Deceive the Credulous; Become Fabulously Wealthy

[Collimatrix]

I've been meditating a lot lately on humans that I hate.  I would say "people I hate," but once I take to hating a someone enough I de-classify them as a person.

 

I've been focusing on hate more because I've realized that there is no point in marinating in negative emotions.  What I had mistaken for righteous indignation was really jealousy.  I'm not angry at the fraudulent because I hate fraud; I'm angry because they're talentless hacks and I could do a far better job.  But I'm lazy, so you, my talented reader, you must do a better job, and become a more ravenous, vicious, and unstoppable leech than ever these mediocre reprobates could dream.

 

I got the idea when I was reading the latest drivel from our favorite poly sci majors, and I realized that the authors are fundamentally parasitic con artists, and, more to the point, half-assed ones.

 

The article is only worth reading if you want to heckle it.  It has no factual content.  The funniest part is probably where they're talking up the threat of firearms made on 3D printers, and then bring up the Ghost Gunner, which isn't a 3D printer.  It's a fucking mill.  You know, an example of that old-fashioned subtractive manufacture that's supposed to be obsolete now.  This is as intellectually honest as hyping the threat of being stung to death by zebras in the streets, and pointing out that tapirs will bite your fucking arm off as evidence of the severity of the threat.  I am, of course, heartened to see that these worms have doubled down on their claim that 3D printing is somehow applicable to clandestine manufacture of nuclear weapons, and are, as before, aggressively misunderstanding fundamental facts about isotope enrichment.  If there's anything that these scum are good at, it's ignoring basic fucking nuclear physics.

 

But other than that, it's not a particularly slick attempt to sew panic and profit thereby.  The best possible result from this sort of scaremongering is that some useless government regulatory agency will be set up to strangle 3D printing with useless regulations.  This useless agency will have some number of jobs that will be filled with poly sci majors and other unemployable refuse.  Anyone employed in this hypothetical useless agency would work nine to five in a cubicle, watching whatever their favorite deviant sort of porn is, calling in sick about a third of the time, and occasionally writing internal correspondence that will be beautifully devoid of meaning.  Is this sort of soul-raping mediocrity anyone's idea of a big steal?  Because if getting a fake job at a fake agency to police a fake threat is your notion of making it, please enclose yourself in a running incinerator.  You have some sort of pathogen that causes you to aspire to being a moderate nuisance, and that sort of plague needs to stop now.

 

The problem with these people is that their lies are small.  As we all know, big lies are better than little ones.  Don't stretch the truth; snap it right the fuck off.  The only thing standing between you and gigantic yachts made of cocaine is a sentimental attachment to the truth.  The lord of this world will only reward you fully if you embrace him fully.  Highly successful liars don't embroider the truth, they dispense with it entirely.  Consummate your marriage to darkness and falsity, and receive glorious rewards.  Don't say that the Eisenhower administration should have been more aggressive in defense spending and research.  Say that the Soviets have more bombers and more missiles.  You'll get to be president of Camelot, fuck Marilyn Monroe and will be spared the indignity of old age.  Don't say that 3D printing could change the way nuclear weapons are made in the future.  Claim that the Iranians and North Koreans, and hell, that the South Africans all made their nuclear weapons by using 3D printers.  When asked for evidence of your nonsense, point to the South African invasion of Sudan.  Say so with absolute arrogance and an unshakable air of moral superiority.  If you are loud and persistent enough, and lie outrageously enough, Satan will come through.

 

Don't shill for big coal companies by claiming that coal gasification technology will improve atmospheric conditions.  That's only stretching the truth.  You've got to go all the way, and just burn regular coal that you painted with Elmer's glue.  Your enemies will end up under review, and you'll get millions in tax credits.  Satan delivers.  Praise Satan.  But you have to be willing to go all the way with Satan.  Satan despises spineless, cowering wretches who sin a little to get ahead but still consider themselves fundamentally decent people.  Satan came through for the solar roadways bastards.  Satan came through for Leroy Jenkins.  Trust in Satan, and you will excel.  Don't you trust Satan?  Do you think that Satan is ignorant of your duplicity?  You cannot serve two masters.  Drink deep or taste not.

[SuperComrade]

Oh, I'm sure you can find a 3D printer than can work with HEU or Plutonium.

Positive.

[Toxn]

Upboats for Sudanese invasion reference.

