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Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

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Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#201

Post by CSMastermind »

pjmorris wrote: post #37

This reminds me of something a friend said that's stuck with me for ~30 years: 'The bad news about taking responsibility is now it's your fault. The good news about taking responsibility is now you can do something about it.'

Similar things I've heard:

Just because something isn't your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility.

Hardship is a guarantee; victimhood is a choice.

If you see a piece of trash, you can think that people are terrible for littering, or you can pick it up. It only takes a small percentage of people littering to destroy an environment but it also only takes a small percentage of people to clean it up.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#202

Post by _smfg »

shrubble wrote: post #104
profsummergig wrote: post #23

Charlie Munger had great advice in general. And I've learned a lot of good from him. But I will never get over the hypocrisy of owning a quarter of Coca Cola and constantly criticizing Americans for being overweight (he used words like "sloth").

If Buffett and Munger wanted,they could certainly point out that Coca-Cola and Pepsi both benefit from being on EBT/SNAP lists as acceptable foods to purchase, and ask that soft drinks as a class of foods be removed. Last I looked, about 9.5% of total EBT/SNAP money for food (that is, money from taxpayers that are supposed to help feed those in need properly) is spent on soft drinks. No person in need, needs soft dri…

Just because someone is in need doesn't mean they can't spend some money on soft drinks. This is classist. It's basically "because you're poor you don't deserve chocolate, because you're more likely to be obese".

9.5% of that money being spent on soft drinks is not the problem. The problem is the amount of processed garbage and sugar in most American food.

Buying healthy food is unfortunately a privilege. To have the time to stay fit/healthy (whether going to the gym or taking walks) in this world of processed garbage is a privilege, because time is a precious resource that some people seriously cannot afford.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#203

Post by jackothy »

hotsauceror wrote: post #171
mritchie712 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking strictly in a work setting. I don't absolve people, I just don't let myself stew over how it's their fault.

So now you have two workloads, and they have half a workload, and there are differing standards to which you and they are held? I admit that I come at this question from a very bitter place. I have been woken up many, many, many times at 3 AM to deal with a problem that someone else caused, out of sheer laziness or incompetence. Those people suffered no consequences. Had I applied the same level of due care to my own…

If you're gonna stew over something then that should be: How can I make sure this shit doesn't happen to me again?

"What can I do about it?" is the focus. No point obsessing over the other person.

I think that's what Munger was trying to say.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#204

Post by supertimor »

zozbot234 wrote: post #165
happytiger wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions. It is literally most of us. Wealth concentration is unintuitive in the extreme. But let’s debate the merits of yet another billionaire lecturing everyone about the merits of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and not being a victim. Hard work doesn’t make billionaires. Systems that accelerate privileged positions and concentrate wealth to the top do. And that’s not necessarily bad. But it’s generally ba…

And most of those billion people will never be on HN. The average HNer is just as wealthy when compared to them as a billionare is when compared to us. > Hard work doesn’t make billionaires. Systems that accelerate privileged positions and concentrate wealth to the top do. ¿Por qué no los dos? Jeff Bezos worked pretty hard to end up where he is now.

>”And most of those billion people will never be on HN. The average HNer is just as wealthy when compared to them as a billionare is when compared to us.”

You’re severely underestimating how much a billion dollars is if you really think this is true.

The wealth of an average HNer is much more comparable to the average American than to the wealth of billionaires.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#205

Post by happytiger »

zozbot234 wrote: post #165
happytiger wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions. It is literally most of us. Wealth concentration is unintuitive in the extreme. But let’s debate the merits of yet another billionaire lecturing everyone about the merits of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and not being a victim. Hard work doesn’t make billionaires. Systems that accelerate privileged positions and concentrate wealth to the top do. And that’s not necessarily bad. But it’s generally ba…

And most of those billion people will never be on HN. The average HNer is just as wealthy when compared to them as a billionare is when compared to us. > Hard work doesn’t make billionaires. Systems that accelerate privileged positions and concentrate wealth to the top do. ¿Por qué no los dos? Jeff Bezos worked pretty hard to end up where he is now.

I like the theory that Hacker news seems to follow the human development index fairly accurately.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567986

But of course the truth is it’s a 42 year old (avg) man (91%) that makes $88,716 per year so you’re NOT wrong.

But the idea that Jeff Bezos got where he is because of hard work is inverted. Many work hard, few become billionaires. So what is wrong with the argument of los dos?

This: it may be true that hard work is generally a prerequisite for becoming a billionaire, it is a correlation and not causative effect. The cause of billionaires is wealth concentration itself and a system of overly generous tax advantage for equity owners. That is why the majority of billionaires have sprung from finance and investments — highly leveraged paper wealth from paper products — and not from the likes of Amazon.

I subscribe to the idea that billionaires are a product of the tax system and not the result of some kind of superhuman top-of-heap exceptional personal merit.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#208

Post by WalterSear »

IMHO, this is a crippling ideology, that crushes people's ability for self-compassion. This, in turn, destroys their ability to trust themselves, since they are so used to hearing themselves reflexively take out their distress on themselves with words like 'in any way, it's always your fault'.

I've just spent the best part of a year in an IOP, unlearning this behaviour, and learning to acknowledge my own pain, trust myself and replacing inner criticism with self-advocacy, and I'm stronger and more effective for it.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#209

Post by tech_ken »

ajhurliman wrote: post #84
tech_ken wrote: post #61

> He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. Feeling like a victim is not the same as wallowing in self-pity. Recognizing that you have been victimized in some way could easily be the first step towards taking owne…

This is a welcomed addition of nuance, but I think it thematically fits with the general narrative. If your current situation is not optimal, and we pose a dichotomy of choosing to take control of your situation or self pity, then taking control is better. I guess it’s some combination of feeling like a victim with a fatalist attitude that’s the real issue.

> I guess it’s some combination of feeling like a victim with a fatalist attitude that’s the real issue.

Yes I 100% think this is the case. Simply creating “awareness” of a social problem, for example, is useless IMO because it leads to fatalism. It needs to be matched with a push to create change. I see this as a major failing of the internet activism of the 2010s, although I support its broad aims. IMO it leaned too hard on classifying and describing various structural inequalities, without really advancing a concrete theory of change. This ultimately squandered the energy it created, leading to this weird situation where much of its sharpest criticisms got swallowed the system and converted into HR platitudes.

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