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What's the endgame when the rich have all the money?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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There is no end game. They're hungry ghosts.
They just want an ever increasing "more"
THIS. I believe even if they think the climate is changing and will kill everyone, they will somehow be immune.
The rich would celebrate while we drown
This isn't unique to the "hungry ghosts".
Our behaviors are really quite simple. It has been shown a few times that our logical explanations for how we decide on our behavior are mostly rationalizations after the decision has been made, not actual reasons. I.e. like you say, we want more, then we find an explanation why we would want more.
For example, someone likes a new phone because it's shiny and new, and says "why wouldn't I treat myself once in a while", "it's faster which makes me more productive", "it has X and Y new features which are useful in A and B situations"(which they'll never encounter), and so on
No, actually, normal people can settle. That doesn't mean they don't treat themselves "once in a while" or sometimes crave something special or set new goals when they complete one, but they don't need more more more all the time. They can have periods of contentment. I know I do.
But there are some people who always want more. They never are satisfied, not even for a second. As soon as they get something they want they're already bored with it and want the next best thing. It's a hedonic treadmill that gets faster and faster, they're never happy.
Yeah of course we can override our desires, I never said anything to the contrary. The difference though is not the existence of the desire, but the lack of overriding it.
Normal people don't desire more at all times. They'll be happy for a while before setting their eyes on the next goal.
These hungry ghosts, though, never experience that period of contentment. That moment of happiness where they achieve what they want and can rest never comes, not even for a second. As soon as they get what they want they already want more. In fact, it's probably more accurate to say they don't even have goals. They only want more.
We would disagree there then. In my opinion the only difference is the situation people are in not allowing them to get more. If you need to work 2 months to get a new phone, gotta be "happy" with it for at least 2 months, and also can't buy something else new.
If you look at lottery winners, most of them manage to lose all the money relatively quickly.
Most "non-rich" people spend their money they get from working quickly/instantly.
actually, i think you're wrong about the ultra-rich being "essentially normal people".
by all evidence they seem to have developed a serious mental disorder, a kind of trained sociopathy.
I've never seen it put in such clear nonchalant terms as in this interview .
give it a watch, it's extremely interesting and really puts into perspective how...just utterly inhuman the minds of the ultra-rich really are...
But yeah that's the thing, even you call it "trained" sociopathy. I.e. everyone else could be trained into it as well. Of course that wouldn't happen because people are different, we can't predict everything yada yada. If you grow up with awareness about richness and the good of socialism, communism and so on it's more unlikely you make the same mistakes and so on.
But if you're extremely poor and have a mindset of "oh I just have to work hard and then be rich eventually" and actually aspire to be rich, which a lot a lot of people do, then I think those will quickly become exactly the same as current rich people. The reason the system still works is because there are still a majority of people believing in it and supporting it. Those poorer people would, if they became rich, be essentially the same kind of rich person as current rich people.
Normal people don't buy lottery tickets. Hell, normal people can't save money anymore.
Oh I'm not saying they're like, a different species of human or anything. This is just what being rich does to people.
They never experience that period where they have to settle for less. They always get more, and so they always want more. It's the way their brains have been trained to expect rewards. Someone like me, who is happy using older stuff and waiting for the prices to come down, has been trained to live this way. Someone like them, who always wants the best and most expensive, was also trained to live that way. They become hungry ghosts because of their lifestyles.
Then we agree. It just sounded like you somehow attributed more inherent evilness to them than everyone else. I of course agree that the resulting behavior is worse, but mostly by accident through the situations they've been in.
We are products of our material conditions, yeah, there's no inherent evilness - it's a learned behavior.
Which is why I support reeducation and rehabilitation for these hungry ghosts. ๐