RICH PEOPLE

[Rassah]

3 hours ago, evan said:

you not giving a shit would look exactly like that except there wouldn't be a video being taken.

The video was for family and friends on Facebook. The link here was just too gloat at the OP and three other douchebags on this forum.

Quote

also, i can understand that intent of wanting to "help get to their place in life" on some level, but i refuse to see how you think being so belaboured about this whole situation is equitable to some sort of misunderstood good deed.

Well, my OP was about driving for Uber/Lyft as an idea for how to earn a bit more money during evenings and weekends. I did the experience, posted about it, did the research on issues brought up (puke in car, or issues with personal insurance), and addressed those too. That was really my only intent, until...

Quote

you've even said it before that you take enjoyment out of seeing perceived "poor people" get annoyed at you.

Those few particular people are assholes, trolls, and bullies, who pretty much always derail any post or idea of mine by attacking me directly. Note how that thread is somehow full of claims about me lying and actually being broke, personal attacks about my looks, comments on me being alone and not liked by anyone, about me hating and making fun of poors, about me being an idiot for completely unrelated things, etc. All from a post where I simply said that I am trying out a way to make some extra cash, and AMA about it. So, yes, I enjoyed poking at them.

Quote

to me, value just doesn't happen to equate to a price tag. i personally think you're happy because of what being rich has actually entailed in opportunities. being poor doesn't necessarily mean that you lose those opportunities to be happy so much as they are very different. and to me i think that matters way more than what you think is going on. 

I agree completely. I think experiences are worth way more than material things, and have always tried to collect experiences, regardless of where I was financially. Even if it's taking the cheapest flights, staying at the shittiest roach motels, and subsisting on home made cucumber and tomato sandwiches for a week, just to see and experience things I have dreamed to. They're not that far out of reach, for anyone, if you just actually bother to reach for them.

Having a financial safety net does help with stress though...

2 hours ago, Brass said:

And you can accumulate as much wealth as you desire ya sack of shit but a "man who dies rich dies disgraced".

These people did not die disgraced: Steve Jobs, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and that's just the reality famous ones. A man who dies rich, has secured a future for his family. A man who dies poor and in debt, just condemns his family to the same shithole.

2 hours ago, Lucyfish said:

None of these men actually did a lick of work to EARN that money. You know what they did? They either A. got the money through luck or B. got the money by playing stocks. None of them went to work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, and made billions. These people did not WORK. They were simply given the money through various means.

Only Warren got his money by playing stocks. And it wasn't playing, it was spending hours a day researching companies in detail to figure out which ones to buy and which to sell. In some cases Warren even stepped in to take charge of failing companies to help them out. All the guys I listed busted their asses morning till dawn, usually 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, to get to where they were, and very little of it was luck. Otvmay not have been work that you consider as work (physically making things with their hands), but it was still work, including lots of reading, researching, making decisions, taking enormous risks, traveling to seal deals, dealing with problems constantly, etc.

1 hour ago, Half-Note said:

I say we make a new and totally cool system, where we remove those "social classes". Then we distribute the wealth across everyone. People can then be entitled to what they need, and get a certain amount of other secondary needs covered, like entertainment items or transportation vehicles. People can work as much as they want, but there will always be enough to cover for everyone. Education will be free, healthcare will be free and everyone will be happy.

I'm pretty sure my family and I already lived in that system (USSR) >.<

1 hour ago, Lucyfish said:

The only way someone becomes a billionaire is through either dishonest means, luck, or by being an executive, a job title that is overpaid to shit as well as REALLY not that hard to fucking do.

I've brought this up on FAF, and your mentioned it again, so I'll ask again (since no one ever answers): If being an executive is not that hard to do, then why not just be an executive and make millions yourself? What's stopping you?

 

1 hour ago, Brass said:

You'd think someone with so much money would have a gym membership or a personal trainer or SOMETHING. 

