I think the idea is that Kiyosaki's lifestyle is that of a parasite.
Society is built from people producing economic output.
But this guy just buys low, sells high, and uses other people's money to do so?
Society is built from people producing economic output.
But this guy just buys low, sells high, and uses other people's money to do so?
There's a vector of progress in some direction and you are deciding the direction by choosing what you are investing in.
And if you are using other people's money you are just increasing the power of the vector in the right direction by more than you could have on your own. So if you have that ability, it's a very wise thing to do.
Money is a tool to organise/decide where the direction should be at and magnify that direction.
Other people who entrust him with their money, and expect a return. It's not like he's stealing it, and I'd argue he's the one doing the most work in that transaction.
> “If I go bust, the bank goes bust,” he added. “Not my problem.”
That's a very idealistic image. People producing economic output are a not that large fraction of society.
There are a lot of people in the society who are useless or harmful from the point of view of economic output. Military, advertising, retirees, children and full-time learners, significant fraction of bureaucrats and political class, successful rent seekers. They are all part of society. I don't have the numbers but I think, altogether they are majority.
I think emotional opposition to what I wrote comes mainly from the fact that people tend to give moral valuation to economic usefulness. If you are not useful, you are bad. And since they don't want to think about large amount of people as bad, cognitive dissonance arises and forces them to extend the definition of economic utility till they feel comfortable again. Till they narrowed down the amount of bad people to fit their comfortable world view.
I think much healthier way is to say that economic utility and morality are orthogonal and it's perfectly fine that retirees or learners don't have economical utility without any additional justifications. This approach allows making moral judgements more freely and accurately. In this framework, being economically useful can't be used to cover immoral behavior and lack of usefulness can't be used to stigmatize perfectly harmless people or even those useful in other ways.
Elder care, child care, education, health, etc. are all services that benefit society. I don't mean to complain about people who need those services. The military and politicians have their roles too (though I bristle at 'policital class').
If you would need to sell something in a time there aren't many buyers and you needed the money, that kind of people can help you liquidate your asset.
A lot of the times this happens because people make bad investments, but I'm not sure it's his fault.
Being super patient is also a key attribute for financial success.
1. People who love taking advantage of capitalism. 2. People who begrudgingly take advantage of capitalism. 3. People who understand capitalism but pout about it. 4. People too stupid to understand capitalism.
x: understanding capitalism y: success in capitalism z: supporting capitalism
All of these are slightly correlated, but only in rough outline.
> But this guy just buys low, sells high, and uses other people's money to do so?