Comment on The biggest privilege rich people have is to be extremely stupid on purpose.
Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I had an opposing shower thought the other day so I’m going to play devil’s advocate on this one.
I think in a world of rational, good-faith actors (which I’m not arguing we live in), this is both by-design, and optimal at society scale.
Think about those things you’re good at, and the things you’re not so good at. I’m really good with computers, my time is most efficiently spent troubleshooting and building technology stacks. This skillset is in demand enough that I make a comfortable living doing it.
I’m comfortable enough that I have time to learn other skills when needed, but not comfortable enough to hire out all the otherwise commodity tasks I need done. A leak in the roof, a sink that needs replacing, some cat6 through the walls, leveling a floor before replacing broken tile from the 80’s… You get the idea. I can do drywall and other general contractor work but I’m not great at it. It takes me longer to end up with a worse end product than a professional, and I don’t enjoy doing it.
Every Saturday I spend doing drywall could, at society-scale, be much more efficiently spent building a k8s cluster or helping a scientist build software for research. Just like the guy doing my drywall should have a me on the other end of a phone when he needs a new laptop, or his mother gets malware.
When people hit “rich” the unspoken meaning is supposed to be that their time is valuable enough that society deems it more useful to spend it outside of commodity tasks. That seems like a good fundamental design… say what you will about its current real-world implementation.
That argument only works to explain and support the existence of millionaires and multimillionaires. With millions of dollars you can hire out most menial tasks easily. Especially if you’re still living in a reasonable home.
It falls apart when you reach excessive levels of wealth. Your first few million buys you a lot of time to specialize, but your $101st million buys you less. Even moreso when you get to billions.
What you described is the division of labour, which has nothing to do with what OP is talking about. Of course woodcutters, generally speaking, don’t need to know quantum mechanics; of course engineers aren’t generally well versed in military history, etc. But “people generally only know their chosen subjects in detail” isn’t groundbreaking, nor is it what OP said.
NONE_dc@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
No, you’re confusing being stupid with being ignorant. THEY’RE NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL. All stupid people are ignorant, but not all ignorant people are stupid.
An ignorant person can be wise if they are aware of their own ignorance and asks for help or assistance; but an ignorant person becomes stupid the moment they forget that they’re ignorant and takes care of matters beyond their capabilities.
A poor person is condemned to be constantly aware of their own ignorance, since they don’t have the purchasing power or the necessary influence to compensate; the rich, on the other hand, is convinced that their economic success also implies intellectual success, and there is no one to contradict them, because they are the one who puts the money, so they are the one who makes the decisions.
There are rich people who are wise when, for example, they hire other people to solve their blind spots, and obviously there are stupid poor people, millions of them, purely for statistics.
But is this the best and most efficient way for rational beings to organize themselves? Let me be REALLY skeptical about that.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Stupid is a lack of awareness.
NONE_dc@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
EXACTLY!! 👏👏👏