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The Perception of Evil, Greedy Rich People

Posted By: Randy GageMarch 24, 2019

I got a DM from a friend after I made the Friday post.  She mentioned the visceral reaction she had with the pic I used for that blog.  I told her that I had intentionally selected that one because it played into so many memes, tropes and clichés about wealthy people.  (Just as I did the pic for this post.)

If you look deeper, you’ll see I did that through all the posts last week.  (Because they were all about how we perceive money and rich people.  Worth a read if you didn’t see them the first go around.)  Notice the example I used of “Debra,” a rich trust fund baby, flying private to Ibiza.  That was deliberate because I needed to provoke the trigger of some readers.  If I used a more innocuous example – say someone declining to support a charity because they were using the money to get better eldercare for one of their parents – it wouldn’t produce the same thought process.

The responses to the posts demonstrate this case quite convincingly.  There really were people who felt that what Debra was doing was against their values – so they had no compunction to forcibly take her own money away from her – to use it in another manner they felt was “right” or “fair.”  To see mature adults make that decision without a thought about the precedent it would set, or the principles it would break is scary AF to me.

But here’s where it gets even more interesting…

My friend who sent the message mentioned that one of the reasons the photo impacted her so, was because it looked like, “a limo of hookers.”  Now I hadn’t intended it to portray sex workers, but the fact it landed that way makes the discussion richer.  Because what if they are prostitutes?

Prostitutes are providing a fair value-for-value exchange and deserve prosperity too.  So I believe even if it was a photo of five prostitutes, it shouldn’t generate any abnormal reaction at all.  Which is where we will pick up on the next post.  Until then, let me know what you think.

-RG

9 comments on “The Perception of Evil, Greedy Rich People”

  1. I thought they were direct sales people in the limo going to an event.
    I thought Debra needed help because she is suffering and numbing herself with drugs
    ( any income level can do that with drugs, alcohol, smoking, food, etc).

    Actually they reminded me that heaven is a more caring culture and not an agressive culture.

  2. We saw what happened in China when the commies took over and took away the wealth from the so-called rich people.. millions starved to death and it was a hell hole until they moved to a capitalist economy.. if you earn it or inherit it or whatever it's yours to do with it what you please.. and no jealousy from the cheap seats.. nothing stopping you from earning it..

    1. Not just in China. Everywhere be as Hungary (where I live), Soviet Union, French, everywhere. The latest live example is: VENEZUELA! What is happening there is simply horrific. And people still worship to Chavez, saying, he opened their eyes. Can you believe it? "Opened their eyes". No fuck you, he closed them! Thank GOD he died in ass-cancer, but his successor continued what he started. This world is really crazy.

  3. Tell the people how to spend their money (and / or force them) and the whole world being to go broke.

    Prostitutes are providing soulless sex for the person, who have no social sense, pushing him even more deeper. The reaction for this is often frustration, based on cognitive dissonance (want to be loved, but found nothing related to love), which turns into rage and make the prostitutes stricken or even killed. This is a no-value-for-no-value exchange. But who am I to judge that?

      1. Dániel, regarding your thoughts on prostitution, you - and everyone else - certainly have the right to feel about it however you personally feel. I think the question being brought up is this: would you - based on your personal feelings about it and the values that *you* hold (that *you* don't feel that any value is being exchanged even though the prostitutes and their customers obviously do) - be willing to use government to take away the prostitutes' and their customers' right to do business with one another? This example is no different than if one holds "sugary soft drinks" to be of no value so they would be willing to use government to take away people's right to buy and sell them. Your personal judgement isn't the issue. It's whether you would demand (through laws) that others conduct their lives according to your judgement. {Just to clarify, we are assuming that the prostitutes in this example are doing this of their own free, are of legal age, and are doing this through total personal choice. In other words, all parties are consenting adults.}