I do martial arts twice a week, Iaido (what Rurouni Kenshin does) and Kendo. Unfortunately, I often end up missing those evening classes. You see, being an executive, I often have to work all day including evenings and weekends, or have to be away to meet with clients, business partners, or present at conferences. So, it's hard not having a plain 9-to-5, and I'm not as good at prioritizing my time as some of my other colleagues. Not that I'm fat at 160lb. Just getting old

Edited December 11, 2015 by Rassah

[Half-Note]

5 minutes ago, Rassah said:

I'm pretty sure my family and I already lived in that system (USSR) >.<

There is no such thing as the USSR.We had the CCCP though.

But they didn't practice what I am proposing. The Stalinist legion stood for equality, but alas, it was just another Capitalist agenda to accumulate wealth.

My idea is not Communism, but rather a new revolutionary way of organizing the modern society!  You are born in a nation, affiliated with it, and as such, it is your land. The land belongs to the countrymen whom live in it.

If someone takes resources off the land to make something, the nation as a whole should have access to it because they did after all use the land to make it, which as stated before, belongs to the countrymen.

But how to organize the society? There are needs. Well, simple. We can develop solar power-panels and wind power-turbines to keep generators going, producing INFINITE access to power. All cars would be electrically powered and rechargable. Speaking of which, there would only be ONE kind of car, a low-end station wagon. That way, no one would complain because someone had a better car than someone else.  

But what about food? Simple. Agriculture. We'll GROW our food, and to maintain our great nation's many animals' health, hunting will be FORBIDDEN. If you grow potatoes for example, you get a few seeds per plant (speaking of fertilizer, we can use our own shit for that), and you can plant these for MORE potatoes.

Of course, things would be rationed to maintain a lasting supply. To keep up the integrity of this system we could hand out "grocery stamps", where people could buy a maximum of five grocery items per week, and no more than one of any kind of item. A bag of potatoes, a salt box, ketchup, toothpaste and a box of matches can come a long way, you see.

But... How to maintain order, in this great, revolutionizing society, you ask? Simple. We let a government body control all goods, and use military population control methods in case a few misguided individuals try to stand up to the system, and tear it apart by its utopian roots.

This government would need a leader, of course. I would of course volunteer to be the great leader of this cause, and pick a few people I shouldn't be trusting to be my right-hand men. Sorry, BOTH-HAND PEOPLE.

[Brass]

Wow did you just call me a bully? I thought we were friends.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Brass

[AshleyAshes]

Hey guys, I know that all I do is talk about my awful financial situation but I really want to stress to you how bad it is.  As a single individual with no dependents, I'm well inside the middle class.  I can only afford a ONE bedroom apartment to myself, not a second one where I could then change up which bedroom I want to sleep in depending on mood.  I can't afford a lot of entertainment on my small budget, so I only have one desktop work station, two home theater PCs, and 5 665 hours of television stored on my the server that feeds the HTPCs.  I can't even afford to have consumer debt like other people, so I pay for everything up front instead.  I have a massive, crushing, student debt of $16 000 at about 5.4%.  What if I lose my job?  How will I pay that without a job?  Never mind that I don't have to repay it if I don't have a job and if I'm unemployed long enough, they'll start paying it FOR me.   I can't afford to play demolition derby in Ferraris with my friends, instead we focus on having quality experiences like dinners, movies, or just chilling and playing video games with snacks and drinks.  I was at the Lego Store last weekend and I could only afford to buy ONE of the Christmas sets, not both that they had on sale!  I mean, it's just not fair you guys!  Please contribute to my GoFundMe.

I know, I know, I'm going to get shit for talking about being poor again, but it's only because you guys are bullies, trolls and stalkers.

[Brass]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

[ poor people tears ]

If you were smart you would have rented a 2 bedroom and subleted one room out for a fee per night/week. You could also eat your own shit to save money. 

[Rassah]

Love your post Half-Note  Sounds like a dream

 

5 minutes ago, Brass said:

Wow did you just call me a bully?

Wow, did you just personally harass me in PM?

[Brass]

Just now, Rassah said:

Wow, did you just personally harass me in PM?

Rassah this is no way to talk to a friend. 

[Half-Note]

11 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Love your post Half-Note  Sounds like a dream

 

Wow, did you just personally harass me in PM?

And no one would complain because they all would have what they needed.  GOLD-PLATED YACHTS FOR EVERYONE!

