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When is it "enough" money?

I live in India and I am pretty poor, I hope to be middle-class/upper-middle class someday, but I have noticed something sinister from some people who are extremely privileged, they can be still be bought with money.

Lack of money makes you desperate, and paranoid, and comparison drives you crazy, hard to be morally perfect as a poor man, but I see actors who have made insane amounts of money on the backs of their Indian fans like Shahrukh Khan, Canada Kumar, Ajay Devgan, Hrithik Roshan and many more who are well-respected in the industry and who still can sell their own fans financial ruin (gambling) or death (Tobacco) in ads. I thought the point of being rich was that you could be more moral, what is the use of getting rich if you use your influence and fame to do more harm than good?

Also, all the actors mentioned above have made numerous movies about patriotism, many in their private conversations like to brag how much they “love their country… blah… blah… blah”, but yet they feel ok selling Tobacco to their fans who made them what they are.

I have a cousin who worships Shahrukh Khan and who took up Pan(Tobacco) because he was naive and because he probably thought it was “cool” since his favorite actor (on whom he has modeled all aspects of his life was selling tobacco), thankfully we were able to get him off that a few years ago, but he spent money like water and he gained worse health for it. He got off easy, many suffered financial ruin or even death. So, when is it fucking enough!? When will these people have enough money?

edit: It’s just not India, it happens everywhere (just watch CoffeeZilla to see more prime examples of this) Also, I am not saying I am perfect, if someone gave me an insane amount of money to sell Pan, I will, judge me if you will. But, I like to think if I had “enough” money, I would be immune to the attractions of blood money, I like to think I can try to be as moral as I can be then, but these people almost make me think that there is never “enough” money.

edit 2: Kurt Vonnegut’s Quote on Money is quite interesting

xilliah ,

I know someone who earns 10s of thousands of euros a month. His girlfriend, who has lived with him for many years, had to sell her bicycle to be able to afford something she really needed. He hasn’t ever given me the impression that he’s happy. Some people just are that way and our society enables their behavior.

fckreddit ,

I find celeb ads pretty disgusting. Watched ads for gambling apps? They almost always feature a celeb. All I can say is, we have to know that celebs will do whatever for more money. They don’t care about their audience. The onus is on us to not get influenced by them.

Flyberius ,
@Flyberius@hexbear.net avatar

I never liked Ray Winston, but seeing him in all the gambling ads in the UK made me want to car bomb him. A self-satisfied, wide-boy EastEnder conning working class people into wasting their money on an addiction. Fuck him, I hope he has a stroke

axzxc1236 ,

If I can suddenly in coma for a year, wake up and pay my bills, it’s enough.

9point6 ,

I’ve always liked the distinction between needing your job to survive and being okay if it disappeared for at least a few months

If you have enough to mean you can take your time to look for a good job if you ever lost your current one without having to change your lifestyle, that’s the minimum bound of “enough” IMO. Anything else involves compromise, so therefore is not “enough” by definition.

I’d say the idealised “enough” is when you can do whatever you decide to do without having to worry if you can afford it.

Both of these depend on the kind of lifestyle people lead and how much more they would do if they didn’t have to think about money. For some people that idealised “enough” is unachievable, because they’ve decided what they want to do is make more money.

People that end up chasing money for the sake of having more money will often do so in spite of any moral compass. And FWIW I don’t think there are a high percentage people out there that make “enough” by either of my definitions and that opens up all the exploitation that forces people into shitty jobs and situations they wouldn’t otherwise do

dumblederp , (edited )
@dumblederp@aussie.zone avatar

You get to define your own sense of what “enough” money is. Many people will never have enough.

The philosopher Diogenes was sitting on a curbstone, eating bread and lentils for his supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, “If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils.” Said Diogenes, “Learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to cultivate the king.”

I like to reference Maslows Hierarchy of needs for a different perspective of personal value.

https://aussie.zone/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.simplypsychology.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fmaslow-needs3-1024x1024.jpg

intensely_human ,

I learned this the hard way for myself.

I’ve lived on the street defending myself against violence, and growing gnawingly more hungry every day, and dealing with sleep deprivation from always being moved along.

