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Survival Of The Richest
Four bullets. He took four bullets, each one an occupational hazard. Or at least that's how polite society would characterize them.
He was fine. Or as fine as you can be after getting shot. It was 2007-ish, which means I anyway wouldn't have run any stoplights on the way to the hospital after I got the call. A fifth-a-day liquor habit meant always driving under one limit (the speed limit) to avoid being arrested for driving over another (the legal limit). I probably listened to NPR on the way,
Another excellent monthly, bringing the overall standard one step higher. I think Social Darwinism reached its apex with the Nazis. One of the things that differentiates Homo sapiens from most other species is that although we compete with each other we also work together in tribes to survive. Sometimes it takes a village to raise a child. In the book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari discusses how this creates conflicting values where we sometimes value the survival of the fittest and sometimes value selfless dedication to the tribe. The tribe can vary in size from a family to a nation. In the long term, self-interest falls somewhere on this spectrum. At least it did for the first 300,000 years of our species. Thanks as always H for the insight into our current condition.
I see two major genetic cohorts in humanity. The empathIc and the authoritarian follower (Altemeyer). And outside those two groups are much smaller cohorts, the narcissists and sociopaths.
Not coincidentally, you can already make out the two major political leanings, and also the blindly ambitious that evolved to lead those evolutionary factions.
So with those assumptions you can really understand why the human world is as it is and has always been like this. You have a small cohort that endlessly competes, the narcissist, and another that will stop at nothing to get what they want, the sociopath. Neither of these personality types ever thinks “I have enough.” Both look around the country club bar with envy and malice.
Then you have the rest of the population. The empathic cohort is egalitarian towards outside groups. The authoritarian follower cohort, while empathetic to its members, is antagonistic to outside populations, and grants leaders enormous sway. Both cohorts are manipulated by sociopathic leaders into the so called “horseshoe” of left-right extremism. Interestingly, the empath cohort has only had any political influence starting with the Roccoco period and Enlightenment.
You can see this dynamic when looking at ‘left wing’ cults like Bill Jones and Lenon, ‘right wing’ cults like FLDS or Trump. I could go on and on about this stuff. But I believe there is actual evolution at work. “Social Evolution” is simply sociopaths and narcissists intellectual justification for fleecing the sheep who struggle for ‘enough’.
A reminder. Evolution does not guaranty survival and nature shows numerous evolutionary feedback loops that can end in extinction. Like the peacocks tail feathers, or the nest building birds in Madagascar. Both are adaptations that thwart survival.
Reference: Richard Dawkins, Robert Altemeyer, Robert Hare.
I would prefer to see pickup trucks driving around with flags flying that say “Narcissist” or “Sociopath” rather than “Trump”. Somehow I think it would be more honest.
I suggest that freedom of expression is over. Those who dare disparage ‘the boss’ risk being dealt with roughly,
Thanks, H – it’s hard to stomach the arguments from the likes of Marks. Collective economic welfare is so vague as to be meaningless. Is he referring to the addiction and sloth that these titans of industry create? Is it the social isolation that phones, social media, and Netflix provide that is improving our economic welfare?
I’ve heard these arguments from founders of the companies I’ve worked for and even think they are often trying to do right by the people who work for them, but it’s clear they have completely lost touch with the reality of what their collective behaviors do to the rest of society much in the same way that I can no longer put myself in the shoes of the lifelong factory or construction workers who I worked with during the summer months of high school and college. They have no idea how extreme our tax code is and either fall back to how much the wealthy pay in aggregate (ignoring how much more wealth they are hoarding) or assume the same tax rules apply to the rich as what apply to them.
I haven’t engaged in political conversations with my mom for years because there is nothing to be gained from it, but once in a while, I’ll get a text from her out of the blue with some random political rant. A few weeks prior to the election, she sent a screed about democrats supporting socialism and how “history” shows how that always ends badly. I didn’t engage with that either, but I wish I could share this essay with her in good faith. Unfortunately, I don’t think she’d be too keen on H’s writings 🙂
One final note – if it were truly about social darwinism, I might be somewhat more accepting of that if we were much more aggressive about taxing inheritance. It’s hard to say which part of the tax code is most egregious – capital gains, carried interest, the stepped up basis for inherited assets, unrealized gains, and the list goes on…
Yes, life is not fair. Only in America can you inherit $400 million, bankrupt multiple companies, have the morals of an alley cat, consistently run afoul of the law, abuse your trade creditors, be both a racist and misogynistic, act like a corpulent clown and still get elected to the highest office in the country.
I have been told that saying people voted against their self interest is insulting. Trump shouldn’t have received more than 800 votes. Anyone who voted for
Trump who is a woman, or receives social security, Medicare, Medicaid, is signed up for Obamacare, or works in any federal agency, frankly works for a paycheck making less than $250M/year especially in a SALT state, is an idiot. Those demographics alone should have ensured a Harris win.
I was convinced that there was no way a black woman was going to be elected president in this society. But I was hoping.
Maybe in a would have, could have, should have world this may have been possible. But not in this one. Let them eat cake.
Everyone can become that rich. And wealthy. If you are not then you haven’t tried enough.
