3 ms·

You've misconstrued "improving someone's life" to being "meaningful work". Maybe a banker thinks his career is meaningful, but bankers do not improve people's

by dstein 15y ago

You've misconstrued "improving someone's life" to being "meaningful work". Maybe a banker thinks his career is meaningful, but bankers do not improve people's lives. The people who built the house you're buying are the ones who improve your life. The banker is an unnecessary middleman. Middlemen in almost every scenario are redundant and merely add drag to our society. If we could eliminate the bankers job, automate it somehow, maybe we can get them to pick cherries or something useful.

hugh3 15y ago
What rot. The banker is a middleman, it's true, but a very necessary one. The bank connects people who have money (old people) to people who want to borrow money (young people), allowing house-sized quantities of money to be borrowed and paid back over a period of decades in a way that lowers risk and maximises accessibility for the depositors. If it weren't for banks, then most young people would be (essentially) unable to afford to buy houses. Heck, if it weren't for banks we'd probably live in some kind of Jane Austen world where the vast majority of the land is owned by a few super-rich families and the folks who don't inherit money have no way of getting ahead.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  You do realize that half of all wealth in the US is in the hands of 400 super-rich families, and that this concentration is increasing, not decreasing? Maybe you were being ironic and I just took you too literally!
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Uhhhh, [citation needed]. Let's do some plausibility arguments here. The total net wealth of the United States is about $54.2 trillion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States) Is that plausible? Sure, that's about $180K per person. Now, let's suppose that half that $54.2 trillion was in the hands of four hundred families. This would give each of these four hundred families $67 billion each, on average. But the Forbes Rich List currently records nobody in the US with $67 billion; Gates and Buffett have $56 and $50 billion. I guess if you count all the Waltons as one family then they've got slightly more. And of course the distribution is way tail-heavy. I don't have a list of the 400 richest people in the US alone, but the Forbes rich list implies that the ~400th richest person in the world has on the order of $3 billion. So the average out of the top 400 probably only has a few billion dollars. In conclusion, I don't believe your numbers at all.
- dstein 15y ago
  Likewise there's a big difference between forcefully inserting yourself as a necessary catalyst (aka, a middleman), and meaningfully improving someone's life. It's the difference between someone who INVENTS a medication, and someone who collects 5% fee any time you PURCHASE the medicine. Sure, the pharmacists might go on and on about how they are helping people, but really it's the chemists that are doing the hard work that ultimately are the ones improving your life.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    While the dude who invents the drug that saves my life is doing far greater work than the dude who makes it possible for me to buy that drug at the pharmacy two blocks away, they're both doing good work, and both a net gain to the world. Why disrespect either? There are genuinely useless, parasitic, and net-negative people out there, but none of the proposed examples (bankers, pharmacists, Google) falls into this category.
  - kristiandupont 15y ago
    No it isn't, both are equally necessary for your life to be improved. You may consider inventing more prestigious and you could argue that it improves more peoples lives but some hypothetical scientist who simply invented a bunch of stuff in his basement that was never distributed would have as little impact on the world as anyone.

by dstein 15y ago

hugh3 15y ago

What rot. The banker is a middleman, it's true, but a very necessary one. The bank connects people who have money (old people) to people who want to borrow money (young people), allowing house-sized quantities of money to be borrowed and paid back over a period of decades in a way that lowers risk and maximises accessibility for the depositors. If it weren't for banks, then most young people would be (essentially) unable to afford to buy houses. Heck, if it weren't for banks we'd probably live in some kind of Jane Austen world where the vast majority of the land is owned by a few super-rich families and the folks who don't inherit money have no way of getting ahead.

rbarooah 15y ago
You do realize that half of all wealth in the US is in the hands of 400 super-rich families, and that this concentration is increasing, not decreasing? Maybe you were being ironic and I just took you too literally!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- hugh3 15y ago
  Uhhhh, [citation needed]. Let's do some plausibility arguments here. The total net wealth of the United States is about $54.2 trillion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States) Is that plausible? Sure, that's about $180K per person. Now, let's suppose that half that $54.2 trillion was in the hands of four hundred families. This would give each of these four hundred families $67 billion each, on average. But the Forbes Rich List currently records nobody in the US with $67 billion; Gates and Buffett have $56 and $50 billion. I guess if you count all the Waltons as one family then they've got slightly more. And of course the distribution is way tail-heavy. I don't have a list of the 400 richest people in the US alone, but the Forbes rich list implies that the ~400th richest person in the world has on the order of $3 billion. So the average out of the top 400 probably only has a few billion dollars. In conclusion, I don't believe your numbers at all.
dstein 15y ago
Likewise there's a big difference between forcefully inserting yourself as a necessary catalyst (aka, a middleman), and meaningfully improving someone's life. It's the difference between someone who INVENTS a medication, and someone who collects 5% fee any time you PURCHASE the medicine. Sure, the pharmacists might go on and on about how they are helping people, but really it's the chemists that are doing the hard work that ultimately are the ones improving your life.
- hugh3 15y ago
  While the dude who invents the drug that saves my life is doing far greater work than the dude who makes it possible for me to buy that drug at the pharmacy two blocks away, they're both doing good work, and both a net gain to the world. Why disrespect either? There are genuinely useless, parasitic, and net-negative people out there, but none of the proposed examples (bankers, pharmacists, Google) falls into this category.
- kristiandupont 15y ago
  No it isn't, both are equally necessary for your life to be improved. You may consider inventing more prestigious and you could argue that it improves more peoples lives but some hypothetical scientist who simply invented a bunch of stuff in his basement that was never distributed would have as little impact on the world as anyone.