Reasons to hate the rich

[Cornfed]

Over the last few decades, while ordinary people have increasingly found themselves impoverished, the very rich have become very much richer. This has partly been the result of specific misdeeds on their part - leveraged takeovers followed by asset stripping, selling off public assets to foreign investors at a discount in exchange for bribes/consultancy fees, extorting the government into bailing out their irresponsible speculation by threatening to crash the whole system and so forth. However, lets consider the big picture.

Some say the rich become rich through hard work and innovation. This is of course bullshit. The rich get their money largely in the same way the government does - by taxing the economic transactions of others in the form of rent, interest, royalties and so on. Therefore, there are two general means for the rich to get richer. One is by increasing the percentage of transactions they take, and the other is by increasing the size of the economy.

The first method is fairly straightforward. Examples would be the massively increased salaries of CEOs as compared to rank and file workers, and the massively increased debt ordinary people are expected to take on in order to lead a normal life, the interest on which can then be extracted by those at the top.

The second method is more insidious. The economy grew naturally up until the 1970s due to the exponentially increasing utilization of energy from cheap fossil fuels. When that stopped being viable, various means of artificially growing the economy had to be thought up. The main one was to drag previously informal value creation into the formal economy, and the main method of doing this was of course the induction of women into the paid workforce. Female services such as cooking, cleaning, childcare, care of the sick, community organizing, sexual release etc. that had once been provided for free were now provided at enormous monetary expense. We ended up paying a fortune for a massively inferior version of what we had once enjoyed and having our communities destroyed in the process. However, the rich massively benefited. Where once the value provided by women had been contained within families and communities, it could now all be taxed, charged interest etc. with the proceeds used to further inflate those at the top. Because of the preponderance of two income households, this also had the effect of bidding up the price of fixed assets and allowing people to take on more debt, further enriching the rich.

It terms of inflating the economy, there was a problem with this strategy in that it created a situation hostile to raising children, leading to a declining birthrate. Eventually this would have led to a declining economy. The rich had a solution to this - to flood the country with immigrants. The incumbent population, already impoverished and alienated, found themselves beset with often scumbaggy foreigners who made them feel like unwelcome intruders in their own country on top of everything else.

The only logical outcome of the policies the rich have pursued over the last few decades, failing their own arrests and executions, is the complete draining and extinction of their host society. Really they as a class are the greatest traitors in human history.

[Ghost]

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[fschmidt]

Let me offer a different perspective. The rich are maggots feeding on the dead carcass of modern culture. Are the maggots harmful? No, because the body is already dead. The maggots are performing a useful service in turning the body into compost which can fertilize the next culture. Is it possible that the masses might revolt against the rich and would this show the body not to be dead? Yes a revolt is possible, but the masses are so stupid that a revolt would just be exploited by one group of the rich against other rich groups. And so such a revolt wouldn't show the body to be alive, only that rigor mortis hasn't yet set in.

Now let me offer a personal perspective. As they say in Idiocracy, I like money. (And maybe being Jewish has something to do with it.) I am a programmer, so how can I turn my skills into money? I think about this all the time. One option is to create something of real value. But the problem is that the masses have lost all taste and are incapable of recognizing value. As an example, I have an idea for a much simpler way for regular people to program websites. The current dominant programming language for this is PHP. PHP is horrible. The reason that PHP is popular is simply that regular people are tasteless morons. So this tells me that there is no point developing anything of real value because the masses won't appreciate it. So what does that leave me with as ways to make money? Either screwing people or finding arbitrage, that's all. My last successful business, Nextag, was based on arbitrage. I am currently working on one business based on screwing people and I am investigating another business (in internet advertising) based on arbitrage.

It wasn't always the case that the masses were tasteless morons. In earlier American history, one could make money by producing value. As examples, Henry Ford and Walt Disney got quite rich while contributing to society. Just as women are morally indifferent and pursue men based on whatever is evolutionarily advantageous, the rich are also morally indifferent and pursue money based on whatever is profitable. A good society financially rewards those producing value and punishes those who are harmful. This pushes the rich in the right direction, to focus their energies and capital on productive things.

So then who is responsible for the current mess? The current mess is cultural and moral decay, which means that the responsibility lies with whoever is responsible for culture and morality. And I think this responsibility belongs to the clergy - the priests, ministers, and rabbis who are supposed to teach morality to the masses. So if you ask me what I hate most, my answer is modern religion, specifically modern Christianity and modern Judaism.

[Cornfed]

So this tells me that there is no point developing anything of real value because the masses won't appreciate it. So what does that leave me with as ways to make money? Either screwing people or finding arbitrage, that's all. My last successful business, Nextag, was based on arbitrage. I am currently working on one business based on screwing people and I am investigating another business (in internet advertising) based on arbitrage.

Yes, where I've probably gone wrong in trying to come up with business ideas is by trying to think of ways to create value, rather than ways to fleece the sheeple. Perhaps without going into specifics you could explain your views on how it is possible for non-elite men to extract wealth from the stupid. It seems such opportunities are mainly skewed to the already rich. It would be nice to be able to do well by doing good, but failing that a simple transference of wealth from the sniveling multitudes to men like me is inherently socially desirable.

[fschmidt]

Perhaps without going into specifics you could explain your views on how it is possible for non-elite men to extract wealth from the stupid.

Here is an article for inspiration:

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archi ... et/355726/

One of my businesses is along these lines. Note that Google is the most evil company in the world today. If you try to run an honest business supported by advertising, Google will screw you. But if you are trying to scam people, Google is your best friend because they get a huge cut.