        1. I wrote "who am I to judge that?". I am not willing to prevent them to be prostitutes. In fact, I want to legalize them world-wide. If someone wants to fuck up her life, she should be able to do it. It is her life, not mine. Who cares? I had experience with prostitutes (I never had sex with them, just I know them) and all of them were so miserable. It is like being among a bunch of drug addict depressives. If someone doesn't see this in them, that person must be blind or extremely insensitive. Just to be clear, I am not an oversensitive person. If I and Maduro were in the same place alone, that guy would feel the horror what a human can cause to an other human with bare hands, you can bet. I am not a snowflake and never been one. I can be ice cold if I have to deal with a monster, who is try to hide in a human body and there are loads of them everywhere in the world. I was involved in crimes, drugs, accidents and fights when I was younger. I had seen violent deaths, which my mind was unable to process at this time. But when I see a prostitute I can't resist for the pain, the emptiness and the sorrow which comes from them. It is shocking me. In fact, I scared of them. I really experiencing fear. And the contrast of how beautiful they are just deepening it.

          https://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics

          "Countless studies report that over 80% of prostitutes say they wish to get out of prostitution."

          "About 40% of prostitutes are former child prostitutes who were illegally forced into the profession through human trafficking or once were teenage runaways."

          "Many men feel that they are safer from AIDS if they have sex with younger prostitutes, increasing the market for younger prostitutes. 60% percent of children reported missing as a result of running away become prostitutes for some period of time to survive."

          "The average age at which a male prostitute begins their illegal work is 14 years old."

          "The average female prostitute enters her job when she is only 16 or 17 years of age."

          "58% of American prostitutes reported violent assault at the hands of clients."

          "In a period of five years in Newark, New Jersey, 14 homicide victims were known prostitutes."

          "Roughly 26% of New York City prostitutes were homeless and addicted to illicit drugs."

          I don't have to check the sources, because it is obviously match completely to the feelings what I feel about them.

          Calling this for a "value to value" exchange is insane beyond words. You can call a trade of a rotten apple to a rotten banana to a value to value exchange, just you know... it is not really that. Naivety is a form of denial.

          Why I would legalize it? Because much of the crimes against them can be prevented by legalization. That's why. Making something illegal is making something unknown, hidden.

  4. The Bible doesn't say, "money is the root of all kinds of evil", it says, " *love* of money is the root of all sources of evil"

    Sure, it's tempting to think of rich people as evil - I've found myself treading that line, even though I know better (especially when someone like Bernie Madoff, Martin Shkreli, or the Sacklers make headlines for all of the wrong reasons). And there are a number of well-done studies that show that a massive fortune does have some psychologically detrimental effects on human beings - just as pervasive poverty does.

    But there's nothing wrong with being rich. There's been rich people around even before money was a thing, and there will always be rich people around. What could be wrong is a) how that wealth was acquired, b) what is done with it, and c) what effect wealth has on the individual.

    A: I would say (as a not-wealthy and decidedly, solidly middle-class person) that becoming rich by harming others- be it directly as Bernie Madoff did- or indirectly via a chain of cause-and-effect (Sacklers) is morally repugnant. Dare I say, evil. But to use a positive example, Tilman Fertita, Mister Billion Dollar Buyer, started out bussing tables at his father's restaurant. Hard work, intelligence, skills are nothing to be ashamed of. But there's both kinds of rich people, and both the people who vilify them and the rich themselves need to realize that. Do not persecute the wealthy as a group, do not put them on a pedestal as a group.

    B: Let's face it: those hoarding money for money's sake are much like the people on Hoarding: Buried Alive: they are mentally ill. Money is just a tool, a means to an end, as taught by everyone from ancient Greek philosophers to Buddha to Pope Francis. A carpenter only needs so many hammers to build a house; a carpenter who hoards thousands of hammers he will never use is suffering from some sort of insanity. So it is with money, except the hoarding of money is worse: it hurts society and it hurts the economy. Money "wants" to be spent, so to speak - its best, highest use is in buying things that people want or need. Not savings, not even investment, but in circulation.