I’ve also been a senior software developer at a company that broke promises to me, and I smiled and ate that shit for the money and also to “grow up” and be less naive and idealistic. Also, I started breaking promises to them too.

When I lived on the street I was happy and whole, despite the discomfort. When I was working that dev job I went to the hospital twice with stress-related issues I thought were going to kill me, and separately, shelled out over $7k on neurofeedback training to reduce my beta wave amplitude and cut down on my panic attacks.

That learned me good. I am done sacrificing my integrity for any material comfort. It simply does not work. My body was suffering despite the cushy conditions around me. I was uncomfortable in my own skin, and not in a trivial way. I was fucking ill from that.

Long story short, I realized the reason to stand up and face the cavalry is that it hurts less to die fighting than it does to die running away.

RedditRefugee69 ,

There’s nothing wrong with the lesson here but this sounds fake. Those are the two most superficial stereotypes of class life with no explanation how you bridged that gap. There is a big jump in happiness when you no longer have to worry about making ends meet. From there, you just have to not get caught up in consumer envy.

But hey this is the internet so who knows

intensely_human ,

Well I’m sorry it sounds fake. Stories about my life often do because I have a weird combinaron of characteristics that lead to weird situations, leading to a density of adventures that most people find simply unbelievable.

Also, if it’s fake there’s definitely something wrong with the lesson. Nobody should be making shit up to teach lessons. Lessons need to come from the truth.

Jolteon ,

Yep, money can buy you the bottom tier and a half of that triangle. Everything above that is up to you.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

IMO: Not having to worry about money.
Bonus points if you could easily absorb being jobless for 1-2 years while not making any compromises.

corsicanguppy ,

IMO: Not having to worry about money.

‘enough’ is massively subjective. Not worrying about money is also very personal.

In America, where people need to sell their house for medical costs - even with a ‘good’ insurance plan - I don’t know any number would free me from worry.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

That’s where the bonus points come in. Ability to easily absorb 1-2 years being jobless wirhout compromising in your living style.

z00s ,

About 20% more than what anybody currently has at any point in time

howrar ,

There’s no hard line between “not enough” and “enough”. More is always better. It’s just a question of whether the gains are worth the effort.

Consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If we say that being able to satisfy physiological needs is “enough”, you still need to ask: with that probability and for what duration of time? Nothing is guaranteed in life, but as you gain more money, you get asymptotically closer to that 100% probability of satisfying all physiological needs for the duration of a human lifetime. What if you want to provide this guarantee for your children? Your extended family? Your local community? Then you’ll need even more.

Let’s say you’ve satisfied all levels of needs but the last one: self-actualization. That final level can be a huge money sink. Are you an artist that wants to express your idea exactly as they appear in your mind? You’ll need a lot of resources to acquire relevant material, or to pay others to work with you on these projects. Are you a scientist who’s interested in fundamental research and gaining a better understanding of the universe? Again, you need lots of money for your scientific equipment and for paying other people to help you.

Then you look at how hard it is to acquire more money. If you’re out doing a 9-5 every day and getting paid hourly for your work, that’s a high effort. You probably wouldn’t want to keep doing that if you know with 95% certainty that you have enough money to survive your remaining days. Now think about someone taking a bribe. In many cases, it’s extremely low effort. You’re already working your 9-5 anyway, but someone is now paying you extra to not do your job? Win-win. What about ad reads? Again, you’re already working in front of the camera anyway. This is just a question of what you do in front of said camera. Ad reads are probably one of the easiest options, no matter how questionable the product is.

What each person wants out of life is going to be very different from one another. Maybe you only care about having enough to take care of yourself, but someone else may need to care for many other people. One person may be okay with a quiet carefree life, another wants to fix all the problems they find, and another wants to enjoy all the luxuries life has to offer. How far you go is largely dependent on the effort required to get there.

Jimmycrackcrack ,

I have wondered the same thing many a time. I don’t think it’s naive to wonder honestly. I find it genuinely confusing, not from a moral judgy standpoint but more of an effort to reward standpoint.

