/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17486195]

ITT: Books that explain why normal people will casually defend this

[Anonymous No.17486216]

Nothing is stopping you from amassing your own fortune in America.

[Anonymous No.17486244]

>>17486216
How many hours times 4 bucks to be a billionaire?

[Anonymous No.17486248]

>>17486216
Billionaires and most millionaires are a hindrance to the well-being of any society that values humanistic virtues over profit margins.

[Anonymous No.17486251]

>>17486244

[Anonymous No.17486681]

>>17486195
>>17486216

[Anonymous No.17486916]

>>17486195
Unironically kinda this, but only if you don't mind about your class conciousness coming along kinda race-based lines too (native American/Canadian specifically)

[Anonymous No.17486926]

>>17486248
There's nothing wrong with low tier millionaires

[Anonymous No.17486986]

I dont see them really do that and the main solution(and realistic) is muh progressive taxes isnt that intersting to talk about which is why its dressed up in muh guillotine larping and the like

[Anonymous No.17486992]

>>17486195

[Anonymous No.17487011]

>>17486986
Income tax is not the solution, no matter how progressive it is, the greatest burden is always placed on the lower and middle classes

[Anonymous No.17487038]

>>17486195
The sad truth egalitarians refuse to admit is that this is the natural state of man for any competition.
A tiny elite will always be an order of magnitude better at any game you set up.

Now maybe we can discuss how having norms that make the nobility constrained to act in pro-social ways is so bad? Since it's inevitable that we have a nobility in the first place.

[Anonymous No.17487071]

>>17487038
>A tiny elite will always be an order of magnitude better at any game you set up.
It'd be nice if the billionaires in our society were all Elon Musks or whatever. But they're not. A lot of them are literal parasites who do insider trading and whatnot.

[Anonymous No.17487084]

>>17487071
This is inarguable. But again, it was a relatively common criticism of the enlightenment.

Now, one can't argue with the success of capitalism, it certainly has vanquished all its enemies. But any possible alternative system ought to have an answer for this problem.

[Anonymous No.17487091]

>>17487038
You presume so god damn much about society and human nature, but paint it as something we can agree on, flagrantly, before we come to some kind of conclusion to the question you asked that you already know the answer to. it’s absurd. You don’t seek knowledge or understanding. You just want to bully people with your shitty opinions.

[Anonymous No.17487098]

>>17487071
>Elon Musk
Even Elon Musk is a fraud. His paper on Hyperloop is utter shit. A 3rd year engineering major is smarter than him. Most of these billionaires become so because of their parents.

[Anonymous No.17487100]

>>17487091
I'm only assuming it because it's so obvious as to be a topos.

But feel free to contradict my assumption then. How do you break Pareto's law if it's literally true in any competitive field?

[Anonymous No.17487172]

>>17487084
The thing is, power law distribution doesn't really explain billionaires. Look at pro gaming for example. That's heavily pareto distributed. And yet, the top earners aren't making that much more than the average pro player. This is what happens when the market (the audience) values competition more than anything.

Billionaires occur when competition is killed off. They are the product of monopoly capitalism. This is why I hate the power law argument as an explanation for the wealth gap. Power law distribution doesn't explain the anti-competitive practices of places like Google/Amazon/Apple/etc. The engineers at FAANG aren't any more talented than the engineers at x startup.

[Anonymous No.17487194]

>>17487172
This. The glaring fault in all these arguments is that they ignore the fact that the end goal of capitalism is to centralize wealth. I could assemble a team of the best software engineers in the business, but I simply would not be able to create a search engine as good as Google. Same story with Amazon, Nike, Apple, etc.

[Anonymous No.17487196]

>>17487172
I suppose you're tempted to do the classical Marxist analysis and say that it's the fault of capital whom accumulates around itself?
Myself I see this as exactly the problem that I enounced: that of the corruption of elites.

Were there strong social norms and noblesse oblige, all this alteration of competition would eventually result in reform.
This was the thrust of Trust-busting in my view.
But we've relentlessly destroyed those norms so we're in an increasingly degenerate situation.

How does Aristostle call degenerate oligarchies again?

[Anonymous No.17487204]

>>17487194
To see it as a goal is to make a moral judgement. It just is.
I happen to be sympathetic to distributism for this very reason.

[Anonymous No.17487285]

>>17487194
>Central goal of capitalism
>REEEEEEEE, WHY ARE YOU MAKING BASIC ASSUMPTIONS WAAAAAAAH
You people are mentally diseased
>>17487172
Why are you comparing pro gamers to each other rather than to the entire community like you do with incomes niggger?