Edited December 11, 2015 by Half-Note
what was missing.

[Brass]

Guys stop making fun of Rassah and half-note stop joking about communism. We're all capitalists here. This thread is about HATING rich people. Please remain on topic.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Brass

[Half-Note]

5 minutes ago, Brass said:

half-note stop joking about communism.

There is NO SUCH THING.

[Rassah]

10 minutes ago, Half-Note said:

And no one would complain because they all would have what they needed.  GOLD-PLATED YACHTS FOR EVERYONE!

"Yachts" being station waggons, and "gold" being wood

[Lucyfish]

41 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Only Warren got his money by playing stocks. And it wasn't playing, it was spending hours a day researching companies in detail to figure out which ones to buy and which to sell. In some cases Warren even stepped in to take charge of failing companies to help them out. All the guys I listed busted their asses morning till dawn, usually 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, to get to where they were, and very little of it was luck. Otvmay not have been work that you consider as work (physically making things with their hands), but it was still work, including lots of reading, researching, making decisions, taking enormous risks, traveling to seal deals, dealing with problems constantly, etc.

That sounds like $30 an hour work to me, not billions and billions of dollars worth of work. These men made way more money than they ever came anywhere near deserving.

[Half-Note]

8 minutes ago, Brass said:

This thread is about HATING rich people.

You're coming off as some kind of Marxist fanboy there, brah.

You're just mad because you're lazy. It has nothing to do with that you're forced to work low-end jobs since you can't afford a proper education that makes you useful, so you're just a disposable piece of shit working class scum.

[Lucyfish]

Marx's ideals were actually very spot on and worthwhile, hence why Mr. Lenin implemented them and his country LOVED him. Then, unfortunately, he passed away and Stalin took office and eeeeeverything went downhill...

Stalinism =/= Communism, remember that kiddies.

[Half-Note]

5 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

Marx's ideals were actually very spot on and worthwhile, hence why Mr. Lenin implemented them and his country LOVED him. Then, unfortunately, he passed away and Stalin took office and eeeeeverything went downhill...

Stalinism =/= Communism, remember that kiddies.

I read his commie manifest. Fucking tree-hugging peace-loving idealist with no insight into how the REEEEEAL World works.

[Lucyfish]

You're just jealous his beard is better than yours.

 

Edit: FIX THE FUCKING CODING ON THIS SHITTY WEBSITE YOU SPACE FAGS :3c

Edited December 11, 2015 by Lucyfish

[Pignog]

love and miss u steve

[PastryOfApathy]

Rassah aren't you on like vacation or something? Shouldn't you be doing literally anything else?

[Half-Note]

5 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

You're just jealous his beard is better than yours.

 

Edit: FIX THE FUCKING CODING ON THIS SHITTY WEBSITE YOU SPACE FAGS :3c

Only an evironmentalist like him wouldn't mind overgrowth. >.<

[Lucyfish]

Just now, Half-Note said:

Only an evironmentalist like him wouldn't mind overgrowth. >.<

I bet there was a society of beard gnomes living in his beard

And I bet they were happy commies TOO

[Brass]

4 minutes ago, Half-Note said:

You're coming off as some kind of Marxist fanboy there, brah.

You're just mad because you're lazy. It has nothing to do with that you're forced to work low-end jobs since you can't afford a proper education that makes you useful, so you're just a disposable piece of shit working class scum.

Now where did any of this come from. Please explain 

[Half-Note]

4 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

I bet there was a society of beard gnomes living in his beard

And I bet they were happy commies TOO

Fucking UNIONS. BAN THEM ALL!

5 minutes ago, Brass said:

Now where did any of this come from. Please explain 

I have no idea what I'm rambling on about but I think my logic is flawless so that you don't understand is your fault.

[AshleyAshes]

26 minutes ago, Brass said:

If you were smart you would have rented a 2 bedroom and subleted one room out for a fee per night/week. You could also eat your own shit to save money. 

Then I could have Winter Toy Shop 10249 -and- Santa's Santa's Workshop 10245!!!  And I'd only have to tolerate another human being in my living space!  ...Wait, nope, fuck that noise.

