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The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me

nytimes.com

11–15 of 15 posts

Re: The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me

#11
post #7

From the article: "Unfortunately, however, these people have enough money to do serious damage." Having money does not make anyone fit to change anything outside their business. Maybe there need to be limits set on what can be done with money, government approval of business plans for example, or limits on how much cash can be spent in some area the wealthy person has no understanding of. If someone makes a fortune s…

People would definitely resist the idea of not being able to spend their money the way they want. That's the whole point of capitalism, and these people made their fortunes thank to capitalism so obviously capitalism is correct.

The core fundamental issue I see a lot of is that your net worth defines your value. People with more money have more inherent value across the board, and people with less have less. Rich people have an outsized effect on society because people look at their bank balance and see how much money they've made and immediately think that their success came from being an exceptional specimen of humanity.

If we could ditch the cult of personality and the "rich makes right" attitude and actually looked at the behavior of billionaires, we'd see that these people are almost universally unhinged from reality, making baseless claims and assertions, changing social or political affiliations as soon as the group they support doesn't support them unconditionally, avoiding paying taxes as much as possible and then turning around and performing "philanthropy" by paying for a new library or wing of a museum to be named after them. They complain that the government is subsidizing health care when taking billions in government subsidies just so they can turn a bigger profit, which people then attribute to their skill and worth as a person and not their leveraging of their fortune for political gain.

Re: The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me

#12
post #8

What I don't get about this whole COVID conspiracy thing: If there's no Graphene Oxide in there, why don't some anti-conspiracy people just grab a camera while testing the blood of various volunteer vaxxed/non-vaxxed people, compare it under a microscope and show the results? Because that's what the conspiracy people are doing and they're all finding traces of what looks like graphene oxide based on existing papers a…

It's because none of these claims are valid or reputable. Anti-vaxxers are making up these claims out of whole cloth, and if people spend any reasonable amount of time debunking it, then the anti-vaxxers will fall back on the same playbook as always: 1. The debunking is a lie/hoax, you can't trust these people they're working for big pharma. 2. Okay well that might not be true but what about this other completely man…

Thank you, that's exactly what I was looking for!

Re: The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me

#13
post #11
post #7

From the article: "Unfortunately, however, these people have enough money to do serious damage." Having money does not make anyone fit to change anything outside their business. Maybe there need to be limits set on what can be done with money, government approval of business plans for example, or limits on how much cash can be spent in some area the wealthy person has no understanding of. If someone makes a fortune s…

People would definitely resist the idea of not being able to spend their money the way they want. That's the whole point of capitalism, and these people made their fortunes thank to capitalism so obviously capitalism is correct. The core fundamental issue I see a lot of is that your net worth defines your value. People with more money have more inherent value across the board, and people with less have less. Rich peo…

>we'd see that these people are almost universally unhinged from reality, making baseless claims and assertions, changing social or political affiliations as soon as the group they support doesn't support them unconditionally, avoiding paying taxes as much as possible

This sounds like a normal person. So the problem is that they're plagued by the same biases and shortcomings as the un-monied, but via their wealth are able to inflict their flaws upon us on a vast scale?

Re: The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully I think we did a fairly good job succinctly taking the sabotures to task this time around on these climate issues. The fine technicalities any contrarianism rested on looked ridiculous. On so many topics all it takes is two or three seeds of chaos & the core points are all missed, amid endless debate on absurd distantly related topics. Injecting false debates can quite effectively smokescreen the topic at…

Yes, that's a good point, that in well-moderated environments you can call them out effectively. And silent majority, indeed. Too bad the term "silent majority" has been co-opted by the loudest and most misguided minority.

100% on point irony & sadness vis-a-vie silent majority. I think the idea is such a useful, true & important idea.

I've struggled to find a good succinct way to capture the idea, that doesn't also have the bogus historical baggage.

Re: The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me

#15

There must be a different brain chemistry at work. Maybe increased levels of comfort and elevated pack status from the freedom of social transactions does this. I never understood why a lot of these fuckers don't just go away and leave everyone else alone when they made enough money for themselves to not worry about money. But I have come to realize that it doesn't work like this at all and there comes a profound cha…

I don't think there is any different brain chemistry at work. It is just human nature to want to do something with their wealth, for good or ill or whatever.

It is more likely that the people are naturally acquisitive and the ones that succeed then feel the need to continue to do things when the best thing for them and us is for them to stop and just enjoy their wealth.

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