If you or I sold tobacco in exchange for a quantity we’ll call a “shit-tonne” for the purposes of discussion. It would change our lives considerably. As you said, you personally would do it, and I think odds are pretty good I would too. But if that 1 shit-tonne of cash doesn’t significantly change the recipient’s life or capabilities or long term security, I don’t understand why they’d bother with it. I think my confusion diverges from yours in so far as I don’t think the point of getting rich for the vast majority of people has to do with acquiring the luxury of a moral compass. It might be for some, but I’d say for most it’s at best a side benefit and for many irrelevant. However I do think that most of us without the requisite shit-tonnes of cash like to imagine the purpose for acquiring it is to avoid having to expend the effort required to acquire anymore thereafter. In this framework, which seems so obvious and relatable to me, you’d think you couldn’t hook wealthy actors in to shilling tobacco because basically, they just couldn’t be bothered, I mean why bother? You might keep acting if you find it fun but surely there’d be funner gigs than ads?

This is a more cynical way to look at it, but no less inaccurate than your theory of acquiring wealth to buy the ability to be moral. In the case of wealthy actors however, I think they’re maybe not the best example, the richest ones are very rich but their material desires are sometimes able to scale with their wealth. Nicholas Cage was a good example as he managed to get himself in to ridiculous debt ostensibly from insane spending on ridiculous things. Presumably he liked having those things and was able with some effort to actually spend enough outpace his unbelievably high earnings. In that context you might well take lucrative acting gigs for scummy companies to help you out of debt or to help you buy one more private island.

There’s a whole other tier of offensive and obscene personal wealth where you see people like billionaire CEOs. These people trash my model of the ‘purpose’ of acquiring wealth and by the actions we see them do, yours as well. These guys probably couldn’t spend all their money on material objects if they actively tried. Their motives are very obscure to me. I definitely judge these guys but I leave them just a little bit of slack in so far as it seems generally observable that acquiring this much wealth seems to make you want to keep acquiring more wealth. I may not know why, but it almost seems like some kind of a fundamental law or drive so it could almost have some exculpatory power, though not much and in any case would only lend credence to the idea that society as a whole ought to avoid the accumulation of quite so much personao wealth since if my observation is at all accurate it would tend to mean, that much like we hold it to be true that all drivers will be impaired after a certain amount of alcohol so too does wealth tend to corrupt the decision making and motivations of people who have too much of it.

I’ve read about the topic a little bit and there’s some concepts that make some sense. People do crave purpose, so if you make enough money to sit on your ass and avoid having to make money people have a tendency to create objectives for themselves to work towards and if they don’t it can lead to unhappiness. In the case of some of those who achieved such wealth they had such objectives on the way up too, so it’s how they’ve always lived their life (theoretically, if they supposedly got their through hard work and merit, big if). This does explain it I guess, but as an explanation it feels vague and weak. I’ve heard ideas around a kind of competitive peer pressure effect too, these guys want to be richer than each other. This is unsatisfying because it’s just so dumb but makes a lot of sense, especially because it kind of scales with wealth as well. Often as people at all walks of life take stock of their position they will assess how well they’re doing in comparison to where they were before and also in comparison to someone else around them so by those metrics you’re always going to want to be doing just that little bit better than a few years ago and your always going to want to be exceeding or approaching the person you’ve most recently set as a desirable standard. All of these ideas seem to explain the behaviour we see but to me all feel too wishy washy to really make sense but I guess that’s because it’s going to be lots of these drives acting in concert along with something that one probably just has to experience and which basically none of us ever will as it comes with becoming richer than god.

Personally I can’t but think that if instead of becoming rich, I suddenly got bequeathed all of Elon Musk’s wealth unexpectedly from his timely death then I’d very likely have far less ambitious and contentious goals than he. Not necessarily because I hold myself to a higher standard but because, I mean, why take over the world like a megalomaniac when it’s so much easier and more fun to do lots of drugs and go traveling and play with all the best toys? If I really crave purpose I can make a movie or something, I wouldn’t even have to be good at it, I could buy everything related to it being made and distributed. If I was talentless and it stunk and flopped, it wouldn’t be my problem and I could afford to spend my time getting good at it as a hobby even if each flop cost hundreds of millions. But maybe one the zeros started trailing on my account balance I’d suddenly start wanting to own everything and influence politics and just generally being a bit of a prick, it seems to happen to people.

Ilflish ,

When I am immune to the thoughts of questioning my finances

Pulptastic ,

I would say that never goes away, but when the decisions change from “house or food” to “camper or boat” etc.

