Before we dismiss the money taboo as something that obviously hurts people (which it does), I wonder what is the upside? What are the situations in life where not discussing money is the right thing to do? I suppose, if you win a lottery but don’t tell anyone, you are less likely to be robbed or have your kids kidnapped. (But you still need some advice on how to use the money wisely.)
From the class-war perspective, money taboo obviously benefits rich people. Their family probably already hires an expert to manage the assets, so the rich kids can get advice from their parents and also use the expert. Kids born in poor families won’t get good advice, so if they happen to win a lottery—or just a well-paying job—they will probably waste that money somehow, keeping them in their place. This however does not explain why the poor people also enforce the taboo, instead of cooperating with each other. Or is the causality the other way round, like inheriting a cultural taboo against discussing money is one of those things that keep people poor? But sometimes the taboo is strategically enforced from the top, like when your boss tells you not to discuss your salary with your colleagues.
I am generally oblivious to many status games, so I don’t feel the need to compete with others at spending. Spending is instrumental. When I was a kid, I hated the fact that some of my classmates had a computer and I did not; but that’s because computers are fun (and later also turned out to be useful). If someone has a very expensive shirt or socks… I most likely won’t even notice. -- Okay, technically, spending money on status is also instrumental. But it’s an instrument I don’t know how to use well anyway, so why bother wasting money on it.
To the list of financial stupidities, I would also add how people automatically increase their expenses when their income increases. Like, I get it that poor people live paycheck to paycheck. But when a software developer also lives paycheck to paycheck, something is wrong. (People usually don’t disclose this explicitly, but if they worry too much about whether the salary arrives on 10th or 15th of the month, I assume they do.) Having more money, in general, should make your life less stressful, shouldn’t it?
Thinking about why the rich people can’t get more prestige by redistributing their money to the poor… maybe it’s because instead of having many small competing tribes, the society is interconnected and then separated again by social class. -- Like, imagine that you could randomly assign people to dozen tribes, and magically make everyone care about their tribe a lot. Each tribe would have its millionaires. And some of them would be willing to help the poor people from their tribe, because this would make the tribe as a whole more powerful. And the poor people would appreciate that someone made their tribe more powerful; they would see the millionaires from their tribe not as competitors, but as allies against the other tribes. So, I suppose this is kinda the mechanism that worked in the past, whether the “tribe” was a literal tribe, or perhaps a city. -- But in our society, it is all interconnected, and then people sort themselves out mostly by their social class, so instead of millionaires in each tribe we get a separate millionaire tribe.
I’ve seen thousands of people telling him he’s a piece of shit for daring to mention it and in the same breath asking him for charity
I suppose, if you ask someone for charity, it lowers your status… but if you ask someone for charity while telling him he’s a piece of shit, that balances it somehow. It may reduce your chances, but they were already low anyway. (Is this analogical to catcalling?)
Many poor people are actually ashamed to ask for money, or even to accept it when it is freely offered. The latter is somewhat mysterious to me, especially in situations where it is already established that they are poor and in dire need of money (so it is not like they would reveal this fact by accepting the money).
Before we dismiss the money taboo as something that obviously hurts people (which it does), I wonder what is the upside? What are the situations in life where not discussing money is the right thing to do?
This is an important Chesterton’s Fence to identify.
Status games and social/family obligations and judgement are the main reasons NOT to discuss the reasons for your choices, nor too much detail about your current or projected situation. Envy is a real thing for many (most!) humans, even if it’s a little more rare (or better-hidden) in rationalist and high-IQ groups. Even fairly close friends can take your decisions which differ from theirs as a judgement on them, and react badly.
I wonder whether there is a strictly better solution, something that would preserve the obligations without incentivizing against becoming visibly rich.
For example, imagine that a group of people takes a vow (written, legally binding) that 20 years later each of them will redistribute 10% of their net worth to the rest of the group. That means, if they all have approximately the same wealth, no money will change hands (the amounts will cancel out on paper). But if one of them becomes a millionaire, they will distribute 10% of their wealth among the rest of the group.
With such vow, you would be happy if one of your friends becomes visibly rich, and you would gladly support them to become even more rich, because that would mean a payout waiting for you in the future. If they are a millionaire, you would wish them to become a billionaire instead!
Of course, this would not be so easy. People would be picky about whom to include in the group, and 20 years later would regret their choices. The millionaires would try various tax evasion techniques to minimize the amount they need to distribute. Perhaps it wouldn’t work at all, dunno.
In the past, people had all kinds of implied obligations, many of them sucked. Today, in theory we are free to make various kinds of contracts, in practice most people suck at designing contracts and coordination is hard.
