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This is an underrated property of wealth accumulation: beyond a certain point money doesn’t cover useful things, but vanity projects, and is being wasted. The
by kubb 27d ago
This is an underrated property of wealth accumulation: beyond a certain point money doesn’t cover useful things, but vanity projects, and is being wasted.
The typical cliches in this subject are that nobody can decide what’s worthwhile or not so we have to let the people with accumulation decide and that it stimulates the economy, no matter what kind of spending it is.
Claude can point out the flaws in those arguments fairly easily by now.
- glitchc 27d agoThat's good for the economy. Vanity projects help the wealth spread around. Think of all the people who received income by working on this house. It's a much bigger problem when wealth is hoarded.
- kubb 27d ago[flagged]
- peddling-brink 27d agoYeah well my llm said the opposite, so this is obviously untrue. Also, my llm can beat up your llm.
- kubb 26d agoBeing silly and obstinate when knowledge is in arm’s reach? Making people spell it out for you because you don’t have the respect to look yourself? OK here’s the short version: the economy has a limited amount of resources and the way they’re allocated matters. A yacht built means no hospital built. Making people work on useless stuff for the rich is demoralizing because their life’s blood is used on meaningless projects. Growing a luxury industry incentivizes gifted people to seek employment in it rather than in other fields where they’re. It matters what the economy does, not just that it grows. Every LLM will tell you that if you ask. You just didn’t ask. Because you think nothing of others and their time.
- kentonv 26d agoLLMs will tell you whatever you want to hear. You subtly direct them with the way you ask the question, and then they give you the answer you want. That's basically what they're trained to do. So of course they always give you the answer you want -- but you can't just go around telling people to ask an LLM to back up your argument, as other people will get a difference answer.
- kubb 26d agoI don’t think that’s true anymore. You can ask for weak points of a position (e.g. that luxury spending is good for the economy) and they will give you a reasonable answer. You could do the opposite - what are the weak points of the position that accumulation of wealth leads to waste and see what are the weak points there. And then think which position can be dismantled more easily and is therefore less well founded. Or ask for a steelman version of it.
- kentonv 26d agoIf you had ten million dollars, what would you spend it on?
- kubb 26d agoImmediate retirement for me and 4 more people who I like. What's that got to do with anything?
- kentonv 26d agoBut that's such a waste! 5 whole people taken out of the economy, no longer producing value, just going around consuming resources in retirement. How is that any better than me spending to build a nice house that facilitates my family's comfort and my friends' enjoyment of getting together to play games?
- 26d ago
- jebarker 27d ago> and is being wasted Why is this use of their money a waste?
- kubb 26d agoHow many people will get to use this for LANs? A couple dozen once every couple of months? A proper Internet cafe could serve thousands per week.
- jebarker 26d agoWhat is the mechanism by which you imagine that this private individuals $75K becomes a public internet cafe?
- kubb 26d agoYou mean 1.075M? The house was the bulk of it. But that’s the point. A private individual will use his economic power on vanity spending and it won’t materialize into anything efficient or useful.
- jebarker 26d agoOK - what is the mechanism by which you believe this private individual’s $1.075M should be turned into a public internet cafe?
- kubb 26d agoWhy would I need to believe in some mechanisms? What are you on about?
- jebarker 26d agoYou seem to be suggesting that there's a problem with private individuals spending their money as they see fit because that leads to what you see as wasteful vanity projects. So I'm asking how you think the world should change to compel these individuals to spend on things you believe are more efficient and less wasteful? I would point out that spending $1.075M on food for starving people probably scores more utilitarianism points than an internet cafe though in your zero sum world.
- fc417fc802 27d agoThis has to be some sort of record. Not only did you set up a strawman to facilitate a shallow dismissal, rather than tilting at it yourself you simply assured us that AI is capable of shredding it. Somehow you've managed an even more offensive variant of the "condescendingly hand out a reading assignment to strangers" trope.
- kubb 26d agoI’ve gotten two separate responses reaffirming the very same “strawmen”, so I guess the cliches exist? In my opinion it’s even more disrespectful to pretend that a simple counter argument doesn’t exist, and keep doubling down on the cliche. Just that ignorance is not an excuse anymore. We have knowledge conveniently available.
- fc417fc802 26d agoMake the argument yourself, directly, in your own words or GTFO.
- kubb 26d ago[flagged]
- rpdillon 27d agoYeah, I don't think building a house dedicated to LAN parties is a waste of money at all: it provides a substantial benefit for those that get to use it!
- throwayay4929 26d agoYou don't get to decide whats useful and what's not useful for other people. It's extremely disrespectful. I'm sure you'd hate it if someone were to look at your life and label parts of it that way.
- kubb 26d agoThat’s the cliche. Only people with accumulation get to decide.