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by smolder
993 days ago
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> I mean, your consumption is on the scale of people’s whole livelihoods. No, and particularly not my "conspicuous consumption" which is what I said. > this “anyone who has more than me is necessarily evil” mentality. That's not my mentality. I didn't say necessarily evil or even evil. I'm postulating on the motivations of people who have access to every material comfort they could ever want, but still want 1000x that because someone else has 100x that. I'm nothing like them, nor the people in my wealth range that seem to have similar motivations --splurging on status signaling, doing anything to get more. It's irrelevant that I am richer than 3rd world people. |
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I mean, it is. There are multitudes in rural Asia and Africa who don’t have a fraction of a fraction of what you have and would regard most of your consumption as “conspicuous”.
And you may not have said the word “evil”, but your intent was quite clear. I’m suggesting that, as I said, your baseline for what someone has, and their baseline for it, are inherently different, and that ascribing motive to that doesn’t make sense.
Mostly, I think that pretending your ostentatious wealth is actually totally ok to flaunt, just because it’s yours and you don’t care about the people who see it as flaunting and ostentatious, is a moral relative, just like the one you’re suggesting is so bad.