Is money really the root of all evil...

or is evil itself?


Detoured from Daydreaming of an American "Autobahn."


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I agree that the wealth needs to be spread evenly. But how do you accomplish that, exactly?

In case of an economic crash of the worst kind which seems inevitable, that still will not make things even. I have made contingency plans. So too has every member of my family. Investments. Overseas accounts, a diverse portfolio. Etc., etc., etc.

Take it all away and start everyone out with the same amount of money. It will simply be a matter of time before the same conditions are present again, because you cannot remove a person's brain, their skill set, their motivation, their worth to society.

You're balking at people who "are willing" to spend a year's salary on a days entertainment? Hilarious.

People buy automobiles in excess of a million dollars. How many years salary is that? What would you have people do with their money who work for it? Leave it behind when they die? Hate the rich because they worked hard to be rich and earned it why don't you. But don't hate them because they spend what they earned the way they damn well please.

I worked for my money. Every damn penny I earned. When many were playing with themselves and their GI Joes when they were teenagers, I was coding. Drove my mother crazy receiving checks at 13 years old that was several times greater than her yearly salary. I didn't ask for it. Wasn't even aware that a skillset of a hobby I had was so valuable. I simply loved playing with computers. So what if I can afford to feed prime rib to my neighbor's dog. My money. Made legally.

It is my money. I earned it. And I'll spend it as I damn well please. Scream at me and judge me for the half mil every year I donate to the homeless. Directly to the homeless. Scream at me and judge me for the additional 2-5 million a year my family spends on scholarships. Direct scholarships.

Scream at me and judge me for wanting to make a difference in people's lives, but piss off if along the way you don't like that I'd like to indulge myself as well. And perhaps even cut into the National Debt.

If you don't like being poor, then don't scream at the rich. They don't like being poor either. Try getting your ass in gear and doing something about it.

Money certainly isn't the root of all evil. Lack of it can be soul destroying, just as an insatiable lust for more, ever more can destroy you.
I retired a decade ago at 58, with job offers everywhere. Had worked out that due to an excellent superannuation scheme and shrewd (lucky?) investments, I had more than I needed for a good life. In that decade I've roamed the world, helped family out, and still now have more than I started with. As an example of how I feel, I (like cthia) love Aston Martins, have driven them but don't feel the urge to drop hundreds of thousands on to one that I can't get out of first gear. My little clubman had a lot lower top speed but quicker acceleration, and on the club circuits was quicker than Astons, Ferraris, and Lambos. More usable performance on the road without being locked up.
I don't in any way disparage your wealth or your use of it, after all as you say you earned it.
I do point out that most developed economies look after those on the bottom better than the US. Trump's election is an indicator. The poor "deplorables" have been shafted by both major parties, so elected to vote for someone outside of the system in the desperate hope that he will fix things. A multiple bankrupt billionaire narcissist who has never done it even slightly tough, yet anything was better than their current system, and the system has brainwashed them about the evils of socialism, so Bernie wasn't in the hunt.
Back to the autobahn, here in Australia our sparse Northern territory has for many years had several unrestricted highways. The annual road toll was 15, so to save lives they imposed a 130kph limit. Result for several years an annual toll of 30. New government derestricted the roads, road toll 15 again. Currently the yet new again government has imposed a 130kph limit again. Not looking good at present. Clarkson (with the others) took a DB10 around there and it made good TV (Top Gear Down Under).

Personally, I think a good arguement could be made for greed being the root of all evil.
(Of course it would take more time for a proper arguement than I'm willing to devote here)
To get biblical for a moment.

Eve's eating of the apple can be seen as greed, for knowledge.
Ten comandments? Many of them are about greed.
Only 1 god.
Only 1 ass.
Your own wife.
Don't steal.


Ie: don't be greedy but be happy with what you're given.

Similar for much of Jesus' teachings.

Which makes the movie "Wall Street" I think it wsd the devils work, since that introduced "Greed is good" to the masses.

Actually, if you look at much of the economic woes of the western world you'll find that Greed is Good mantra at the heart of the problem.

Didn't know they'd put a limit back on the NT.
I remember it was originally done after a couple of chinese business types crashed a ferari and died during a cannonball run event.


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IIRC, the original saying is not "Money is the root of all evil" but "Love of money is the root of all evil".

Treat money as a tool (useful to have, able to do things with it, good to have a few spares just in case things go wrong) and things will generally work out fine.

Treat money as the goal (must have more, must be able to do a Scrooge McDuck-style swimming in money) and it ends up separating you from the general populace since you are seen as placing monetary wealth above the more important types of wealth such as friendship and family.

