8 ms·

This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than

This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil". People with greater wealth having access to certain services and procedures that normal people don't is unrelated to all rich people supposedly looking down on everyone else.

cptskippy 7y ago
> a ... quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil" But that isn't at all what the quote says, that's what you attributed to it.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  A rich person would read that quote and summarize it as "rich people are good". So really GP is just outing his or herself as not rich.
  - hnal943 7y ago
    Rich people would consider being soft and cynical as virtuous? There's no way to read the quote in a positive manner.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Of course there is: soft => more refined and subtle, cynical => more wise to the world.
      - eswat 7y ago
        That is how I read it as well. I’d imagine being someone that is cynical and wealthy protects your wealth from forces that would suck less cynical people dry (multilevel marketing, get-rich-from-real-estate seminars, stocks currently riding the wave of the hot rumour of the week).
      - mirimir 7y ago
        I read "soft" as more mellow and chilled out, and less stressed about (what seems) trivial stuff. In a way, even kinder. And from what I've read by rich people (such as Diane Disney Miller) cynical is a lot about the difficulty of establishing genuine relationships.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      Cynicism is definitely a virtue in a certain light. Trust is good for everyone while being bad for the individual, cynicism is good for the individual while hurting society. Personally I think both extremes are terrible, but leaning on the side of cynicism seems safer.
    - compiler-guy 7y ago
      An important detail is that the quote is not "they are soft and cynical", but rather: "soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful" In other words, how they are different from others. Not that they are fundamentally soft, cynicalm or bad.
      - unkulunkulu 7y ago
        How does adding an opposite as “fast where we are slow” specify anything?
        pdpi 7y ago
        It emphasises that the contrast is the thing of interest, rather than the properties themselves.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    I'm an expat and read the quote as ~"rich people are foreign". Having different values from "you and me" doesn't make people evil.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      Having different values from "you and me" doesn't make people evil. For most of history, it (mostly erroneously) did. In 2019, this also applies. It's just applied much faster over global distances through the Internet.
- hisham_hm 7y ago
  There's a whole thread about interpreting the quote debating whether it paints rich people in a positive or negative light, and amazingly nobody focused on the part that says "they think they are better than we are". Perhaps that's what the HN audience really thinks of rich people and thus skipped that point? Someone thinking they are better than others based on wealth alone is an unmistakable negative in my book.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    I agree that it's a negative quality, and it's a far cry from evil in my opinion.
diminoten 7y ago
The point of the quote is to demonstrate that using poor-folk calculations to try and figure out what things cost for rich folk is pointless, and has been for the past ~100 years.
- bluetomcat 7y ago
  Poor people measure their stuff by its momentary monetary value, rich people measure their assets by their long-term projected intrinsic value. Rich people look for good value, not a good price. The rich man’s mentality can also work for middle class people if every purchase they make is a long-term well-informed decision, rather than flying with the pop culture of what everyone else is currently buying, wearing or visiting. For example, buy timeless durable unfashionable clothing, buy a used but durable car from which you can extract the best value in the long run, buy products which can be utilised for many purposes, etc.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    Note that this is constrained by IRL effects that middle-class people experience that rich people are much less vulnerable to. With enough money, you can afford to wait for a good deal because you don't need the money right now to live. When you're wealthy, you can brave health issues, accidents, sudden crossings with the law, etc. without ever truly touching the money-in-wait for a good deal. When you're middle-class you definitely don't have as much cushion. This is similar to the logic of "the best time to buy is a recession", except its difficult to buy during a recession purely because it's more likely that a middle class person's cushion is gone due to economic conditions and thus has no money to buy good deals.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      The rich real estate guys I know phrase this as "you make all the money on the day you buy". That is, they want to buy from desperate owners, so that prices are so low they are guaranteed profits. Lots of businesses are more desperate in recessions.
  - 7y ago
sk5t 7y ago
In fact, it's merely an irrelevant usage of a very famous quotation.
coldtea 7y ago
>This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil". Which is nonetheless both pertinent and important to keep in mind.
1000units 7y ago
Do you know old money? I do, and I also know people with hundreds of millions who grew up in rags. There's nothing incorrect about what the parent poster said.
tensor 7y ago
The irony is that these "they think they are better than us" type posts always to me read with an implicit but unsaid "but really we are better than them." In reality, people are people, and thinking you're better than others is absolutely not something that the rich have a monopoly on. This attitude is rampant in many groups and underlies much of the current hatefulness in the world.
- mars4rp 7y ago
  In average more entitled people are expecting more from the world. this is proven by studies. It is more like they think they are better than us, and "but really they think they are better than us". This studies are not even about the super-rich, people with like $50k cars are showing less consideration toward people that they fell are poorer.
MiroF 7y ago
Yes, the post included multiple potentially true claims. What is the problem? Only one claim per comment?

