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Comment by yTh0 | Hacker News Reader

> A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world

A rich person is subsidized by society. Why should we optimize fiscal policy to enable them and let them leave an outsized impact on the world?

Especially when the outsized impact of the rich is inequality, anti-democratic political norms, and environmental destruction?

They have no skills, or information advantage. Just a network effect advantage through monopoly of a shared value store. I see little difference with this system compared to monarchy or theology rule, which were also hierarchical, with ones power based on closeness to power, and monopoly of value store and public time economy.

To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc.

Doctors, engineers, etc., sure let us give them our ear. Unskilled rich are a drain on public agency.

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Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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> To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc.

What does this mean? How are hedge funds unskilled or non-doers in the manner that heirs are? I'd say the average hedge fund analyst is probably as accomplished/skilled/hard working as the average doctor or engineer.

Certainly more-so than the average [software] engineer. There's no 6-week bootcamp for hedge funds and there's no "typing JavaScript into a computer" equivalent. We can argue all day about whether hedge funds are good, bad, or useful, and reasonable people will disagree on the answer, but you'd be hard-pressed to make a cogent argument that the average software engineer works even nearly as hard as the average hedge fund analyst.

Speaking as someone who worked in private equity, our Principal had generational wealth- literally he was an Italian count and his family money came from the Crusades.

The people who made the investments and ran the fund came from State University of New York at Buffalo. The count had a team of three assistants and one's entire job was to coordinate shipping cases of wine from his vanity winery to everyone their kids encountered to lubricate the wheels of their success in life. Elite squash trainer might take on the son? Case of wine to the wife. College tour? Case of wine to the tour leader. I was an analyst reporting directly to the CFO and wasn't an assistant but would routinely get asked to do lifestyle chores like help the count's uncle hook up their ipod to their Range Rover's bluetooth.

Hence why I left finance and went into medicine which is more of a meritocracy.

Wow, the wine shipping is an incredible way to influence people. I should try that more often. So far I've only been sending small gifts over to people, or hand written letters. I know in sales this sort of stuff works very well but it also works well in day to day life.

How has the transition been?

The value they claim to unlock is completely made up.

People need logistics to move materials to enable people to do stuff.

Not speculative emotional guidance on ephemeral value stores.

Most of them are, or are funded by, inherited wealth to service fiscal policy memes.

There are a lot of assumptions baked into this statement. For example what does unskilled mean? Who gets to decide it? Would you consider an artist or a musician unskilled? A diplomat? Those people don’t code or perform surgery but most people would consider them skilled and those careers positive contributions to society.

Someone who is wealthy may not have skills as you describe it, but if they are investing their wealth in the stock market for example, it could be argued they have a much more outsized positive impact on society than the average person.

It could be argued but it’s a large assumption on its own.

Stock markets are recent inventions; some hand wavy way of saying “this is exactly the right way to store value!”

Why must that ideal be externalized onto others? Why do I have to believe some hedge fund is indeed worth N dollars?

Mendacity of the elderly is not a good enough justification for belief.

Correctly engineering a road, medicine, or making art does not at all rely on such belief.

"A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world"

I quoted this as a neutral fact. That things might or could be better otherwise is a total different question.

Qualify it as such in the original post.

Some search engine can come along in N days, weeks, months, and provide that snippet out of the context you intended.

Social media is not a friends backyard fire pit. The information peddled here isn’t necessarily lost to memory the next day.

I don’t know you so none of this should be considered a personal attack. I’m just taking information and expanding on it.

"Qualify it as such in the original post."

It is unfortunate that people seem not to be able to distinguish between a neutral fact and an endorsement. Just recently I posted something I consider a fact and since I was afraid if could be controversial, added that this is not meant in a judgmental way. The bulletin board owner took this to a meta level and argued that it was exactly this add-on that showed that it was meant in a judgmental way and banned me.

It’s been shown that words mean different things given geographical region.

One brain is not composed of the same experiential model, and as a result, neurological model, as others.

Physics > chemistry -> biology -> humans -> metaphor and analogy. Kind of my mental road map for information hierarchy.

If it’s not physically quantifiable it probably falls into some category like “relative metaphor and analogy”.

This seems unnecessary, since it's obvious from context. Endless caveats are death in writing and readability. We have modal verbs like "should" for a reason, and OP chose not to use them, making the communication clear.

"unskilled risk are a drain on public agency" what does this mean? How are they a drain?

> A rich person is subsidized by society.

What?

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