[Brass]

2 minutes ago, Half-Note said:

Fucking UNIONS. BAN THEM ALL!

I have no idea what I'm rambling on about but I think my logic is flawless so that you don't understand is your fault.

I dunno man. The validity of baseless assumptions is uh, pretty questionable. 

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

 fuck that noise.

And this is why you're poor you dumb faggot

[Rassah]

21 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

That sounds like $30 an hour work to me, not billions and billions of dollars worth of work. These men made way more money than they ever came anywhere near deserving.

So, again, why don't you get that job? It's easy, so you should be able to make millions too, right?

Have you heard that anecdote about a guy taking his car to a mechanic, the mechanic revs the engine, listens to it for a bit, then smacks it with a hammer and the engine works perfectly again. The mechanic charges the guy $102. The guy is incredulous, asking why he charged so much for just smacking it with a hammer. The mechanic replies, the hammer hit was $2. Knowing WHERE to hit was $100.

But, regardless, that's not even how rich billionaires make their money. Almost no CEOs make millions (just the half dozen or so you heard about out of thousands). And rich people don't earn their money by trading labor hours for money. How they ACTUALLY earn millions I was explaining on the old wealth building thread on FAF, but that's gone now. And, FYI, how they do it is entirely legit.

As for Lenin and Marx, no one loved Lenin. Lenin started the terror raids in Russia, and Stalin built all those Lenin statues and forced people to "love" Lenin through propaganda. And Marx's ideas and writings are typical of someone who had zero education in finance and economics, and zero experience in business and capitalism, which are the things he wrote about. His ideas have led to the deaths of over 200,000,000 people last century.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Rassah

[Half-Note]

5 minutes ago, Brass said:

I dunno man. The validity of baseless assumptions is uh, pretty questionable.

I'd like to define it as "experimental evidence".

[Lucyfish]

1 minute ago, Rassah said:

So, again, why don't you get that job? It's easy, so you should be able to make millions too, right?

Have you heard that anecdote about a guy taking his car to a mechanic, the mechanic revs the engine, listens to it for a bit, then smacks it with a hammer and the engine works perfectly again. The mechanic charges the guy $102. The guy is incredulous, asking why he charged so much for just smacking it with a hammer. The mechanic replies, the hammer hit was $2. Knowing WHERE to hit was $100.

But, regardless, that's not even how rich billionaires make their money. Almost no CEOs make millions (just the half dozen or so you head about out of thousands). Rich people don't earn their money by trading labor hours for money. How they ACTUALLY earn millions I was explaining on the old wealth building thread on FAF, but that's gone now. And, FYI, it's entirely legit.

As for Lenin and Marx, no one loved Lenin. Lenin started the terror raids in Russia, and Stalin built all those Lenin statues and forced people to "love" Lenin through propaganda. And Marx's ideas and writings are typical of someone who had zero education in finance and economics, and zero experience in business and capitalism, which are the things he wrote about. His ideas have led to the deaths of over 200,000,000 people last century.

Because I don't have the money to go to college for the amount of time do get a bullshit degree to "qualify" me for that job. You have to pay money to make money.

Also I would love to get your sources on the utter bullshit that was those last two paragraphs, lol. Stalin hated Lenin.

[Rassah]

23 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

Because I don't have the money to go to college for the amount of time do get a bullshit degree to "qualify" me for that job. You have to pay money to make money.

No you don't have to pay money to get money, and you don't need a degree to be an executive. Look at Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, David Oreck, among many many others.

The reason you can't be an executive and make millions is (aside from the fact that almost no executives earn millions) because you lack experience and education (the type of education you get from immersing yourself in a subject, not from a university), don't like to take risks, and don't have an extreme drive to keep pushing forward even when life and people just keep throwing shit at you. Very few people do. Those who don't and somehow end up in exec positions always get burned out, fuck up, and drop out or get kicked out. Or worse, take the whole company down with them, either by making a stupid inexperienced decision, not taking the right risk and having others who did beat you in the market, or just because they let their own personal issues take the company down with them. Those things take a lot of years of study, experience, practice, and self control, and Few people having those executive requirements means they can ask for top dollar salaries.

