[Adrox]

This article sounds like “classicism” upside down, all “elite people” are boring, plastic, superficial, all the same, despair poor people, focused only on money… Blablah.

She finished with the drug dealer example, what if she went to a “gang-meeting” or Magic the Gathering meeting and tried to ask the same questions that she claims are not answered at this parties:

“ How do people talk about money? What makes people prestigious? What kind of traits influence social standing? How familiar are people with evaluating quality of research? How private are we supposed to keep gossip?”

Would she have clear or better answers?

[photochemsyn]

People with large amounts of money/property/assets often do have one thing in common that explains much of this stereotype - they're afraid that someone is going to come and try to take it all away from them. If they're a wealthy family, then they're often worried that one of their family members will squander all the wealth so that's often a subject of discussion - who has access to the funds? I've known a few such families, they're often fairly miserable in their internal dynamics.

It all seems a bit futile, though, the extraction of wealth from the economy via the neoliberal program and the creation of wealthy lifestyles. What's happened in the USA is that the neoliberals vacuumed all the wealth out of the middle class, so now it's basically posh and prole with a big gap between them. It's as if it the USA has become late 19th century Britain (certainly the educational system is going that way). It has all the unpleasant vibes of a dying Empire.

One notion from the article that's very true is this: Or does she (and everyone else here) habitually exaggerate their productivity?

That's perhaps a central myth that must be maintained, that the USA is a meritocracy where hard work and hustle is the route to wealth, when in reality it has more to do with inheritance than anything else. Some people from wealthy families do squander their inheritance, but even then their social networks tend to keep them from falling below the poverty line.

The fact that most wealth is in the hands of a lazy aristocratic class that isn't (with some exceptions) using it to build new research laboratories or develop novel technologies, while China rushes full speed ahead (ever see Shenzhen?), doesn't bode well for the future of the USA.

[lotsofpulp]

> What's happened in the USA is that the neoliberals vacuumed all the wealth out of the middle class, so now it's basically posh and prole with a big gap between them.

Perhaps it had something to do with billions of people worth of labor coming online willing to work for lower prices than Americans, in conjunction with advanced in automation, computing, transportation, etc. Supply and demand, result in lower prices for the type of labor that could be done elsewhere for cheaper, and so it was. Any attempt to stop the labor arbitrage would have made the US uncompetitive on the global scale.

Seems like a simpler explanation than a conspiracy by some nebulous tribe called “neoliberals”.

[closedloop129]

>What's happened in the USA is that the neoliberals vacuumed all the wealth out of the middle class, so now it's basically posh and prole with a big gap between them.

What is preventing the former middle class proles from reorganizing and creating wealth for themselves?

[sinenomine]

Pretty obvious competitive pressure channeled upon middle class by the upper class in the US:

https://www.axios.com/2019/12/29/trump-att-outsourcing-h1b-v...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshoring#United_States

This could be summed up in a certain passe word, and this word is "globalism". There was a moment when the usual suspects were scared: occupy wall street, and colossal media and political resources were spent since then to pacify the mob, redirecting the narrative towards bottomless fractal of idpol.

I guess there is little left to do for (lower-) middle class Americans, except moving to the EU and living the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Fire_(novel) dream.

[JetSpiegel]

They are too busy working to pay the inflated rents that fuel the same elite.

[guelo]

neoliberals but not Reagan conservatives?

[photochemsyn]

It's the same picture. Reagan and Bush and Clinton and GW and Obama and Trump have all supported neoliberal trade policies that allowed US manufacturers to move production out of the country to take advantage of cheap labor. The agreements (GATT, NAFTA, WTO, TPP, etc.) were backed by all of those presidents, if not publicly than certainly privately, and now by Biden. Of course they're all just Wall Street puppets, 'democracy in America' is a bad joke, and the politicians are really best understood as little more than corporate middle managers.

[Kerrick]

I have a history attending Magic: the Gathering tournaments, both local and regional. I know you're not actually asking, but I thought this was a fun exercise:

- How do people talk about money?

Money is completely avoided, but prices are regularly discussed. Almost all casual trades are facilitated with the use of apps that tell you the current market prices of cards, and trading partners usually try to get within a dollar of matching value. This can be hilarious when making high-value trades, like when A has a $50 card that N wants, and N has a $70 card that A wants--there's a whole song and dance around finding the extra $20 of value from A's collection. Words like "throw-in" and concepts like the liquidity of said throw-ins get bandied about.

