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Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

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Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#101

Post by mseebach »

The Economist had a very good column on this subject a little while ago:

> In living memory, some middle-class Britons would not allow delivery boys to come to their front door; the tradesmen’s entrance was at the side. [....] And their modern descendants, the middle-class intelligentsia who populate the continent’s universities and staff its public sector, have a tendency to despise the businesspeople who generate the wealth needed to fund their way of living. There is great distaste at the idea that political choices should be dictated by “the markets”; investors should just hand over their money and not ask whether it will be paid back.

http://www.economist.com/node/21541857

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#102

Post by jakejake »

I find there are three types of people who will try to make you feel guilty about wanting money. The first are people who have chosen non-lucrative careers and will want you to feel that your work is shallow. The second are people who have an invested interest in paying workers lower wages in order to make their money. The third are people who are young, in school and not yet working full time and paying bills.

Living your life based on money is probably not the way to find happiness. But it's good to know the motivations of people who would judge you for wanting money.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#103

Post by pushingbits »

michaelochurch wrote: post #60

Answer: yes, sure. It's far more honorable to want to be wealthy than, for example, to vie for social status or power over other people. I want to be wealthy; I wish everyone were. I feel like I'm an old (28) knight, having learned the hard way that people are not honorable. For the record, I've seen more disgusting behavior in supposedly "world-changing" startups than many people see in their lives, and far more tha…

"Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off."

This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of being-close-to-the-cliff.

On the other hand, in societies where, if you don't have any money, you are starving on the street as well as ostracized, you can hardly ever trust anyone not to carve you up if there is anything to be gained by it.

I once heard of a doctor working for an NGO in a major Indian city (I think it was Calcutta), who talked about how it was virtually impossible for a white person to make a friend there, because everyone he met was just trying to use him to gain status/money in some fashion.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#104

Post by illumin8 »

oz wrote: post #72

TL;DR: Yes. Get that money. Get lots of it. Poverty sucks. I left rural Jamaica to come to Kingston, the capital, in 2005. After my first year in college, I got a summer job with a telecom startup run by an American. My student loan was not renewed for the 2nd year, so I had to drop out, and got a permanent position as a sysadmin at the company. The pay sucked, but I didn't care: The family member I was living with w…

> I'd been a typical HN-reading, Ayn Rand-quoting, John Galt aspiring-libertarian. Slowly, I began to realize the role of luck and circumstance. I used to look down on the poor, writing them all off as lazy and not willing to work. "How dare they be poor and have a TV!", I used to think.

Wow. I've come to expect a certain level of hypocrisy from a lot of libertarians, but this is a pretty stark example of it. By all rights, you qualified as one of the "moochers," yet you were perfectly happy to denounce those like you.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#105

Post by timwiseman »

michaelochurch wrote: post #60

Answer: yes, sure. It's far more honorable to want to be wealthy than, for example, to vie for social status or power over other people. I want to be wealthy; I wish everyone were. I feel like I'm an old (28) knight, having learned the hard way that people are not honorable. For the record, I've seen more disgusting behavior in supposedly "world-changing" startups than many people see in their lives, and far more tha…

Very well said. As long as you do not compromise your ethics in the process, it is probably good to seek money.

Its worth pointing out that one of the best ethical ways to make money is provide people things or services they want at prices they are willing to pay. As long as you are doing that in an ethical way for people that are also generally ethical, you are probably improving the world while earning money for yourself.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#106

Post by michaelochurch »

pushingbits wrote: post #103
michaelochurch wrote: post #60

Answer: yes, sure. It's far more honorable to want to be wealthy than, for example, to vie for social status or power over other people. I want to be wealthy; I wish everyone were. I feel like I'm an old (28) knight, having learned the hard way that people are not honorable. For the record, I've seen more disgusting behavior in supposedly "world-changing" startups than many people see in their lives, and far more tha…

"Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off." This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of be…

I agree completely. Why does the US have so much crime? Because there's no safety net. (The War on Drugs also contributes in a major way.) This ends up being foolish, because we pay more to keep people in prison (over $30,000 per year) than we would by providing them with education and training. We have the resources to get rid of poverty, but we're spending what we have in phenomenally stupid ways.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#107

Post by cgag »

bhousel wrote: post #80
scotty79 wrote: post #43

Perhaps it's wrong place to ask, but ... Does anyone have an idea how to get this "hunger for money"? I get no pleasure from earning money and almost no pleasure from things I can buy. I find it hard to motivate myself to get rich despite the fact that I consciously know that it could make my life bit easier.

Money == Freedom Don't you want freedom?

Exactly. I never want to work on someone else's terms. I want to be able to travel on a whim. I want to be able to stay up all night and sleep all day. I want to enjoy things that require sunlight more than just two days a week.

I just hope I can buy my freedom while I'm still young.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#109

Post by cobrausn »

illumin8 wrote: post #104
oz wrote: post #72

TL;DR: Yes. Get that money. Get lots of it. Poverty sucks. I left rural Jamaica to come to Kingston, the capital, in 2005. After my first year in college, I got a summer job with a telecom startup run by an American. My student loan was not renewed for the 2nd year, so I had to drop out, and got a permanent position as a sysadmin at the company. The pay sucked, but I didn't care: The family member I was living with w…

> I'd been a typical HN-reading, Ayn Rand-quoting, John Galt aspiring-libertarian. Slowly, I began to realize the role of luck and circumstance. I used to look down on the poor, writing them all off as lazy and not willing to work. "How dare they be poor and have a TV!", I used to think. Wow. I've come to expect a certain level of hypocrisy from a lot of libertarians, but this is a pretty stark example of it. By all…

I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set. Progressives touting 'diversity' while living in the suburbs and paying exorbitant amounts to send their kids to all-white private schools, conservatives railing about government overreach while trying to enact 'morality' laws, libertarians looking down on moochers while living under a different safety net.

This happens because we hold values. The easiest way not to be a hypocrite is not to have any. I find it's better to have values, get called out on violating them, and try to improve, than it is to have none. YMMV.

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