Quote

Also I would love to get your sources on the utter bullshit that was those last two paragraphs, lol. Stalin hated Lenin.

Stalin hated Lenin, but he saw his idea as a symbol to rally people behind. The Lenin that later USSR people loved was nothing like how Lenin was in real life. My classmates thought Lenin was kinda ridiculous, as we were forced to learn and recite poems about wholsome grandpa Lenin who loves us all. My parents and their friends hated Lenin for turning the country into the communist shithole it has become. Anyone who wasn't brainwashed by the propaganda, or was old enough to remember, knew Lenin for the murderous bastard that he was. His and Marx's ideas were so popular that it took hundreds of thousands of dead to convince people to follow them. And that's not including places like China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, etc.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Rassah

[Lucyfish]

Just now, Rassah said:

No you don't, and you don't need a degree to be an executive. Look at Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, David Oreck, among many many others.

The reason you can't be an executive and make millions is (aside from the fact that almost no executives earn millions) because you lack experience and education (the type of education you get from immersing yourself in a subject, not from a university), don't like to take risks, and don't have an extreme drive to keep pushing forward even when life and people just keep throwing shit at you. Very few people do. Those who don't and somehow end up in exec positions always get burned out, fuck up, and drop out or get kicked out. Or worse, take the whole company down with them, either by making a stupid inexperienced decision, not taking the right risk and having others who did beat you in the market, or just because they let their own personal issues take the company down with them. Those things take a lot of years of study, experience, practice, and self control, and Few people having those executive requirements means they can ask for top dollar salaries.

Stalin hated Lenin, but he saw his idea as a symbol to rally people behind. The Lenin that later USSR people loved was nothing like how Lenin was in real life. My classmates thought Lenin was kinda ridiculous, as we were forced to learn and recite poems about wholsome grandpa Lenin who loves us all. My parents and their friends hated Lenin for turning the country into the communist shithole it has become. Anyone who wasn't brainwashed by the propaganda, or was old enough to remember, knew Lenin for the murderous bastard that he was. His and Marx's ideas were so popular that it took hundreds of thousands of dead to convince people to follow them. And that's not including places like China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, etc.

1. Yes, you do need to have a degree to be an executive, that's just purely wrong of you to say.

2. Russia isn't Communist, it's Capitalist.

3. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, and David Oreck all have business degrees.

 

I'm sorry Rassah but you are literally making things up now.

[Rassah]

3 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

1. Yes, you do need to have a degree to be an executive, that's just purely wrong of you to say.

2. Russia isn't Communist, it's Capitalist.

3. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, and David Oreck all have business degrees.

 

I'm sorry Rassah but you are literally making things up now.

1. No you do not. University teaches you a lot, but absolutely nothing that your need to be a CEO (besides maybe history case studies about other CEOs). Everything you learn to be a CEO you have to learn on the job, through experience, or by following others who are already in those positions. It's not a job like accounting where you just have to learn some terminology and how things are traditionally applied.

2. Current Russia is a socialist dictatorship. USSR was a communist dictatorship. Even if USSR was not "true" communism (and add North Korea, Cuba, and old China to that), fact is that still every country that wanted to implement communism had to do it by force, murdering thousands of people in the process, and USSR still used almost all ideas of communism, with their predictably awful results. Free healthcare, education, and housing. Equal pay for equal work, where pay was based on the job, not the person. No capitalism, such as investment, of any kind. No corporations or rich exploiting the poor. Worker owned means of production, with workers electing the foreman in charge of the factory. Etc. And it all sucked so horribly bad!

3. Those people most certainly do NOT have business degrees.Branson never attended. Gates dropped out of school cause he wanted to play with computers instead. Others either never went, or dropped out. Some wealthy CEOs ate even offering kids up to $100,000 to drop out today.

[Lucyfish]

So the communes in France and other European countries had to murder tons of people to implement communism in their societies?

Funny, I didn't hear about those massacres. :U

Edited December 11, 2015 by Lucyfish

[AshleyAshes]

4 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

3. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, and David Oreck all have business degrees.

