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rocgf | 2 years ago
To me, it is just an axiom that working harder is correlated with more wealth. What you've done in previous replies is a typical reductionist approach, which is to pretend that a multivariate problem, with those variables on various continuums, can be presented as "Elon Musk doesn't work harder than someone stocking shelves with shampoos". I honestly do not understand how someone frequenting HN could genuinely think that this is a valuable argument.
In simpler terms, if you exclude all the obvious counter-examples like inheritance, crypto pump and dumps, lottery winners and so on, it is empirically true that richer people work harder than poor people. Before you give some example of how some billionaire simply got lucky, I did say about that this is a multivariate equation. There are many, many things that go into it, and luck is one, hard work another.
The simple logic is: you work harder -> your productivity is higher -> you make more money. You may find some exaggerated counter-example, but this is the truth.
If Elon had just been involved in the PayPal business, yeah, he would be some forgotten rich dude living his life on some island. It boggles my mind that anyone can think of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI as unimpressive.
There is such a visceral hate for "rich people" that there is no room for any positives. This is looking to me more like a cult.
lapcat|2 years ago
I don't "play" contrarian. If my views happen to be contrary to yours, or to the majority's, that's just how it is, how I am, and how I've always been from a very young age. Nonetheless, there are plenty of subjects on which I'm in agreement with the majority.
> hate for the rich
Well, my view is that our economic system tends to select for people who are unethical and ruthless, so if there's any hate, I would argue that it's a rational hate rather than an irrational hate. In general, though, my issue is with the system, and defenders of the system, rather than with the beneficiaries of the system.
> To me, it is just an axiom that working harder is correlated with more wealth.
To me, it's not an axiom. I don't consider it to be self-evident or even true. If you don't want to argue over your axiom and defend it from criticism, you're free to walk away, but you shouldn't be surprised when someone doesn't accept your beliefs as evidently true.
> It boggles my mind that anyone can think of Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI as unimpressive.
The word "impressive" means "evoking admiration through size, quality, or skill". The question is, why should I have admiration for something I don't care about, or even something I dislike? If a person that I vehemently oppose gets elected POTUS, am I supposed to "admire the accomplishment"? Only 45 people have ever been President, so in that sense it's an accomplishment, yet "admiration" is not really the appropriate attitude in these case; more like "horror". I understand that if you admire Tesla, SpaceX, and OpenAI, then you might admire Musk too, but I personally don't give a crap about any of them and even consider aspects of them to be a negative for society.
Just to evoke Godwin's law, are we supposed to be "impressed" by the "accomplishments" of Hitler? He did have a major impact, changing the world forever, doing some unprecedented things, and greatly affecting tens of millions of people. (I'm reminded of the sarcastic conversation that Paul had with Stilgar and Korba in Dune Messiah.)
Back to the more mundane subject of wealth accumulation, from my perspective, gluttony and insatiable greed are not an accomplishment, they're a personality flaw, a pathology.
> There is such a visceral hate for "rich people" that there is no room for any positives. This is looking to me more like a cult.
I was happy to ignore Musk as much as possible until recently, and to me his followers seemed very much like a cult. Unfortunately, Musk acquired Twitter, which was my social network of choice, and then proceeded to wreck it in many ways, which is mainly why I hate him in particular. Again, it's not some weird "irrational" hate but rather a direct reaction to his actions.
rocgf|2 years ago
Finally, we agree on something. This is exactly it. The problem is the system, which I am happy to change. The people who get rich are simply playing by the rules the system allows.
Rich or poor, we all do the same thing, we all try to maximize our income, reduce our taxes, use any crack in the system we find.
> To me, it's not an axiom.
I struggle to understand why anyone would think this. So you think hard work is inversely correlated with making more money? That would be an incredible statement to defend.
> The question is, why should I have admiration for something I don't care about, or even something I dislike?
If you have subjectively decided that Tesla, SpaceX and OpenAI are not impressive, then I'm afraid we simply view the world differently. I cannot comprehend how someone would be unimpressed with companies at the forefront of technological progress.
The only way in which I can explain your view is that you are not able to separate Musk's personality from his ventures. I can.
> Just to evoke Godwin's law, are we supposed to be "impressed" by the "accomplishments" of Hitler?
Anther clue that we simply think very differently. Yes, I am impressed by what Hitler 'accomplished'. I am also impressed by what Bin Laden 'accomplished', for example. Imagine if this same amount of work, ingenuity, scrappiness was applied from 'good'. Then we might have had two rich entrepreneurs that you'd find just as despicable simply for being rich.
> Back to the more mundane subject of wealth accumulation, from my perspective, gluttony and insatiable greed are not an accomplishment, they're a personality flaw, a pathology.
Back to what the real problem is - the system. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Also, if Musk wanted to actually just make money, I'm sure there are better avenues than doing the hard work of creating disruptive technologies.