The poor should lead a reckless life

Sunday, October 8th, 2017

While looking at probabilistic models and high- versus low-confidence measures, Techniques of Systems Analysis makes a point that seems especially apropos today:

The rich, having paid their money, just want the expected to happen. They are, in fact, willing to invest large parts of their fortunes just to decrease fluctuations. The poor, on the contrary, should lead a reckless life. It is only by great good luck that they can do anything at all. On the whole, their salvation lies in increasing the fluctuation, in making the situation chancy and uncertain.

Comments

  1. Faze says:

    This is why many young people want to see the overthrow of the established order. Facing an uncertain world with what seem to them to be few resources, they instinctively wish for some level of chaos or disorder, the hope being that the new order will be more favorable to their gifts.

    I realize now that this is why I was a left-wing radical fool when a lad. I figured that anything was better than society as it was then ordered, because the only way I could see that I could get ahead would be through hard work, conscientiousness, etc. Horrors! My hope was that with society overturned, a new order might arise in which lazy people like myself could contemplate our naval without starving. I still meet young people who are as I once was.

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