5 ms·

Capital begets capital. That's not a secret. No offense but we don't need a new economic concept. We need to adjust or priorities. Take this article, note the

Capital begets capital. That's not a secret. No offense but we don't need a new economic concept. We need to adjust or priorities. Take this article, note the headline is not "The five people who gave away the highest percentage of their wealth" or "The five people who saved the most lives in 2023". Etc. You get the point. We've collectively have bought into and become fixated on a single currency of measurement. We say "success" and don't bother to preface it with "financial" as if there are no other forms of success. There are. Words create worlds. We have the words. But we don't use them to our (i.e., 99.5%) own advantage.

dijit 3y ago
Capital begets Capital is the literal foundation of capitalism. IE: My capital and your time are equal; thus a person who has much more capital has the buying power of many people. it's mildly irritating that we know that in a relative closed system with finite resources the inequality rises (the entire point of Monopoly is to show this), yet we forget it in our day to day lives because we can't relate the microeconomics to macroeconomics for some reason.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  It's also mildly irritating that people still don't understand that wealth is not 0 sum.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    True. But to be fair that's what they see, so there's no reason to believe otherwise. When scarcity is all you know then zero-sum is all you think. When the Top 5 double their worth, and the poorest lose - while that might be correlation - it certainly looks like cause (read: zero-sum). Per another comment I left on this thread, we need to be aware of the language the rest of us use, as it does create worlds. And we keep creating a world that favors the systems, metrics and paradigms of The Few.
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      Agreed with your comments... So we are saying it is a problem of perception? If we didn't know about the top 5's wealth, and the bottom was rising in wealth (Maybe lower rate than the top, but we don't know). There would be no problem?
      - chiefalchemist 3y ago
        Perception and "promotion". We've fetishized and normalized excessive wealth. Imagine you collected Fubar Widgets and the media promoted you as having a Fubar Widget collection with 50+ billion such Widgets...most would look upon you as being a weirdo, with some sort of personality disorder, etc. Do that with money, and the concept of normal and decent goes out the window. Your obsession...your hoarding (if you will)... Perfectly normal. Perfectly acceptable. But ultimately, textbook bonkers. Mind you, I don't have a philosophical issue with excessive wealth per se. To me, it's strange, but what do I know? However, in the context of poverty and a slew of countless other ills in the world, such hoarding feels disturbing and disconnected. I don't see such behavior as being enviable, let alone put on a pedestal as we do.

dijit 3y ago

Capital begets Capital is the literal foundation of capitalism. IE: My capital and your time are equal; thus a person who has much more capital has the buying power of many people. it's mildly irritating that we know that in a relative closed system with finite resources the inequality rises (the entire point of Monopoly is to show this), yet we forget it in our day to day lives because we can't relate the microeconomics to macroeconomics for some reason.

mlrtime 3y ago
It's also mildly irritating that people still don't understand that wealth is not 0 sum.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  True. But to be fair that's what they see, so there's no reason to believe otherwise. When scarcity is all you know then zero-sum is all you think. When the Top 5 double their worth, and the poorest lose - while that might be correlation - it certainly looks like cause (read: zero-sum). Per another comment I left on this thread, we need to be aware of the language the rest of us use, as it does create worlds. And we keep creating a world that favors the systems, metrics and paradigms of The Few.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Agreed with your comments... So we are saying it is a problem of perception? If we didn't know about the top 5's wealth, and the bottom was rising in wealth (Maybe lower rate than the top, but we don't know). There would be no problem?
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      Perception and "promotion". We've fetishized and normalized excessive wealth. Imagine you collected Fubar Widgets and the media promoted you as having a Fubar Widget collection with 50+ billion such Widgets...most would look upon you as being a weirdo, with some sort of personality disorder, etc. Do that with money, and the concept of normal and decent goes out the window. Your obsession...your hoarding (if you will)... Perfectly normal. Perfectly acceptable. But ultimately, textbook bonkers. Mind you, I don't have a philosophical issue with excessive wealth per se. To me, it's strange, but what do I know? However, in the context of poverty and a slew of countless other ills in the world, such hoarding feels disturbing and disconnected. I don't see such behavior as being enviable, let alone put on a pedestal as we do.