a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
kleinbl00  ·  1806 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what is your ideal for personal wealth?

You know what? I don't have an answer.

I managed to scrape together $20k and a $50k loan from family to get a $300k loan from a bank to build a business and now we're providing the livelihood of seven people directly. Our biller went from a staff of one to a staff of five. I've got three different support groups meeting in there every week. My biggest worry is that I'm not providing them a good enough livelihood. I want to be able to provide benefits. I want to be able to provide retirement. There's two women that I know of whose ability to raise children out of poverty depends on my ability to market my business.

When Ethereum was fuckin' riding high? That was great. I could see a future in which I was providing jobs for six or seven watchmakers I know that are currently hand-to-mouth. I could see jobs for three or four machinist friends. This is the thing about capital - it enables labor, so that labor can support capital. I went to Hawaii and envisioned a future in which I invested in converting the agriculture there from conglomerate-owned low-yield crops to native-owned chocolate.

    At a certain point, being a billionaire for example, comes with all sorts of personal responsibility (noblesse oblige)

It ain't even a very high point. I've been able to fund my retirement one year out of the past three and the money I see is pretty much a lever to help others. It's safe to say there's three quarters of a million dollars worth of student loan debt on my payroll. Let's say we wipe all that away. Let's say I stand up a watch manufactory. Will there ever be a point where I go "you know what? I can't find anything useful to do with more money"? I can't think of one.

Some wag on Twitter pointed out that Michael Bloomberg has already spent more on advertising a losing presidential bid than the US Government spends on NOAA in a year. Think of that. A vanity project costs more than protecting the entire fucking country from tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards and flooding. Do I think I could come up with something useful to do with a hundred million dollars? Yer damn skippy I could.

I allowed myself to buy a $25k car only after I spent $2k on someone's kidneys. Could I see myself in a $125k car? I mean, sure, I'd love one but there's so much more I could do with that money. And I have a sneaking suspicion that's where Republicanism comes from.