In the interest of accuracy, Bill Gates never earned a degree.  He's rather famous for having dropped out of Harvard to found co-found Microsoft.  He does however have a boat load of honorary doctorates that came many years later, including from Harvard.

However, Gates always had access to privilege.  His family was well to do, he attended private schools and had early access to technology at a time when most youth in school never would.  He had a real strong launch basically, he was able to afford to attend Harvard and to bail on school to pursue the then crackpot idea that was many tech companies of the day.  At that point, he effectively found himself in that rare position where circumstance, timing, and luck all intersect and he managed to make the right decisions in that moment.  Plenty of other companies founded into nothingness at that time.

This is how ALL the stories of 'self made men' go.  They didn't just 'work hard', they were in that moment where every star aligned and it all managed to workout.  The stories of self-made men are only something to idolize if you ignore the many, many, many more self-made failures that no one remembers even if it was just one factor that didn't work out and lead to failure.

[Kaizy]

[Phausk]

I perceive Gabe Newell as a man who worked honestly to get where he is today. But chances are he probably did some shitty things, since that's just the world of business.

[AshleyAshes]

Also, why are we listing Michael Dell as a successful executive?  He's the man running Dell into the ground.  Dell crashed so hard it's profits fell 72% in 2013 and that's the last known public report because the company bought back all of it's own shares so as to remove itself from public trading.  It took a 2 billion dollar loan from Microsoft to even mange THAT.  The company has done nothing but lose market share since.

[Ginpanther]

6 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Also, why are we listing Michael Dell as a successful executive?  He's the man running Dell into the ground.  Dell crashed so hard it's profits fell 72% in 2013 and that's the last known public report because the company bought back all of it's own shares so as to remove itself from public trading.  It took a 2 billion dollar loan from Microsoft to even mange THAT.  The company has done nothing but lose market share since.

And then they managed to buy EMC. Hooray for doubling down!

Edited December 11, 2015 by Ginpanther
Correction, they bought EMC in October. I removed the reference to the November of Failure.

[AshleyAshes]

Things that Dudes are no longer doing: Getting a Dell

[Rassah]

 

19 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

So the communes in France and other European countries had to murder tons of people to implement communism in their societies?

Funny, I didn't hear about those massacres. :U

No, they just ended in failure or other tragedies, without ever coming close to implementing Marx's ten planks of communism.

 

By the way, the way millionaires and billionaires make their millions and billions is not by trading their labor hours for money, like the rest of us, but by buying assets and having those assets earn money for them. That's it, the whole "secret" to wealth in its entirety. The rich buy assets, the poor and middle class buy liabilities.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Rassah

[Phausk]

2 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Things that Dudes are no longer doing: Getting a Dell

What do people get these days? I haven't bought a Dell since 2008 because I realized it's way better to build your own PC.

[AshleyAshes]

6 minutes ago, Rassah said:

By the way, the way millionaires and billionaires make their millions and billions is not by trading their labor hours for money, like the rest of us, but by buying assets and having them earn monet for them. That's it, the whole "secret" to wealth. The rich buy assets, the poor and middle class buy liabilities.

1) A lot of people can't afford to buy assets.  You can be the worlds best poker player, if you don't have the money to buy into the table, then you won't be winning anything.

2) I'm always puzzled by this metric that more wealth is somehow a major goal, like, it's inherently a higher achievement than less money and other things.  A wide range of studies have shown that once someone has sufficient income that they feel secure in their lives, they never get any happier.  It's less so that money brings happiness and more so that lack of money and struggling to keep secure in food, housing, and other critical resources causes UNhappiness.  So why should anyone who's achieved at least that minimal threshold where a lack of funds no longer makes them unhappy be considered someone with a 'lower than score' someone who's rich?  If the money can't bring happiness, what the fuck is it doing?

