Quokk.auWealth Hoarders
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Greed is a mental illness is something i have believed for years.
hauiI dont actually think its a problem once we abandon the broken system. I think its an addiction like every other.
TrickDacySo you don't think addiction is a problem...?
No. I dont. Addiction is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the corrupt, broken system and seeing addiction means people actually react to it. What we need to do now is work to get people dismantle this system. California seems to be on the right track, other groups in other countries are also recruiting massively. Lets see where that leads.
Does this apply to all addictions like hard drugs, for example? Do you separate physiological and psychological addiction into two separate categories or do you combine them into one?
Trying to quit a hardcore Benzo or alcohol addiction can be fatal if not weened off, for example.
I would put reasons for starting a drug habit and continuation of a drug habit in two different categories.
Yes, of course. All addictions, despite the of course possible genetic predisposition and personal preference are a product of the surrounding system. If people have a shitty life and/or have no achievable goals, the danger of falling into such traps explodes statistically.
I don't think that's universally true. I think a lot of drug use starts with the people who someone associates with; if they use drugs, then you are more likely to join in than if you were never exposed to it in that way.
There is also the "cool" factor with children, like cigarettes (in the past), vaping, weed pens, etc.
Being a billionaire (aka wealth hoarder) is a mental illness.
If they were hoarding anything else to this extent, going way beyond their rational needs, e.g. billions of tables, pokemon cards or toilet papers, everybody would know they are insane. But as it’s money, somehow they are supposed to be the smartest people in the world, and we should worship them.
This. It's literally no different, and the fact that so many people idolise this kind of hoarding shows how powerful the processes of hegemony are.
If there are 10 monkeys in a zoo and they give them 10 oranges a day as a treat and one of the monkeys would hoard 6 oranges every day and left them to rot. Do you think that the zookeepers would keep an eye on it because it's clearly mentally ill or an asshole, or would they point at it and go: damn, that's one cool and smart monkey.
Great example, makes the contrast even more obvious. Insane people are controlling the world, and we are wondering why it’s going to shit
It's a bad example, because we are not monkeys, we lack zookeepers and money normally rots only at a much, much slower rate than oranges and increases itself over a certain threshold
If the monkey traded the oranges to other monkeys for other treats, or for something intangible like status or privacy, the zookeepers would think it was a cool and smart monkey, but they would think the other monkeys who took the extra oranges in trade and let them rot were less intelligent.
That's just what monkeys do and if you give the weakest monkey an orange the strongest will go and kill them.
Only if they are in captivity.
In the wilderness they share their resources. The strongest would defend the weakest, especially if they had an orange.
You can’t really do anything useful with a billion Pokémon cards, there’s always something you can do with a billion dollars
But you could do lots of useful things with a billion pokemon cards - either bartering them for goods and services or converting them to money first, effectively "spending" the cards on useful things.
But practicality isn't the issue when people see someone hoarding incredible amounts of something - it's the abnormality of devoting yourself to accumulating vastly more than what we interpret as anywhere near normal. We treat hobby objects that way but not money.
No it isn't.
These aren't directly related to sex appeal whereas money is.
Edit: I mean I assume. Perhaps there are some people out there who see pokemon cards as a good measure of offspring-raising potential, I dunno. In which case, accumulating pokemon cards wouldn't be considered a sign of mental illness either.
Who told you that?
Being an incel is also probably a mental illness
I don't know what you mean by that.
Look at yourself in the mirror.
That's what an incel looks like.
You're not communicating.
Yeah, too simplified. But narcissism and psychopathy go hand in hand with wealth. Because you don't care about others then, it's easier to throw morals over board.
This is almost wholesome, imagine if it were that easy to regulate greed
Imagine if people who really should go to therapy (like melon usk in this one) actually went to therapy.
Yeah, that too. And not just about greed
The solution might not be easy but it is simple: tax.
Good on the cuurent Australian governments increased taxation of superannuation over 3 million $.
There should be an income maximum. It should be a little above the maximum happiness threshold. Any income above that should be taxed at 95%
Not disagreeing with you but this particular tax is on wealth. Imo there is a place for both.
unpopular opinion: if most of the current billionaires werent this rich or lucky they would just act like normal people
As in, they're power tripping? Absolutely. When you get a false sense of importance, especially when you have sycophants reinforcing this image, narcissists in particular tend to act poorly toward their fellow human beings.
This is one of the best reasons to socially stigmatize wealth hoarding, even if you can't change the fundamentals of the capitalist system that causes it in the first place.
If enough people make people who hoard money feel lesser than, to the point that having less is a preferable alternative, then they're more likely to give away their wealth and become at least a little bit less shitty people.
This is also, coincidentally, why rich people isolate themselves within bubbles of similarly rich individuals, who won't look down on them for being so greedy and narcissistic.
This is why we should have mandatory testing for NPD and be institutionalising anyone who tests positive. Narcissists cannot be allowed to walk the streets freely, their mental illness is too dangerous.
What NPD?
Narcissistic Personality Disorder. A narcissist is someone with NPD. And they all deserve the gas chamber treatment.
O_o
People with certain mental disorders aren't fit to live in society. Donald Trump is proof of that. And if you think we should extend mercy to people with his disorder, you're defending a fascist.
And the inverse statement too: If normal people became billionaires, they would act stupidly too
And if normal people suddenly became billionaires, they’d act just as awful as the current billionaires
Power doesn’t corrupt. It just exposes who leaders really are.
Non-paywalled link: archive.ph
If only it were that easy to cut down billionaires...
it only takes about an ounce at 300ft/s
Or a pointy stick at, uh, 15m/s?
You're talking about shooting, not cutting
Mountainhead [2025].
Crazy flick
In the Post-Scarcity Era every guy will get a trophy wife!
This is nonsense. Wealth translates directly into attraction as a mate. More wealth means more attraction. There's no point at which increasing wealth stops increasing attractiveness. This is true even for the person with the most wealth because increases in wealth still increase relative wealthiness, which is still an increase in attractiveness.
Whoever thinks wealth accumulation is a mental illness doesn't understand humans.
You get diminishing returns pretty quickly unless you're a really disgustingly ugly person both inside and out.
If there are any returns whatsoever, diminishing or otherwise, then that's enough for humans to chase after it.
Indeed, humans are pretty ugly. Same with the rest of nature. Look around you. Would you say it's ugly or beautiful when a gazelle is still alive watching a lion eat its insides. Or when a fly is immobilised as a spider wraps it in silk. Humans are no better. We are animals. The same forces are active inside us as in every creature. This is life on planet Earth.
You might have a mental illness.
What makes you say that?
You seem to be worshiping billionaires who would never give one iota of care about you
Err.. what gave you that idea?
The part where you say that wealth attracts you.
Since billionaires are the most wealthy, it must mean you find them super attractive and thus worthy of worshiping.
That's not what I said.
And this is a non sequitur.