cptskippy 7y ago

> a ... quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil" But that isn't at all what the quote says, that's what you attributed to it.

jessaustin 7y ago
A rich person would read that quote and summarize it as "rich people are good". So really GP is just outing his or herself as not rich.
- hnal943 7y ago
  Rich people would consider being soft and cynical as virtuous? There's no way to read the quote in a positive manner.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Of course there is: soft => more refined and subtle, cynical => more wise to the world.
    - eswat 7y ago
      That is how I read it as well. I’d imagine being someone that is cynical and wealthy protects your wealth from forces that would suck less cynical people dry (multilevel marketing, get-rich-from-real-estate seminars, stocks currently riding the wave of the hot rumour of the week).
    - mirimir 7y ago
      I read "soft" as more mellow and chilled out, and less stressed about (what seems) trivial stuff. In a way, even kinder. And from what I've read by rich people (such as Diane Disney Miller) cynical is a lot about the difficulty of establishing genuine relationships.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Cynicism is definitely a virtue in a certain light. Trust is good for everyone while being bad for the individual, cynicism is good for the individual while hurting society. Personally I think both extremes are terrible, but leaning on the side of cynicism seems safer.
  - compiler-guy 7y ago
    An important detail is that the quote is not "they are soft and cynical", but rather: "soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful" In other words, how they are different from others. Not that they are fundamentally soft, cynicalm or bad.
    - unkulunkulu 7y ago
      How does adding an opposite as “fast where we are slow” specify anything?
      - pdpi 7y ago
        It emphasises that the contrast is the thing of interest, rather than the properties themselves.
- Arnt 7y ago
  I'm an expat and read the quote as ~"rich people are foreign". Having different values from "you and me" doesn't make people evil.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    Having different values from "you and me" doesn't make people evil. For most of history, it (mostly erroneously) did. In 2019, this also applies. It's just applied much faster over global distances through the Internet.
hisham_hm 7y ago
There's a whole thread about interpreting the quote debating whether it paints rich people in a positive or negative light, and amazingly nobody focused on the part that says "they think they are better than we are". Perhaps that's what the HN audience really thinks of rich people and thus skipped that point? Someone thinking they are better than others based on wealth alone is an unmistakable negative in my book.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  I agree that it's a negative quality, and it's a far cry from evil in my opinion.

diminoten 7y ago

The point of the quote is to demonstrate that using poor-folk calculations to try and figure out what things cost for rich folk is pointless, and has been for the past ~100 years.

bluetomcat 7y ago
Poor people measure their stuff by its momentary monetary value, rich people measure their assets by their long-term projected intrinsic value. Rich people look for good value, not a good price. The rich man’s mentality can also work for middle class people if every purchase they make is a long-term well-informed decision, rather than flying with the pop culture of what everyone else is currently buying, wearing or visiting. For example, buy timeless durable unfashionable clothing, buy a used but durable car from which you can extract the best value in the long run, buy products which can be utilised for many purposes, etc.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Note that this is constrained by IRL effects that middle-class people experience that rich people are much less vulnerable to. With enough money, you can afford to wait for a good deal because you don't need the money right now to live. When you're wealthy, you can brave health issues, accidents, sudden crossings with the law, etc. without ever truly touching the money-in-wait for a good deal. When you're middle-class you definitely don't have as much cushion. This is similar to the logic of "the best time to buy is a recession", except its difficult to buy during a recession purely because it's more likely that a middle class person's cushion is gone due to economic conditions and thus has no money to buy good deals.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    The rich real estate guys I know phrase this as "you make all the money on the day you buy". That is, they want to buy from desperate owners, so that prices are so low they are guaranteed profits. Lots of businesses are more desperate in recessions.
- 7y ago

sk5t 7y ago

In fact, it's merely an irrelevant usage of a very famous quotation.

coldtea 7y ago

>This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil". Which is nonetheless both pertinent and important to keep in mind.

1000units 7y ago

Do you know old money? I do, and I also know people with hundreds of millions who grew up in rags. There's nothing incorrect about what the parent poster said.

tensor 7y ago

The irony is that these "they think they are better than us" type posts always to me read with an implicit but unsaid "but really we are better than them." In reality, people are people, and thinking you're better than others is absolutely not something that the rich have a monopoly on. This attitude is rampant in many groups and underlies much of the current hatefulness in the world.

mars4rp 7y ago
In average more entitled people are expecting more from the world. this is proven by studies. It is more like they think they are better than us, and "but really they think they are better than us". This studies are not even about the super-rich, people with like $50k cars are showing less consideration toward people that they fell are poorer.

MiroF 7y ago

Yes, the post included multiple potentially true claims. What is the problem? Only one claim per comment?