The system is rigged pal.
It really isn’t.
I wonder what’s it’s like though. To have a cool 1 billion in a checking account. Will I feel any better than if I had say 100K in that account?
I don’t know. That’s on you.
What if I walked around a homeless encampment knowing I had 1 billion in my checking account?
I don’t know. Again it’s on you.
Interesting conversation but I think the system is not rigged. You simply don’t work hard enough.
Perhaps I’m misinterpreting, but if not, and I’m supposed to take this comment seriously/literally, let me just say, that it (the comment) is a lot of nonsense. The system’s rigged. Really it is. If you don’t believe that, guess what? You’re not on the right side of the system, which is to say you aren’t wealthy, because if you were, you’d know it’s rigged. The rich in many cases don’t work at all. That’s one of the main takeaways from this article. America’s not a meritocracy. I’ve been around a lot more ultra-wealthy people than most readers, and let me just say, definitively: They (the ultra-wealthy) are in general quite lazy, and don’t “try” at all, because in a lot of cases, they don’t have to. Don’t be naive, folks.
While I’m on the subject, it always strikes me that a lot of my very well-off readers don’t fully appreciate the scope of the disparity between being worth, say, $5 million or $10 million on paper, and being worth $50 million and up. Nobodies are worth $5 million. I talked to an old MBA buddy the other day who casually mentioned that her net worth was $7 million. She lives in a one-story house and drives a Honda Pilot. God bless those among you who’ve managed to retire worth $10 million, but just try to keep perspective: Well-off is something different from rich. You’re not rich. You’re a lot closer to “regular” than you are rich, and you can’t even see wealthy from where you are. So, you know, just try to keep your head down among the “regulars,” because trust me: You’re more regular than you might think, and you’d discover that pretty damn quickly if you ever took a vacation to — you know — Dubai or somewhere like that. I remember overhearing a conversation from the bar at Bonefish Grill when I first moved to the island in December of 2015. One of the women in this big group of couples sitting at the table behind me said something to the effect of, “Yeah, well Bob and I just put $500,000 into the furniture. It’s an investment. We got some great pieces.” And that was just retirees at a Bonefish on a pretty generic resort island. Imagine what that furniture bill’s like in non-generic ritzy locales. Rich people blow well-off people’s life savings on sofas. Wealthy people don’t buy sofas. They buy properties through teams of personal agents and lawyers and then when they show up at those properties for the first time, there are just sofas there somehow.
If you don’t think the game is rigged, then you are the mark in the poker game.
Exactly. Of all the things I said in this article, I thought “the system’s rigged” would be the least controversial. And you know it’s funny, I had some guy e-mail me today and defend Social Darwinism. Not the accidental appeal to it (i.e., not Marks’s inadvertent Spencer citation), but Social Darwinism itself. I mean… wow! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but boy oh boy is that a shaky limb to go out on.
I started to learn this “truth” regarding how the “system” is rigged when I was in high school. Various situations and events put me either on the losing side and occasionally on the winning side of this truism, but at that time in my life I still believed 100% in a meritocracy.
During the 5+ years that I lived in NYC (Manhattan), I got my masters degree in “this is how the world works”. I was a single white girl from a (barely) middle class midwestern town, living and working as a CPA in NYC and I figured out that the most important lesson was this:
Know how the world works; then work towards getting what one wants from life. This means that certain things might just not be available- so focus on the things that are. In certain areas of life, but not in all areas, a meritocracy does exist- so if that is important to someone, focus on that corner in the game of life.
We raised all 3 of our kids to understand how life works (not always fair), and in spite of that- this is a lesson that most people have to learn for themselves….usually the “hard way”.
H- thanks as always for sharing your intellect and snippets of your fascinating life.
And here I thought you were the biggest believer in the 100% meritocracy myth!
I’m just joking. I mean, I do think you’re squarely in the American meritocracy camp, but all my experience with you over the years strongly suggests you worked hard and deserve to be prosperous.
Hats off. Always appreciate your comments.
I prefer that “corner”.
I did work hard- but I have never thought I deserved anything.
US meritocracy is real: I arrived in the US in 1973 with a literal cardboard suitcase and $300. I’m still here, still working; risk consulting to the “real rich.” However, the meritocracy requires three things: Hard work, paid my way thru community college, state college and law school, easier back then than it is now due to the loss of basic college funding. Connections, my first job as a lawyer was for the brother of someone who had befriended me. And luck: Hated being an actual lawyer, but a secretary in the law firm was dating someone who gave rave reviews to my next employer a New York consulting firm just beginning a period of exponential growth, brutally hard work, from which I acquired the skills and connections that still support my own firm today. Hard work continues, I enjoy the projects, and financially we are comfortable, mostly a matter of managing lifestyle creep. H. thanks for your continued provision of searing clarity, please keep it up.
“A literal cardboard suitcase.”
Care instructions: Do not wash.
Family heirloom…
There are other mechanisms that might be considered. A progressive tax on total wealth, which would start somewhere north of top 0.001% or 0.0001% territory. A capital gains surtax, also kicking in somewhere in the income/wealth ether. Or revert to the individual and corporate tax rates of the not-so-distant past.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”