3 ms·

This is a bit of an aside but why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels? To be clear I'm not asking if the rich

This is a bit of an aside but why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels? To be clear I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil'? Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires? Why is the cookie cutter young adult dystopia book, sold by the millions, about a bunch of poor kids in a dystopian capitalist society? None of this shit makes sense to me.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
Consider the pervasive narratives those people are reacting to: that people who are wealthy/powerful are better humans. Being poor is often seen as a moral failing, whereas people who are wealthy are attractive, intelligent people. In some cases, "better" is even meant literally, like this well-known, only partly tongue-in-cheek new Yorker article (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rich-people-really-are-better https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rich-people-rea...) or the British class system. You're only questioning one half of these ideas.
- argentinian 2y ago
  Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans?
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Well, you could look at the examples provided, any of various historical (and modern) class systems, great man theory, do a quick search (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/05/08/new-psychological-studies-how-the-wealthy-really-are-different-from-everyone-else/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/05/08/new-...), read self-help literature (e.g. rich dad, poor dad), and so on. It might be harder to find media where that narrative isn't either present or intentionally absent. And just because something is present doesn't mean it's an intentional or complete narrative being promoted by the author. This is simply an idea that's virtually omnipresent in Western societies, like the acceptance of capitalism or the system of colors. Things that challenge these sorts of deeply assumed ideas often seem like attacks on society itself. If you want an author who intentionally addresses it, Ursula Guin has made it a big focus of her works (e.g. Omelas, the hainish cycle).
  - JadeNB 2y ago
    > Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans? This is kind of like asking where one observes the promotion of the absurd narrative that white people are better people. It's rare to get an explicit source, but you have to benefit from it or be willfully blind to it not to believe it's there. For one example of a reasonably explicit source, a very loud voice in the US agreed that those who benefits from government services are "the parasite class" (https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120000227.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120...). Leaving, therefore, only the wealthy, who (so the narrative goes) impose no burden on others, to be the virtuous, non-parasitic class.
    - torginus 2y ago
      Dunno, to me it's quite obvious the rich (as in the asset generating wealth owning) class are the parasitic ones, almost by definition - after all they get mony for doing nothing. Them being 'better' in any sense of the word is weirdly orthogonal and juvenile statement. It doesn't matter if you are a breatthakingly handsome hardworking genius, or you are an ugly imbecile - it's about what assets you own - the whole notion of being better on benchmarks of what humans consider better is irrelevant.
  - flocciput 2y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
  - pixl97 2y ago
    https://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-gospel-on-the-rise-among-us-churchgoers.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-gospel-on-the-... https://oxfordre.com/religion/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-429 https://oxfordre.com/religion/display/10.1093/acrefore/97801... The idea of prosperity gospel is strong in the US, it doesn't take much more than looking at US elections and seeing the religious poor voting for Trump and using "because he is rich" as one of the reasons for it. This also ties into Milton Friedman's "everyone runs on greed" idealisms that permeate capitalism. I think some of this is because you don't live in the US and get to see behavior like this daily.
    - argentinian 2y ago
      Yes, I guess I'm not seeing it as many of you do because I live in a society with different values. Curiosly, in Argentina a popular belief is that "nobody became rich by working" and variations. Being rich here is seen as either the result of luck (born rich) or corruption.
- torginus 2y ago
