The S&P closed at 5088: Remember that we have it made, even in the face of stupidity and evil
The dark side of the news is that news is dark. Progress is slow, and that means that that which is good is slow, whereas the bad things are dramatic. They catch our attention, and so when we consider what draws our attention and what seems to warrant commentary and analysis, it is the bad, the horrifying, the stupefying. The conclusion we draw? The world is dark and horrible. I, of course, comment on the dark and the horrible because I comment on politics, being a Political Science professor, yet this morning, it is time once again to step back and consider the slow, the gradual, the incremental and the systematic. Chances are that your life, in perspective, is pretty good. The S&P closed at 5088.80 yesterday. That was nice. Those are some nice numbers.
It is almost laughably easy to get rich in the United States of America in the 21st Century. The stock market goes up. There are downturns, and even crashes, but long term, it goes up. If you have the patience, you make money. Even acknowledging crashes like the financial crisis, you make money. In July of 2007, the S&P was around a local peak just over 1500. Then, we know what happened, and it took years for the market to recover, but the market recovers. Why? Because people buy things. That means companies make money, and stock is part ownership in companies. Once upon a time, it was harder to make money in the stock market. You had to buy stocks individually, through a stock broker. You had to select stocks, place orders through a broker, and it was a pain. And, you had to figure out how to balance your portfolio, how to time orders, dependent on your broker as you were, and really, you'd make money, long term, but what a mess. Now? Now, all you have to do is put your money into index funds. They have been around for years. Passively managed funds have low fees. They rebalance for you. You don't have to do anything. Sure, there will be periods when you lose money, but long term, you'll make money. Over the really long term? You get rich. Elon Musk-rich? No, but do you really need that much money? No. And how much money do you need, if you start investing early to get to a level of wealth at which you are quite secure? Not a lot. That is the principle of compound interest. Those who get into credit card debt feel the reverse, but if you invest, you get the benefit. Mathematically, it is the same principle.
Getting rich is easy. It isn't fast, but it is easy. Or rather, the fast methods have a high likelihood of losing you all your money. The right way is just slower.
The job market? Right now, you can see the unemployment rate, but it always varies by education level. I have done various "street epistemology" exercises with people on questions like the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and various associated policies, but such questions come down to this. What happens if you do the following: finish high school, don't get involved in drugs or crime, don't have kids before marriage? Even following those very basic steps, you'll be basically OK. College? State colleges are cheap. Those who take on massive student loan debt were not attending state colleges, and those whose incomes don't match their debt frequently did not major in anything useful. If you go to an expensive college, taking on debt, and major in Gender Studies, you will not have the employment prospects to match your debt because your major is a joke and you have no real job skills, so no one has any need for you. You are useless. If you go to a state college and major in accounting, you will take on less debt, be more employable, and make more money. Put money into S&P index funds, slowly, starting early, and you'll get rich. Will you have the fun of haranguing people about how gender is socially constructed while feeling sanctimonious about your blue hair dye in between antibiotic treatments of your oozing, infected septum piercing? No, but you will have the fun of being economically secure and able to provide for yourself and your family instead of whining about how you need your student loan debt (to me) forgiven.
Point being, this is easy. Easier than at any other point in history, and in any other country. Are there other countries where it is easier to get a basic, middle class life? Yeah, but where it is easier to get rich? No. The fact that people don't do it more frequently doesn't mean it isn't easy. That just means people fail to recognize the opportunity or take advantage of it. It's there.
And that's awesome!
You're reading this on technology provided by a system with such opportunity. Whatever else happens, amid apocalyptic warnings, you're still going to be able to go read and see whatever you want tomorrow, next week, next year and so forth.