[Walter_Sobchak]

Colli, I think you are destined for better things than this forum.  Or maybe worse things. It's hard to tell.

[Toxn]

I joke sometimes about starting a cult, but in my heart of hearts I know that Colli would produce a superior product.

[Walter_Sobchak]

I joke sometimes about starting a cult, but in my heart of hearts I know that Colli would produce a superior product.

Aren't we already a cult?  

[Toxn]

Aren't we already a cult?  

We aren't. But we could be.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

We aren't. But we could be.

Too many leaders, not enough followers, and the kool-aid is weak. 

[Bronezhilet]

This is now the most liked content on SH.

 

This forum....

[Toxn]

This is now the most liked content on SH.

 

This forum....

 

Ave Machina?

[Collimatrix]

Thunderf00t has been doing God's work lately:

 

 

 

 

 

All three videos are good, but the last is the best.  It is a brief glimpse of horrifying clarity into the minds of science fetishists.

 

A science fetishist is someone who has come to believe (correctly, as it turns out) that the systematic approach towards understanding the universe (often called "science") is the best, and it will be the means by which all the clean, shiny and beautiful people of the future will lord it over the sticky, sickly, filthy peasant scum of the future.  Having further reasoned (again, correctly) that they wish to be in the former, rather than the latter camp, science fetishists have decided that they will do anything to get on top of the most important trends of the future.  They'll upvote shit on Facebook.  They'll make viral videos on Youtube.  They'll evangelize.  They'll worship new gods and heroes.  They'll throw money at visionaries.  They will do anything short of actually making any effort to understand science.

 

Just because Elon Musk is throwing money at something does not make it a good idea.  Elon Musk is rich, and you are poor.  Rich people have the luxury of throwing money at dumb ideas and not starving.  Again, this is because they are rich.  Every once in a while one of these dumb ideas turns out to be a fantastically profitable idea masquerading as a dumb idea, and the rich person makes their money back plus something.  If the breaks are right this is sustainable, and thus it has turned into something of a sport for rich people, who call it venture capitalism.  They like it even more than polo, camel racing or even competitive spitting on poor people because, in addition to being fun, it helps them feel smart and responsible.  Feeling smart and responsible is a critical part of building up a rich person's confidence, which they need in order to establish social superiority over their most fearsome adversaries; other rich people.  I'm sorry; did you think I was going to say poor people?  No; rich people are not worried about poor people.  Poor people like you don't matter.

 

But you have to understand that venture capitalism is strictly a rich people sport.  Speculation and investment of any sort is a rich people sport; you need the enormous thermal mass provided by enormous piles of money in order to stay on the good side of the law of large numbers.  Oh yeah, sure, in theory a bunch of poor people could pool together their meager, filthy peasant money into some sort of serf penny pile and appoint a known expert to manage and diversify it for them and pay them pro rata.  In some far off time and place with different pass-through taxation laws, different real economic growth and different trade commission regulations this probably could theoretically even have worked.  Obviously, it would have worked even better for rich people, because everything works better for rich people because God loves them more.  That's why they're rich.

 

Or maybe you believe that rich people are that way because they know certain spells and incantations, or that they're all actually lizard people who have saved money on groceries by being ectothermic and have compounded those savings over centuries, or that they're all really devil worshippers who have exchanged their souls for worldly prosperity.  Whatever; it doesn't matter.  The bottom line is that superficially copying the habits of rich people will not make unwashed poor people such as yourself rich.  If you want to become rich, you have two options.  If think that you don't want to become rich you need to stop lying to yourself and realize that you really do want to become rich.  Option one is to be lucky.  I can offer no useful advice on that.  Option two is to work hard and actually understand how in the fuck the world works, and then try to manipulate it into diverting some of its delicious, glorious money to you.  On that I have little advice, save that throwing your money at obvious science fetishist bullshit is not going to help.

[T___A]

Thunderf00t is good at debunking at this kind of shit but he himself is a science fetishist, not only is he one, he professes belief in the heresy known as Scienctism.

Though one can make the arguement that by definition Science fetishists believe in Scienctism.

[Vanagandr]

Back in middle school I read the shit out of Scientific American and Popular Mechanics; I bet 95% of the things they advertised as breakthrough technologies still don't exist yet. Supposing hyperloop worked totally without problems it would still be as cheap as wiping your ass with gold foil and it's still championed as the future of transport. We're nothing close to having flying cars or robot maids and people still don't have their bullshit radars calibrated somehow. 

