Heya, it's been a long time. I hope you're all doing great. I was listening to this podcast today and something really inspired me. There are two kinds of games in real life. Positive sum games in which we try to gain wealth in which everyone wins over longer periods of time. Zero sum games in which we try to gain status and only one individual gains something over time which might just be useless in the long run. For example, there might be this individual A who runs a billion dollar startup who is doing some great work for humanity and is a flawed human being in some sense but one the whole earns a lot of money and creates new avenues for people. There might be this individual B who spends his entire day on twitter and tries to increase his status by criticising the individual A which costs individual A in terms of brand value and credibility. In the long run the individual A will still somehow do more for humanity and his efforts are better invested as everyone will gain from his combined efforts over time. A poor person today is far better off than an Aristocratic 200 years ago because there have been so much progress due to people who were hungry for wealth because those people kept innovating. While the guy on twitter might become some socially famous personality in his small bubble which will be totally useless unless he cashes in on that popularity and converts it into wealth at which point he'll become a Type A person. It can be seen how buying a Lamborghini just adds to your status because 1) it's disposable and 2) it's useless as it can't run on it's max speed sn roads and you're better off weith a Tesla model 3 or something. The point is it only adds to your status and in turn status means nothing in the long run unless you cash in on it. Which is usually paradoxical because a person who is amassing wealth somehow also will amass a brand value and status which he can cash in on. But someone who just has false status in his/her own eyes will never be able to cash in on it because he feels great about being better than people never thinking that he can go down there and work as well. I don't know if any of this makes sense to you or if I have gone ballistically bonkers.
1) in the case of serious bullying, both the bully and victim experience long-term disadvantages to wealth, physical and mental health, and social status. 2) There are zero, and negative-sum economic games. It's a fallacy to say money is better than social status. It's a much more nuanced topic than that. 3) There are positive-sum social games, usually collaborative, in which two groups come together to increase their spheres of influence mutually, to inspire, motivate, and spread positive messages. Status is similarly as useful as wealth. Wealth also needs to be "cashed in on". It's knowing how and why to use either form of capital to do good that's important, and sometimes it comes at a great cost to the one spending, and the capital might not come back, but it doesn't have to. If you need someone to lie to you and say that doing good things means you'll be richer in the long-run, then you should question your own values. The whole point of this line of reasoning seems to be to lie to selfish people and tell them to go into business because it'll make them richer and that the more money they make, the more good they do. An absolute fallacy and actually a counter-productive one. A similar defence is made for capitalism and for giving money to the rich and multinational corps: They may be nabbing more of the pie, but the pie isn't of a fixed scale. If they invest properly, the pie will increase in size, there'll be more money for everyone, and things will be good. This is the ever-expanding ever-inflating world economy. We are always making more money while taking more from the earth. We are trading the growth, vitality, and survival of our planet and exchanging it for meaningless wealth. We make promises to exploit it further in the hopes that someone will value that exploitation and entrust us with their money. The pie is expanding, but what into? How do we get more wealth? We must be drawing from something. (hint: it might be the environment) This is half wisdom, half right wing economic spin. The negative-sum game is between Wealth and Nature, not Social status and someone else's social status. While there are examples of wealth and natural resources being used well to generate more, and while economic growth isn't all bad, a lot of it is fucked. And the overwhelming enemy of Businesses Magnates aren't Socialite (as this post seems to suggest), it's Nature. We can teach people to be respectful and to play positive social games, and most people do, but this is within the sandbox of our society. It's usually pretty chill and if it gets bad, we get then counselling or put them in jail. Money touches much more than consumers.