Of course, this would not be so easy. People would be picky about whom to include in the group, and 20 years later would regret their choices. The millionaires would try various tax evasion techniques to minimize the amount they need to distribute. Perhaps it wouldn’t work at all, dunno.
Tax evasion might decrease taxes, but not necessarily ‘net worth’.
Yeah. But there are techniques (perhaps unrelated to tax evasion) for decreasing net worth, that the millionaire might use to avoid paying the 10%. Politicians use them to pretend they didn’t get rich while in the office. Divorcees use them to reduce alimony. Criminals use them to not appear suspiciously rich.
For example, “this is not my property, it all belongs to my wife and/or children”. Or it is owned by a shell company, which is owned by another shell company, which is owned by… oops, this one is registered in a country that does not disclose this information. Depending on the exact definition of “net worth”, the money could be (temporarily) converted to something that technically does not count as “net worth”.
(There is also an opposite problem, that sometimes the net worth is overestimated. For example, if you own a large fraction of shares of some company, their total value is calculated as “value of 1 share × the number of shares you own”, which ignores the fact that if you actually started selling the shares, that would automatically drive their price down.)
Hm. You may have made a case for not using ‘net worth’. (Though what else to use isn’t clear.) At the same time, it’s also not clear how much that would be an issue. (Is the practice more common among billionaires than millionaires perhaps?)
Such a thing, if done at all, might make more sense taking in to account the plans the people involved have for the future, i.e. they’re all doing something risky which could pay out big.
For most groups, the obligations are not written nor legally binding. They’re implied and illegible, and VERY hard to change, or even talk rationally about.
In fact, most contracts you can imagine are un-enforceable—only some narrow topics are in the overton window of contracts that can be discussed, and only some of those are in realms that many courts will enforce.
For your specific (group agrees to share 10% of individual wealth after 20 years), it would be tricky to adjust for expected net worth (why would someone with better prospects agree?), and you’d need some way to handle entry and exit (or just decide not to have any new social contacts, I guess).
I don’t see a solution here, other than secrecy, at least among those who aren’t very-well-trusted rational individuals in pretty close relationships. Which describes vanishingly small groups.
OR maybe we bite the bullet. Take the Scandinavian approach, and publish tax returns, or further—publish all wealth and income worldwide. Get through the strife and pain that would happen in many regions and in many groups, and those who survive can learn to stop worrying about it. A guy can dream, huh?
Many poor people are actually ashamed to ask for money, or even to accept it when it is freely offered. The latter is somewhat mysterious to me, especially in situations where it is already established that they are poor and in dire need of money (so it is not like they would reveal this fact by accepting the money).
Does not seem so mysterious to me. Even if everyone already know that you’re poor, deliberately asking for money (or even accepting charity) moves you to Officially Poor People™ and strongly increase your risk of feeling like a burden. Also, unless you’ve been poor all your life, I suppose that local gossipmongers can be quite nasty if they catch you accepting charity (“I never thought they would stoop so low!”).
Some people are willing to kill themselves rather than being ashamed to ask for money (this is quite mysterious even to me)
The evolutionary explanation is that if you’re a burden on enough people who are genetically close to you, then by reducing their chance of passing on their genes you also reduce the chance of passing your own. So if it’s unlikely you will pass your own genes by yourself, or if the group can’t support everyone when it includes you, then the optimal reproductive decision might be to leave the group and alleviate the burden, and one way to do that is suicide.
It’s one of those sad evolutionary adaptations that are no longer relevant in the modern world and now only cause harm. Today even if you are a burden on someone it’s never so drastic that killing yourself helps anyone.
These are statements whose truth can’t be discussed, only claimed with filtered evidence. Like politics, this requires significant reframing to sidestep the epistemic landmines.
Can you elaborate? I agree this a difficult risky topic to discuss, and I tried to evade the landmines while writing it (like accidentally implying that this evolutionary instinct is somehow good), but though I very much like and agree with Yes requires the possibility of no, and know what filtered evidence is, I don’t really understand the first part of your comment. Also I’d be interested to hear what you think are the epistemic landmines.
If you are about to say something socially neutral or approved, but a salient alternative to what you are saying comes with a cost (or otherwise a target of appeal to consequences), integrity in making the claim requires a resolve to have said that alternative too if it (counterfactually) turned out to be what you believe (with some unclear “a priori” weighing that doesn’t take into account your thinking on that particular topic). But that’s not enough if you want others to have a fair opportunity to debate the claim you make, for they would also incur the cost of the alternative claims, and the trial preregistration pact must be acausally negotiated with them and not just accepted on your own.
