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Eh, I think it's oversimplification to attribute it to a single motivation. There are definitely people like OP is describing, but there are also definitely the 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' types. And honestly I think a damn big percentage is just plain ol' fear of change wrapped in several layers of rationalization.
Another reason: it's really easy for unimaginative people to sound smart with cynicism. They'd rather be superior than be right.
"Look at that crash! I told you that flying machines can't work."
Oo yeah, for real. I kind of stumbled upon this in my teens (maybe everyone does), but luckily was able to snap out of it, woke up, and realised I could form flexible informed opinions that define my whole personality
"It's way easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they've been fooled."
A lot of people just lack critical thinking skills and imagination. A lot of people like being at the bottom of hierarchy. A lot of people like when people they dont like suffer, even if it means they do, too. A lot of people are religious. All of these things are plagues on our society, and a lot of them are done on purpose by those in power.
Its a lot of just world fallacy too
Or they are just brainwashed, and can't fathom another type of society after ~500 years of capitalism.
I've known far more Musk fanboys than I would have liked to, and I wouldn't say they see him or other genocidal pedophiles as gods or anything.
In fact, it's quite difficult to describe it or compare it to anything, because that sort of blind admiration just plain doesn't make any sense, and usually contradicts their other beliefs. Which is a big sign of being affected by propaganda.
They see people like Musk, and they see strength, if only because of their economic capabilities. They want a society of strength. A society where people hoard around the few to lift them up. A society that enables greatness. Somebody who can look mortality in the eyes and reject it. To bring us into the future with vitality.
What they fail to see is that by turning the mighty into gods, we turn ourselves into coggs. In the pursuit of lifting them up, we alienate ourselves from the meaningful. Makes us sacrifice for the superficial. We become lifeless and in fear of the meaningful.
I don't defend the rich but I also don't claim it's stupid hard to make 75k and up and I will never in my life say starting a career that can help you live comfortably is an impossible task.
I think the unwillingness to invest in one's self and to sacrifice your thought process of fuck climbing up the ladder, is what's hurting people's personal wealth growth.
I think that as much people are preserving themselves and not going into careers because they don't offer as many benefits as the boomers, I also think people are limiting themselves and I think that if you don't want to invest in your future, that's your own fault.
However, I do not agree with generational wealth but I don't disagree on passing a home down. If you're fortunate enough to have a house passed down to you, then that's what you are, fortunate.
I dont agree with trusifarians using their wealth to buy up more property or to be greedy and glutenous with their money.
I don't hate on the six figure earners but I think once you make 450k/year, you can start figuring out ways to better society.
I think once you hit a 20mil* net worth, you can figure out ways to help other people.
It's like the Stanford marshmallow experiment. It's not willpower, it's that people have been taught that any money we save will be lost.
We're all expected to invest or lose money to inflation. But most of us don't know anything about investing. So we trust our money to some Wall Street type, and then get called stupid when we pick the wrong dudes. But you don't get called stupid if you just spend the money now.
It's even worse in the USA where everyone has the specter of medical debt hanging over us. You can do everything right and then just get a massive forever debt from which bankruptcy can't save you. Better to spend the money on a community that might appreciate it.
And I pointed this out before that rich people inadvertently will end up becoming involved in politics, even if there was not interest or want to in the beginning or was never a goal; It's shocking how many of them end up getting to know their mayor at a personal level to leverage them.
Most don't leverage their local government for the better and it's rare to see it. It's rare that someone will like actually fund a food bank for a year and become involved in the community. Imagine having enough money to set a trust for a church to have an indefinite food bank? That would be so fucking cool, I would so do that if I had that kind of money to toss around. Or or or like buying old hospitals and completely demolishing them and putting up modern hospitals.
So we trust our money to some Wall Street type, and then get called stupid when we pick the wrong dudes.
99% of account managers and financial advisors are just some dude. The only sensible thing to invest in is an index fund like VOO, SPLG, FXAIX, IVV, or for non-US stuff, VEU, VSS, or something else based on an index appropriate to your needs.
Genuinely, the best known growth strategy in a capitalist market is also the lowest-brain strategy. Buy an index fund, and then do nothing.