Edited December 11, 2015 by AshleyAshes

[Pignog]

58 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Marx's ideas and writings are typical of someone who had zero education in finance and economics, and zero experience in business and capitalism, which are the things he wrote about. His ideas have led to the deaths of over 200,000,000 people last century.

lmao Marx had a ton of education in law, philosophy, economics, and history. The amount of research that went into writing Capital is staggering. And his buddy Engels who he collaborated with helped run his family's factory. They also helped organize industrial workers and wrote extensively outside academia. And Adam Smith's ideas have led to the deaths of over 2,000,000,000 people in the last two centuries.

[AshleyAshes]

5 minutes ago, Phausk said:

What do people get these days? I haven't bought a Dell since 2008 because I realized it's way better to build your own PC.

Firstly, desktop PCs continue to see declines as a whole.  Anyway, there's a large range of companies, HP, Acer, Asus, Lenovo and a lot of others.  Really, ANY company can build Pcs and sell them in stores, the margins aren't that great anymore.  What people buy more of?  Phones, then tablets.  But even Android devices see a LOT of competition and weak margins.

[Jerry]

14 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

1) A lot of people can't afford to buy assets.  You can be the worlds best poker player, if you don't have the money to buy into the table, then you won't be winning anything.

2) I'm always puzzled by this metric that more wealth is somehow a major goal, like, it's inherently a higher achievement than less money and other things.  A wide range of studies have shown that once someone has sufficient income that they feel secure in their lives, they never get any happier.  It's less so that money brings happiness and more so that lack of money and struggling to keep secure in food, housing, and other critical resources causes UNhappiness.  So why should anyone who's achieved at least that minimal threshold where a lack of funds no longer makes them unhappy, someone 'lower than score' someone who's rich?  If the money can't bring happiness, what the fuck is it doing?

They're fuelled by envy and greed, basically. As Gandhi once said, this world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.

 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Jerry

[Pignog]

pee pee poo poo invisible hand wa wa wee wa atlas shrugged

[Lucyfish]

39 minutes ago, 6tails said:

This is patently untrue. Bill Gates and Paul Allen made first an Altair emulator then a BASIC interpreter for the Altair. To boot, in the early days of Microsoft, Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit. It wasn't until the mid-80s that Gates quit doing much of anything, but he was well rich by then anyways.

And remember how good early Microsoft was? Oh right, it was garbage and everyone hated it.

 

Also, @Rassah Those communes still exist today and haven't failed at all...? They have some of the highest rates of civilian satisfaction in the entire world. They didn't fail at all.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Lucyfish

[Rassah]

13 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

1) A lot of people can't afford to buy assets.  You can be the worlds best poker player, if you don't have the money to buy into the table, then you won't be winning anything.

Everyone can afford to buy assets. Most people just don't know how or which ones.

13 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

2) I'm always puzzled by this metric that more wealth is somehow a major goal, like, it's inherently a higher achievement than less money and other things. A wide range of studies have shown that once someone has sufficient income that they feel secure in their lives, they never get any happier. ... So why should anyone who's achieved at least that minimal threshold where a lack of funds no longer makes them unhappy be considered someone with a 'lower than score' someone who's rich?  If the money can't bring happiness, what the fuck is it doing?

Money can bring happiness. It could let you do things that make you happy, or could give you a stress free life, it could let you help your friends and family, which makes people happy...

Simply reaching some level of income isn't enough. It just means you're one job loss from disaster. That's what having cash producing assets (including investments) is for.

21 minutes ago, Pignog said:

lmao Marx had a ton of education in law, philosophy, economics, and history.

Which all turned out to be shit

21 minutes ago, Pignog said:

The amount of research that went into writing Capital is staggering.

Yeah, bs.

21 minutes ago, Pignog said:

And his buddy Engels who he collaborated with helped run his family's factory.

His buddy basically did everything and paid for Marx to live at his place for free, while Marx himself refused to work (and allegedly shower, always being covered in nasty painful sores), or learn anything about running a business.

21 minutes ago, Pignog said:

They also helped organize industrial workers and wrote extensively outside academia.

Being a populist and coming up with ideas the uneducated masses get behind isn't much of a challenge.

21 minutes ago, Pignog said:

And Adam Smith's ideas have led to the deaths of over 2,000,000,000 people in the last two centuries.

Lolwhat?