See this comment and its parent for a bit more on this. This is a large topic, related to glomarization and (dis)honesty. These contraptions have to be built around anti-epistemology to counteract its distorting effects.
Before we dismiss the money taboo as something that obviously hurts people (which it does), I wonder what is the upside? What are the situations in life where not discussing money is the right thing to do? I suppose, if you win a lottery but don’t tell anyone, you are less likely to be robbed or have your kids kidnapped. (But you still need some advice on how to use the money wisely.)
From the class-war perspective, money taboo obviously benefits rich people. Their family probably already hires an expert to manage the assets, so the rich kids can get advice from their parents and also use the expert. Kids born in poor families won’t get good advice, so if they happen to win a lottery—or just a well-paying job—they will probably waste that money somehow, keeping them in their place. This however does not explain why the poor people also enforce the taboo, instead of cooperating with each other. Or is the causality the other way round, like inheriting a cultural taboo against discussing money is one of those things that keep people poor? But sometimes the taboo is strategically enforced from the top, like when your boss tells you not to discuss your salary with your colleagues.
I am generally oblivious to many status games, so I don’t feel the need to compete with others at spending. Spending is instrumental. When I was a kid, I hated the fact that some of my classmates had a computer and I did not; but that’s because computers are fun (and later also turned out to be useful). If someone has a very expensive shirt or socks… I most likely won’t even notice. -- Okay, technically, spending money on status is also instrumental. But it’s an instrument I don’t know how to use well anyway, so why bother wasting money on it.
To the list of financial stupidities, I would also add how people automatically increase their expenses when their income increases. Like, I get it that poor people live paycheck to paycheck. But when a software developer also lives paycheck to paycheck, something is wrong. (People usually don’t disclose this explicitly, but if they worry too much about whether the salary arrives on 10th or 15th of the month, I assume they do.) Having more money, in general, should make your life less stressful, shouldn’t it?
Thinking about why the rich people can’t get more prestige by redistributing their money to the poor… maybe it’s because instead of having many small competing tribes, the society is interconnected and then separated again by social class. -- Like, imagine that you could randomly assign people to dozen tribes, and magically make everyone care about their tribe a lot. Each tribe would have its millionaires. And some of them would be willing to help the poor people from their tribe, because this would make the tribe as a whole more powerful. And the poor people would appreciate that someone made their tribe more powerful; they would see the millionaires from their tribe not as competitors, but as allies against the other tribes. So, I suppose this is kinda the mechanism that worked in the past, whether the “tribe” was a literal tribe, or perhaps a city. -- But in our society, it is all interconnected, and then people sort themselves out mostly by their social class, so instead of millionaires in each tribe we get a separate millionaire tribe.
I suppose, if you ask someone for charity, it lowers your status… but if you ask someone for charity while telling him he’s a piece of shit, that balances it somehow. It may reduce your chances, but they were already low anyway. (Is this analogical to catcalling?)
Many poor people are actually ashamed to ask for money, or even to accept it when it is freely offered. The latter is somewhat mysterious to me, especially in situations where it is already established that they are poor and in dire need of money (so it is not like they would reveal this fact by accepting the money).
This is an important Chesterton’s Fence to identify.
Status games and social/family obligations and judgement are the main reasons NOT to discuss the reasons for your choices, nor too much detail about your current or projected situation. Envy is a real thing for many (most!) humans, even if it’s a little more rare (or better-hidden) in rationalist and high-IQ groups. Even fairly close friends can take your decisions which differ from theirs as a judgement on them, and react badly.
Ah yes—wealth (not kept secret) creates obligations.
I wonder whether there is a strictly better solution, something that would preserve the obligations without incentivizing against becoming visibly rich.
For example, imagine that a group of people takes a vow (written, legally binding) that 20 years later each of them will redistribute 10% of their net worth to the rest of the group. That means, if they all have approximately the same wealth, no money will change hands (the amounts will cancel out on paper). But if one of them becomes a millionaire, they will distribute 10% of their wealth among the rest of the group.
With such vow, you would be happy if one of your friends becomes visibly rich, and you would gladly support them to become even more rich, because that would mean a payout waiting for you in the future. If they are a millionaire, you would wish them to become a billionaire instead!
Of course, this would not be so easy. People would be picky about whom to include in the group, and 20 years later would regret their choices. The millionaires would try various tax evasion techniques to minimize the amount they need to distribute. Perhaps it wouldn’t work at all, dunno.
In the past, people had all kinds of implied obligations, many of them sucked. Today, in theory we are free to make various kinds of contracts, in practice most people suck at designing contracts and coordination is hard.
