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Here's a quote by Frank Underwood / House of Cards: Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone buildin
by rsp1984 7y ago
Here's a quote by Frank Underwood / House of Cards:
Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference
Amusingly, I find it's the other way round. Power dies with with the people who have it. Money can last for many generations, especially when put to good use.
- sjwright 7y agoMoney and power can both be squandered and wasted with little effort. To the extent that democracy has reduced the longevity of power (compared to e.g. monarchy or theocracy) it acts much like inflation does for money—if you don’t want your asset to devalue in real terms, you need to invest it. (Or you can hack the system and find vulnerabilities. Right now it seems like a few politicians have worked out the power equivalent of the get rich quick scam...)
- coldtea 7y ago>To the extent that democracy has reduced the longevity of power (compared to e.g. monarchy or theocracy) It just gives it a new public facade every 4-5 years. Those in power remain the same...
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Those in power remain the same This is demonstrably false, at least in American politics. The inter-generational transmission of wealth and power had a half life of, at my last reading, about 1.5 generations. In Sweden, for instance, about 70% of information gets lost in each generation [1]. After a couple generations, the effect tends to disappear. Expecting power dynamics to shift every 5 years is silly. People build life-long relationships. And someone good at leading when 35 is probably still good at 45. [1] https://voxeu.org/article/drivers-wealth-persistence-across-generations https://voxeu.org/article/drivers-wealth-persistence-across-...
- js8 7y agoIt's also the reason why there is much power in money (in Western societies) - the other venues of power (such as hereditary privilege or religion or mercenaries) have been closed.
- jammygit 7y agoThis sounded very interesting, so I looked it up. It seems that Sweden during that time seems to have had a 30-70% inheritance tax, depending on the year. That accounts for a loss of 70% of wealth pretty neatly. https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-disastrous-inheritance-tax https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-di... Please correct me if I missed something in my haste
- JumpCrisscross 7y agoThe study’s data span multiple inheritance-tax regimes. The results are robust beyond the (since expired) tax.
- sooheon 7y agoInteresting to see those stats, but you also see the same family names in politics over and over again (Bush, Clinton, Kennedy...). I could grant that information loss for the population as a whole, and still also recognize that dynasties exist at extremes (Rothschild?). All the "regular people" could be in a flux of wealth gain and loss, and the true upper crust could also be very good at holding on to power. Your link doesn't demonstrate the falsity of this hypothesis.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- plorkyeran 7y agoThe Bush and Kennedy families are currently four-generation political dynasties, while Clinton is a single generation. That'd be a very low upper limit compared to most of history if it does turn out to be an upper limit, but of course there's no way for us to know now if the current generation will also be the final one.
- quotz 7y agoPondered on the same thing actually
- mieseratte 7y agoRoyal families make a good counter-point. As do political dynasties, e.g. the Kennedy and Bush families.
- RickJWagner 7y agoThe Kennedy and Bush clans wield some power, true. But nothing compared to those who control the media. (Look at the generations of families that run Hollywood.) They control the narrative, which controls the masses, which choose to empower the Bush/Kennedy/Clinton alternatives.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoBushes : Bay of Pigs, prime suspects in Kennedy's assassination (means and motive), transforming Irak from the most prosperous third-world country into a hellhole, turning a blind eye to what was brewing just before 9/11 because their best pals Ben Ladens were involved... are you sure about your statement ?
- User23 7y agoThe Goldman–Sachs family have also done quite well for themselves for centuries in both wealth and power.
- mensetmanusman 7y agoDo outliers matter in this context?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAssuming a non corrupted and effective judiciary/police force, money is a proxy for power.
- syrrim 7y agoYou mean "assuming a corrupted"?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoIn nature, might makes right. Most societies around the world, as they advance, replace this with a less violent way to trade resources and services. If you define power as the capacity to do something (or obtain something), then money has been the solution that most societies have figured. I specify non corrupted to exclude situations such as mafias and gangs using force instead of money to make things happen.