  I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich. And the ones who are honest with themselves probably have enough capacity for self-reflection that they aren't rich because they've worked for it. There's a lot of hard working talented, and well-compensated people here. But that alone doesn't make you rich, merely well-off. What makes you truly rich is investing your wealth in stocks, real estate, or being in the right place in the right time, which is the difference between the guy who built the core systems at a successful startup, and the guy who owns a significant stake of it (which might be one and the same). But being rich isn't earned in the sense that you work hard for it, you might need savvy, connections, luck, and need to fight others for money, but I'm sure most honest rich people wouldn't describe themselves as their money being the result of their hard work. And this is for self-made people. People who inherited wealth are even less responsible for their success.
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    >I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich. You should define what you mean by rich. Colloquially, when speaking of 'eat the rich' its typically a reference to people with net worths exceeding 25 million or more with substantial cash generating assets there in[0]. Rather than some SWE's making 250-500K a year and perhaps retire with 5-10 million in assets with smart investments over the course of 20-30 years. This gets edged down into 'upper middle class'. Sometimes the term. 'Well off' is used (somewhat nebulously) to refer to people in that bracket. Of course there are exceptions, but these seem to be the common trends in these discussions. Therefore, I ask again, what exactly do you mean by rich? Because the most colloquial definition is unlikely to be common anywhere, even on HN [0]: Whether folks realize it or not, this is approximately where the real difference between 'well off' and truly wealthy start to set in. It differs a bit by state (in the US) and country, but its a decent enough approximation for this conversation.
- Miraste 2y ago
  That New Yorker article is not "partly" tongue in cheek, good grief. Has Reddit broken reading comprehension so badly it needed an /s?
argentinian 2y ago
In Argentina leftists newspapers and media are paid by the main populist party (peronism) to promote the anti-rich ideology. Ironically all peronist leaders are super rich. They want to advance statism, and to keep getting richer by using privileges they have thanks to the State.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
> I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil' Well, not the only possible but one extremely simple answer to the second question is "they are evil" to the first. You can't separate them like this. > Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires? What newspaper does this describe? None of the major newspapers are significantly left of the democrats, a center-right party globally. Jacobin? Mother Jones? They don't quite fit your description. Genuinely do not know what you have in mind here. > None of this shit makes sense to me. Like look around man it's not hard to figure out. Even if you like this I don't think it takes a huge amount of wisdom to perceive why some would not.
bilbo0s 2y ago
Haven't spent much time outside of the West have you? If you had, you would know that this practice is not West specific. Heck, spend more than a day in any African or Asian nation and they'll tell you all about how the rich and powerful are the root cause of all their problems. I'm thinking it's human nature. Looked at from the perspective of human nature, it does kind of make sense. That's why politicians on the left and the right tend to say, "Look at that rich guy! He's the problem!" They just point at different rich guys and gals. They do so because it works to win them power.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  You two have both missed, or chosen to talk yourself out of, the reality that the rich really are the root problem.
s_m_t 2y ago
Because the idea of class interest being split along easy to understand lines like billionaires versus everyone else or rich people versus poor people is a fallacy. In the real world your economic interest relies more on exactly how you make your money, in what industry, in what region, what your assets are, etc, etc. A teacher in California might have close economic interests with billionaire group X and a truck driver in Wyoming might have close economic interests in line with billionaire group Y. Everything else is just propaganda to try and give a compelling narrative to these unintuitive groups. Because what we are actually talking about is essentially a classification problem in highly multi-dimensional space there really isn't a coherent narrative. The only way the propaganda narratives make sense to you is if you have shut down your critical thinking skills. Being confused means you aren't a brainwashed partisan.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels? Because it's an easy line to buy. Hell, Trump was able to sell it! He's a billionaire!

