The rich aren't your role models | Hacker News Reader

The rich aren't your role models

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I wonder if unchecked capital accumulation combined with cutting the social safety net and major public works will lead to commerce without customers: An economy built on consumption where nobody has the money to consume.

It’s all moving to a service economy for the wealthy as the only consumers.

You can see this most dramatically in Las Vegas right now: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LHwU4lQ46nA

This is because America builds nothing anymore. Consider Disneyland. It's expensive as hell. But also there are more people in America than ever. You'd think they'd have built another one, but they haven't. Why?

Disney world does not count?

When was Disney world built? Why can nothing be built anymore. Disney is but one example.

People complain about data centers due to electricity. We have technology to generate infinite electricity yet the answer is to not build rather than build both the utilities and the data centers. Everyone would benefit from more availability of energy

$7.01 trillion

A deficit occurs when the federal government’s spending exceeds its revenues. The federal government has spent $1.25 trillion more than it has collected in fiscal year (FY) 2026 - another 1.25 trillion to go for the second half of the year.

My pet theory on why a lot of things happen in the US that don't happen elsewhere is one of disposable income.

We have the biggest pile of disposable income (not per capita, but in total) of anywhere in the world. This enables people to sue when something is going on that they don't like, and once you start looking at things through this lens, lots of strange things start to make sense. For starters - a lot of the school-related controversies. Schools cave to many demands because they are afraid of being sued by monied parents, and you can see it with parents on both sides of the political spectrum.

You may also notice if you're in the US, consuming foreign content on Youtube that even non-English content has a tendency to put units in dollars, miles, pounds, etc. There's guides that talk about targeting the US lets you make the big money on Youtube.

And of course, the NIMBYism. People can slow down, raise the costs of or stop megaprojects entirely via flurries of lawsuits.

Money makes things happen or not happen. The town I went to college in was a wealthy town which had banned any kind of large structures to preserve the natural beauty of the town. But then all the wealthy residents got cell phones, and hated the cell coverage. The solution: A multi-million dollar bell tower which towered over the landscape, looking like a grand obelisk (and which tastefully concealed rather a lot of cell tower hardware).

No commerce going on when the trillion cells inside your body interact. Yet more energy is consumed by the brain.

This is what people have been speculating will happen with the rise of the K-shaped economy. An economy where a smaller and smaller number of consumers are responsible for more and more of consumption.

I think the problem is a sort of self-correcting one though because when the cuts start to bleed deep enough that people can no longer afford food or basic amenities that's when people start to get violent. Unfortunately that also tends to be very bad for economic outcomes.

That premise is kind of false though. Food stamps are very generous, much to the chagrin of the borderline tax contributors.

I think we'll just see benefits slowly ramp up until most people are on benefits, with lots of consternation around government waste along the way.

> Food stamps are very generous

Certainly not in Texas.

A single person, who makes $910/month before taxes, rent, transportation, clothes, and insurance, could spend a lot of time and energy on paperwork, and then net $24/month.

https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/snap...

Food stamps are definitely not 'very generous', speaking from personal historical experience. And food stamps can't pay for health insurance, rent or car bills.

What state are you in that leads you to belive food stamps are very generous? For example West Virginia (not the lowest) maxs out a family of 4 at about $500 a month.

Generally increasing "money supply" will increase the spending floor, which business will eventually use to increase profits, which we read as inflation. (Sorry, I mean they'll do price discovery to optimize corporate ownership benefits.)

As long as the economic system can absorb it (and there are plenty of places with >20% inflation rate that survives,) you're right. But if it makes people feel they have "nothing to lose" on going against the rich, GPs scenario will kick in. Ray Dalio (and the Fourth Turning book) suggests this debt cycle is overstretched, and that we should _expect_ an uprising soon that resets it.

There is no economy without customers/consumption. Elon Musk's SPCX are worth zero if nobody wants to send anything to space and nobody can send anything to space if nobody has any money. Debt can fuel consumption to some degree but that has limits. Capital accumulation on its own does not impact the economy. You can put the number $10000000T against Elon's name and it will not change the economy at all. What changes the economy is how this money is deployed. Economies are not zero sum games and money is not a fixed quantity. That's not to say this is meaningless but it also doesn't mean that Elon now has your dollars.

a large % of wealth is a made up number. if everyone runs to the door to sell an asset it becomes close to worthless pretty quickly.

It's unlikely because governments actively try to avoid that even if it means printing money. Also commerce needs customers or it fails.

Screw ups where that kind of thing has happened like the Irish potato famine, which was mostly a result of crap British governance are mostly avoided these days.

Neither are the politicians, or the influencers, or Hollywood, they all have an end-game, a message or something to sell, none of these people are better than you, yet people pick someone and agrees with everything they say.

The world has lost the ability to critically think.

