The beauty of the market economy is that it is a mass consumption economy. Jeff Bezos can't buy a better Big Mac than Joe Six-pack. He can't watch a funnier episode of The Simpsons. Nor can he watch a more suspenseful version of North By Northwest. He can't even listen to a more moving recording of Beethoven's Ninth. You can find twenty dollar tennis shoes which are just as comfortable as thousand dollar Balenciagas. Baudrillard, following Veblen, explained that the sign value of a product had come to displace its material value. All that being rich can do for you nowadays is to enable you to pay 10X, 100X, or maybe 1,000X for something offering no increase in material value but packing some major excess sign value. One almost begins to feel sorry for the rich these days. Before capitalism having serious bank really counted for something. Nowadays it is a great bother and as often as not a great bore. The poor rich feel compelled to seek out ever more pricey thrills - not because they're necessarily any more of a blast - but entirely for the sake of the sign value they supposedly confer. Take Bezos and outer space. I can't think of anything I'd rather NOT have to do than to get strapped into a tin can and blasted into the heavens. I would in fact pay quite dearly to avoid having to do so. But if you're rich you've got to do that sort of thing if you want to hold on to your signifier cred, to keep your signifier bona fides re-upped. The contrast between Gore Vidal and Truman Capote dramatizes the two sided coin of the classes. Vidal who was cursed with coming from the upper class said of Capote who was cursed with coming from the lower class, "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success, to get out of." The bottom line ? The socialist not understanding what a great nuisance great wealth really is - has let his invidiousness get the better of him and feels compelled to chase after the wealthy in order to scold them, to exhort them to hand their wealth over. In fact no prodding is necessary. As it is the rich invariably give away their wealth of their own accord simply to get shud of the bother of it. Carnegie gave away his money so that every town in America might have a library. JP Morgan gave away his money to found and fund New York's Metropolitan Museum. Jay Gould donated vast amounts to fund Bellevue Hospital.
Robert, I never thought of it that way. One other thing I would add is that in a true free market economy, getting "rich" is not emotionally easy, because it requires a large degree of self-sacrifice in service to others (true altruism). If I want to get rich in a free market, I would need to figure out what the vast majority of people around me want, and then try to figure out how to get it to them. This requires me to have savings. You can think of "savings" as another way of saying "self sacrifice", because in order for me to save, I need to forgo material consumption in the present. I can't spend all my money on eating at fancy restaurants, buying fancy clothes, and buying striped lollipops on Candy Crush. I would need to reduce my consumption in the present so that I can invest for the future. In other words, if all I do is think about myself, and spend things on myself, I will never get rich. The path to wealth is paved with self-sacrifice and altruism. These are the very qualities that socialists worship, yet criticize capitalism for lacking. In fact, it is the opposite: it is socialism that encourages selfishness and disregard for others, and it is free-market capitalism that encourages self-sacrifice in service to others.
@BlackLibertarian "in a true free market" This is an unfalsifiable assertion. Although it is often repeated- like a mantra- among the proprietarians, this mode of thinking has its roots in classical liberalism and what defines it is IDEALISM, which is distinguished from socialism which is MATERIALIST. Materialism will always win out because what the mind can think up ie "the free market will do X", has no corresponding relation to actual, material reality. The purpose of the philosopher, the thinker and the person genuinely interested in changing human social organization (politics), it is therefore VITAL that they deal with MATERIAL REALITY via analysis and constant, unrepentant self criticism. One must be like a scientist, and constantly testing/falsifying, or else you end up with dogmas like "the free market will save humanity" and other such nonsense, much like religion does "my god will punish unbelievers and bless believers".
@BlackLibertarian Socialists don't believe in "self sacrifice". This is not only a strawman but a misunderstanding. In fact Socialism is about FREEING the individual from "self sacrifice" ie working for an employer who dictates your work life and a "consumer" who demands your labor for exchange. I like what Oscar Wilde had to say regarding "altruism" in "the soul of man": Capitalism "the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-are forced, indeed, so to spoil them" Because the conditions compell people to express a kind of "forced altruism", only upon abolishing capitsl accumulation (which WILL invariably arise under any market system) and private property (necessary precondition for capital accumulation)will humans be truly free to express their individuality and be free from the forced "altruism" that arises from a market based system.
![Summer Walker - Heart Of A Woman [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SFddctbZzw8/mqdefault.jpg)
Robs books are great. I will pick this one up.
