[FRIAM] What is Wealth for?

[Marcus Daniels]

Right.  This is one thing wrong with Los Alamos.   There isn’t just one boss, but a network of managers.   I’ve even had bosses make jokes like “You should really get a Tesla” (e.g. take on debt).   And it is easy to estimate the burn rate of employees if one has social ties to others at work (or if you live up there).    For most, the burn rate to income is even worse in the bay area, but at least there are other bosses available.   In a company town, you’re just screwed.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2021 7:42 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What is Wealth for?

What is the function of wealth? Most of the discussion above is about it's function for the person who has it, but I think about this a lot in terms of wealth's function for society. If I had to define social class, it would be based around the benefit society should receive from having a healthy middle class, and that is entirely dependent upon wealth (not income).

Lower Class - The lower class lacks significant wealth relative to their expenses. Their ability to stand up for themselves is miniscule, because one or two missed paychecks will wreck their lives.

Upper Class - The upper class has sizable wealth, relative to their expenses. They have so much wealth that they could quit out of the socio-economic game entirely and be just fine. They could not work again ever, or at least last many, many years without doing so. They could start a business, run it however they felt like, and if it never made money, had some loss, or even went bankrupt, they could simply continue living off of other wealth.

Middle Class - Between those extremes you have people with enough wealth to take a stand, but not enough wealth to check out of the game. A middle class person can, when told to do something they consider immoral, or even sufficiently unpleasant, quit their job and spend some time looking for a new one without worry. Is your boss abusive? Are work conditions unpleasant? Were you asked to break the law, or look the other way while others did? Is your company starting to abuse or take advantage of its customers? You can refuse to take part in it. You might quit, you might make them fire you. Either way, you can use your power as a moderately-wealthy employee to push back against your employer. When the middle class is small, that does something, but not a lot, because the corporation can turn to the lower class as needed to fill positions. When the middle class is large, this has a huge effect on how workplaces operate (and this is why working conditions are better in industries dominated by middle-class skilled labor).

I tend to think of the boundary conditions there as a cushion of between 6-months and 3 years. But you could certainly stretch that a bit. And note that this definition scales with cost of living. If you make $500,000 a year, but you would lose your house without the next two paychecks, you are functionally lower class, and your company will figure out how to abuse you as such. If you make $30,000 a year, spend every penny of your paycheck every month, but are quite happy with your current living conditions and have $30,000 in the bank, you are solidly middle class, and it will be harder for a boss to abuse you.

The function of a middle-class wealth is to organically do a huge chunk of the things we keep ineffectively trying to get laws to do. It reduces workplace abuse. It allows people to pursue things they are passionate about. It reigns in industry excess. It encourages more moral corporate action. Etc. If we wanted to accomplish those things, and we wanted to accomplish them through law, we would focus primarily on figuring out how laws could encourage savings*, and we would make moves to at least slightly reduce compulsive consumerism. Once you have a large middle class, companies would not be able to survive without accommodating the ability of middle class people to refuse unreasonable requests, and society as a whole will benefit.

*  Not weird 401K-style stock-market investment schemes with penalties if you try to touch the money early; regular, old-fashioned, savings. Bank account money, home equity, maybe a share in Cousin Steve's tree trimming business, cause you helped him get started.

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 2:02 PM jon zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com<mailto:jonzingale at gmail.com>> wrote:
so freaking cute.



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