Stoic Bites 009 - Global Inequality

Bananas and Marshmallows

This is actually a rather big bite. Hold on to your hats.

I'm having a lazy Saturday, and I woke up in the middle of, or the beginning of, something from Business Insider, and this guy from East London is telling the story of how he became one of the top traders at Citibank, and how he made lots and lots of money, basically predicting that the economy would collapse or something to that order. And I have no reason not to believe him.

I understand something that I read a long time ago, that is the professionals in every organization know the ugly side of their industry, the ugly belly, the butthole of their industry, and they know that if you don't go against the grain, you will keep your job. And so I've been answering a lot of questions about billionaires, because everybody believes billionaires run the world, and maybe they do?

So what if? What if the way that the world works is that the middle class is just going to get destroyed by the rich, and there's a lot of ways that it could happen, and well, how do I think about it?

How do I think about it? Because, as I've been saying, I've been I've done everything that I wanted to do in life, except become a multi millionaire, and I'm still working on it. So what if, in the end, I end up becoming a multi millionaire, because I figure a way to make money, no matter what happens, whether people are smart with money or they're stupid with money, sooner or later, they're gonna have to figure out how to watch their money, and I could make money figuring out how to make people watch their money. So I could be indifferent to the economy. The economy could go to shit and I still make money. The economy could go great and I'd still make money. So what's the ethical thing?

The ethical thing is almost not important, but it is. So on the one hand, I take a peasant's point of view, because I grew up as a peasant, and the peasant's point of view is, let's say I offer you a banana or a marshmallow, and all I ever give you is a banana or a marshmallow, and you find a way to be happy with that one banana. Meanwhile, I know that there's lobster, there's champagne, there's foie gras, there's caviar, there's crab legs, and you'll never get any.

So is my happiness with my marshmallow and my banana real, or am I oppressed?