Throughout most of history, this has not been the case. In the Western world, to varying degrees, it is the case. Outside the Western world, it depends. Some East Asian countries, like South Korea, have adopted Western economic values and now they have this thing called "opportunity." Cross a border, change the political and economic system, and you enter hell on Earth. Through no fault of their own, people are born into a country and a system where they have no chance. North Korea is strange in this, and many senses. There are places that are culturally constrained and culturally inhibited, unable to progress by their own rejections of modernity. North Korea is an extreme case of repression with closed borders and a closed information system. The culturally constrained systems are products of their own people, the choices and beliefs of the people. If the people believed and chose differently, the politics and economics of the places would operate differently. The dysfunction in many regions of the world is a product of dysfunction at a cultural level. Dysfunction is almost necessarily a reflection of culture. Note how quickly, then, opportunity is created when a culture modernizes and adapts. Note how quickly Germany went from hellscape to modern, free, economically developed and replete with opportunity. Consider the aforementioned South Korea. Japan's stagnation in the 21st Century raises some interesting questions, but its prosperity through much of the latter half of the 20th Century still demonstrates the point.
Culture, and cultural dysfunction. As we survey the landscape of the United States and the Western world, we see increasing cultural dysfunction. I am not compelled to elaborate. Yet, what remains is a system, a set of rules and processes, within which opportunity remains. Those rules and structures are widespread and while they are not written in stone-- they are impermanent and subject to change or destruction-- they are here, and they can be created anywhere, as demonstrated by how widely they have been created. That simply requires choices. Remember two things. First, marvel at the intrinsic goodness of the systems that exist because of opportunity. Yes, it really is absurdly easy to get rich. Second, marvel at how easy it is to replicate such a system, if any culture simply chooses to do so.
One may reasonably ask, is that it? What is truly valuable? The lineage of philosophers from Zeno to Chrysippus took a bit of a dodge here.
The Hellenistic philosophers mostly argued that the end goal of life is a happy life. What, though, does that mean? To the Stoa, that meant virtue because living virtuously will always convey happiness. Other things may provide happiness, but may also make you unhappy. Consider money. Might money make you happy? It may contribute to your happiness, but what if you win the lottery, and then your family starts fighting over that money, and that squabbling winds up making you less happy than you were before. Could that happen? That has happened. So, money does not deterministically make you happy.
What is entirely within your will? Virtue. Virtue, then, is all that is necessary for happiness. Everything not in your will is "an indifferent." You can be happy without it, as long as you live virtuously. However-- and here's the dodge-- there are preferred indifferents. Huh? Yeah, dodge. There are things that can contribute to happiness, even if they aren't necessary for happiness/within your will/same thing. The Greek Stoa bought into this more than the Roman Stoa (like Epictetus), but the idea was this. Used properly, money and health and such? They will make you happier. Used improperly, they will not. So, they are not fundamental goals. They are still indifferents. But, they are preferred because used properly, they contribute to happiness. Hence, preferred indifferents. Which sounds like a contradiction in terms, because it kind of is, but not entirely. Remember, the idea is as follows. There are objects, outcomes and such that have no effect on your happiness. Then, there are objects that can make you happier, used properly (preferred indifferents). Then, there is that which always makes you happy (virtue). As a categorization, the distinction makes sense. The terminology is just a little fucked.
OK, it is kind of a contradiction. You cannot truly be indifferent to something you prefer. This was before microeconomic theory, which may not have changed their minds, but whatever.
Regardless, here's the point. Is wealth actually what you seek? Independence? What? Wealth is easy. Wealth is the vomit of Fortune, as Diogenes said.
Wealth can convey independence, but is independence actually the goal? (Did Diogenes have independence without it?) What's the goal? Improperly used, wealth gets you nothing. Wealth, like anything else, is a tool, a means to an end, and improperly used, it is as dangerous and self-destructive as anything else. A car is nice to have, but if you drive recklessly, you will crash and die. Buy a fancy car, drive too fast, and where have you gotten?
Yet wealth is easy, and a modern society filled with opportunity makes so much so easy. The point is to put as much as possible within reach so that the preferred indifferents are within reach. The responsibility to use them will be on you, but the responsibility to ensure rules which allow opportunity is on us anyway. Forever, everywhere. Fortunately, we have it. We have it made.
Eric Lindell, "The Good Times," live. Interesting side-note. One can forget that Eric is a pretty good guitarist, but he gets in some nice licks here, along with Anson Funderburgh. You may not know Anson, but you probably know about a guy who played bass in his band decades ago. Mike Judge. Yeah, him. Uh... uh huh huh huh huh. That is, in fact, pretty cool.
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