Everything else is just giving money to someone else to do a worse job on average.
You're not wrong, but do you hear yourself? That's a terrifying alphabet soup of complicated choices. And in the next thread we'll talk about AI IPOs dumping on the index fund suckers before a collapse.
Yes, it's alphabet soup, but no, the choices are not complicated.
In USA? Buy VOO.
Not in USA? Buy VEU and maybe VOO if you want.
The world would be better if a bunch of people could just admit they are into mental BDSM and they are subs
Religion, narcissistic family members, social media algorithms, sandwich shops... all tuned to churn out subs.
I'm only okay with one of those.
(Also you forgot shipyards, BTW.)
As I heard someone else say recently, everything with conservatives is either team sports or cuck porn and it really seems that's true.
Conservatives are naturally a servile people. They desire to be ruled. They want a daddy.
They have been told that their sky daddy will actively judge their lives and they will get what sky daddy thinks they deserve. They have been told this so often and in so many ways that they now worship money. Money becomes the way for them to tell how sky daddy judges their lives. Obviously, this means that those who have more money are more beloved by sky daddy and therefore should be listened to and obeyed.
It's really true.
This is a mistake that many leftists do, thinking that people don't like authoritarianism. A lot of people crave for it
In theory, a benevolent dictatorship is a good system, that can cut through a lot of bureaucracy and enact good changes in a timely fashion. The obvious problems are who gets to be dictator and how do you keep the dictatorship benevolent.
If I could unilaterally make somebody a dictator and believed they would do what's best, I'd do it. But I don't know if there is such a person. To me it just seems like people believe in and trust certain public figures to agree with them, and enact the same changes they'd want.
Sort of? This is giving way to much logic to an emotional situation. The reason fanboys choose Musk isn't because he has leadership or patriarchal qualities, he just has money which they think is the same thing as being smart. They can project themselves on to him and experience his wealth or veneer of expertise vicariously through a fantasy.
This still is the relationship men have with patriarchs. It's just obfuscated by the fact that Piss-odor guy isn't competent in the ways associated with rulership
I think your interpretation is still too cerebral. People don't follow money because it's money. Money has become essential to our individual survival, so success with money is essentially conquering the threats to individual survival, and I think that is why people revere him and other billionaires.
At the end of the day, we're all shit scared of our own end, and we've been tricked into believing that money is our way out of that inevitability. Money is God, so those with lots of money are closer to God, if not a god themselves.
These heirarchies caused or exaserbated just about every major tragedy in history - war, genocide, slavery, rape, empire, colonialism, capitalism, etc.
But depending on how you look at it, 25-40% of humans just like heirarchies and want them, despite the misery they cause for both the empowered and disempowered.
That's a huge problem - fascism will likely always have a base of supporters to come back from no matter how many times we defeat it, and you just can't imprison/disenfranchise/exile that high a % of people for a wide variety of obvious reasons.
I fear this is a "this is who we are as an organism" problem that will follow our species wherever we go.
I'd like to see how you got to "hierarchies = fascism". I also think that the people who want hierarchies are much higher than 25-40%.
Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it's the precursor to all supremacist thinking.
If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%. Die hard as in will support those candidates no matter how poorly they're doing. Support levels wax and wane as anxiety goes up and down, or as supremacist candidates tend to be winning or losing, but the core support base for authoritarian ideals routinely comes out around 25-40% across most western countries.
Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it’s the precursor to all supremacist thinking.
It isn't because "some people are better than others", it's because some people are better than others at leading. Leadership is a skill, and it can be learned and practiced just like any other skill. You could say, "Hey, Mary is good at fixing things, let's put her in charge of repairs. Margaret is good at planning projects and organizing people, let's put her in leadership."
And no, it doesn't imply that the person leading should have total control over everything or that they can't be held accountable.
If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%.
You said "humans who want hierarchies" and you're equating that with "support for supremacist candidates". Does that mean that if I support a centrist or a left-wing candidate, then I don't want hierarchies? I can tell you, there are certainly not that many anarchists in the world. 60-75% of the population?