Wealth, however, is a very taboo topic. Magic, especially at regional tournaments that have entry fees, travel expenses, hotels, and metagames that require the use of multi-hundred-dollar decks to compete are nearly universally attended by two kinds of people. The most obvious are middle class folks for whom this is their hobby and vacation. Their coworkers and social peers take up things like skiing, photography, mountain biking, classic car repair, and other gear-and-time-intensive hobbies. Magic is just another one of those, with built-in social events. The other are working class people for whom this is an extremely important hobby, and for whom their Magic expenses are an almost-too-high amount of their spending. But in any interaction between two strangers at a Magic event, you'll almost always see the latter guiding money-related discussions ("the price of the format is too high because you have to constantly change your deck" / "who is this new collector edition even for" / etc). The former, meanwhile, pretend to also be working class to avoid difficult discussions about money. This is such an important tactic that many people who have multi-thousand-dollar decks will hand-wave away the price of their deck by saying they got the cards when they were an order of magnitude cheaper--regardless of whether that's the truth.

- What makes people prestigious?

In the competitive scene, winning. Nearly universally, prestige comes with winning a lot, over a large amount of time. Note that this doesn't require always winning, because even the best players barely break 70% win rates. And because of that variance, winning big but only once or twice also doesn't confer prestige, and instead gets derisively written off as somebody "spiking" a tournament, implying that it was all a bunch of lucky matches and the person doesn't deserve their win. Some people will try to gain this kind of prestige by winning only a little bit and then writing strategy articles; or by playing a lot without winning much and writing metagame articles. That rarely works.

In the casual scene, people claim to avoid the concept of prestige, as though having traits that make one prestigious in that social circle turns the social circle into a competitive scene. But the truth is that prestige in a casual circle comes from coming up with creative ideas for decks (or even just combinations of cards that can be folded into other decks).

- What kind of traits influence social standing?

Social standing on the large scale is influenced by content creation. Content creators (of podcasts, articles, videos, or streams) tend to be higher up on the social hierarchy, even if they don't have prestige. On the smaller scale, social standing within playgroups or among local gaming store regulars comes from apparent kindness and honesty.

- How familiar are people with evaluating quality of research?

On the whole, pretty poor. Frank Karsten is nearly universally known for applying statistics to deck building, which goes to show just how few others are known for what should be a prerequisite of good deck building. Gut feeling has a huge influence even on professional teams, and superstition reigns supreme among casual players.

- How private are we supposed to keep gossip?

Generally, very private. When people don't show up to a tournament, very few questions are asked and very few details are given. Usually it's just assumed that "life happened" and they'll be back next time, even if that's not the case. Even pro teams don't do much gossiping about their strategies for an upcoming tournament. A bit of an extreme counter-example is the Gaby Spartz / LSV drama, but that was less "Magic culture" gossip and more "Twitch culture" gossip.

[f17]

Her portrayal of the wealthy was downright kind (which makes sense, because at a party you won't really get to know them) compared to the actual behavior of such people.

I've worked for and with them. Sure, a few of them are decent people, just like anyone else--and a bit embarrassed by the wealth they have. Usually, they try to get away from it--they have a desire to prove themselves, so they go into academia or the military or seminary and try to reinvent themselves, hiding their origins entirely. (Fred Trump, who became a pilot, is another example.) That might be 20 percent, the ones who deliberately leave the world of the wealthy, the world of unearned opportunity, the same way poors leave small towns in which there is no opportunity. The other 80 percent, the ones who like being in that sphere, are depraved fucking ghouls, and there are really no exceptions because their world is itself ghoulish.

[DiggyJohnson]

> I’ve worked with and for them

That is just one very narrow window into an entire class of people. Do you can’t any of them your friend? Or your rival? Or family? You’re magnifying a single type of relationship into a general description of a class of people.

It would be like writing three paragraphs about Hispanics based on the many taco trucks you frequent.

[f17]

Do you know how offensive it is to compare an ethnic group (in fact, numerous ethnic groups) to the ultrarich hyperconsumptive ghouls who run the world?

People can choose not to be ultrarich. People can choose not to be ghouls. People who get the opportunity to run the world can either decline or step up and actually do a good job, unlike the shitbags currently in charge.

To make a comparison between (a) a group defined by ancestry and linguistic heritage, and (b) a group in which a person must deliberately choose membership, and must commit harmful acts in order to remain a part... is just insane.

[perpetuummobile]

You’re just asserting your conclusion without any logical elements. I don’t find this appeal to emotion and angry outburst persuasive.

[DiggyJohnson]

I know it can’t be that offensive because I’m not exactly in the ultarich group and I’m comfortable extending a bit of cognitive empathy their way.

The onus is on you to explain why certain groups of people cannot be analyzed like another group of people. And why different standards of analysis should apply to different groups.

[seibelj]

I know a lot of self made wealthy and it’s all about building businesses and investing in risky things. That takes a lot of talent and effort.

There is a different group of born wealthy, but they aren’t building new businesses.