I believe money can be compared to oxygen. It's very problematic if you don't have enough, not seen as being all that important if you do have enough and liable to drive you loopy if you end up with millions and have limited self-control.

cthia wrote:In case of an economic crash of the worst kind which seems inevitable, that still will not make things even. I have made contingency plans. So too has every member of my family. Investments. Overseas accounts, a diverse portfolio. Etc., etc., etc.

An economic crash doesn't have to be inevitable. We just need to stop pretending that capitalism is something that can be fixed and patched.

Take it all away and start everyone out with the same amount of money. It will simply be a matter of time before the same conditions are present again, because you cannot remove a person's brain, their skill set, their motivation, their worth to society.

It's true, you can't. There's always going to be differences in the aptitudes and abilities people have, which is why "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a thing in socialism.

The point isn't to remove unevenness (the dreaded "equality of outcomes"); it's to smooth it out so that we don't end up in a situation where 1% of the population hold the economic fates of the rest in their hand by virtue of having accumulated wealth not through clever application of their skills in service of society, but through gaming and rigging the system so that they have a guaranteed income.

You're balking at people who "are willing" to spend a year's salary on a days entertainment? Hilarious.

I am. What sort of purpose does it serve? What's the benefit to the greater good? If Elon Musk starts a high-performance electric vehicle racing series, sure, that's an indulgence on a surface level. But it's also going to encourage advances in the technologies involved that'll filter down to the realms where normal people live.

People buy automobiles in excess of a million dollars. How many years salary is that? What would you have people do with their money who work for it? Leave it behind when they die? Hate the rich because they worked hard to be rich and earned it why don't you. But don't hate them because they spend what they earned the way they damn well please.

Make the world better. Don't just spend it to amuse yourself. Invest in ventures that make the world a better place through technology, research, or politics.

I don't hate the rich because they're reaping the benefits of hard work or smarts. I hate them because they've abrogated their responsibility to the society that made it possible for them to get those benefits.

I worked for my money. Every damn penny I earned. When many were playing with themselves and their GI Joes when they were teenagers, I was coding. Drove my mother crazy receiving checks at 13 years old that was several times greater than her yearly salary. I didn't ask for it. Wasn't even aware that a skillset of a hobby I had was so valuable. I simply loved playing with computers. So what if I can afford to feed prime rib to my neighbor's dog. My money. Made legally.

It is my money. I earned it. And I'll spend it as I damn well please. Scream at me and judge me for the half mil every year I donate to the homeless. Directly to the homeless. Scream at me and judge me for the additional 2-5 million a year my family spends on scholarships. Direct scholarships.

Scream at me and judge me for wanting to make a difference in people's lives, but piss off if along the way you don't like that I'd like to indulge myself as well. And perhaps even cut into the National Debt.

In that Autobahn post, you didn't want "to make a difference in people's lives". Not "people" as I understand the term anyway; what good is a cross-country road that can only be used by people willing and able to pay thousands of dollars going to do?

If you don't like being poor, then don't scream at the rich. They don't like being poor either. Try getting your ass in gear and doing something about it.

What the rich like even less than being poor, at least according to the accumulation of wealth they indulge in, is being less rich than the other guy.

Also, jesus fucking christ the sheer position of priviledge you argue from without even being aware of it.
You claim to be a programming prodigy, earning fat cheques at the age of 13. I'm guessing that you didn't build your own PC with a soldering iron at that stage; you were fortunate enough to be born into a family in the right place at the right time that you could get the education you needed and the access you needed to make that happen, not to mention that you grew up in an environment that afforded you the opportunity to turn your skills into money. What the rich as a class have been doing over the past several decades is making damn sure that those same opportunities are few and far between. Rich fuckers go on and on these days about those damn millennials, and how we aren't willing to work as hard as you believe you've done in your day, when the reality is that we live in a world that has been thoroughly screwed up by people who've earned their millions and would very much like to keep earning those millions, except without working quite as hard.

cthia, although you are personally blameless of the ills of late stage capitalism, you are still one of its profiteers. You are complicit in and a benefactor of a system that is unjust and unable to change for the better, and all your attempts at making it more just only end up reinforcing it.

I do not hate you. Why should I? Hating you doesn't accomplish anything. I do hate what you stand for, though.

EDIT:

In case that wasn't clear, what you stand for in my eyes is perhaps best encapsulated by this image:


It's a statement that is very firmly "not even wrong".