Nighed ,
@Nighed@feddit.uk avatar

Part of the problem is that most people will spend most of their time around people of a similar wealth level. They will therefore always be around people richer than themselves and generally see less people that are much poorer (at least in a personal context).

This means that ‘rich’ people don’t feel rich. (Unless they are self aware enough to realise it). It also means that your references for morals etc are now other rich people rather than ‘normal’ people (although it’s normal to them!)

Therefore, they always want to acquire more money, and their references for how to go about that are the richer people who have already done similar things.

eran_morad ,

When i am convinced that my children will each have at least enough money for a good education and a home of their own. If my next twenty years are as successful as my last twenty years, then I’ll have enough money only after i can also fund my grandchildrens’ educations.

It’s kind of a shit world that we’re leaving for the next generations. I’ll try to look out for mine before i fuck off to the great beyond.

electric_nan ,

I don’t know, but I wonder the same. I’m in the US and work for a guy that has tens of millions of dollars. He still spends all day in the office 6 days a week. To be fair, I don’t think he does it for the money, exactly, but I can’t understand why he keeps working at all.

intensely_human ,

Have you asked him?

The_Worst ,

Maybe he just likes to work?

electric_nan ,

Which I cannot understand lol.

NotMyOldRedditName ,

Is it his company? It could be his baby and his passion.

If it’s just some random manager… well, I got no clue lol

electric_nan ,

Yeah it’s his company, and I think that is basically it.

bradorsomething ,

Money only amplifies who you are and what you’re able to do. I’m quite comfortable, but I like to build things and make companies grow, and solve technical problems. I don’t really want to sit back and just do nothing - in fact I’d love a partner to help me do a bit more relaxing - but when left to my own devices I am always learning some new skill or refining some process or generally trying to make the world around me a little better.

intensely_human ,

Are you gay, or a woman? I’m pretty good at relaxing, and wouldn’t mind having an industrious partner.

franzfurdinand ,
@franzfurdinand@lemmy.world avatar

A big swing, but I’m genuinely rooting for you.

bradorsomething ,

He shot his shot, I can’t fault him. Straight male, unfortunately.

franzfurdinand ,
@franzfurdinand@lemmy.world avatar

Ah, well, fair. Would have made for a great story! 🙂

corsicanguppy ,

I’ll leave this here.

The happiest nations of the world aren’t obsessed with chasing money and hoarding it because they’ve been supported by their neighbours from birth to where they’re working and supporting their own neighbours. So many of the things that Americans hoard money to try and prevent are just … handled … by everyone’s neighbour, anonymously. The knowledge that this coordination and ‘smoothing’ of stressful troubles is done anonymously, regularly, and unilaterally, serves to reduce a lot of the effects of food insecurity and health insecurity and shelter insecurity. They have a system that works, and it’s shown to be reliable, and people are more calm.

So I’m not going to say how they achieve that, except “find the objectively-ranked happiest nations of the world and either move there or convince your government to do what they’re doing” and I’ll move on. It’s not hard, but you’re going to go through stages of disbelief (nah, that can’t work because people will cheat), bargaining (can I cheat please?), etc, and either you’ll be ultimately frustrated at the fact that your locale just can’t get there, or you’ll be moving to the locales where they’re doing it.

intensely_human ,

I just want to add that a substantial social safety net doesn’t have to be a loss of freedom. You can keep it broad and level and market activity can happen above it while still processing information.

As a libertarians, I often argue with other libertarians about this. To me, being a libertarian is about making liberty the highest value to be sought by governmental design. A reduction of risk for everyone across the board increases liberty. It leaves people free to engage with others as they see fit and to seek profit wherever they will.

That calm thing you’re talking about is huge. One of the prerequisites of anything that can be called freedom is the ability to think clearly, and science has shown that the more stress and uncertainty a person is under chronically, they less clearly they can think. Freedom means being able to do what you choose, and people can’t really choose if they’re sleep deprived, full of adrenalin and cortisol. Like, the psychological literature calls that “ego depletion”, and with good reason. A person whose willpower budget is always drained, and therefore can’t control themselves, is not a free person.

Never underestimate the ability of a few good policies to increase individual liberty. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

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