AlotOfReading 2y ago

Consider the pervasive narratives those people are reacting to: that people who are wealthy/powerful are better humans. Being poor is often seen as a moral failing, whereas people who are wealthy are attractive, intelligent people. In some cases, "better" is even meant literally, like this well-known, only partly tongue-in-cheek new Yorker article (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rich-people-really-are-better https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rich-people-rea...) or the British class system. You're only questioning one half of these ideas.

argentinian 2y ago
Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans?
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  Well, you could look at the examples provided, any of various historical (and modern) class systems, great man theory, do a quick search (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/05/08/new-psychological-studies-how-the-wealthy-really-are-different-from-everyone-else/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/05/08/new-...), read self-help literature (e.g. rich dad, poor dad), and so on. It might be harder to find media where that narrative isn't either present or intentionally absent. And just because something is present doesn't mean it's an intentional or complete narrative being promoted by the author. This is simply an idea that's virtually omnipresent in Western societies, like the acceptance of capitalism or the system of colors. Things that challenge these sorts of deeply assumed ideas often seem like attacks on society itself. If you want an author who intentionally addresses it, Ursula Guin has made it a big focus of her works (e.g. Omelas, the hainish cycle).
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans? This is kind of like asking where one observes the promotion of the absurd narrative that white people are better people. It's rare to get an explicit source, but you have to benefit from it or be willfully blind to it not to believe it's there. For one example of a reasonably explicit source, a very loud voice in the US agreed that those who benefits from government services are "the parasite class" (https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120000227.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120...). Leaving, therefore, only the wealthy, who (so the narrative goes) impose no burden on others, to be the virtuous, non-parasitic class.
  - torginus 2y ago
    Dunno, to me it's quite obvious the rich (as in the asset generating wealth owning) class are the parasitic ones, almost by definition - after all they get mony for doing nothing. Them being 'better' in any sense of the word is weirdly orthogonal and juvenile statement. It doesn't matter if you are a breatthakingly handsome hardworking genius, or you are an ugly imbecile - it's about what assets you own - the whole notion of being better on benchmarks of what humans consider better is irrelevant.
- flocciput 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
- pixl97 2y ago
  https://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-gospel-on-the-rise-among-us-churchgoers.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-gospel-on-the-... https://oxfordre.com/religion/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-429 https://oxfordre.com/religion/display/10.1093/acrefore/97801... The idea of prosperity gospel is strong in the US, it doesn't take much more than looking at US elections and seeing the religious poor voting for Trump and using "because he is rich" as one of the reasons for it. This also ties into Milton Friedman's "everyone runs on greed" idealisms that permeate capitalism. I think some of this is because you don't live in the US and get to see behavior like this daily.
  - argentinian 2y ago
    Yes, I guess I'm not seeing it as many of you do because I live in a society with different values. Curiosly, in Argentina a popular belief is that "nobody became rich by working" and variations. Being rich here is seen as either the result of luck (born rich) or corruption.
torginus 2y ago
I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich. And the ones who are honest with themselves probably have enough capacity for self-reflection that they aren't rich because they've worked for it. There's a lot of hard working talented, and well-compensated people here. But that alone doesn't make you rich, merely well-off. What makes you truly rich is investing your wealth in stocks, real estate, or being in the right place in the right time, which is the difference between the guy who built the core systems at a successful startup, and the guy who owns a significant stake of it (which might be one and the same). But being rich isn't earned in the sense that you work hard for it, you might need savvy, connections, luck, and need to fight others for money, but I'm sure most honest rich people wouldn't describe themselves as their money being the result of their hard work. And this is for self-made people. People who inherited wealth are even less responsible for their success.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  >I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich. You should define what you mean by rich. Colloquially, when speaking of 'eat the rich' its typically a reference to people with net worths exceeding 25 million or more with substantial cash generating assets there in[0]. Rather than some SWE's making 250-500K a year and perhaps retire with 5-10 million in assets with smart investments over the course of 20-30 years. This gets edged down into 'upper middle class'. Sometimes the term. 'Well off' is used (somewhat nebulously) to refer to people in that bracket. Of course there are exceptions, but these seem to be the common trends in these discussions. Therefore, I ask again, what exactly do you mean by rich? Because the most colloquial definition is unlikely to be common anywhere, even on HN [0]: Whether folks realize it or not, this is approximately where the real difference between 'well off' and truly wealthy start to set in. It differs a bit by state (in the US) and country, but its a decent enough approximation for this conversation.
Miraste 2y ago
That New Yorker article is not "partly" tongue in cheek, good grief. Has Reddit broken reading comprehension so badly it needed an /s?

argentinian 2y ago

In Argentina leftists newspapers and media are paid by the main populist party (peronism) to promote the anti-rich ideology. Ironically all peronist leaders are super rich. They want to advance statism, and to keep getting richer by using privileges they have thanks to the State.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

> I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil' Well, not the only possible but one extremely simple answer to the second question is "they are evil" to the first. You can't separate them like this. > Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires? What newspaper does this describe? None of the major newspapers are significantly left of the democrats, a center-right party globally. Jacobin? Mother Jones? They don't quite fit your description. Genuinely do not know what you have in mind here. > None of this shit makes sense to me. Like look around man it's not hard to figure out. Even if you like this I don't think it takes a huge amount of wisdom to perceive why some would not.

bilbo0s 2y ago

Haven't spent much time outside of the West have you? If you had, you would know that this practice is not West specific. Heck, spend more than a day in any African or Asian nation and they'll tell you all about how the rich and powerful are the root cause of all their problems. I'm thinking it's human nature. Looked at from the perspective of human nature, it does kind of make sense. That's why politicians on the left and the right tend to say, "Look at that rich guy! He's the problem!" They just point at different rich guys and gals. They do so because it works to win them power.

giraffe_lady 2y ago
You two have both missed, or chosen to talk yourself out of, the reality that the rich really are the root problem.

s_m_t 2y ago

Because the idea of class interest being split along easy to understand lines like billionaires versus everyone else or rich people versus poor people is a fallacy. In the real world your economic interest relies more on exactly how you make your money, in what industry, in what region, what your assets are, etc, etc. A teacher in California might have close economic interests with billionaire group X and a truck driver in Wyoming might have close economic interests in line with billionaire group Y. Everything else is just propaganda to try and give a compelling narrative to these unintuitive groups. Because what we are actually talking about is essentially a classification problem in highly multi-dimensional space there really isn't a coherent narrative. The only way the propaganda narratives make sense to you is if you have shut down your critical thinking skills. Being confused means you aren't a brainwashed partisan.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels? Because it's an easy line to buy. Hell, Trump was able to sell it! He's a billionaire!