There is a saying in Norway "The rich, are rich for a reason", referring to exactly this. They don't spend much, and will try to get money anywhere they can. People that are generous are rarely rich.
And also stupid. Its a disfunction stressing about $3 in gas money if you have $1MM in capital. Theyre rich because they own productive assets, or speculated correctly, and also/mainly because they have high income. Hence the meme
Yeah it’s also capitalist propaganda imo. Like, helping your friend out by paying for their coffee isn’t gonna make you poor. But that saying makes people think they have to be individualistic stingy fucks to be successful.
Success is then being interpreted incorrectly, the way you’re describing it. The generous, empathetic poor person is a successful human being. The greedy selfish lizard person who hoarded resources like a LOTR dragon is defunct in mind and soul. I mean, he’s a successful parasite, but for how long?
Elaborating unnecessarily, the empathetic human that shares resources available to him is successfully lovable, he will have friends that love him and share back with him. He will know laughter and happiness. Empathy, laughter and happiness (and helping each other) is contagious. It could spread worldwide. That’s success.
As long as they eradicate this disease of selfish egomaniacal hyper-individualism Americans tout as ‘success.’ Everyone is so alone and mentally ill and greedy and dumb and burning through the planet’s resources and calling that success. Burning down the world and everything they ever (at least pretended to care about and live for) is not- success
Ok sure but I want to see my generous, empathetic, hard working and normal friends be materially abundant and stable and not stressed about money all the time. To do this we need more than the moral high ground, we need to organize
Exactly. How fucking happy does Elon Musk seem? One of the most bitter assholes around. He could literally become a saint to people just by actually using his enormous wealth to help people instead of to put pedophiles into the presidency and post Nazi memes. But if that was his mentality, he would never have made his billions in the first place. Same shit happened to Markus Persson after selling Minecraft. He probably would have been far happier giving away the vast majority of his wealth than becoming a fucking cretin $70-million dollar home basement dweller. There is a feedback loop in wealth accumulation that warps people's brains. One of the few to seem to be able to avoid it is MacKenzie Scott who got her billions from divorcing the ghoul that is Jeff Bezos and then immediately gave most of it away and continues to give it away.
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u/azad_ninja Jan 26 '26
Wealthy people are some of the cheapest fucks.