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> They are able to entertain millions of people around the globe while doing it and some build incredible wealth at the same time. I think you meant hoard incr

> They are able to entertain millions of people around the globe while doing it and some build incredible wealth at the same time. I think you meant hoard incredible wealth? There's a limit to how much wealth you can actually create with immaterial entertainment alone. Even a best seller book: it takes time to read, so while it provides value to millions of readers, it also removes value in the form of opportunity cost. No way around choosing what to do with your own time. Other alternatives have more potential. Educational content could lift some people out of incompetence and help them build actual wealth (say a very good programming or sawing tutorial). Writing useful software could also create wealth, even more so if it's Free (and free). And of course, building stuff (while taking care not to deplete our resources or burning up our planet…). We say that people "make" money, but that's a dangerously misleading idiom. They don't actually make money, they extract money. Hopefully this money is actually earned in proportion to the value they actually injected into society (make a chair, get paid for the chair, all fair and square). But never forget that the people who "make" the most money generally do so by taking it from other people. Employers, landlords, stakeholders… who get most of their "earnings" not from what they do, but from what they own.

admax88qqq 3y ago
What makes a chair more valuable to society than entertainment?
- joelfried 3y ago
  Many of us have the ability to entertain ourselves entirely within our own minds on the regular. None of us can snap our fingers and summon a chair from nothingness. Do you know anybody who owns zero chairs?
  - hnfong 3y ago
    There are cultures that don't use chairs. The Japanese generally didn't use them (I think?) before they came into contact with European civilization. I don't think any civilization could survive without entertainment though.
  - admax88qqq 3y ago
    Many of us can sit on the ground or in a deep squat. None of us can snap our fingers and summon a book from nothingness.
    - roguas 3y ago
      sure, you can, many did, they are called authors
- loup-vaillant 3y ago
  I did not say it was.
- squirtlebonflow 3y ago
  You can't rest your legs on an entertainment
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Yet the entertainment I'm getting out of my chairs is limited. But I think this is a false dichotomy: A comfortable armchair and a good book go well together.
liber8 3y ago
If people do not "make" money (i.e. create value), how do you explain the increase in the standard of living over the last 100 years?
- mandmandam 3y ago
  > how do you explain the increase in the standard of living over the last 100 years? https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption That will catch up to us. It already has, in many parts of the world, and it's not looking like it'll get better soon. And let's not forget, it's not just people who have paid the price. > The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet); also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction The ecocide which we've inflicted on the planet for the last 100 years will some day be seen for what it is - an atrocity. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 All of which is to say nothing about the inequality in how that shareholder wealth is distributed, which is incredibly short-sighted for literally billions of reasons. 8 Americans own more wealth than 4 billion humans. It's perverse beyond comprehension.
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
    You only see the curves go upward. But if you look very detailed, you see that a plateau is coming. A downward trend will follow. When the going gets tough... About the inequality : it is really bad, but hundreds years ago, the poor were starving because of lack of food, in stark contrast with landlords and knights and kings. Today an equal amount of or more, people die from too much food than of too little. My point is, you need to take a step back and look from a bit more distance to see the real trend. Things are bad now, because we are at a maximum.
    - mandmandam 3y ago
DiffEq 3y ago
I think your viewpoint stems in a belief that there is only so much money to go around. Your view about a landlord taking money is kind of a micro view. I am a landlord…the house I rent I actually built. It is an asset that people are willing to give me money to use for a while…they get a place to live…IF I could not have ever rented it out I would have never built it…it would be a worthless piece of ground that nobody would want to live on…this is how the world works…when I die, I will give it to my son…he will rent it out. Are you saying that he also would be “taking” money from people?
- TFYS 3y ago
  So if you didn't build the house, no one would've and people would live on the streets? No, people need a place to stay and the house would get built even if renting was impossible. We would just figure out different ways to pool money to build houses. House prices would also come down if wealthy people couldn't store their money into land.
  - DiffEq 3y ago
    So, in the many thousands of years of men trying every which way…this has not happened. So, unless someone has found a better way capitalism is the best way so far.
    - jamiek88 3y ago
      What? Of course this has happened. I grew up in a council house. I.e. a house created by pooled money in the form of taxes. Houses must exist. Landlords are an inefficiency to be optimized out.
      - DiffEq 3y ago
        How many houses did investors build vs how many houses did the government build…from the money they actually took from somebody else? And which houses are nicer, safer and better maintained?

admax88qqq 3y ago

What makes a chair more valuable to society than entertainment?

joelfried 3y ago
Many of us have the ability to entertain ourselves entirely within our own minds on the regular. None of us can snap our fingers and summon a chair from nothingness. Do you know anybody who owns zero chairs?
- hnfong 3y ago
  There are cultures that don't use chairs. The Japanese generally didn't use them (I think?) before they came into contact with European civilization. I don't think any civilization could survive without entertainment though.
- admax88qqq 3y ago
  Many of us can sit on the ground or in a deep squat. None of us can snap our fingers and summon a book from nothingness.
  - roguas 3y ago
    sure, you can, many did, they are called authors
loup-vaillant 3y ago
I did not say it was.
squirtlebonflow 3y ago
You can't rest your legs on an entertainment
- lxgr 3y ago
  Yet the entertainment I'm getting out of my chairs is limited. But I think this is a false dichotomy: A comfortable armchair and a good book go well together.

liber8 3y ago

If people do not "make" money (i.e. create value), how do you explain the increase in the standard of living over the last 100 years?

mandmandam 3y ago
> how do you explain the increase in the standard of living over the last 100 years? https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption That will catch up to us. It already has, in many parts of the world, and it's not looking like it'll get better soon. And let's not forget, it's not just people who have paid the price. > The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet); also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction The ecocide which we've inflicted on the planet for the last 100 years will some day be seen for what it is - an atrocity. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 All of which is to say nothing about the inequality in how that shareholder wealth is distributed, which is incredibly short-sighted for literally billions of reasons. 8 Americans own more wealth than 4 billion humans. It's perverse beyond comprehension.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  You only see the curves go upward. But if you look very detailed, you see that a plateau is coming. A downward trend will follow. When the going gets tough... About the inequality : it is really bad, but hundreds years ago, the poor were starving because of lack of food, in stark contrast with landlords and knights and kings. Today an equal amount of or more, people die from too much food than of too little. My point is, you need to take a step back and look from a bit more distance to see the real trend. Things are bad now, because we are at a maximum.
  - mandmandam 3y ago

DiffEq 3y ago

I think your viewpoint stems in a belief that there is only so much money to go around. Your view about a landlord taking money is kind of a micro view. I am a landlord…the house I rent I actually built. It is an asset that people are willing to give me money to use for a while…they get a place to live…IF I could not have ever rented it out I would have never built it…it would be a worthless piece of ground that nobody would want to live on…this is how the world works…when I die, I will give it to my son…he will rent it out. Are you saying that he also would be “taking” money from people?

TFYS 3y ago
So if you didn't build the house, no one would've and people would live on the streets? No, people need a place to stay and the house would get built even if renting was impossible. We would just figure out different ways to pool money to build houses. House prices would also come down if wealthy people couldn't store their money into land.
- DiffEq 3y ago
  So, in the many thousands of years of men trying every which way…this has not happened. So, unless someone has found a better way capitalism is the best way so far.
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    What? Of course this has happened. I grew up in a council house. I.e. a house created by pooled money in the form of taxes. Houses must exist. Landlords are an inefficiency to be optimized out.
    - DiffEq 3y ago
      How many houses did investors build vs how many houses did the government build…from the money they actually took from somebody else? And which houses are nicer, safer and better maintained?