[Sturgeon]

Thunderf00t is good at debunking at this kind of shit but he himself is a science fetishist, not only is he one, he professes belief in the heresy known as Scienctism.

Though one can make the arguement that by definition Science fetishists believe in Scienctism.

 

"You see, "science" gave us vaccines and rockets and stuff, so we should worship it blindly as though it were a god, and be as obnoxious as possible to people who think we're weird!"

[Toxn]

Thunderf00t has been doing God's work lately:

 

 

 

 

 

All three videos are good, but the last is the best.  It is a brief glimpse of horrifying clarity into the minds of science fetishists.

 

A science fetishist is someone who has come to believe (correctly, as it turns out) that the systematic approach towards understanding the universe (often called "science") is the best, and it will be the means by which all the clean, shiny and beautiful people of the future will lord it over the sticky, sickly, filthy peasant scum of the future.  Having further reasoned (again, correctly) that they wish to be in the former, rather than the latter camp, science fetishists have decided that they will do anything to get on top of the most important trends of the future.  They'll upvote shit on Facebook.  They'll make viral videos on Youtube.  They'll evangelize.  They'll worship new gods and heroes.  They'll throw money at visionaries.  They will do anything short of actually making any effort to understand science.

 

Just because Elon Musk is throwing money at something does not make it a good idea.  Elon Musk is rich, and you are poor.  Rich people have the luxury of throwing money at dumb ideas and not starving.  Again, this is because they are rich.  Every once in a while one of these dumb ideas turns out to be a fantastically profitable idea masquerading as a dumb idea, and the rich person makes their money back plus something.  If the breaks are right this is sustainable, and thus it has turned into something of a sport for rich people, who call it venture capitalism.  They like it even more than polo, camel racing or even competitive spitting on poor people because, in addition to being fun, it helps them feel smart and responsible.  Feeling smart and responsible is a critical part of building up a rich person's confidence, which they need in order to establish social superiority over their most fearsome adversaries; other rich people.  I'm sorry; did you think I was going to say poor people?  No; rich people are not worried about poor people.  Poor people like you don't matter.

 

But you have to understand that venture capitalism is strictly a rich people sport.  Speculation and investment of any sort is a rich people sport; you need the enormous thermal mass provided by enormous piles of money in order to stay on the good side of the law of large numbers.  Oh yeah, sure, in theory a bunch of poor people could pool together their meager, filthy peasant money into some sort of serf penny pile and appoint a known expert to manage and diversify it for them and pay them pro rata.  In some far off time and place with different pass-through taxation laws, different real economic growth and different trade commission regulations this probably could theoretically even have worked.  Obviously, it would have worked even better for rich people, because everything works better for rich people because God loves them more.  That's why they're rich.

 

Or maybe you believe that rich people are that way because they know certain spells and incantations, or that they're all actually lizard people who have saved money on groceries by being ectothermic and have compounded those savings over centuries, or that they're all really devil worshippers who have exchanged their souls for worldly prosperity.  Whatever; it doesn't matter.  The bottom line is that superficially copying the habits of rich people will not make unwashed poor people such as yourself rich.  If you want to become rich, you have two options.  If you don't want to become rich you need to stop lying to yourself.  Option one is to be lucky.  I can offer no useful advice on that.  Option two is to work hard and actually understand how in the fuck the world works, and then try to manipulate it into diverting some of its delicious, glorious money to you.  On that I have little advice, save that throwing your money at obvious science fetishist bullshit is not going to help.

A few things about rich people:

 

In my experience there are different basic strata of richness, which can be easily determined by asking a putative rich person about taxes. If you get a complaint about paying the top tax rate, then that person is not rich but upper-middle class. If that person goes on at length about the accountant they use to shuffle money between tax havens while they carefully plan their lives around maintaining their status as non-tax residents, that person is rich. If you get a blank stare, followed by something along the lines of 'oh, but so-and-so handles it' then there is a good chance that that person is phenomenally rich. This is especially true when 'so-and-so' turns out to be a person in the first category who is a senior person at a well-established financial or law firm.

 

Even within these strata, however, there are an infinite number of ladders. The person with a yacht and a villa on a nice island feels himself to be a working stiff compared to a person with a fleet of planes who owns an island. And that person, in turn, is jealous of the person who owns a fleet of ships, an entire airport and a small country.

