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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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Nowhere in this thread did I question anyone's right to make decisions.
Point taken. Nevertheless, I know from previous postings of yours over the years that you take a very dim view of people making those decisions (to spend disposable income rather than to save it).
All I'm trying to point out is that the very reason you are able to invest in various things and watch them increase in value over time is that roughly 70% of people are NOT doing that. You shouldn't want them to be more like you!
To give an example I'm sure you can relate to.... professional poker players rarely like to give good advice to lesser-skilled players. The pro doesn't WANT the fish to play better!
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Point taken. Nevertheless, I know from previous postings of yours over the years that you take a very dim view of people making those decisions (to spend disposable income rather than to save it).
No, you have (I believe accidentally, though understandably) mischaracterized my position. I take a dim view of people spending their disposable income **then demanding that others bail them out when they don't have (enough) money**. It is immoral to force savers to bail out spenders when the spenders could have bailed themselves out with some financial discipline and forethought.
You won't believe this but I probably care less about money than 99% of people. If I had to I would be perfectly happy to carry everything I own in a backpack. Possessions mean absolutely nothing to me except as tools. An example relevant to chess: FIDE gives out certificates when you get a title (e.g. FM, IM, GM, etc.). I looked at my FM certificate once then tossed it in a pile of papers. Next time I moved, I tossed it in the garbage. Same with my IM certificate. They are useless as tools and I have no sentimental attachment to things.
While I don't care about money, I do care about my time. I don't have a job that pays me to take vacations or sick days. If I don't work, I don't make money. So when you take my money you rob me of something I care about very much - my limited time on the planet.
Last edited by Tom O'Donnell; Wednesday, 28th September, 2016, 07:10 AM.
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
No, you have (I believe accidentally, though understandably) mischaracterized my position. I take a dim view of people spending their disposable income **then demanding that others bail them out when they don't have (enough) money**. It is immoral to force savers to bail out spenders when the spenders could have bailed themselves out with some financial discipline and forethought.
You won't believe this but I probably care less about money than 99% of people. If I had to I would be perfectly happy to carry everything I own in a backpack. Possessions mean absolutely nothing to me except as tools. An example relevant to chess: FIDE gives out certificates when you get a title (e.g. FM, IM, GM, etc.). I looked at my FM certificate once then tossed it in a pile of papers. Next time I moved, I tossed it in the garbage. Same with my IM certificate. They are useless as tools and I have no sentimental attachment to things.
While I don't care about money, I do care about my time. I don't have a job that pays me to take vacations or sick days. If I don't work, I don't make money. So when you take my money you rob me of something I care about very much - my limited time on the planet.
Thank you for that post, Tom, and I apologize for mischaracterizing your position. You must not like Donald Trump at all then, considering his 4 bankruptcies and his attitude towards them ("I took advantage of the laws of the land".)
It would be great if we could all carry our entire belongings in a backpack. Maybe Google will invent one.
On the topic of time and money, couldn't enough money buy you the time you desire? I mean, free up the time that you would otherwise be spending working. Although maybe your work is what you would prefer to do with your time anyway?
But I can't understand why time would be so precious to you given your beliefs about afterlife. What does it matter, today, tomorrow, next year, a decade or two from now? If there's nothing, there's nothing and so this existence is devoid of meaning. Even pleasure and pain are meaningless. Perhaps we are all just characters in a holographic video game....
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Rather than continue to hijack this thread from the next US President, I have started a separate thread, the Value of Money, for discussion of money and lotteries. CU there.
On the topic of time and money, couldn't enough money buy you the time you desire? I mean, free up the time that you would otherwise be spending working. Although maybe your work is what you would prefer to do with your time anyway?
That is the plan already. Money buys time, to accumulate money costs time. At some point the amount of money that my wife and I have will allow both of us to retire if we like and never work again. We worked for the money, then the money works for us. If we were sure we would both be dead by 75 we could probably do it already, even assuming no CPP.
Money buys choices. It buys freedom. I don't believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, etc. so I get one chance to live my life the way I want. I don't want to spend it subsidizing people who had the tools to take care of themselves but chose not to.
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
That is the plan already. Money buys time, to accumulate money costs time. At some point the amount of money that my wife and I have will allow both of us to retire if we like and never work again. We worked for the money, then the money works for us. If we were sure we would both be dead by 75 we could probably do it already, even assuming no CPP.
Money buys choices. It buys freedom. I don't believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, etc. so I get one chance to live my life the way I want. I don't want to spend it subsidizing people who had the tools to take care of themselves but chose not to.
What do you think society should do differently with the people who "had the tools to take care of themselves but chose not to"?
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
Great, take that to grocery store the next time you need some protein.
