dagblog - Comments for "The Rich Believe They Are Under Attack"

Excellent letter.

Emerson2 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:23:13 +0000

In reply to The Rich Believe They Are Under Attack

Excellent letter.

(No subject)

Donal — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:56:07 +0000

In reply to The Rich Believe They Are Under Attack

(No subject)

Richard Day — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:17:37 +0000

In reply to The super-rich are under

The company selling

Verified Atheist — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:13:05 +0000

In reply to I loved your letter. I went

The company selling Batmobiles has gone out of business. Of course, the people giving away the tanks will now also give you a Batmobile instead, if you prefer...

P.S. Stephenson's essay was also written prior to the introduction of OSX. Why is this important? Because OSX is based on BSD Unix. In a sense, MacOS is also gone.

I loved your letter. I went

arc400 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:31:39 +0000

In reply to I struggled with this. I

I loved your letter. I went back and read Cooperman's and appreciated your reply even more.

Re Jobs. I posted something on Steve Jobs shortly after his death. I didn't want to be disrespectful, but I was trying to remind people about the still-alive Richard Stallman, the open source guy who developed the operating system Jobs used in his original Apple PC. Stallman was the one who 'created' the system, based on an underlying hacker belief that these innovations should belong to everyone. I.E. Free. Take it, use it, develop it into something even better. Jobs took that stuff and developed it into something proprietary, patentable, belonging only to him, which, I think was the point of your blog. Some people assume responsibility, not for creation, but control over other people's creations.

I refer everyone to a fantastic piece by Neal Stephenson about Jobs, Wozniak, and the missed opportunity of Open Source:

http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml

Thanks again for a great letter!

Cooperman just invested $1.4

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:40:23 +0000

In reply to You're probably right. I

Cooperman just invested $1.4 billion in Blackberry/RIM - he's literally insane.

Better to engage the guy on the corner with Tourette's waving the broken umbrella in his smelly rags.

You're probably right. I

Michael Maiello — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:36:15 +0000

In reply to Destor, after reading your

You're probably right. I picked him because of the tone of his letter, which seems to offer some introspection and even some willingness to be persuaded. I suspect, but havem't checked, that Cooperman voted for Obama. I suppose a quick jaunt through opensecrets.org who tell me that for sure.

I thought you glossed over

Ethanator — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:50:47 +0000

In reply to I thought I was

I thought you glossed over that distinction, and I think it's key. Cooperman wants to assume the mantle of "job creator," and it's at best a stretch to put him in the same class as a Gates, Ford or Carnegie (at worst, it's torturing the comparison until it screams "Stop!"). And I think the best avenue of attack against his overall argument is to point out how bogus his attempt at conflating what he's done to become wealthy versus what those titans of industry did is.

The American people need to understand that very little of the wealth "created" over the last thirty years has anything to do with building a better mousetrap. Rather, the new class of wealthy got there by trading inflated paper assets between themselves and arbitraging the standard of living of American workers versus those in the developing world. Allowing greedy scum like Cooperman to classify himself along with those who actually produce and put people to work only makes it harder for the American people to understand that higher taxes are necessary in order to stop him and his type from gambling with their economic future.

Destor, after reading your

Peter Schwartz — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:15:18 +0000

In reply to The Rich Believe They Are Under Attack

Destor, after reading your post and Cooperman's letter and this thread, I wonder why you chose to engage with what is, to me, by now a pretty standard rich man's plaint.

His point of departure is so far from yours, where could you two meet and truly discuss or even argue profitably?

He thinks he is being picked on unfairly.

He thinks he worked hard for everything he got.

He also thinks he owns what he's got so shouldn't be forced to give it up.

He thinks he already makes an outsized contribution to society, so why are we bothering him.

He thinks that, without him, other people wouldn't have jobs.

He is unconscious in the way that those who feel they represent "the majority" or the "majority view" or just "the right view" often are. Can't accuse him of much introspection.

So he sees even a speck of partisanship from Obama as ruining the tone and overlooks the hyper-partisanship of Bush because their views coincided.

He does admit to some luck as having contributed to his success, so it's possible he has a slightly guilty conscience. That might be a way in.

I think we're wandering into

Peter Schwartz — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:07:23 +0000

In reply to Ah, this is kind of it...

I think we're wandering into the "big assumptions" that undergird more specific arguments.

• If by "giving some thought to" you mean rectifying the lopsided inequality we have now, I'm totally onboard. I've had many, many arguments with old, and now very successful, high school mates who portray themselves as latter day Paul Bunyans who wandered out into the virgin forest with nothing more than a sharp ax and a dream and built an empire "out of nothing." It's delusional. No one gets rich on his own, and a lot of luck is involved, not to mention chicanery in some case (as seems to be the case with Cooperman in particular).

• But if you mean we need to level out the end result so that everyone gets an equal dose of success under the assumption that success has nothing to do with talent and hard work, then I'd have a hard time with that. So yeah, that unknown guitarist beavering away in his apartment might be better than Clapton, but no, he doesn't "deserve" the success that Clapton has for all the obvious reasons, the main one being: He didn't get his arse out of his apartment.

That said, if Clapton happened to hear the guy and was (of course) impressed, it would be a good thing for him to give the guy some help getting his art out there.