>The world has lost the ability to critically think.

Bold of you to assume it ever did.

Mostly off-topic, but I've wondered, is there a measure of wealth that involves first liquidating everything? And what is that for Musk? I don't find it meaningful to say someone has a net worth of $X if they can't actually liquidate their assets and pay off their liabilities to produce $X.

Presumably Elon can borrow a lot of money against his paper money. That would be more typical than trying to liquidate. But yes, there is no way he can actually fully cash out on his net wealth, and he probably wouldn't even know what to do with it if he could.

It's usually not that different from just amount * marginal market value, such that its not generally worth worrying about the distinction. The main reasons you can't dump 1 trillion dollars of stock at once is it would be difficult to find enough buyer capital quickly, and announcing your intention to do that is going to drop the price as you're implying an overvaluation.

Both of those problems can be solved if you just do it slowly in a pre-announced manner. A trillion is a thousand billions, so you could cash out 1 billion dollars annually until the 30th century assuming zero growth/inflation. So unless you're really worried about the optics of selling 0.1% of your holdings, or plan to spend more than 1 billion a year outside your business, you're not really constrained.

Everything is liquid in a long enough time horizon. It just depends on what you mean by liquidating. Like do I have to sell my house today? In a week? Months? More flexibility = more value.

For Musk the situation is definitely more extreme though. Since a significant part of that valuation is attached to him owning it, he would definitely take an abnormal level of haircut. Probably an unknowable investor sentiment question though.

I enjoyed seeing this refer to the Phaistos disc, because I have just come back from Heraklion and saw it in the flesh (clay)

A reminder that deciphering Linear B was the work of a number of people and a brilliant book by John Chadwick discusses the statistics, and the application of numerical/statistical methods to the analysis That Chadwick and Ventris used, from the ground breaking work of Alice Klober.

The problem with Linear A and the Phaistos disc, is that there isn't enough material to apply these kinds of methods. I believe most Linear A is tally records.

I wonder what it would take to shake America of the whole 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' problem.

At this point I assume even a hard economic crash pioneered and gleefully supported by the rich isn't enough of a cold water splash. I think that mentality is too locked in for a large subset of Americans. Musk has been increasingly getting more and more rancid and that doesn't seem to deter his supporters at all.

Leftists ask “why don’t Americans hate capitalism,” while Americans live in one of the most prosperous and advanced societies in the world.

Unfortunately, leftists rely on Americans ability to empathize with the plight of the vassal states in the world which have been pillaged and destroyed in service of the most prosperous and advanced societies. It is obvious at this point that Americans do not have empathy and will gladly accept the state of the world as long as they don't have to witness the injustice of it.

"Americans live in one of the most prosperous and advanced societies in the world" for only a small % of the people that live in America!

1 - 2 million people are homeless!

What next mr south african, will go for 100 trillion?

One doesn’t have to imagine themselves a future millionaire to be wary of granting the state the ability to confiscate private property. There’s a very real risk that they’ll come for the modern equivalent of the kulaks next.

This would be fair...except said wary individuals have had zero problem giving the state the ability to confiscate private property as long as it appeals directly to their emotions. We've seen cheers from those same types as the government sends jack-booted thugs to kick in doors and destroy property.

Americans: terrified of an imagined threat, completely oblivious to the active threat right in front of them.

The several hundred thousand people that died during dekulakization were very real

Because dekulakization is definitely the path we’re on right now, not oligarchic domination. What trillionaire?

Thanks for making my point for me.

Nothing short of mass violence, which should not and will not happen. I.e. we're absolutely fucked in the foreseeable future. Maybe in a century something massive enough will happen, god help those living at the time.

Who are your role models?

What matters isn't Elon Musk (or any other person's) net worth. What matters is how this money is being deployed. If Elon has $1T in his basement and he's not doing things with this money then the net outcome is the removal of this money from the economy which is deflationary - makes your money go farther. If Elon invests it in things that produce broader value (e.g. create jobs, improve productivity, etc.) then it can be a net positive. It's not about the amount- it's about how it is deployed. One rich person (or country e.g.) can be your "oppressor" (more likely in non-democratic countries) and another could be your benefactor.

Making money is the incentive we have in capitalism for individuals to create value. Capitalism isn't perfect but it's the best system we know of. In systems where we don't allow people to become rich (in theory) we typically produce less value and end up with most of the value concentrated into one dictator (e.g. Russia, China, Saudi Arabia). We can argue about taxation etc. but fundamentally this is the system that has proved to be the best for everyone. We can argue about checks and balances as well but again in practice having rich people and western democracy correlates with better outcomes for everyone historically. If you propose we get rid of this system you need to make a reasonable argument for an alternative that is better. If you're arguing that life isn't always fair and luck plays a role- well yeah.

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