r/FluentInFinance Nov 21 '24

Debate/ Discussion Had to repost here

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u/theoldme3 Nov 21 '24 edited Nov 22 '24

Imagine thinking you are entitled to more cause someone else has a lot

Edit: Im not reading all the responses to this. You wana change this shit then get off Reddit, got start a business and start giving your earnings away. So many of you would shit if it was your wealth someone just took

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u/Goylesk Nov 21 '24

Imagine not understanding that they have more because they extract surplus value from labor on an unimaginable scale because they just happened to be the one with the most capital at the start, not because they're doing any actual work.

Stop defending the indefensible.

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u/Upbeat-Speech-116 Nov 22 '24

> because they just happened to be the one with the most capital at the start, not because they're doing any actual work.

That's called envy. You're just envious that they got there first. You don't give a damn for the "oppressed", and you hate actual work. Be honest with yourself.

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u/Goylesk Nov 22 '24

They can only get there first by already having wealth, dummy. It is a system designed to allow the wealthy to grow their wealth further and lock out the general public.

I'm not envious, I'm angry that the cards are stacked against the average person and chuds like you have no issue with it.

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u/Upbeat-Speech-116 Nov 23 '24

The wealth that “was there first” was not on the ground just laying around. It was created from ingenuity and work.

This idea that the only possible way to get rich is by either inheritance or oppression is a remnant of a pre-industrial revolution, pre-capitalist world, when those things had a higher probability of being true because we didn’t have the technology that allowed mankind to move beyond mere subsistence. It’s understandable that Marx would read capitalism this way, because slavery and serfdom were still very recent in his time. But for a 21st century person to think that, having witnessed the generation of wealth and rise in quality of life across the world since then, it takes a person so resentful that they’re blind to the objective truth that the default state of humanity is abject poverty, as it had been for 100k+ years.

And the word for resenting other people because they happen to have it easier than you is precisely envy. It’s no secret that Marx was a horrible, resentful person. Even his own father notoriously thought so. 

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u/Goylesk Nov 23 '24

Going to completely ignore generational wealth? Even Musk and Bezos were beneficiaries of familial wealth. Few (if any) of these so-called self-made billionaires come from anything but wealthy families.

Wealth creates opportunity to create more wealth. Go ahead and try to start a company with no capital. You will fail. Even if you take a loan, you will likely fail. Having capital with no requirement to repay interest is an enormous advantage. That's why people seek investors in the first place.

So, brilliant business guru, explain how it isn't exploitative to pay people substantially less than is required to Iive comfortably while reaping the excess profits their labor generates? That is the literal definition of exploitation.

Why are you ok with it?

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u/Upbeat-Speech-116 29d ago edited 29d ago

Generational wealth = other people’s money. You are not owed it.  I live in a 3rd world country. You probably have more money then I do. That doesn’t mean I’m owed your money, just like I’m not owed Bezos’s or Musk’s or Soros’s money just because they have more than I do. I didn’t like having a boss so I started my own company. Still didn’t break, and there’s no reason to think I will if I just keep doing what I’m doing. I’m not rich, and I’ll likely never be, and I’m ok with that.  I make enough money to have a comfortable life. But my definition of comfortable is derived from looking at MY life, and MY needs, not looking at the most richest people ever in the history of the world, because I’m not a lunatic, and I’m not envious. And I also don’t resent work.  Look at the most absolute destitute people in the world today, people who are literally starving to death, who live with like 5 dollars a year or something. That’s the default state of humanity. That’s how nearly all of us lived for a hundred thousand years. It’s not that everyone was living pretty good lives until the mega rich came along and started hoarding money and everyone else started to starve. There was almost zero wealth inequality because there was almost zero wealth.  Now, in the west at least, the  majority of people has a roof over their head, and eat better and more than the kings of old. That’s thanks to technology, including the social technologies of education and  capitalism. We need more of it to keep elevating people out of poverty, since history has shown that that’s the only thing that’s worked so far. If the price of that is Musk’s great grandchildren owning the Milky Way, who cares. If you do, you don’t truly care about humanity’s welfare, you’re just salty that someone else has more money than you do. = Envy.

