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> 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.
by 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 agoA 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 agoRich people would consider being soft and cynical as virtuous? There's no way to read the quote in a positive manner.
- coldtea 7y agoOf course there is: soft => more refined and subtle, cynical => more wise to the world.
- eswat 7y agoThat 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 agoI 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 agoCynicism 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 agoAn 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 agoHow does adding an opposite as “fast where we are slow” specify anything?
- pdpi 7y agoIt emphasises that the contrast is the thing of interest, rather than the properties themselves.
- Arnt 7y agoI'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 agoHaving 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 agoThere'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 agoI agree that it's a negative quality, and it's a far cry from evil in my opinion.