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"Progress and prosperity are unusual; poverty is the norm"

This is the key quote concept that so many still fail to grasp. We should not ask why some people are poor, we should ask why some are rich and work backward from there. We need to stop thinking of wealth in terms of greed and instead wealth in terms of capabilities and opportunities.

As I wrote here: https://www.lianeon.org/p/does-material-progress-matter

"while a person who is fasting has the same nutritional state as one who is starving, we would not treat them identically disadvantaged; the latter has no capability to eat, as opposed to the former."

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"We need to stop thinking of wealth in terms of greed and instead wealth in terms of capabilities and opportunities."

Great statement. And that for the great bulk of mankind, seeking wealth is trying to simply satisfy the normal desires for improved lives with more pleasure and less pain.

And yet, there are some relatively few very successful wealth obtainers who cannot stop at "enough", but couple their self worth and their drive for power to gaining even more wealth.

Part of the answer to that would seem to be that the rest of us need to also adopt a viewpoint that says seeking "excessive wealth" is actually a "disease" for which we might pity the person, rather than reward them with allocation of power over us. Something related to Jefferson's nominally dependent yeoman farmer. Someone sufficiently well off to be mostly (but perhaps not totally) independent of needing to gratify his more wealthy neighbor's claims to being a superior human being.

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