… and real estate is as much about connections as it is about capital.
The closest thing to a self made billionaire I know of is Warren Buffet and his dad was in Congress. Not that it helped him particularly (it took less money to get elected to Congress back then), but he obviously came from an upper class family that was well thought of in Omaha. Probably made it a lot easier to get those lawyers and doctors who were his first investors to open their checkbooks.
It’s not as simple as just cash. A lot of people who have never been rich or have always been rich greatly underestimate how different opportunities are for people who are lower on the social ladder. I’ve strangely been at a bunch of places on that ladder in my life so I can tell you it’s a HUGE factor.
According to this article about him being honored with an award for people who have succeeded in spite of adversity he was actually 17
As a youngster, Hall was business savvy — he once bought soft drink syrup from a pharmacy going out of business, which he parlayed into a moneymaking venture along with a lawn mowing business. When he turned 17, he used his $4,000 savings from various jobs, as a down payment to buy a college rooming house near the University of Michigan in his hometown of Ann Arbor.
By the time Hall was 21, he owned more than 20 buildings and had already become a millionaire.
I mean look… there are absolutely people who are just goddamn gifted at capitalism. I’ve met a few of them, and one or two of them started poor. They generally don’t stay poor for long and the snowball effect is crazy strong.
We shouldn’t be worried about taxing those people to the point where they wouldn’t work though. They absolutely love the game one and all. They would do business if there wasn’t any money in it. You can tell this is true because they keep making money long past the point where additional money has any marginal impact on their lives. Shit I’m past that point myself and I plan to keep playing capitalism until I die. It’s fucking fun. It’s the same rush as poker, but way softer and with much easier downswings.
Also the whole ‘job creator’ thing is such bullshit… they are good at finding demand, and once they find demand they hire people to help them supply it. The demand already exists and is the reason why the jobs are created. They are just the intermediaries who ‘make it happen’. If they don’t do it someone else absolutely will. Obviously not always as effectively, but someone will.
[quote=“boredsocial, post:9259, topic:68”] You can tell this is true because they keep making money long past the point where additional money has any marginal impact on their lives.
[/quote]
I don’t buy this. It has more to do with ego and not feeling like they have enough.
Most of these people will never feel like they have enough.
Nah. You’re talking about a different type. I’m talking about the people who are actually great at the game and play it for the love of it. They want more money so they can play bigger at higher stakes generally speaking.
You’re talking about the people who are trying to fill a hole in their soul with materialism. Those guys aren’t in it for the game. Half the time they hate the game and are trying to fix that with stuff. They also fail overall a ton.
The part about it being possible to do it without inheriting it isn’t the problem part of it being a problem that some people have billions and a hundred million people having less than zero.
Yeah a particular set of skills and personality makeup are generating crazy results in this economy. I have a hard time blaming them personally for it though. I barely believe in free will honestly. It’s very very difficult to look past your own self interest, and expecting that of people isn’t reasonable. Even when you try your lizard brain is busy subverting the shit out of it. Everything you perceive is coming through the lens of your own self interest. None of us are immune, and pretending that we are is where hypocrisy comes from.
@anon24898493 you’re totally right that those people aren’t content… but seriously dude nobody actually is. Nobody on this board is content. Nobody I’ve ever met in real life is ‘content’. Happiness is something people feel briefly when something good happens. Then they return to baseline, which is itself probably something that gets set genetically. That’s why people who objectively have way less than we do are sometimes happier than we are. It’s also why we could drop our standard of living a good bit and our overall happiness wouldn’t decrease all that much.
None of this is saying that people in distress aren’t unhappy. They definitely are. But that’s because over and over again they are getting slammed by bad stuff. Turns out building an entire economy on addiction and desperation is bad for us. What a shock.
I mean the system needs to be designed to prevent people from working the refs basically. Super competitive people who are great at business have a tendency to be the kind of people who will push every edge they can find… that just goes with the personality type. They aren’t necessarily trying to do it maliciously, it’s just how they are. You see it from the top level people in every field if you look hard enough. The top academics tend to be really aggressive at working the journals, the top athletes tend to be great at getting favorable calls (don’t even try to dispute this, James Harden is crazy good at drawing fouls and did any of you see that Lebron travel recently?), and the top business people want to figure out how to use regulation to dominate the competition.
Unfortunately all of that is bad for everyone else, and institutions have to be designed with minimizing this in mind (good luck eliminating it, I really doubt its possible). Our current government is designed to facilitate it maximally and until that changes you’re going to be hard pressed to convince normal people that the government is even minimally benevolent.
Maybe, I think it’s a tall order. He needs to get an 85/15 split among the undecideds. I looked up what the support for homosexuality is among Democrats. I thought that was the easiest one to get hard numbers on. It was 83% in 2017 according to the Pew Research Center. I suspect there will be some who will reject him purely for that reason. They might not say it out loud but it’s a liability for him.
Then add not supporting M4A, wine caves and him being young/inexperienced.
I can dig it. For yourself and adept others, you describe the gameplay as intoxicating. I’ve no doubt about it. At times, though, quality standards have got to suffer because advantages(edges) sought and gained over the competition are not necessarily realized by an improvement to the product or service, but rather through cost-cutting sacrifice. There’s harm in that to the consumer(maliciousness).
I think my buzz would be short-lived if I was peddling low-grade dog food.
You have a huge advantage in business if you are a piece of shit person. To the extent that it’s borderline impossible to become legitimately super rich while being a good person.