Tax evasion might decrease taxes, but not necessarily ‘net worth’.
Yeah. But there are techniques (perhaps unrelated to tax evasion) for decreasing net worth, that the millionaire might use to avoid paying the 10%. Politicians use them to pretend they didn’t get rich while in the office. Divorcees use them to reduce alimony. Criminals use them to not appear suspiciously rich.
For example, “this is not my property, it all belongs to my wife and/or children”. Or it is owned by a shell company, which is owned by another shell company, which is owned by… oops, this one is registered in a country that does not disclose this information. Depending on the exact definition of “net worth”, the money could be (temporarily) converted to something that technically does not count as “net worth”.
(There is also an opposite problem, that sometimes the net worth is overestimated. For example, if you own a large fraction of shares of some company, their total value is calculated as “value of 1 share × the number of shares you own”, which ignores the fact that if you actually started selling the shares, that would automatically drive their price down.)
Hm. You may have made a case for not using ‘net worth’. (Though what else to use isn’t clear.) At the same time, it’s also not clear how much that would be an issue. (Is the practice more common among billionaires than millionaires perhaps?)
Such a thing, if done at all, might make more sense taking in to account the plans the people involved have for the future, i.e. they’re all doing something risky which could pay out big.
For most groups, the obligations are not written nor legally binding. They’re implied and illegible, and VERY hard to change, or even talk rationally about.
In fact, most contracts you can imagine are un-enforceable—only some narrow topics are in the overton window of contracts that can be discussed, and only some of those are in realms that many courts will enforce.
For your specific (group agrees to share 10% of individual wealth after 20 years), it would be tricky to adjust for expected net worth (why would someone with better prospects agree?), and you’d need some way to handle entry and exit (or just decide not to have any new social contacts, I guess).
I don’t see a solution here, other than secrecy, at least among those who aren’t very-well-trusted rational individuals in pretty close relationships. Which describes vanishingly small groups.
OR maybe we bite the bullet. Take the Scandinavian approach, and publish tax returns, or further—publish all wealth and income worldwide. Get through the strife and pain that would happen in many regions and in many groups, and those who survive can learn to stop worrying about it. A guy can dream, huh?
Does not seem so mysterious to me. Even if everyone already know that you’re poor, deliberately asking for money (or even accepting charity) moves you to Officially Poor People™ and strongly increase your risk of feeling like a burden. Also, unless you’ve been poor all your life, I suppose that local gossipmongers can be quite nasty if they catch you accepting charity (“I never thought they would stoop so low!”).
Of course, things can get even worse. According to Wikipedia, the second most commonly listed motive for suicides in Japan is “Financial/Poverty related issues” (17% of suicides). Some people are willing to kill themselves rather than being ashamed to ask for money (this is quite mysterious even to me).
The evolutionary explanation is that if you’re a burden on enough people who are genetically close to you, then by reducing their chance of passing on their genes you also reduce the chance of passing your own. So if it’s unlikely you will pass your own genes by yourself, or if the group can’t support everyone when it includes you, then the optimal reproductive decision might be to leave the group and alleviate the burden, and one way to do that is suicide.
It’s one of those sad evolutionary adaptations that are no longer relevant in the modern world and now only cause harm. Today even if you are a burden on someone it’s never so drastic that killing yourself helps anyone.
These are statements whose truth can’t be discussed, only claimed with filtered evidence. Like politics, this requires significant reframing to sidestep the epistemic landmines.
Can you elaborate? I agree this a difficult risky topic to discuss, and I tried to evade the landmines while writing it (like accidentally implying that this evolutionary instinct is somehow good), but though I very much like and agree with Yes requires the possibility of no, and know what filtered evidence is, I don’t really understand the first part of your comment. Also I’d be interested to hear what you think are the epistemic landmines.
If you are about to say something socially neutral or approved, but a salient alternative to what you are saying comes with a cost (or otherwise a target of appeal to consequences), integrity in making the claim requires a resolve to have said that alternative too if it (counterfactually) turned out to be what you believe (with some unclear “a priori” weighing that doesn’t take into account your thinking on that particular topic). But that’s not enough if you want others to have a fair opportunity to debate the claim you make, for they would also incur the cost of the alternative claims, and the trial preregistration pact must be acausally negotiated with them and not just accepted on your own.
See this comment and its parent for a bit more on this. This is a large topic, related to glomarization and (dis)honesty. These contraptions have to be built around anti-epistemology to counteract its distorting effects.
I also saw you saying a similar thing here. I think there’s a top level post here waiting to be written. I’ll be glad to read it if you write it.