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The real use of money is to buy freedom

paraschopra.com

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Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#131

Post by PavlovsCat »

dbecker wrote: post #91
nexttimer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real use of money is to buy freedom The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. Inequality (wealth-based) means nothing else than domination. If you are richer, then you dominate the poorer people. And richer countries dominate poorer countries. This is the most basic and fundamental injustice [0] we seem to accept in our Western culture. Because we…

The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide , for the two centuries.

When I am healthy, or plant a fruit tree (on previously unused land), or come up with a better or healthier way of doing something, nobody else looses anything. (That has been going on since the dawn of time if you will, and certainly not just since the last 200 years.)

But on the other hand, a million dollars is in no small part worth a lot because most people don't have it; if everybody did, that wouldn't make everybody rich, it would just mean a loaf of bread now costs a million dollars. You can't just ignore that "because rising standards of living". Wealth is first and foremost a word, not an actual thing, and the associated concepts can be complex... but wealth purely in the sense of market shares, of bank accounts, even of being an expert in comparison to non-experts.. there is so much of what we tend to consider as wealth that is obviously a zero-sum game.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#132

Post by mathattack »

nexttimer wrote: post #80
miles wrote: post #21

Tim O'Reilly on money: It’s easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations! Source: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-...

> The real use of money is to buy freedom The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. Inequality (wealth-based) means nothing else than domination. If you are richer, then you dominate the poorer people. And richer countries dominate poorer countries. This is the most basic and fundamental injustice [0] we seem to accept in our Western culture. Because we…

I disagree. If have a $100,000, and somebody else has zero, neither of us have any value until I spend the money.

If I spent the $10,000 to have someone do my laundry for the year (increasing my free time), then they have $10,000 with which to buy things that they might value more than the time doing my laundry. It may be groceries, it might be books, it might be a vacation.

If I invest the remaining $90,000 (let's say by buying a bank CD) then the bank will lend the money out to people, who have an opportunity to buy houses, start businesses, or otherwise put it to use.

Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others. Nobody forces them to accept it.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#133

Post by glurgann »

Artistry121 wrote: post #120
glurgann wrote: post #114

I'm kind of disappointed, I was hoping for a bit more than a "rich people get obsessed with getting richer" type of story (still a good piece). Freedom is indeed bought with money, but not in the way that most people think. There's a shell game going on right now for the lowest class worker. At the time the US economy had it's "oh shit" moment around 2007-2008, I was working at a marketing research company. At the ti…

I did some analysis of the basic costs of living in Austin, TX for a minimum wage worker and found if fairly good decisions are made about $2000 a year can be saved at 40 hours of work a week 50 weeks a year. How much money were you spending on alcohol and the few times you went out "crazy"? Substance abuse sounds like a few beers a night - costing $20 a week or so? That's two hours of free time (closer to three) a w…

And I really couldn't give one, at least in this setting. And really I've yet to see a good estimate for cost of living. Full time in minimum wage-land is 35 scheduled hours, less if you are let go early. Getting behind on bills also constitutes additional fees.

As far as what I remember, I ended up having about $100-150 left after bills per pay period. There are other factors here as well, bad roommate, car accident, that I'm not going into.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#134

Post by reginaldjcooper »

Artistry121 wrote: post #106
flyinglizard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a simplistic view. Most rich people became rich because they provided a particular value to society. This value is exchanged for money, which allows the rich to draw back this value as they see fit. Lets imagine that Steve Jobs, instead of getting paid for his iPhones, sold them in exchange for a person's time. The average hourly wage in USA is approximately $24, meaning an iPhone would retail for abou…

And those involved in creating the iPhone (in countries with strong property laws) all entered into a trade agreement where they provided their time or skills in exchange for a certain amount of money. Bill Gates had to give 30 cents of every dollar he earned to the US government to avoid going to prison. That's domination - the threat of force if penance is not paid. Wal-mart never made anyone work for them. They si…

Just what we need, some more Objectivism.

If the free market ensured that all people were given a wage that adequately reflected their value, the bottom 40% of earners would be getting more than 10% of the income.

Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system. Microsoft then abused its wealth to "embrace, extend, extinguish;" which is sort of a perfect illustration of how consolidating lots of money gives totally unbalanced market advantages to a few entities.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#135

Post by trevorstrohman »

ashray wrote: post #122
dbecker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide , for the two centuries.

Is the standard of living really growing for everyone ? Or are there more people now (%wise) in poverty ? This is an honest question as several people have mentioned the standard of living argument before on HN. I've read however that the rich-poor divide is growing and thus am just wondering about this..

This Hans Rosling talk from a few years ago shows how most indicators are improving worldwide (e.g. reductions in child mortality, GDP per capita).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#136

Post by [deleted] »

vanderZwan wrote: post #24
paraschopra wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the projects I want to do is to map living expenses, inflation and life expectancy to know exactly how much money is "enough". My problem is that we forget that we tomorrow should be more valuable to us than today and by the time we get this realization, we might have lost many years (of adulthood).

Based on the following research, I guess $75K? http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/07/129703291/new-stud...

[deleted]

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#138

Post by joshuahedlund »

ashray wrote: post #122
dbecker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide , for the two centuries.

Is the standard of living really growing for everyone ? Or are there more people now (%wise) in poverty ? This is an honest question as several people have mentioned the standard of living argument before on HN. I've read however that the rich-poor divide is growing and thus am just wondering about this..

Not only have both absolute and percentage numbers of people living in poverty dropped in the last two decades[0], but global inequality (unlike some intra-country inequality) is falling as well[1].

[0]http://www.economist.com/node/21548963 [1]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/13/a...

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#139

Post by yummyfajitas »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #108
yummyfajitas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you still haven't read the link I provided, which provides numbers after adjusting for purchasing power . I'd provide you with more statistics showing how wealthy poor Americans are ( http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf ), but clearly you aren't going to read any numbers. So instead, go watch about 4 minutes of Delhi Belly (good movie, BTW, vastly better than typical Bollywood crap) which always c…

What's so terribly wrong about those scenes? After applying cinema discount. They don't drink your juice in the USA? I will pick middle-class Indian over poor American every day, because: you won't get shot, you won't land in prison, you won't have to work three jobs for funny money, you'll have a real family and your children won't do drugs. Instead you'll be raking in some respect.

What's so terribly wrong about those scenes?

3 middle class professionals (2 in that scene) all sharing a single grungy studio apartment. One of them is unable to wash his butt because none of them remembered to fill buckets of water during the 2-3 hours/day when the water worked.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when you suggest the poor American works 3 jobs. He probably works 0 (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2011.pdf), unlike the Indian who is typically working mon-sat (mon-fri at a good IT company). Crime is a huge problem - just ask any woman of reasonable attractiveness.

As for having a "real family", the poor American can choose to marry a woman of good character before having children. He typically chooses not to.

Look, you can complain about "I can't afford a new iPhone poverty" and "omfg someone with a job makes 8x more than my welfare poverty" within the first world all you want. But don't project these intuitions onto India and other nations suffering from real poverty. It leads you to conclusions that are utterly ridiculous to anyone who knows what they are talking about.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#140

Post by marknutter »

reginaldjcooper wrote: post #134
Artistry121 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those involved in creating the iPhone (in countries with strong property laws) all entered into a trade agreement where they provided their time or skills in exchange for a certain amount of money. Bill Gates had to give 30 cents of every dollar he earned to the US government to avoid going to prison. That's domination - the threat of force if penance is not paid. Wal-mart never made anyone work for them. They si…

Just what we need, some more Objectivism. If the free market ensured that all people were given a wage that adequately reflected their value, the bottom 40% of earners would be getting more than 10% of the income. Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contrac…

> Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system.

You make it sound as though it's a willful transaction between two parties. Yes, taxes go to those things, but it's compulsory. If I don't like Microsoft I can choose not to buy their products. If I don't like the NSA or CIA torture tactics, I can't opt out of their services. BIG difference.

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