[rocgf]

> The rich also tend to have the power to write the rules themselves, for their own benefit.

This is correct, and the 'poor' do the same, within the limits of their abilities.

> This is not true at all. Individual businesspeople vary vastly in their ethics. I don't actually try to maximize my income...

This is the Internet and saying this is free. Even so, I don't care about you specifically, I am talking about the average behaviour at the level of the society. There is no big distinction between the 'poor' and the 'rich' in terms of their behaviour to maximize their income while bending the rules as much as possible.

Typical employees (the 'poor') have way fewer levers to do this, as well as less financial education, due to the way the system is structured, but the desire to keep more of your earnings to the detriment of everyone else is the largely the same.

> It's unfortunate that you appear to have such a limited imagination, an inability to comprehend the possibility of other people rationally disagreeing with your beliefs. > Why do you present a false dichotomy? There could be little or no correlation, as opposed to an inverse correlation.

In retrospect, it is true that I presented a false dichotomy since I never considered that your defense might be "there is virtually 0 correlation".

I maintain that you have no decent argument to make in defence of this opinion of yours. To claim that working harder is not correlated to financial reward is completely indefensible.

> you're not necessarily even in the majority.

I'm not sure why this would be imporant. Nuanced views are rarely 'in the majority'.

> Have you considered, for example, that I don't necessarily view them as "progress"?

Yes, I did, but then you are simply wrong.

> Musk is already the wealthiest person in the world. To say "I'm sure there are better avenues" to making money just seems ridiculous to me.

You described anyone looking to be rich as simply greedy and basically mentally ill (I forget the exact term). So Musk is greedy and vain. After he got his 100+ millions from the sale of PayPal, would an electric car company, followed by a rocket company, be the obvious way to increase that wealth? Probably not.

[lapcat]

> within the limits of their abilities

That's the crucial distinction. Specifically, the ability to buy politicians and elections.

> This is the Internet and saying this is free.

Once again implying that I'm a liar...

You're talking to someone who spent N years, for uncomfortably large N, as a grad student in a philosophy PhD program, so it ought to be very obvious that I'm not a ruthless wealth maximizer. In fact, I still have student loan debt from that undertaking.

> There is no big distinction between the 'poor' and the 'rich' in terms of their behaviour to maximize their income while bending the rules as much as possible.

It's true that there are a lot of unethical poor and middle class people. (Also a lot of ethical poor and middle class people.) My earlier suggestion, though, is that there's a correlation between wealth and lack of ethics, because "our economic system tends to select for people who are unethical and ruthless".

> I maintain that you have no decent argument to make in defence of this opinion of yours. To claim that working harder is not correlated to financial reward is completely indefensible.

You still, after repeated prompting, resolutely refuse to explain exactly what you mean by "hard work", so how would it even be possible for me to make any argument or defense at all? It ought to be clear from how I earlier characterized hard work (e.g., manual labor) that there's no correlation. You claimed that my characterization was silly, but it's become ridiculous how you won't say anything more about it.

Perhaps what you want to say, or at least ought to say, is that some people have more natural abilities than other people, which is absolutely true, and thus some people are capable of accomplishing things that are impossible for other people, which is also true. But I wouldn't characterize that as "hard" work, at least not for the person with special abilities. To the contrary, things come easier to them. It's only hard for the people who don't have those natural abilities. I could work as "hard" as I possibly could, to the very edge of my abilities, and never become a professional guitar player or a professional tennis player (much to my dismay), because I simply don't have enough talent.

> I'm not sure why this would be imporant. Nuanced views are rarely 'in the majority'.

It's important because you seem to consider your own views as axiomatic and in need of no defense.

> You described anyone looking to be rich as simply greedy and basically mentally ill (I forget the exact term).

Pathological. But I didn't say "simply".

> would an electric car company, followed by a rocket company, be the obvious way to increase that wealth?

Why would it need to be "obvious"? There's no obvious way to become ultra-wealthy, otherwise everyone would do the obvious.

[rocgf]

> You're talking to someone who spent N years, for uncomfortably large N, as a grad student in a philosophy PhD program, so it ought to be very obvious that I'm not a ruthless wealth maximizer. In fact, I still have student loan debt from that undertaking.

And that's great, but your specific example is not what we are discussing here. We are talking about averages, not particular examples.

> My earlier suggestion, though, is that there's a correlation between wealth and lack of ethics, because "our economic system tends to select for people who are unethical and ruthless".

Hmm, I think we can agree here, I don't think I've said anything that would suggest otherwise.

> You still, after repeated prompting, resolutely refuse to explain exactly what you mean by "hard work"

Because I'm not sure it's worth it. However, your example with the guitar is good and actually fits exactly into what I'm trying to say.

Maybe you can never get to be like Jimi Hendrix, no matter how much you practice, but generally speaking, those who practice more, ON AVERAGE, will be better than those who practice less. Yes, there are other factors like natural talent and whatever else, but OVERALL those with 2k hours of guitar will be X% better than those with 1k hours.

Now, in the example above, replace guitar with "hard work" (however you want to define it, that matters less) and "better" with "more money".

In our economic system, the thing that gets rewarded is the creation of value. All things being equal, the harder you work, the more value you create. It's obviously not perfect and there are many, many caveats, but averaged across the whole economy, this is definitely true.

> It's important because you seem to consider your own views as axiomatic and in need of no defense.

Not all of them. I'd be perfectly okay with having to explain my stance on the accomplishments of Bin Laden. However, yes, I do find it axiomatic that working harder is correlated with more wealth.