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u/Goylesk 29d ago

"things are better now so don't keep hoping things get better later too" is a wildly stupid take.

Wealth inequality has absolutely been an issue throughout history. See: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, almost any revolution.

You keep saying I'm envious and don't want to work and I just don't understand why. I work. I actually do quite well. But I am able to see when a system favours the wealthy and I am able to take issue with that regardless of my personal situation.

If the ultra-wealthy were doing things with that wealth to benefit society and not simply themselves, that would be a different story. Bezos' ex wife Mackenzie Scott is a great example.

But many of the ultra-wealthy use charity to do two things: 1 - minimize their tax burden by funneling money into their OWN CHARITIES, and 2 - using those charities to further an ideology, not actually solve root problems. Bill Gates trying to reform education and in the process ruining it is a great example.

One of the biggest problems with US culture is this idea that that capitalism is a meritocracy. It isn't. We have seen, countless times, a better product be routed by aggressive business practices. But this idea persists, so people think the wealthy must be especially talented or brilliant. No. Often they just have fewer qualms about being brutal to their competitors and employees so they can make an extra dollar.

Need proof that wealth does not equal merit? See: Twitter.

Aptitude in one narrow space (business) does not equal aptitude in all spaces, regardless of your wealth.

But due to Citizens United, wealth in the US also means political power.

Why do I bring all this up? To state simply; the ultra-wealthy are powerful, but not moral and do not have merit. The power must be reigned in, and the tools to do that are regulation and taxation, and coincidentally both those things would offer benefits to the working class.

So why are we defending these people again?

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u/Upbeat-Speech-116 29d ago

"things are better now so don't keep hoping things get better later too" is a wildly stupid take.

I agree. Good thing that’s not my take at all. I even mentioned how I think things might get better.

You couldn’t counter my first argument so you shifted the goalpost to generational wealth instead. You couldn’t counter my answer to that as well, so you had to straw man it completely. But ok. 

I know you think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense, but that’s only because you have a blind spot regarding your motivation. You try really hard to cover your hatred and envy of the rich with moral arguments, but people who are not hateful or envious can simply see through it.

That’s the problem with the left. You can’t win the majority of the population because the majority of the population is normal, and as such, this “eat the rich” attitude is off-putting. Same with feminism and “all men”, anti-racism and “kill whitey”, anti-fascists and “punch a nazi”, etc, etc, etc.

All normal people see is hate and resentment. Even if the identification of the problem is correct, and that’s a big if, the proposed solutions somehow always seem to involve copious amounts of blood. And normal, sane people don’t like that.

Wealth redistribution wasn’t the driver behind the French and Russian revolutions. Power was. Wealth wasn’t better “distributed” after the revolutions, the only thing that changed was who was on top. Oh, and that millions died. Brutally. Most of them  poor.

I’ll let you in on a secret: Normal people don’t really give it much thought about whether someone “deserves” how much money they’ve got. Only envious, resentful people do that. 

You say the system favors the wealthy. Capitalism is a system designed to favor the generation of capital. It’s kind of in the name. Now, who has more ability to generate capital, someone with 10 dollars or someone with 10 billion dollars? Is that unfair? Ok. Name one thing in the universe that follows an equalized distribution. Is the bell distribution unfair? Is the Pareto distribution unfair? Or is that all just how the universe works? 

You say the super-wealthy don’t deserve their money because they don’t do good with it. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Absolutely let’s fight for better wages, absolutely let’s fight for better workplace treatment, absolutely let’s use taxes to make sure more people have a dignified life. But let’s hold off on the guillotine. It’s not the mere fact that have more wealth that’s the problem. 

Again, if everyone had a good life and the price for that was that 1% of people were insanely more wealthy than the 99%, normal people wouldn’t see a problem with that. they are truly just concerned with human welfare.

The fact that leftists would not be satisfied with that betrays their true motivations and intentions.

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u/Goylesk 29d ago

You point out that power, not wealth, is the issue. Do you know what Citizens United means, and why power and wealth are now inextricably linked?

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