Why do rich people read books and keep telling you to get books if you can get them free well if you have amazon ebook thing??

[akio123008]

About the online stuff, I struggle to read only 2 pages on my monitor whereas I have no problem getting through an entire real life book. 

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, PonyBoyZ_ said:

money overrated

Only for those who are not well adjusted.   For those of us who know what is important and what we desire from life,  money is a very pertinent tool.

 

 

[spartaman64]

like what sort of rich people? bill gates? im sure bill gates is 100% fine with ebooks. jeff bezos even more so with amazon ebooks LUL

[TetraSky]

11 hours ago, WolfLoverPro said:

They clarify hardback books though never any other version + they say build a library of books shelves like they have which is a lot 

Having a large collection of physical books can be seen as a sort of "status" to some people. As if to say "look at all this burnable trash I've accumulated in my house". It shows you're "educated" enough to be able to read and possibly understand a vast number of subjects.

 

So basically, it's just a show of wealth. Because physical books not only cost more, they also take up physical space, which is a premium currency these days with houses getting smaller and smaller. Gotta fill that mansion with something, right?

 

 

I personally prefer ebooks.

Having an entire library worth of books, in something as small as a tablet, is better IMO.

Though it just doesn't have the same feel as reading in a room surrounded by books... with the smell of paper, leather covers and all that..

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Having a large collection of physical books can be seen as a sort of "status" to some people. As if to say "look at all this burnable trash I've accumulated in my house". It shows you're "educated" enough to be able to read and possibly understand a vast number of subjects.

 

So basically, it's just a show of wealth. Because physical books not only cost more, they also take up physical space, which is a premium currency these days with houses getting smaller and smaller. Gotta fill that mansion with something, right?

 

 

I personally prefer ebooks.

Having an entire library worth of books, in something as small as a tablet, is better IMO.

Though it just doesn't have the same feel as reading in a room surrounded by books... with the smell of paper, leather covers and all that..

Look at young people with their expensive gaming computers, all it says is look at me with my big pile of expensive electronics that will be obsolete in a few years. 

 

When people want to show off their wealth they buy a jet or a sports car.   They buy shares in tech then talk about endlessly.  They don't hoard books where only friends and family will see them.  Books are a dying existence that are treasured largely by people who appreciate what they are.

[Bombastinator]

40 minutes ago, comander said:

Define rich people. High income? High wealth? Generations of class? Educated people? 

 

 

The push for books proper isn't nearly as strong as it used to be. There still is a push for people to read though, just not necessarily physical books. Basically, just know stuff. 

 

 

For what it's worth I'm currently in silicon valley land, the median person is 30 years old and making over $200,000/year with a graduate degree from an elite school. I roughly check those boxes. This might not be the classiest group. With that said the average 40 year old is a millionaire or multimillionaire. 

They might be where you work.  Median US salary is something like 63k.  I don’t know what net worth is but I’ve heard people complaining about how it’s been going down year on year for as long as I’ve been alive.  I’ve seen this one for some years.  I suspect based on what media ive seen that it’s people who say “I am wealthy and I will share my secrets” on video.  It’s not incorrect, though it’s not like they’re going to say anything horrible either.  I think it’s likely possibly a prerequisite of some sort of it’s so common.  It in itself won’t do it though. There are plenty of poverty stricken readers out there.  The saying is one has to be both lucky and good. They’re going to share some but not all of the good, and they’re unlikely to even admit the lucky to themselves let alone strangers on video. So decent literature may be a piece of the good. 

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Caroline said:

You don't have to be rich to send someone to read.

Look at Twitter shills for example, if you don't share their ideas you're automatically *rolling dice* a far-right white supremacist or a dirty communist that supports terror, and they both send you to read uhh... Das Kapital or The Wealth of Nations, depending on the side they are of course.

I’m not disagreeing with what I see to be your point that the Internet seems to wall people off in circles of extremism.  Just noticing some oddities in the delivery.
 

Do you mean you don’t have to be rich to read?  To send someone else to read one would have to be quite wealthy and willing to pay them.

