Modern wealth is a parlour game played by the well fed

tencentshill

Well said. To be able to bet all the money I've ever made on something stupid and it then when it fails nothing actually happens. Wealth needs to be attached to responsibility and scale as such. It should be a huge liability to even have 1 billion dollars.

gruez

So let me get this straight: Market goes down: "grr... this is just a dastardly ploy to further wealth inequality because the rich can buy stuff on the cheap!" Market goes up: "grr... this is just a dastardly ploy to further wealth inequality because stocks are overwhelmingly held by the rich!"

mjamesaustin

I think the current administration has laid bare the truth behind how wealth and power work in our society. The rug pulls have become extremely obvious, but no consequences arrive for those making billions off of intentional sabotage of the economy.

js8

For a similar thesis, that the austerity policies are manufactured by the well-off, I recommend Clara Mattei's Capital Order (as well as her YT channel).

JuniperMesos

Every single person is well-fed today by the standards of most of the history of humanity (this is why obesity is such a problem). > The wealthy don’t play in some abstract financial dimension removed from the rest of us. They play on our lives, our communities, our systems. And when they make risky moves—when they place bold bets or break things for the sake of entertainment—the consequences are wildly asymmetric. Every other human being physically present anywhere near me also plays on my life, my community, and my system. If I get physically attacked walking down the street today, the odds that the perpetrator is a mentally-ill homeless person are much greater than that it's a rich person. My manager at my last corporate job is probably richer than me because he worked at the company for longer than I did, and I think that had very little to do with how my interactions with that manager, who is ultimately another employee of the same organization, actually went. I myself am wealthy compared to many other people in my life. Every voting citizen in the political communities I live in votes for the politicians who pass laws that affect how things happen in those communities. I face potential consequences from many classes of people making risky moves - the wealthy aren't particularly special here. Anyway, this article is basically, very verbosely, claiming that people who the author characterizes as wealthy ("When you have true wealth—defined in my mind as far more than enough—failure doesn’t threaten your position.", which is incredibly vague - who, specifically, has far more than enough? Why should other people share your definition?) - are doing something unspecified in order to deliberately cause stock market crashes in order to buy stocks at a low price. He doesn't say how this happens, what specific people are at fault, or what specific decisions he thinks other people should make instead. I checked the about page of the blog author: > I am a graphic designer with over twenty years of experience in interaction design, product design, design leadership and training, and business and marketing strategy. > Over the last decade, I have personally consulted over 200 creative, digital, and marketing firms on how to better understand audience attention, leverage design and technology to make the best use of it, and measure the signals that matter. > I am currently the Chief Design Officer at Newfangled and Magnolia. I manage all things design in both places. Given this biography, I think there's a good chance that he has more money and power than I do. Certainly I've never been the Chief Design Officer at any design firm, with managerial power over other people. I'm sure that there are decisions he could make well or poorly - by someone's standards - that would affect the value of that company or the livelihoods of other people who work there. Is he himself part of the wealthy class he attacks? Does he himself have "far more than enough" wealth?

brodouevencode

Feels like the author is having some sort of existential crisis.

josefritzishere

The assumption that the wealthy are inherently smart and educated is a false premise.

RickJWagner

“Market crashes aren't accidents—they're board-clearing strategies that consolidate power while the rest of us lose everything.” Of course! All the rich people just go along with it, to be social.

readthenotes1

"The difference between ten million and a hundred million doesn’t change your material reality." The person writing the article clearly has no idea what they're talking about if they believe this is true.