    C: I love the image of the guy at the top of this page - it's a great parody of the rich people we all love to hate. Egotistical and full of himself, in-your-face with pretentiousness, flaunting his fancy stuff that you know he holds zero value for. The thing is, parody though he be, money can have a negative effect on those who have a lot of it. They are less empathic, less sympathetic, they show less gratitude, they give less to charity as a proportion to their income, they have a higher suicide rate, higher divorce rate, higher instances of almost every kind of psychosis known. Being rich is hard on a person - but it's entirely self-inflicted. Okay, so you're rich. Maybe you earned it all Tillman Fertitta style, or maybe you inherited it and did nothing to earn it other than being lucky enough to come out of the right vagina. Regardless, it's your attitude more than anything else- certainly more than the wealth- that leads people to dislike you.

    I'm willing to bet that any wealthy person in the world who gets their attitude right will see the other stuff falls into place. I don't think that wealth, personal happiness, and social welfare are mutually exclusive, but it's up to the wealthy to take a long, hard look at wealth and what it means to them and to others and see if they agree with me.

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  • 9 comments on “The Perception of Evil, Greedy Rich People”

    1. I thought they were direct sales people in the limo going to an event.
      I thought Debra needed help because she is suffering and numbing herself with drugs
      ( any income level can do that with drugs, alcohol, smoking, food, etc).

      Actually they reminded me that heaven is a more caring culture and not an agressive culture.

    2. We saw what happened in China when the commies took over and took away the wealth from the so-called rich people.. millions starved to death and it was a hell hole until they moved to a capitalist economy.. if you earn it or inherit it or whatever it's yours to do with it what you please.. and no jealousy from the cheap seats.. nothing stopping you from earning it..

      1. Not just in China. Everywhere be as Hungary (where I live), Soviet Union, French, everywhere. The latest live example is: VENEZUELA! What is happening there is simply horrific. And people still worship to Chavez, saying, he opened their eyes. Can you believe it? "Opened their eyes". No fuck you, he closed them! Thank GOD he died in ass-cancer, but his successor continued what he started. This world is really crazy.

    3. Tell the people how to spend their money (and / or force them) and the whole world being to go broke.

      Prostitutes are providing soulless sex for the person, who have no social sense, pushing him even more deeper. The reaction for this is often frustration, based on cognitive dissonance (want to be loved, but found nothing related to love), which turns into rage and make the prostitutes stricken or even killed. This is a no-value-for-no-value exchange. But who am I to judge that?

        1. Dániel, regarding your thoughts on prostitution, you - and everyone else - certainly have the right to feel about it however you personally feel. I think the question being brought up is this: would you - based on your personal feelings about it and the values that *you* hold (that *you* don't feel that any value is being exchanged even though the prostitutes and their customers obviously do) - be willing to use government to take away the prostitutes' and their customers' right to do business with one another? This example is no different than if one holds "sugary soft drinks" to be of no value so they would be willing to use government to take away people's right to buy and sell them. Your personal judgement isn't the issue. It's whether you would demand (through laws) that others conduct their lives according to your judgement. {Just to clarify, we are assuming that the prostitutes in this example are doing this of their own free, are of legal age, and are doing this through total personal choice. In other words, all parties are consenting adults.}

          1. I wrote "who am I to judge that?". I am not willing to prevent them to be prostitutes. In fact, I want to legalize them world-wide. If someone wants to fuck up her life, she should be able to do it. It is her life, not mine. Who cares? I had experience with prostitutes (I never had sex with them, just I know them) and all of them were so miserable. It is like being among a bunch of drug addict depressives. If someone doesn't see this in them, that person must be blind or extremely insensitive. Just to be clear, I am not an oversensitive person. If I and Maduro were in the same place alone, that guy would feel the horror what a human can cause to an other human with bare hands, you can bet. I am not a snowflake and never been one. I can be ice cold if I have to deal with a monster, who is try to hide in a human body and there are loads of them everywhere in the world. I was involved in crimes, drugs, accidents and fights when I was younger. I had seen violent deaths, which my mind was unable to process at this time. But when I see a prostitute I can't resist for the pain, the emptiness and the sorrow which comes from them. It is shocking me. In fact, I scared of them. I really experiencing fear. And the contrast of how beautiful they are just deepening it.

            https://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics

            "Countless studies report that over 80% of prostitutes say they wish to get out of prostitution."

