On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 3:25 AM, Jean-Christophe Helary < [email protected]> wrote:
> Sure, but I still think that wanting to become rich and wanting to > exercise coercive power are two very different things. > Are they? What are the main reasons why people want more money? The obvious reason is to improve their material conditions of living. This works until you have accumulated enough money to make your life comfortable and your future reasonably secure. But why do people who are already financially secure want more money? Partly it is social norms that dictate that you should always want more money. Partly it is a love of money for its own sake, a condition that Keynes famously suggested should be "turned over with a shudder to specialists in mental disease". But, I do believe, a very large part of the attractiveness of being rich is being able to exercise power over others. Wall Streeters famously have an expression for this: "how much is your fuck-you money?, meaning that when you have a lot of money no one gets to tell you what to do, and conversely you get to tell other people what to do. -raghu.
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