I recently read a highly popular book called "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" just to see what the fuss was about. It currently ranks as the no.1 finance book of all time and it is best seller in many countries including USA, China and Japan. Personally, I found the book financially boring but the context of it's success and popularity quite insightful.
People who read books such as this one, are mainly concerned with making money. Now, aren't we all? Indeed when it comes to matters of personal finance, it does a great job explaining to amateurs how to trick the system — or better —learn how make money work for you instead of working for money. Pretty amazing right?
As I was I reading the book, some anthropological rather than financial insights confirmed some long held hypothesis I have formed throughout the years. Humans are not natural born thinkers, nor do they care much about each other. Most rather go after the fat, short term reward and have everyone else chasing their tales. Basically, we are all hypocrites (more or less) and like to point fingers left and a right in case we are the ones without a chair when the music finally stops (see music chairs game).
The Author of the book, basically describes how he grew up with two father figures — one of his own and another of his friend. His dad was a poor, government employee professor and the other was a rich self-made business man. More or less, the book explains how poor people like his dad invest in liabilities by working for money while rich people, like his friend's dad, concentrate on assets, having money working for them. Really, this is all what the book is all about if you are bored reading it. Economics 101.
Throughout the books a noob will find out how fucked the system is and how basically rich people get richer. For example, when poor people ask for a raise, the rich people create corporations and increase their bonuses so they can avoid taxes. As a result, wages shrink and the gap between rich and poor widens even more. In other words, the government — which poor people support, turns and fucks them over. Try to say to most people that the government is in bed with corporations and they will discredit you as a conspiracy theorist. Try to tell them in a book how to make money that this is the case and they will worship your book as best seller.
Yet, this is not the most fucked up part. The interesting part is that the book teaches you how to cheat the system using the law. Aka, the system that most people elect. Remember. This book is a best seller so more or less democracy favors it. In one hand we have people that elect a system that is designed specifically to fuck most people over and from the other you have the same folk buying the book in order to learn how to fuck everyone else except themselves.
People who fear for anarchy might be correct after all. You see, if everyone had their money working for them (aka if everyone were investors and businessmen) then essentially there would be no factory workers, no nannies, no teachers, no garbage men, no specialized workers. Everyone will be sitting in their offices, clicking away in front of screens investing in stocks, bonds and real estate. For the proponents of the book, somehow specialized wage slaves would magically emerge out of nowhere to support their status.
Earlier in life, I have worked in dishrooms for years. Later on, I enjoyed the fruits of high-end investment. Although I never owned my own mansion or slept in the street, I believe I lived (almost) in the entire spectrum of wealth and most experiences that people crave. I adhere to anarchic and capitalistic ideals and have no respect for politics or bullshit rhetorics. Nonetheless, I can assure you something rich people almost never admit: Investing and making money is the easiest thing one can do while working on the lower end of the labour spectrum is the hardest, most exhausting and most humiliating. There is no "charisma" or "brains" in investing. It is 90% luck and one success giving birth to another. This is why you hear rich people say that only the first million is the hardest. Most people that make money from owning a business have the right connections and "insiders" to keep things rolling. A 10 word tip 10 can make you more than than a small country's entire GDP. Again, this is the awesome system that we have created and what most people crave — hence the high success of the book worldwide. Human hypocrisy at it's highest. We want equality and fairness as long as we are getting fucked. If someone shows us a book how to fuck other people over then we have no problem ditching our principles.
When I see people in the business and investment world boast about their success, claiming that they are "worth" it, I pity their arrogance. The cause for this pedantic behaviour is rather simple every single time: superficial beliefs and poor understanding of statistics. They will say things like "I have worked hard for this money in the past" or "I spend hours and hours on courses". They are always few as one would expect from a normal statistical distribution. Yet finding themselves in that position appear to be a grandiose accomplishment since the entire system supports such as ridiculous system. At the end of the day I ask them this: "Haven't we all tried our best?".
Humans tend to over-amplify their impact in order to explain certain outcomes. We all do it. I saw it here on Steemit as well. Early adopters and people with some lucky connections became whales fast — with possibly a little time spent in chatting or getting involved in some projects and producing some content. The whole effort might took 2-3 months tops for them. After that most of these people shut their engines but their rewards stayed and multiplied. They will never have any idea how it takes someone to produce good content day after day for a year to reach 1/10 of what they have. The only had to endure this for a month. It became a fond memory.
The ironic part? Most of these 'lucky guys' on Steemit got probably fucked over in the real world (and without it might still do). They most likely had some other people shoving the same excuses down their throat as the ones they use now in order to explain their own position. Same exact principle as with the people enjoying "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" while getting up and voting for the same system at the end of the day. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
Through the dawn of time most humans have been aiming to take advantage of other humans while in the meantime trying to deny it. We do this by setting up systems that are strategically hypocritical. Whether those are online, offline, blockchain or no blockchain, it makes no difference. The pyramid has only one path, the top. Rest assured that no secret society, no aliens or any other superior entity has put this in place. We did. The responsible ones are our mothers, teachers, friends and neighbors. Much like the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", we are short sighted hypocrites. We will continue supporting the system because some fools will make us rich by working for money. In the meantime we will strive to find out secrets and schemes how to have the money work for us by most likely screwing others. And we are ok with this. In our mind "this is how things are" because most of us agreed that it is ok. As long as we are biological beings dictated by the laws of evolution this is the only game in town. Adapt or perish.