            "About 40% of prostitutes are former child prostitutes who were illegally forced into the profession through human trafficking or once were teenage runaways."

            "Many men feel that they are safer from AIDS if they have sex with younger prostitutes, increasing the market for younger prostitutes. 60% percent of children reported missing as a result of running away become prostitutes for some period of time to survive."

            "The average age at which a male prostitute begins their illegal work is 14 years old."

            "The average female prostitute enters her job when she is only 16 or 17 years of age."

            "58% of American prostitutes reported violent assault at the hands of clients."

            "In a period of five years in Newark, New Jersey, 14 homicide victims were known prostitutes."

            "Roughly 26% of New York City prostitutes were homeless and addicted to illicit drugs."

            I don't have to check the sources, because it is obviously match completely to the feelings what I feel about them.

            Calling this for a "value to value" exchange is insane beyond words. You can call a trade of a rotten apple to a rotten banana to a value to value exchange, just you know... it is not really that. Naivety is a form of denial.

            Why I would legalize it? Because much of the crimes against them can be prevented by legalization. That's why. Making something illegal is making something unknown, hidden.

    4. The Bible doesn't say, "money is the root of all kinds of evil", it says, " *love* of money is the root of all sources of evil"

      Sure, it's tempting to think of rich people as evil - I've found myself treading that line, even though I know better (especially when someone like Bernie Madoff, Martin Shkreli, or the Sacklers make headlines for all of the wrong reasons). And there are a number of well-done studies that show that a massive fortune does have some psychologically detrimental effects on human beings - just as pervasive poverty does.

      But there's nothing wrong with being rich. There's been rich people around even before money was a thing, and there will always be rich people around. What could be wrong is a) how that wealth was acquired, b) what is done with it, and c) what effect wealth has on the individual.

      A: I would say (as a not-wealthy and decidedly, solidly middle-class person) that becoming rich by harming others- be it directly as Bernie Madoff did- or indirectly via a chain of cause-and-effect (Sacklers) is morally repugnant. Dare I say, evil. But to use a positive example, Tilman Fertita, Mister Billion Dollar Buyer, started out bussing tables at his father's restaurant. Hard work, intelligence, skills are nothing to be ashamed of. But there's both kinds of rich people, and both the people who vilify them and the rich themselves need to realize that. Do not persecute the wealthy as a group, do not put them on a pedestal as a group.

      B: Let's face it: those hoarding money for money's sake are much like the people on Hoarding: Buried Alive: they are mentally ill. Money is just a tool, a means to an end, as taught by everyone from ancient Greek philosophers to Buddha to Pope Francis. A carpenter only needs so many hammers to build a house; a carpenter who hoards thousands of hammers he will never use is suffering from some sort of insanity. So it is with money, except the hoarding of money is worse: it hurts society and it hurts the economy. Money "wants" to be spent, so to speak - its best, highest use is in buying things that people want or need. Not savings, not even investment, but in circulation.

      C: I love the image of the guy at the top of this page - it's a great parody of the rich people we all love to hate. Egotistical and full of himself, in-your-face with pretentiousness, flaunting his fancy stuff that you know he holds zero value for. The thing is, parody though he be, money can have a negative effect on those who have a lot of it. They are less empathic, less sympathetic, they show less gratitude, they give less to charity as a proportion to their income, they have a higher suicide rate, higher divorce rate, higher instances of almost every kind of psychosis known. Being rich is hard on a person - but it's entirely self-inflicted. Okay, so you're rich. Maybe you earned it all Tillman Fertitta style, or maybe you inherited it and did nothing to earn it other than being lucky enough to come out of the right vagina. Regardless, it's your attitude more than anything else- certainly more than the wealth- that leads people to dislike you.

      I'm willing to bet that any wealthy person in the world who gets their attitude right will see the other stuff falls into place. I don't think that wealth, personal happiness, and social welfare are mutually exclusive, but it's up to the wealthy to take a long, hard look at wealth and what it means to them and to others and see if they agree with me.

    Leave a Reply to Dániel Kőszegi Cancel reply

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