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Only the rich are allowed to get richer. We poor people wouldn't know what to do with money if we had it, we can't possibly be trusted with what little we have
by Zikes 11y ago
Only the rich are allowed to get richer. We poor people wouldn't know what to do with money if we had it, we can't possibly be trusted with what little we have.
- tptacek 11y agoWell, the rich are mathematically favored to get richer, almost no matter what public policy decisions we make, short of tax rates that even Scandinavians would call confiscatory. But that aside: do you honestly think that the opportunity to invest in small "private" companies is likely to make non-rich people rich? I don't think so. Angel investing is a notorious trap for flush cashed-out startup people, because it's hard to make angel portfolios work. And those are people with relatively huge financial resources to draw on! Normal people have many more liabilities than just lack of accreditation in competing with rich people in venture capital.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoIf the goal is to get rich, pretty much any endeavor will fail. It's a non-goal. "non-rich" people could be interested in contributing money to endeavors they deem worthwhile. Current rules prevent most from contributing to such endeavors, however.
- atom-morgan 11y agoThe likelihood of getting rich has nothing to do with my right to use my money as I see fit.
- msellout 11y ago"my right" is a strange term. It's entirely a social concept and is defined by the society you happen to live in (and re-defined by every subset of that society). In a sense, money is just a technology a society uses for allocating its resources. So, yes, the society/government can regulate how you can spend your money as a little monkey-patch on its tech.
- atom-morgan 11y agoYou're just incorrect. Money is a medium of exchange, not a means of allocating resources.
- Zikes 11y agoJudging by the downvotes, we're just going to have to accept that institutionalized classism is the price we pay for being on HN.
- vinceguidry 11y agoI'd argue that HN is practically the only place in the whole world one can just walk in to and get serious, current, and actionable information on real-world social ladder-climbing. Nobody here believes you should "know your place", but the more you learn about the world and business, the more you see just how hard this shit really is. The downvotes aren't out of classism, but because your posts are not constructive to the discussion. They articulate a philosophical viewpoint and offer no real information of the sort I described earlier. HN is not your soapbox.
- msellout 11y agoA friendly exchange is a cooperative reallocation of resources. Thus money is as I said, a medium/technology for reallocation. You seem to think being a medium of exchange is mutually exclusive with being a means of allocating resources. On the contrary, media of exchange is a subset of technologies for allocating resources. Despite how much you dislike it, it seems that the government can in fact decide what you do with your money. For example, hiring an assassin is illegal. I'm sure we'd all agree that banning conspiracy to murder is not a violation of your rights. Thus your "freedom" to spend your money according to your wishes is limited by the safety of other citizens, with as loose a definition for "safety" as we like.