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the U.S. is an interesting place b/c it's possible to spend some period of time in the top percentage of earners more so than many other countries. for example many countries gatekeep based on your birth or family connections.

It's the most meritocratic (but not perfect) relative to others. China, even though it's more meritocratic based on grades and hard work, still requires you to be fairly fluent in Chinese culture and the language.

There are bubbles where this isn't the case. e.g. an expat or english teacher in Shanghai or Beijing could have very good lives economically speaking.

In this whirlpool system, where people can only briefly spend a period of time as a high flyer (usually 20 to early 30s) there has to be a way to "lock in" your gains.

E.g. if you can "pay your dues" and save enough money so that it compounds you can then "retire" to somewhere cheap where you can do whatever you want.

This story of "work for 10 years, then do whatever the fuck you want." is very compelling. Very few systems offer this type of freedom. Usually it's Lifetime Indirect Slavery but With Extra Steps.

Whether this story is 'good' or 'bad' or even makes sense or works doesn't matter to its 'validity'. If people believe in or want to believe in a story, those who are in charge of maintaining the story will be paid Big Bucks to keep it afloat.

If 99% of people are spending 99% of their money in service of the story, it's by definition "Valid".

This type of culture can be attacked in a very interesting way through Tourism.

If you spend 10 years getting a lot of capital but don't re-invest that capital into the "world" and instead extract it into your "home world" you slowly drain the system of its vitality.

It can also be attacked through insipid deployment of capital, either by continuing to let it compound, never letting it crystallize into the real world in some useful form, or by wasting it in a conflagration. (usually status signalling)

Combined, you have forces that "Siphon", "Lock-up", and "Burn" vitality.

While technically these tokens are only representations of vitality, destroying the idea or visage of abstract ideas can often cause actual damage to the "real" thing.

Money is Just Sacred Enough that destroying enough of its vitality can cause a Great Depression but no so sacred that any insult to it leads to a Great Jihad Against The Heathens.

Capital deployment in a Useful or Artistic Way is pretty cool. Batman is difficult to hate for example. A social system is great when it can get capital into the hands of those who can deploy capital effectively and efficiently.

It's when you see that capital being burned in an orgy of excess that you start to polish your gun and your pitchfork.

The thing is, even burning capital is just Someone Trying to Do Their Best. When you have a lot of capital as input you're *expected* to generate a similar output.

If you say "I can juggle 10 balls" and only juggle 3 in your shows, people will want a refund and will stop giving you balls. Excess consumption is just them trying to live up to all the money they have.

It's why we see companies who don't return money or try to stay as small as possible as "virtuous". They accurately tell people how much capital they can currently manage effectively.

Rich kids and all the Suddenly Billionaire Chinese Peasants are just trying to do what's expected of rich people. They're expected to Do Something With All That Stuff.

It's easier to be rich in the U.S. because there's a longer history of wealth and more social scripts to follow. Start a charity or non-profit, name a bridge or a town after yourself, start a war, etc... Without these social scripts the default is to Buy Luxury Goods.

You could make the argument that burning a giant pile of money this way at least allows the money to "pass through". A miserly scrooge who just amasses money is like a constipated asshole, locking up energy and vitality in limbo.

The consumption of luxury goods at the very least passes the money back into the economy even if you can argue that the work created from this energy isn't particularly Useful.

(The counter argument is Life as Art and that not everyone is suited for rocketing cars into space or developing nuclear fusion energy)

What something like a basket of index funds does is that is allows misers to contribute to society. It realizes assholeness is a form of energy just like that time when a someone picked up a black rock and called it Coal.

So that's a connection between global warming and the financial system. We have this energy source called "Coal" that we can burn for Energy to Do Stuff and it generates "Pollution" and at some point we need to ask if that Stuff is worth the Pollution.

Because the coal is infinite, and there's only so much pollution (physical and mental) living things can take before they just die o kill themselves.