The beauty of the market economy is that it is a mass consumption economy. Jeff Bezos can't buy a better Big Mac than Joe Six-pack. He can't watch a funnier episode of The Simpsons. Nor can he watch a more suspenseful version of North By Northwest. He can't even listen to a more moving recording of Beethoven's Ninth. You can find twenty dollar tennis shoes which are just as comfortable as thousand dollar Balenciagas.
Baudrillard, following Veblen, explained that the sign value of a product had come to displace its material value. All that being rich can do for you nowadays is to enable you to pay 10X, 100X, or maybe 1,000X for something offering no increase in material value but packing some major excess sign value. One almost begins to feel sorry for the rich these days. Before capitalism having serious bank really counted for something. Nowadays it is a great bother and as often as not a great bore. The poor rich feel compelled to seek out ever more pricey thrills - not because they're necessarily any more of a blast - but entirely for the sake of the sign value they supposedly confer. Take Bezos and outer space. I can't think of anything I'd rather NOT have to do than to get strapped into a tin can and blasted into the heavens. I would in fact pay quite dearly to avoid having to do so. But if you're rich you've got to do that sort of thing if you want to hold on to your signifier cred, to keep your signifier bona fides re-upped.
The contrast between Gore Vidal and Truman Capote dramatizes the two sided coin of the classes. Vidal who was cursed with coming from the upper class said of Capote who was cursed with coming from the lower class, "Truman Capote has tried, with some success, to get into a world that I have tried, with some success, to get out of."
The bottom line ? The socialist not understanding what a great nuisance great wealth really is - has let his invidiousness get the better of him and feels compelled to chase after the wealthy in order to scold them, to exhort them to hand their wealth over. In fact no prodding is necessary. As it is the rich invariably give away their wealth of their own accord simply to get shud of the bother of it. Carnegie gave away his money so that every town in America might have a library. JP Morgan gave away his money to found and fund New York's Metropolitan Museum. Jay Gould donated vast amounts to fund Bellevue Hospital.
😂😂😂
Won’t someone think of the billionaires?
Robert, I never thought of it that way. One other thing I would add is that in a true free market economy, getting "rich" is not emotionally easy, because it requires a large degree of self-sacrifice in service to others (true altruism).
If I want to get rich in a free market, I would need to figure out what the vast majority of people around me want, and then try to figure out how to get it to them. This requires me to have savings. You can think of "savings" as another way of saying "self sacrifice", because in order for me to save, I need to forgo material consumption in the present. I can't spend all my money on eating at fancy restaurants, buying fancy clothes, and buying striped lollipops on Candy Crush. I would need to reduce my consumption in the present so that I can invest for the future.
In other words, if all I do is think about myself, and spend things on myself, I will never get rich. The path to wealth is paved with self-sacrifice and altruism. These are the very qualities that socialists worship, yet criticize capitalism for lacking. In fact, it is the opposite: it is socialism that encourages selfishness and disregard for others, and it is free-market capitalism that encourages self-sacrifice in service to others.
@BlackLibertarian "in a true free market"
This is an unfalsifiable assertion. Although it is often repeated- like a mantra- among the proprietarians, this mode of thinking has its roots in classical liberalism and what defines it is IDEALISM, which is distinguished from socialism which is MATERIALIST. Materialism will always win out because what the mind can think up ie "the free market will do X", has no corresponding relation to actual, material reality.
The purpose of the philosopher, the thinker and the person genuinely interested in changing human social organization (politics), it is therefore VITAL that they deal with MATERIAL REALITY via analysis and constant, unrepentant self criticism. One must be like a scientist, and constantly testing/falsifying, or else you end up with dogmas like "the free market will save humanity" and other such nonsense, much like religion does "my god will punish unbelievers and bless believers".
@BlackLibertarian Socialists don't believe in "self sacrifice". This is not only a strawman but a misunderstanding. In fact Socialism is about FREEING the individual from "self sacrifice" ie working for an employer who dictates your work life and a "consumer" who demands your labor for exchange.
I like what Oscar Wilde had to say regarding "altruism" in "the soul of man":
Capitalism "the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-are forced, indeed, so to spoil them"
Because the conditions compell people to express a kind of "forced altruism", only upon abolishing capitsl accumulation (which WILL invariably arise under any market system) and private property (necessary precondition for capital accumulation)will humans be truly free to express their individuality and be free from the forced "altruism" that arises from a market based system.