24 minutes ago, Pignog said:

pee pee poo poo invisible hand wa wa wee wa atlas shrugged

As he types this from a nice air conditioned home, on an affordable computer or electronic device, using a globally interconnected communications platform. 

[Rassah]

13 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

Also, @Rassah Those communes still exist today and haven't failed at all...? They have some of the highest rates of civilian satisfaction in the entire world. They didn't fail at all.

A LOT of them failed throughout history. And the ones that exist aren't really communist by Marx/Lenin standards, since they don't implement the ten planks of communism. They're just small social groups existing within and being supported by capitalism.

To save you Google time, those 10 planks are:

1. Abolition of private property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work.  Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

By that list, the US is closer to communism than some hippies living together and growing their own food.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Rassah

[Half-Note]

44 minutes ago, Rassah said:

2. Current Russia is a socialist dictatorship. USSR was a communist dictatorship. Even if USSR was not "true" communism (and add North Korea, Cuba, and old China to that), fact is that still every country that wanted to implement communism had to do it by force, murdering thousands of people in the process, and USSR still used almost all ideas of communism, with their predictably awful results. Free healthcare, education, and housing. Equal pay for equal work, where pay was based on the job, not the person. No capitalism, such as investment, of any kind. No corporations or rich exploiting the poor. Worker owned means of production, with workers electing the foreman in charge of the factory. Etc. And it all sucked so horribly bad!

I'm a neighboring fanboy of Russia and the Putinist government.

I won't call modern-day Russia a dictatorship, as Mr. Putin was duly elected democratically and, according to a Pew (a "non-partisan" research center based in the United States) survey, the Russian public has an 88% positive view towards Mr. Putin.

Communism, as we all know, was a failure, an ideal society not meant for people because people always want more, and I do think they should be allowed to have the chance to pursue their goals without being prevented by a totalitarian government.

You're a Capitalist, Rassah, and I'm a Socialist-Capitalist, so of course you'll disagree with me on this to an extent, but I believe that for a society to prosper, one needs to be socialistic. One needs a government that which is democratically elected to handle the management of the country. One needs, to be a part of a society and collect the benefits of being one, to pay taxes so that the government can use this money for funding things that are in your interest to have, like emergency response units in case of an incident, an armed force to handle conflicts and threats to the society, and other needs, like healthcare and education, which will be in the benefit of the country as a whole. Ask yourself this, which person is more useful to either you and/or society, the uneducated man flipping burgers at McDonald's, or a surgeon?

It's not just in the interest of the individual to get a job that which will allow them to live comfortably in a society, but also in the interest of the society. As such, offering tax-covered education is mutually beneficial. Is it a slight drawback on the paycheck? Sure, but it's better than spending life indebted to a private entity. In Norway where I live, taxes scale too, meaning the more you make, the higher percentage you pay in tax, though you'll still make more the better the job because the percentage-increase only reaches the mind-blowing number of 47% (which I believe has been used for fear-mongering on Fox News at one point) when you make two million NOK a year, which equals to 250,000 USD (assuming 8 NOK equals 1 USD). How many ordinary people do you know that make that much a year?

In regards to equal pay for equal work, I also think that the more important the job, the higher the pay should be. Both nurses and engineers do jobs that are necessary to society, but the nurses use equipment developed by engineers, and so I believe that an engineer should make more than a nurse, for example, because they help develop better equipment for the nurses to use to treat the sick so that they can hopefully return to society to keep supporting it.

I am longing for your response so that we may spark an entertaining flame war.

Not really, I'd honestly be excited to have a rational debate with you.

[Kaizy]

[Rassah]

I believe Putin's 88% approval rating is about as real as the 97% vote to secede in Eastern Ukraine. Putin was elected, but elections in Russia are always questionable, and the party rules with an iron fist. The figurehead might change, but the same party with the same people is always in charge.

By theway, it may interest you to learn that Norway is in many ways more capitalist than US. Most Scandinavian countries are. If you just look at their free services, you might think that's a weird thing to say, especially with Scandinavian countries being darling examples of social liberals, but if you look at the overall tax, regulatory, and business environment, US businesses only wish they could be as "socialist" as Scandinavia...