 

thats some barely post world war 1 literature you’re referencing there.

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, comander said:

63k per household. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The Bureau of Labor Statistics,income at %2431%2C099 in 2016.

https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

Depending on how you measure and the source you use, individual income is more like $40k. So yeah, the average "high tech" worker is making 5x the median while being around 10 years younger... and they likely work a longer career as well. Likely 3-10x lifetime earnings, though I don't have any real data on that. 

 

 

Most wealthy people I've come across try to not flaunt it, at least not explicitly, like that. Doing it too much will get you French Revolution types knocking at your door and calling for a guillotine. Think Red October. 

The thing about class is that it's relatively hard to move up or down more than 1-2 levels vs your baseline. Income might go up (e.g. Jeff Bezos going from literal bastard to Billionaire), but class is subtle, it's different. It's often a matter of taste and culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_(sociology)
 

Rich people don't go to Harvard or Yale because it sets them up for success, they'll be alright regardless, they go because anything less would show that they have poor taste and bad judgement. 

Desperation and signalling a lack of sophistication usually scare away risk adverse "elites."

Luck matters for sure, but much of "luck" is having good processes and good connections. Knowing how to access institutions and decisions makers is in part a function of class but it's learnable and can be developed as a skill. 
 

With that said, faux humility is relatively common among the "elite". Saying "I worked hard but I owe a lot to good luck" often soothes social interactions.  - 'we're both amazing, but we really are the same, even if I did something better than you' is the subtext of that. 

Also something, something Noblesse Oblige. 

Re: luck

The one I see most often ignored is childhood upbringing.  The phrase used to be “being born with a silver spoon in ones mouth”. Such things can create massive opportunity differences.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, comander said:

Also being born with the right chromosomes. 

Anecdotally I had far fewer resources and much less parental investment than my little cousin. I won a genetic lottery though and have around 40iq points on her. She might have studied her ass of for classes and got good grades... I went on cruise control, graduated from the same comment she dropped out of (despite her working harder and having better habits), studied a bit for the GRE/GMAT/LSAT and did better than 99% of people on it, and put in a few hundred hours of interview prep. 

 

With that said, I googled stuff and did a lot of the right things. 

 

Likely literally googling "what jobs do kids at Harvard do?" "how to get into McKinsey" or "how to get into Google?" Goes a long way. 

 

Looking up what you need to do and doing an ok job (I didn't even get an interview from McKinsey, though Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. all gave me a shot) isn't luck, it's what should be considered the bare minimum. 

Sounds like your parents may have recognized the problems she would likely have and invested additional resources into alleviating them.  Without them she might have done even worse.  It’s the whole nature vs nurture thing.  Proponents of nature tend to under emphasize the effects of nurture.  Proponents of nurture tend to under emphasize the effects of nature.  Often successful people prefer to overemphasize nature because it implies their innate superiority.  Generally it seems to me that in extreme situations both approaches break down, and neither can completely replace the other.  Either can make up for some short comings in the latter though.  Lincoln was an example of an extreme situation.  He had to teach himself to write (Though not to read.  That was apparently done by a step parent) using a shovel and a piece of charcoal.  There have been cultures where reading was a secret technique taught only to the intelligencia.  Not many.  The Aztecs were one.  They allowed that if a person could teach themselves to read (a very difficult thing to do) they should be admitted to the intelligencia (Which in this case was the priesthood) regardless of their origin.  It’s the Aztecs though and they’re all dead, so to what degree members of the priesthood did or did not openly or secretly teach their children to read is unknown.

 

in the modern era college entrance serves a similar purpose.  It may be circumvented with status though.  A favorite of mine is the younger Bush.  It was widely proclaimed how he gained entrance to Yale without using family connections.  Such claims avoided a few points though.  The major one that I see is that he had an identical name to his father, who at the time he applied was the head of the CIA, which was the single greatest recruiter at Yale.  The chances I believe of the Yale application board not noticing this coincidence is near zero.  This is supported by him apparently making grades that would ordinarily have gotten another student expelled.