The post is kind of all over the place, more like an internal reflection than a normal message to others, but it does resonate with me on one point specifically: I am an "official" millennial, born 1989. One thing I have noticed (in an anectodical, personal and subjective way) is that my age bracket, especially those I would consider higher on an intelligence/success curve, appear to be so much more closet-nihilist t…
I have a different take on why we want to see the world burn: we can see the world on fire, but seemingly lots of people don't (at least, not enough to do anything about it). We hope that if the burn increases a little bit now, people will notice before it starts burn uncontrollably in a few years, so start working to stop the fire.
I too have a different take on why we want to see the world burn. We’re watching as we get trapped into the void, the proverbial rat race. We have a specific vantage point, dead smack in the middle. We see both ends of the race clearly, with boomers in retirement at the end, and GenZ/Y at the beginning. All racing.
At the beginning of the race we see the incessant vain jockeying of a group trying to socially manipulate constantly and fit in, and on the other end (the actual end of the race), you see a group constantly trying to justify and protect what scraps the race allowed them to keep.
And in the middle you run as fast as you can, hoping you escaped the beginning of the race, hoping you make it to the end with some scraps you can call treasure. You run away from the beginning of race, disgusted at what you once were, and disgusted at what you need to become to survive until the end.
It’s in that moment of realization you wish the universe imploded. All that running kills the soul.