Greed, plain and simple, and a complete absence of checks and balances.
There is no problem in creating an endeavour to achieve some goal and make money from it in the process but it is a problem when making a better life for oneself becomes a trip to hoard as much riches as possible just for the sake of it.
I’ve been lucky enough to know people with a lot of money, both old money and new money. Old money were down to earth people, still working on their family business, leading a very discreet life, with no show off. Polite, well spoken. New money - I prefer the french nouvelle riche - were insuferable twits, that liked to throw around their money as if it meant anything.
The old money people paid whoever worked for them well; I was told, in no uncertain terms, trust is a very high value commodity. They wanted to keep people around them loyal and reliable. The other lot paid pittance salaries.
There is only so much money needed and spendable. I don’t mind paying taxes, although I do say there is a lot of misuse of all the money collect from it, but I consider it the price of civilization. I have an NHS, good roads and somewhat well taken care infrastructure, free public education, subsidized medication, unemployement by the state, paid sick days, paid parental leave, etc. That is money well spent.
Meanwhile, I see companies paying pittances. Tax the blood out of them. Force them to pay higher salaries in order to have higher tax deductions. Throw out deductions for charity; that is white washing greed. Increase paid vacation days (we get paid 14 months here and only work 11, as we have 22 days of paid vacation, plus an extra month salary for holiday “bonus” and another for christmas) and pay higher per diem values.
A company can work to only break even and still produce a lot.
why can’t people just not be dumb
I don’t think it’s the case that people are rewarded with power, then somehow turn into pstchopathic fuckwads, but that only psychopathic fuckwads are willing and able to do everything it takes to gain that sort of power in the first place.
Think of all the compromises someone has to make and lies they have to tell and asses they have to kiss and backs they have to stab to fight and crawl up the ladder to that sort of position.
No truly sane and stable and honest and empathetic person would or even could do all of that.
Yeah I’m totally
omon board with this. It’s filtering.
The people that tend to be the best at ammassing the most wealth tend to be the ones who care the least about others.
They destroy society because the wealth/power they are ammassing is being stolen from society at large.
A couple of good videos on the topic:
Its not that having that mucb money makes you fucked up its that in order to get that much money you have to do fucked up things.
progress is inherently risky. we incentive risk taking behaviour because most people don’t actually want to take risks but we do want progress,
the side effect is that any personal pleasure these people get from taking risks is severely dulled by monetary success so they need to keep going bigger until they get so big they’re risking the very foundations of their success.
It bugs me when people say corporations enable people to take risks. They don’t. They eliminate risk. They allow people to do risky things without any personal accountability. Then they just shut down one corp, start another, and do it again.
It bugs me when people say corporations enable people to take risks. They don’t. They eliminate risk. They allow people to do risky things without any personal accountability.
It’s like snake oil salesmen from the ol West. But instead of jumping towns they jump companies.
I did relate it back to money so you’re not wrong but I wasn’t really talking about our current incentive structure.
I believe we would reward these people with a cushion against risk no matter the underlying system because that’s what we value.
Adrenaline junkies then?
that’s not the sort of risk being mitigated by money.
it’s more that people in general are heavily loss averse so it’s beneficial to incentive people willing to risk loss.
I don’t necessarily believe that this trait is inherent to humankind; instead, I think it’s a product of cultures that value things like power and hyperindividualism.
I do believe that there will always be (insecure) people who seek some level of power and/or wealth without regard for others. Whether or not they succeed would—I assume—depend on how that society views authority/skepticism/community/ect; if allowed, that would nudge society a little bit in that direction. And so on.
Sadly, , some governments and corporations have spent millenia aquiring and wielding their vast power and wealth to cripple and exploit other societies that they can benefit from without too much pushback. Which obviously ravages those cultures, too, and often by design.
So… it’s a little hard to know for certain what is truly in our nature.
There are limits to growth, so eventually the individuals who are rewarded with immense power will find that they can’t keep accumulating more power without fucking up society.
I think fucking up society is just an often unregulated byproduct of trying to amass more power and wealth.
I’ve been leaning lately to understanding all the weird shit going on that people are just people are just driven by whatever inherited animal traits that made humans the dominant species on the planet in the first place. Expansionist exploiters and hoarders of resources until we run out and then expand again. Until there is nowhere more to expand and no new resources. Then it be war times. It sucks, I know.
If the question is asking about Trump, Orban, Putin, or your other favourite dimwitted world leader, it’s because these people usually don’t actually want to fuck everything up. They want to make their country (or their notion of the groups of people they regard as their country) prosperous and glorious. But they’re just unable to take in the fact that their policies and leadership are actually leading them further away from this goal. It really is just a deadly combination of incompetence and inability to self-criticise.
In the case of Trump, who is a pre-eminent example of this, he really does think that tariffs will make the US richer. He is a moron, of course, but that’s what he thinks. He doesn’t “know” that tariffs will damage the American economy and America’s international reputation, because he doesn’t grasp the concept at all. Anyone who has observed his thinking for any period of time after he got into politics can observe that it is very feelings-driven and not very fact-based. And a lot of his government’s policy is also ego-driven, which explains why it is seemingly always falling for Russian propaganda and why he wants to be on good terms with Putin. Though Putin is no universal genius either, one thing that he is very good at, as a result of his KGB training, is manipulating others to get what he wants. It certainly does help Putin a lot that Trump is pretty easily manipulated. And as for Trump’s comments about wanting to take over Canada, take over Greenland, take over Panama, &c. &c., most non-US observers describe that as clear evidence of his mental decline. J. J. McCullough, a Canadian political commentator, described it as being “obvious” that Trump is “losing it”.
And ironically, since Joe Biden’s mental competence was called into question in the last US election, while Biden’s senility manifests mostly in the form of stutters, speech blunders, and random mostly-inert goofiness, Trump’s senility seems to manifest in a desire to take over the world and become God-emperor of Mankind, which is objectively more dangerous for a world leader.
If this is true then it must be Nature of human or Moral of this individuals or Perception of this individual When got power of millions Society is wrong They should retrieve the reward But if this is false Society doesnt do this This rewards happen by something else And the human is just manifest of that thing They should retrieve the reward This is not the answer, just my ponder write out to let it go