- lsc 7y agoso, it's interesting. you can see it both ways. Money distills a certain kind of power; one of the sorts of power individuals can have within a lawful system; but... there are other kinds of power that money simply doesn't convey, at least not in a system with functional rule of law. in societies with rule of law, money provides power in a way that is... limited. No amount of money (assuming rule of law, reasonable laws, uncorrupted law enforcement, etc..) lets you have a person killed, or even roughed up without lawful reason. In that sense, even very small time gangsters, people who make way less money than a silicon valley engineer, have more power than a law-abiding billionaire, just 'cause they can credibly threaten to have you killed. I mean sure, the rule of law should prevent the murder in both cases, but on a practical level, it's really a lot harder to prevent crimes in the first place than to punish them after they occur; The low-level gangster's seeming willingness to do things that could potentially cause them to spend a lot of time in jail is a kind of power in and of itself, one that is unrelated (some would say negatively correlated) with wealth. Another interesting side to this is that you could also argue that outside of functional rule of law, money is... worth a lot less, just 'cause you have to put in a lot more effort to protect that money, if the government won't do it. Without the rule of law, if you have money but don't have the sort of power that flows from the barrel of a gun, someone will simply take the money from you using that sort of power. Sure, you can hire bodyguards, but absent rule of law, what's to stop them from just stealing your money? you need some of that other kind of power to convince your bodyguards to work for a wage rather than just stealing your money.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoExcept it's not just money, but money put into some long-lasting, "good use" enterprise (like that stone building). Which tends to give power, even if only a passive one.
- bitL 7y agoStories of executed/imprisoned billionaires/oligarchs in China and Russia would reinforce it. Perhaps it depends on type of society and even subtype within (e.g. democrats vs republicans).
- inflatableDodo 7y agoI like the 'Golden Wall' analogy from 'The Discovery of Heaven' by Harry Mulisch. Actually being in control is much harder and more expensive than just convincing people that you are in control. And for many situations, it is almost as good. This is where the 'Golden Wall' comes in. The 'Golden Wall' is the illusion of competency. It is the idea that the people on the inside of the wall are more able and better informed than the people on the outside of it. From this, it follows that the first rule of power is not about actually having any more of a handle on a situation than anyone else, but in convincing people that you do.
- munificent 7y agoMoney is simply liquid power. Non-money power, as you note, can be limited because it's illiquid.
- blackflame7000 7y agoAssuming every man has a price. Most do but I wager there are a select few that don’t.
- sooheon 7y agoNot everyone has a price, but everyone has a breaking point. If you can't buy someone you buy someone else to cause them pain.
- User23 7y agoMoney isn't power, power is power. Money can hire power, if power wants to be hired. And power can take money, if power wants to take it. For example you can say I won't sell my land for any amount of money, and then money can do nothing. But then the government can use eminent domain to take it and you learn a little bit about power. It's observably true that in the USA those with political power choose to sell out to those with money, but this is just an accident. In many cultures those with power choose to loot those with money and the latter can do nothing about it, because that's what power means.
- munificent 7y ago> Money can hire power, if power wants to be hired. All this means is that individuals have different currency conversions from money into power and vice versa. But in the aggregate, money is liquid power. If you've got the money, odds are good you can find someone with sufficient power that's willing to exchange. > For example you can say I won't sell my land for any amount of money, and then money can do nothing. Money can: * Hire a thug to threaten to break your legs if you don't sell. * Buy up the neighboring land, pollute the soil, drain the water, obscure the visibility, etc. * Buy something that you would give up the land for. Private doctor for your son's rare disease. You get the idea. Another way to look at it is that anyone who can honestly say "I won't sell my land for any amount of money" by implication already has enough money for all of the high priority things money can acquire. Being able say that itself already implies luxury. So all you're really saying is that money won't buy someone who already has more money than you, which is pretty obvious. > But then the government can use eminent domain to take it and you learn a little bit about power. Except that you've taken some of your money and funded campaigns for all of the city council members so they're in your pocket and don't vote to do that. And you've bought advertising in the area to persuade citizens that they shouldn't take it. Democracy exists fundamentally to push against the long human history of might (-> power -> money) making right. The idea of each human getting one vote is essentially an attempt to reset or flatten out the power currency economy. It's great. But at least recently in the US, you can watch power and money reverting that back to the old way. Billions of dollars flows into campaigns every election. That money is buying something.
- mordymoop 7y agoAnd Frank Underwood lived happily ever after.