> It means your CEO sitting across from a skeptical reporter and engaging with specific concerns about job displacement, creative rights, privacy—on those terms, not by retreating to the cosmos.
I suspect a big factor here is that there are two audiences. Many of the things a CEO might say to acknowledge consumers' concerns (let alone solve them) are also things that the investors might not appreciate hearing, and that endangers the principle of Line Goes Up.
> Humanity, the concept, is an extraordinarily comfortable thing to care about. It’s theoretical. It’s malleable. [...] People, on the other hand, are a nightmare.
This reminds me of a short 2018 post that went viral, regarding how "the unborn" are an easy group of people to advocate for as long as they stay that way. [0]
> A lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself. A philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids.
Pretty much all the worst crimes in history have come from idealists trying to create a utopia. The "true believers" are basically always wrong, and always make a mess for the pragmatists and worldly people to actually clean up.
It would seem to me that becoming ultra wealthy necessarily disconnects you from ordinary people. You have security concerns for yourself and family, you don’t want to be constantly peppered by requests for financial help.
Plus your resources allow consumption of things otherwise out of your reach: women, exotic travel, yachts, mixing with other elites. Also the darker things (Epstein elites).
So after a while you not only won’t mix with the hoi polloi, you literally can’t because you share nothing with them.
The trappings of wealth start to include political influence, which seems to encourage the idea that being wealthy makes you some kind of expert because important people listen to you and will do what you want with an appropriate consideration or contribution.
There is an argument in here for limiting wealth to avoid this descent into disconnected sociopathy.
> It means your CEO sitting across from a skeptical reporter and engaging with specific concerns about job displacement, creative rights, privacy—on those terms, not by retreating to the cosmos.
I suspect a big factor here is that there are two audiences. Many of the things a CEO might say to acknowledge consumers' concerns (let alone solve them) are also things that the investors might not appreciate hearing, and that endangers the principle of Line Goes Up.
> Humanity, the concept, is an extraordinarily comfortable thing to care about. It’s theoretical. It’s malleable. [...] People, on the other hand, are a nightmare.
This reminds me of a short 2018 post that went viral, regarding how "the unborn" are an easy group of people to advocate for as long as they stay that way. [0]
____
[0] Primary source seems to either require login or has link-rot, so a secondary would be: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10357009-the-unborn-are-a-c...
(Post is 56% AI in Pangram.)
Suspected so at midway reading.
Sad, because I think he has an interesting point but he started going too long on it and that's where I started to question the writing
> A lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself. A philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids.
G.K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi
Pretty much all the worst crimes in history have come from idealists trying to create a utopia. The "true believers" are basically always wrong, and always make a mess for the pragmatists and worldly people to actually clean up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJjODY-PyJY
It would seem to me that becoming ultra wealthy necessarily disconnects you from ordinary people. You have security concerns for yourself and family, you don’t want to be constantly peppered by requests for financial help.
Plus your resources allow consumption of things otherwise out of your reach: women, exotic travel, yachts, mixing with other elites. Also the darker things (Epstein elites).
So after a while you not only won’t mix with the hoi polloi, you literally can’t because you share nothing with them.
The trappings of wealth start to include political influence, which seems to encourage the idea that being wealthy makes you some kind of expert because important people listen to you and will do what you want with an appropriate consideration or contribution.
There is an argument in here for limiting wealth to avoid this descent into disconnected sociopathy.