[Anonymous No.17487402]

>>17487285
Can you please write coherently? I don’t have autism like you fortunately.

[Anonymous No.17487406]

>>17487402
>I don’t have autism
>posts on /lit/
Anon...I...

[Anonymous No.17487408]

Americans aren’t normal people

[Anonymous No.17487529]

In my country people moved from lower to middle class by practising good habits over a long period of time. This resulted in economic growth and later the state decided to give money to people still in the lower class.
Seeing this, the hard-working middle class became furious, seeing that they were living under the same standard.

Not that the very rich have worked harder than the middle class, but yes they have and some of them even pay taxes ! I am grateful for the very rich that they will keep supporting my neet lifestyle

[Anonymous No.17487543]

Reminder that the "wealth" of those top 1% is almost entirely in stocks. They probably have barely more cash than you in their checking accounts because holding cash is stupid. So essentially if their "wealth" is partially imaginary and if they tried to liquidate it they would flood the market with so many shares that the price per share would dramatically decrease. So they aren't as wealthy as these politically motivate graphs lead one to believe.
Also, given the age of globalism, those top 1% of Americans are more like the top 1% of the world because wealthy people move here.
I think instead of drawing attention to "wealth" in equality we should draw attention to the retarded use of wealth by most people. While Elon Musk is solving climate change and making us an interplanetary species, zoomers are going on vacation just to take pics of their butts in different places.

[Anonymous No.17487544]

>>17487408
>Americans aren’t people
There. Fixed it.

[Anonymous No.17487551]

>>17486681
yes I am, commie. fuck off.

[Anonymous No.17487557]

>>17487543
>flipping the topic to shitting on zoomers
Do millennials have no shame?

[Anonymous No.17487558]

>>17486992
does it look like the top two deciles have the 80% of wealth?
it looks like they have much more, and the system is unbalanced.

[Anonymous No.17487585]

>>17487551

[Anonymous No.17487628]

>>17486195
I don’t get this chart. If it says that 10% of the population held 73% of the wealth at the end of 2007, then how the fuck did 10% of the population hold 0% in the beginning??
Or does it just look at a certain group, which constitutes 10% of the population and got immensely rich in the course of the year?

[Anonymous No.17487653]

>>17487628
It's not saying anything about how long it took to acculumate, just that the top 10% controls 73% of total wealth.

[Anonymous No.17487730]

>>17487544
Can confirm this as an american

[Anonymous No.17487732]

>>17486216
nothing except the whole deep state lol

[Anonymous No.17487740]

>>17486216
did the whole gamestop thing just not register to you, or what?

[Anonymous No.17487751]

>>17487628
No wonder this board is perenially butthurt at STEMfags, being unable to read a basic chart must fill one with immense insecurity.

[Anonymous No.17487767]

>>17486195
Most Americans genuinely believe that they're going to be billionaires in a year.

[Anonymous No.17487790]

>>17486195
When are you commies going to talk about the fact that this system you hate was instated and is run by Jews?

[Anonymous No.17487791]

just gotta keep up the grind
the hustle
we gonna make it boys
we gotta keep cookin
2 jobs then we go home we constantly work on those skills
try to improve our career positions
try to be more productive
keep up with cnbc and the economist keep up with the wsj
invest in stocks and crypto
go to the gym 4 times a week
but only 30 minutes bc anything more gets in the way
all chest all biceps no legs, listen to some podcasts
drink a protein shake
swing by the dave n busters after work, play ski ball
watch the nba game, tweet about it, check in on fb, update my story
grab a slice of pizza, order a local ipa
get on my macbook, work on my salesforce modules
can never stop working, ever. sleep is time wasted.
go back to the apartment, turn on the phub, get back to work
learn mysql, learn python, learn indesign, mine btc
check the sports scores, check my favorite subreddits
check my socials, check my tinder, check my imessages
off to bed, gotta be ready bright n early in the morning

[Anonymous No.17487810]

>>17487790
Why did Hitler kill 40+ million white people?

[Anonymous No.17487855]

>>17487653
Oh shit I thought the year was divided into deciles

[Anonymous No.17487857]

>>17486195
What the alarmists that use these charts usually don't take into account is that a large portion of the population (over 50%) will at least at one point in their life be in top decile of wealth. Large amounts of money only happens thanks to compounding interest. A 40 year old engineer will have a vast amount more money than a 30 year old engineer simply because his wealth had 10 more years to compound.

[Anonymous No.17487923]

>>17486195
I don't see a problem with this.