4 ms·

Bearing in mind that my lived experience is entirely subjective, and that your mileage may vary accordingly: I find that when people associate money with happi

Bearing in mind that my lived experience is entirely subjective, and that your mileage may vary accordingly: I find that when people associate money with happiness, what they fail to observe is that they actually want the presumed stability such money would afford them, at their current lifestyle. Failing to acknowledge and plan around that leads to “lifestyle creep” as income rises, which simply perpetuates the same grievances they currently have around instability or insecurity, just with higher price tags and consequences for failure. I strongly suspect that billionaires engage in wealth and asset hoarding for this very reason: a terror of status, security, and stability collapse. Once I let go of lifestyle creep and found contentment and gratuity in what I had, I began realizing that stability is shockingly affordable even under modern policies and economics. Releasing yourself from this forced societal obligation to “Keep Up with the Jones’” is a key step towards objectively reflecting on your life as it’s lived, and identifying what’s of genuine import to you. Only by doing that do you find what is actually needed for personal fulfillment, and thus, happiness.

sublinear 11mo ago
> billionaires engage in wealth and asset hoarding That's not how money works. Nobody becomes a billionaire by hoarding. Money greater than a surprisingly low amount must be invested. Even the most obvious, boring, and low-risk investments still tend to have good returns. At scale lots of money just becomes a lot more money. There is no ego necessarily involved in this process.
- stego-tech 11mo ago
  Hoarding not as the act of accumulating such absurd wealth (they do that through exploitation), but hoarding in the sense of refusing to spend down, divest, or otherwise cease further acquisition despite the harms created or perpetuated in doing so. You cannot look me in the eyes and keep a straight face while saying their megayachts, private jets, palatial estates, private islands, and state capture are completely ego-less. To willfully retain or grow such wealth is to have a gluttonous, insatiable ego.
  - sublinear 11mo ago
    I wouldn't say those things are completely ego-less, but I will say that they're not necessarily for personal enjoyment alone. The function of all that is entertaining guests. Of course theirs must be the biggest and best to win people over. You may then ask why they need to win people over, and you will find it only keeps getting more complicated and torturous to maintain than what any individual's ego could possibly and stubbornly want to do. I'm not saying the wealthiest are heroes or saints or anything like that. In fact, in some cases all of what I just said is totally wrong and it's just a front for massive money laundering. Having a means for large private gatherings is also ideal for other possibly nefarious activities. I'm simply trying to explain what humanity and depth exists where you don't think it does. It's not really one single "evil" person, or even a group of "evil" people, but a situation caused by many well-intended constraints. That a system naturally becomes corrupt as a mere side effect of its scale and tiny imperfections adding up rather any intentions is probably the most evil thing imaginable.

sublinear 11mo ago

> billionaires engage in wealth and asset hoarding That's not how money works. Nobody becomes a billionaire by hoarding. Money greater than a surprisingly low amount must be invested. Even the most obvious, boring, and low-risk investments still tend to have good returns. At scale lots of money just becomes a lot more money. There is no ego necessarily involved in this process.

stego-tech 11mo ago
Hoarding not as the act of accumulating such absurd wealth (they do that through exploitation), but hoarding in the sense of refusing to spend down, divest, or otherwise cease further acquisition despite the harms created or perpetuated in doing so. You cannot look me in the eyes and keep a straight face while saying their megayachts, private jets, palatial estates, private islands, and state capture are completely ego-less. To willfully retain or grow such wealth is to have a gluttonous, insatiable ego.
- sublinear 11mo ago
  I wouldn't say those things are completely ego-less, but I will say that they're not necessarily for personal enjoyment alone. The function of all that is entertaining guests. Of course theirs must be the biggest and best to win people over. You may then ask why they need to win people over, and you will find it only keeps getting more complicated and torturous to maintain than what any individual's ego could possibly and stubbornly want to do. I'm not saying the wealthiest are heroes or saints or anything like that. In fact, in some cases all of what I just said is totally wrong and it's just a front for massive money laundering. Having a means for large private gatherings is also ideal for other possibly nefarious activities. I'm simply trying to explain what humanity and depth exists where you don't think it does. It's not really one single "evil" person, or even a group of "evil" people, but a situation caused by many well-intended constraints. That a system naturally becomes corrupt as a mere side effect of its scale and tiny imperfections adding up rather any intentions is probably the most evil thing imaginable.