 

Finally; there is a difference between the type of rich where your parents were wealthy and you used the advantages they provided to join the ultra-rich, and the type where your great-great-granddad did something unspeakable to an entire people and you've never so much as had to think about money in your life. The latter are interesting, because they end up approaching dole poverty from the other direction. They never pay for anything, because it was all bought long ago and the trust will provide at the appropriate time. And they do pretty much what they want in terms of employment (often not bothering with much more than odd jobs or dabbling) because money is the sort of thing you buy groceries with; while the house, car, education, medical care, travel and holiday home just are.

[Toxn]

Another note on rich people: it is, of course, much easier to make money when you have an army of accountants, tax advisors and lawyers at your beck and call to minimise risks and offset costs. This means that all the strata of the truly rich will have these sorts of people hanging around as needed - with the dole-rich having them floating in a sort of invisible cloud around their lives.

 

As a professional, then, there is another way to tell the rich apart. The first type (the newly rich and sort-of rich) will call you up, tell you about their idea and ask for your help. This will take a long time and a bunch of meetings. You will also struggle to get them to pay for things, because people become dramatically less likely to pay on time the more money they have.

 

The second type (ultra-rich, rich for generations) will simply call you up, explain that they want to own a particular market or product and hang up. They will hardly pay you at all, but they've been your client since your boss first started work and they indirectly supply 20% of your company's cash flow. So thy will be done.

[Collimatrix]

 

In my experience there are different basic strata of richness, which can be easily determined by asking a putative rich person about taxes. If you get a complaint about paying the top tax rate, then that person is not rich but upper-middle class. If that person goes on at length about the accountant they use to shuffle money between tax havens while they carefully plan their lives around maintaining their status as non-tax residents, that person is rich. If you get a blank stare, followed by something along the lines of 'oh, but so-and-so handles it' then there is a good chance that that person is phenomenally rich. This is especially true when 'so-and-so' turns out to be a person in the first category who is a senior person at a well-established financial or law firm.

 

 

The amount of effort someone puts into hiding their money from taxes is also a clue to how much wealth they have.  A lot of money-hiding strategies simply aren't worth it with a lesser hoard.

 

A lot of shenanigans that are theoretical for the poor or the only kinda rich become viable or even obvious for the wealthy or uber-wealthy because, proportionally, their frictional losses are so much smaller.

[Toxn]

The amount of effort someone puts into hiding their money from taxes is also a clue to how much wealth they have. A lot of money-hiding strategies simply aren't worth it with a lesser hoard.

A lot of shenanigans that are theoretical for the poor or the only kinda rich become viable or even obvious for the wealthy or uber-wealthy because, proportionally, their frictional losses are so much smaller.

Yup. Spending $100 000 in professional fees only makes sense if you expect to save more than that in taxes. The kicker, of course, is that once you do so you inevitably pay far less (proportionally) than everyone else.

Which is why I try to avoid the sorts of meetings where you spend a whole day trying to help lower the effective tax rate on a guy who pays substantially less than you do on your little starter salary. Not what I signed up for.

Some professionals, of course, make this the basis of their careers. And they, in accordance with your thesis, are rewarded lavishly. But never so much as the people they enable - Satan rewards vassals but disdains rivals. Perhaps their children will ascend.

[Toxn]

In a slightly different note, but in the spirit of the topic: I've been conducting an informal survey on how many children of the professional class have been falling through the cracks and are now likely to stay there. My conclusion, when viewed with the macro data, is that the world is indeed splitting in two.

Turns out that the parents frantically pushing their children to get degrees at any cost were simply sensing the currents and accurately understood what was needed. As the gap widens and the middle class returns to being a tiny sliver of the population, the only option for living a life better than your predecessors is to jump hard while it's still possible to do so.

Those who fail to do so can expect to join the new serfdom.

[Sturgeon]

I dunno if this belongs here, but as soon as they reached the chessboard I was riveted:

[Collimatrix]

I'd almost forgotten about this one:

 

[Toxn]

I'd almost forgotten about this one:

Anyone who read the deltoid pumpkin seed knows where this is going.

[Sturgeon]

Except that wasn't a scam, so far as I know.

[Collimatrix]

Except that wasn't a scam, so far as I know.

 

Yes, they did fail to monetize their nonsense.

[Toxn]

Except that wasn't a scam, so far as I know.

The aereon itself wasn't. The preacher/investor who went off the deep end about "G power", however...