It would be nice to be able to do well by doing good, but failing that a simple transference of wealth from the sniveling multitudes to men like me is inherently socially desirable.

I agree and I wish you luck.

[momopi]

As an example, I have an idea for a much simpler way for regular people to program websites. The current dominant programming language for this is PHP. PHP is horrible. The reason that PHP is popular is simply that regular people are tasteless morons. So this tells me that there is no point developing anything of real value because the masses won't appreciate it.

How developed is your idea? (i.e. functional product demo?)

[fschmidt]

As an example, I have an idea for a much simpler way for regular people to program websites.

How developed is your idea? (i.e. functional product demo?)

It isn't fully developed but the core is done. It is based on an improved version of Lua optimized for web development.

[momopi]

As an example, I have an idea for a much simpler way for regular people to program websites.

How developed is your idea? (i.e. functional product demo?)

It isn't fully developed but the core is done. It is based on an improved version of Lua optimized for web development.

It may be possible to obtain some crowd sourcing support, examples:

[fschmidt]

It may be possible to obtain some crowd sourcing support, examples:

I can fund the development myself, but what is the point when no one appreciates quality anymore? Better to spend my time scamming morons.

[momopi]

It may be possible to obtain some crowd sourcing support, examples:

I can fund the development myself, but what is the point when no one appreciates quality anymore? Better to spend my time scamming morons.

If dev's didn't care about code quality (in their own way), then they wouldn't want to spend so much time refactoring code. From business perspective, they want dev's to produce MVP (minimum viable product) that fulfills customer/stakeholder requirements, instead of spending time on nonfunctional improvements. As I've stated previously in another thread, many methodologies used by business today came from the military during Cold War era, their goal was to nuke the Russians and not elegance. In more recent Agile-Scrum methodology, the developers are given wiggle room during sprint planning and sprint cycles. What they do with the wiggle room is up to the individual developer.

[fschmidt]

If dev's didn't care about code quality (in their way way), they wouldn't want to spend so much time refactoring code. From business perspective, they want dev's to produce MVP (minimum viable product) that fulfills customer/stakeholder requirements, instead of spending time on nonfunctional improvements. As I've stated previously in another thread, many methodologies used by business today came from the military during Cold War era, their goal was to nuke the Russians and not elegance. In more recent Agile-Scrum methodology, the developers are given wiggle room during sprint planning and sprint cycles. What they do with the wiggle room is up to the individual developer.

This discussion belongs in the Modern Software Sucks thread. Anyway, business people are clueless when it comes to software development and are extremely inefficient. Refactoring is just a fancy term for cleaning up one's code, something that was done naturally when programmers were left alone. Now we need a fancy term for this to offset micromanagement. And Agile-Scrum is bullshit which take some correct ideas and some wrong ideas and formalizes them all. A wrong idea is all this collaboration and meetings. I have run successful development teams. I never had group meetings, ever. Meetings are a waste of time. One core person needs to be responsible for the big picture and then delegate tasks to programmers, where each programmer is completely responsible for his piece and has complete control over it. All communications should be simply be one person talking to another, no groups ever. And every piece of code should have exactly one owner to make responsibility clear. Anyway, my ideas are clearly outdated. I believe in personal responsibility, not bureaucracies and love-ins.

[momopi]

This discussion belongs in the Modern Software Sucks thread. Anyway, business people are clueless when it comes to software development and are extremely inefficient. Refactoring is just a fancy term for cleaning up one's code, something that was done naturally when programmers were left alone. Now we need a fancy term for this to offset micromanagement. And Agile-Scrum is bullshit which take some correct ideas and some wrong ideas and formalizes them all. A wrong idea is all this collaboration and meetings. I have run successful development teams. I never had group meetings, ever. Meetings are a waste of time. One core person needs to be responsible for the big picture and then delegate tasks to programmers, where each programmer is completely responsible for his piece and has complete control over it. All communications should be simply be one person talking to another, no groups ever. And every piece of code should have exactly one owner to make responsibility clear. Anyway, my ideas are clearly outdated. I believe in personal responsibility, not bureaucracies and love-ins.

Question... in your methodology, who does the code review?

[fschmidt]

Question... in your methodology, who does the code review?

There are 2 parts to code, interface (API) and implementation. I (manager) review all interfaces. I almost never review implementations, only if there is a problem. I trust my programmers to deliver, and if they can't, I fire them.

[momopi]

Question... in your methodology, who does the code review?

There are 2 parts to code, interface (API) and implementation. I (manager) review all interfaces. I almost never review implementations, only if there is a problem. I trust my programmers to deliver, and if they can't, I fire them.

What part of scrum methodology do you think is correct, or incorrect?

(If you prefer, you can reply in this thread instead: viewtopic.php?t=21940 )

[gsjackson]

Here is an article for inspiration:

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archi ... et/355726/

One of my businesses is along these lines. Note that Google is the most evil company in the world today. If you try to run an honest business supported by advertising, Google will screw you. But if you are trying to scam people, Google is your best friend because they get a huge cut.

Oh, yes, truly inspiring. A success story for our times.

Let me ask you: Do these different forms of Judaism you aspire to live by not include a just, even vengeful God, who sits in judgment over all people? If so, are you able to dispense with this component of the system of beliefs? And if you dispense with the supposed architect of the system, how can you expect the religion to have any vitality and impact on culture if it is nothing but a hollowed-out shell of moralisms?

Or is screwing the goy not necessarily something that this God would disapprove of, especially when they have grown self-indulgent, decadent and stupid?