Think of it like a bank run, but instead of withdrawing paper notes, the rich are withdrawing real goods. They have more wealth to withdraw, and they can withdraw it faster, since wealth brings with it preferential service.

The vault only has so much money.

I think confusing money for stuff is the height of midwittery (which is a stupid term, the ultimate ‘self-aggrandizing’ term, and anyone who uses it deserves to have it thrown back at them).

I’m beginning to sense a trend. You don’t quite grasp something, so you leap for its throat.

The story above is not any of the things you say.

If tomorrow Elon Musk decides to buy out every grocery store in your town — heck, if he goes right to the fields and buys the crops at a premium — you will have more trouble getting food, and the food you do get will probably cost more. If he does that enough times, or enough rich folks join in, they may make the current supply of certain goods disappear.

For the time being, yes yes, but the market signal they send will encourage producers to produce more. Maybe. Unless the producers don’t, or can’t, or the rich keep buying up those goods — which they can do at a higher price because they have more money. The font of goods isn’t unlimited. Aren’t you the hard-headed fellow talking often about the realities of starting a business?

If Musk and other self-made billionaires had wealth in liquid assets, rather than in shares in the companies they founded (the value of which will drop if they try to take out too many at one time, by the way, since the captain in the rowboat does not instil confidence in the sailors), they could really do some damage to the purchasing power of the average person.

The supply of goods at any one time is limited, and the total savings of a society vastly exceeds the goods available (at current prices).

If you can explain how it’s a thought experiment that doesn’t translate to the real world, have at it. Your brand of rejectionism is very tiring.

Scrooge adopted a scarcity mindset to deal with an uncertain world. And the world is in fact uncertain. The only question is what’s the best way to cope?

Have multiple sources of income if you can manage it. But beware the hucksters. MLM is not owning your own business.

Or just splurge at a certain age. Better to die poor than to live as if poor. This was Kierkegaard’s practice. He lived well and died poor.

Whatever you do, don’t play Galahad to a girl with a sob story.

Scrooge, in addition to being a burden to those around him, was also personally miserable and inhuman. By changing, he improved those around him and his own personal happiness.

There’s only five things you can do with money really, save it, invest it, spend it, give it to a charity, or give it to the government.

When you hoard it, or just burn it, can they really prove that’s a better option than the other four?

As a band like KLF (who as far as I know weren’t the rivals to the fame won by the Beatles or the Stones) required publicity maybe it was small price to pay. They are probably far more noted for that one act than any bit of music they produced.

My only question would be: do fifty quid notes burn brighter than twenties?

Scrooge got screwed over by his girlfriend. She didn’t even put out. That must have black-pilled him something fierce.

Given a fiat currency, the miser is an anti-inflation hero. What of those who hoard valuable commodities?

I’ve been reading a bit about the sugar and spice trade of old. Appears to have made some people rich, but I wonder from whence came the wealth to enrich the merchants? Did someone have to get less for the spice merchant to get more? Spice and sugar in themselves hardly seem like wealth creating agents; almost the opposite, in so far as they lead one to morbid obesity.

Maybe it is a Keynesian thing, where the money was under a mattress until a spice merchant showed up to garner the coins. Thus, the lesson of Scrooge is that an entrepreneur needs to rise up and bring forth a product that will entice the miser to part with his savings.