I have enough monetary income that I don't have to worry much about that, thanks. But the stuff my monetary income can buy me is only a tiny part of my real wealth, and the money itself is none of it.
Money buys choices. It buys freedom. I don't believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, etc. so I get one chance to live my life the way I want. I don't want to spend it subsidizing people who had the tools to take care of themselves but chose not to.
But by the time you have "enough" money to buy your free time you won't know what to do with it. As long as you chase money and security you are just chasing an illusory fantasy which will never come true.
Actually, of course you'll never stop chasing money because no one who chases money can ever have enough.
And everyone already subsidizes everybody else. There are atoms of oxygen in your body that were once in my body and atoms of oxygen in mine that were once in yours. We live in the same sea of air breathing oxygen that we can only access because plants make it available to us in molecular form, for free. So we are all subsidized by plants and the entire ecology of the planet. And of us are freeloaders on the sun which charges nothing for the energy that allows us to exist.
To live for the future is always to be frustrated because the future never comes, it is always ahead of us but we never reach it and never can. The only time we have is now, and if we can't enjoy this moment we are deluding ourselves if we think that we have the power to make some future moment when we can finally relax and enjoy ourselves.
Of course if you enjoy that game that's great and I wouldn't think of asking you to change. But if you aren't enjoying the game, thinking that you will someday be through with it and then things will be great is just being caught up in a very unpleasant dream. Of course if you enjoy *that*, fine with me too.
What do you think society should do differently with the people who "had the tools to take care of themselves but chose not to"?
There is no one that ever lived, nor will there ever be anyone who "takes care of themselves" entirely. We are all freeloaders on the energy supplied by our local star without charge, and we all breath air that is only there because our planet evolved plant life that makes it available without any charge, and eat plants that grow in soil we never made. You'd think we'd be grateful for this, but instead it seems we are engaged in a relentless war against the very things that keep us alive. But just as the cells of our body know nothing about the body they exist in and keep running, our war against nature may be part of some process so much greater than ourselves that we could never hope to understand it. Or we may not, of course.
Either way, all we have is now. And the harder we try to "improve" the purely imaginary "future" the more we miss the whole point of life, which is right here and right now. In a game of chess, the only important move is the one we must make in the position now before us.
I've often wondered if there is an optimal amount of money to have. Enough to comfortably pay for the best health care in the world that's possible, in case one needs it, seems a good lower limit of wealth that one might strive for, if one does not value material things that much otherwise. One problem is, if you ding a billionaire's car, or otherwise get into any situation that results in a really expensive legal fight, it's desirable to have an almost limitless supply of wealth, in this somewhat unfair world where justice is often weighted heavily in favour of the wealthy, who often can at the least delay justice for many, many years. On the other hand, if you're super-rich, you often acquire more responsibility, including trying to preserve a good chunk of your wealth, if not increase it. Also, power tends to corrupt, and money is a darn good source of power quite often.
For those who believe in scripture word for word as it stands, the Old & New Testament have arguably clearly differing views on the merits of being wealthy (e.g. see wikipedia's take on the subject). One thing seems clear to me, all the same. It sucks to be dirt poor.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
I've often wondered if there is an optimal amount of money to have.
From my observation it seems to be somewhere between ten and a thousand time more than one has now, whatever that figure is. And if that comes to pass, why then it is somewhere between ten and a thousand time more than you have then. And so on for ever.
My pension income is now around thirty five thousand a year depending how you count the benefit package. I think I'd be happy with around three hundred thousand a year, but if that came to pass then I'm sure I'd want three million a year and so on.
Perhaps there are many people who simply enjoy playing the rat race, when it comes to accumulating wealth. There apparently are advantages to being a miser (though if a guy dies young, perhaps in hindsight he'd wish he'd enjoyed spending lots of his money while he was young, & also enjoyed his youth more that way). There apparently are advantages to climbing the social ladder, even by being a good digger or otherwise marrying up, in which case one didn't even have to work hard for their money.
Many people may also enjoy the rat race of daily living, e.g. people striving to be first on and off a bus whatever it takes, or even break pedestrian law at an intersection, perhaps even just so they can be x steps ahead of the other people waiting to cross. Fwiw, there's an old board game called Rat Race where one generally finishes first at the end by gambling on the stock market, using the game's dice. Not to mention Monopoly, where, as my old man once said, you win not by getting rich, but by keeping other people poor.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Perhaps there are many people who simply enjoy playing the rat race, when it comes to accumulating wealth.
Yeah, I believe I covered that in the post. It's fine with me. It's also fine with me if you want to pursue the fantasy of some big prize at the end of your life and postpone actually living until then.
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