Sorry but an economic crash is inevitable. It happens to every society. The question is when. It may happen a year from now or 100 years from now. I don't see the signs of it any time soon but historically almost no one saw the economic crashes coming. In 20/20 hindsight, the signs were always there but people ignored them (humans are great at self deception). So in summary we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that cthia is right.

In America the resentment toward the rich tends to be directed toward subgroups of the rich rather than the rich as a whole (although some of the campaign rhetoric just uses the word rich). Surveys and studies which actually dig into details of this resentment find that the resentment is based on perceived unfairness not on actual wealth level. People who do what cthia did by and large aren't resented. Nor are baseball stars, actors, people who found companies which give jobs to 100s of other people (as long as they treat the employees well) etc. The general feeling is that they earned their wealth and deserve it.

The people that are resented are those who 1) earned their wealth through exploitation of others. The wall street banks whose executives made millions but whose lending policies caused the economy to collapse. The owner/executives of companies who make huge compensation packages while mistreating employees. The executives who run companies into the ground resulting in 1000s of lost jobs but who get 10s of millions in a golden parachute. The executives who make millions outsourcing jobs to the 3rd world while laying off Americans. etc. Also resented are 2) those who gained their wealth by cheating. Generally people who use political connections to pass laws/regulation to disadvantage competitors. And 3) those who display an entitled attitude and treat those around them as peasants.

I have read cthia's posts for years and have not detected a you peasants type attitude. Additionally, as he noted, he does give to charity (it sounds like he gives a LOT to charity) but prefers direct assistance to working through the bureaucracy of a selected charity. That's fine. I personally prefer to donate to carefully selected charities since I don't have time to vet each case. But the method doesn't matter, the fact is either method gets money there.

I'll disagree with cthia that "Try getting your ass in gear and doing something about it." is a universal solution to poverty. In my experience, the poor are a mixed bag. Some of them definitely need to try getting your ass in gear and doing something about it. Others are some of the hardest working people I know. And one of the big problems that Donald Trump tapped into was the the resentment of the latter. That they were working hard and harder but falling further and further behind due to structural problems in the economy. Although to be fair, that first group is a BIG problem. It's one of the reasons that I prefer private charities over government. The private charities can screen them out.

I agree with Annachie and Michael Everett that it is love of money that is the problem not money itself.

cthia wrote:or is evil itself?

...

Try getting the source quote right first.

1 Timothy 6:10King James Version (KJV)

10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Money, in and of itself, is not evil, nor is it the root of all evil. If not for money, we'd live in a barter economy where you'd pay for your beer with a goat and get two ferrets and a rutabaga back in change.

As pointed out, the original quote is "The love of money is the root of all evil". This is partly true. It's not just the desire for mansions and Rolls-Royces and gold-plated toilets, or even scrooge McDuck's swimming pool. If you can earn that kind of money honestly and ethically, more power to you.

The problem comes when the desire for money overcomes the honesty and ethics. That's when we wind up with a sub-prime mortgage crisis, doctors being bribed by pharma companies to prescribe more meds, public safety nets overburdened with people gaming the system, and Trump University. That's how we get average wages that stay flat for over a decade while executive compensation goes up 200-300%. That's why CEOs export jobs to places where there are no safety or environmental regulations, and wages that would buy an American one Happy Meal a week. That's how we wind up with lobbyists actually writing legislation and handing it to their pet Congress critters.

The Preamble to the US Constitution lays out the reasons for establishing a government, and among those is to "secure the blessings of liberty". How secure are those blessings when the average household credit card debt is $5,700 at 20% or more interest, when the same institutions that issue those credit cards pay 1-2% on savings and 2-3% on certificates of deposit? Were's the "blessing" in people going bankrupt for trying to treat their diabetes?

Whoever believes that is an idiot.

There is a shitload of evil that has nothing to do with money. Blowing up people who don't believe exactly the same things you do comes to mind. Rapists. Sadists. Those that want to control people. Did Hitler's evil come from money? Did Stalin's?
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In this world there are people who build things up, and those that tear them down. I have zero regard for the second group.

Imaginos1892 wrote:Whoever believes that is an idiot.

There is a shitload of evil that has nothing to do with money. Blowing up people who don't believe exactly the same things you do comes to mind. Rapists. Sadists. Those that want to control people. Did Hitler's evil come from money? Did Stalin's?
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In this world there are people who build things up, and those that tear them down. I have zero regard for the second group.

All evil is perhaps a bit strong, as you note rapist/sadists have other motivations. But Love of money is certainly responsible for most of it.

The NIV Bible version perhaps states it better than the King James (which uses the English of 300 years ago).

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."

Other versions of the Bible which use modern English seem to be similar to the NIV.