We keep working on the Sweden theme (#1495232, #1552140, #1560586)
If I were to give a snarky answer: that which is scarce becomes valuable, so you admire it more...? #1449095, #1486740
Actually, no: there's now more wealth and more dollar-billionaires in Sweden per capita than in many other places (punching waaaaay above its Europoorean weight #1531949, #1560586)
Sweden is imagined as the land of equality, modesty and Jantelagen – the unwritten rule that no one should think they are better than anyone else. But there has also been a fascination within Sweden with its billionaires, especially those who abide by these dominant cultural norms.
We've discussed this before (#1533994)... and also, the moral code hasn't changed too much: Swedes are still very keen and apt to treat people as the person in front of them rather than their status, wallet, or lambo.
I think the principle extends further: few people (but the most extreme asshat Marxists, #1561710, #1500450) think ill of people who made wealth by honestly and appropriately solving other people's problems. Similarly, most people don't like grifters (=bitcoin treasury companies) or rent-seekers or those upward-redistributing elements of e.g., the housing market (=boomers).
That's not honestly acquiring wealth, and it's not appropriate.
Fuck the boomers (= they're just luxury communists anyway).
In the case of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of furniture giant IKEA, Swedes appreciated that he drove an old car (a Volvo, of course), engaged with employees working on the floor in his stores, and every year personally handed out Christmas gifts. His (some would say strategic) display of ordinariness made people overlook the fact that Kamprad was one of the world’s richest people and had moved to Switzerland to avoid Sweden’s high taxes.
While for a long time Sweden was a country with some of the world’s highest taxes, this no longer applies to capital taxation. For instance, it no longer has a wealth tax, an inheritance tax or a property tax.
"The ideal of egalitarianism doesn’t seem to align with patterns of wealth accumulation, especially at the very top."
Morals and values have shifted in response, but it's unclear what's the cause and the consequence obviously. Also:
Young Swedes and adults alike dream of building a “money machine” by investing in stocks so they can exit the labour market long before retirement.
In research for a yet-to-be published paper, we found Swedish tabloids and business magazines show a remarkable rise in reporting about billionaires. This includes a fascination with their personal lives and framing them in positive terms such as “entrepreneurs”, “investors” and “philanthropists” (rather than “capitalists”, for example).
And:
The articles tempt readers with drone images and descriptions of lavish mansions – but they also repeatedly point out how reluctant the billionaires are to display and talk about their wealth. This frames the topic as socially sensitive and sometimes even dangerous to the billionaires’ personal safety. Readers are invited to fantasise about life as a billionaire – the transgressive act of breaking Jantelagen adds spice to the fantasy.
Backdrop: it does not matter #946539
Striving to get rich seems to have become more socially acceptable in Sweden. Perhaps it always has been the way, but Swedes just never spoke about it (at least not in public).
Might be some cultural and value-based changes going on in the Swedish mentality and relationship to wealth/material things.
Just high sales and income, then?
yes, and payroll taxes and pension levies (that amount to 30-40% of base salary) -- which are the same thing since it's a publicly run PAYG/Ponzi system.
(Yes, we know the employment effects of that tax wedge are insane.)
Sounds like a decent place to be a semi-retired urban homesteader.
life is nice, culture is decent, nature is pristine.
Do not recommend the wokeness, the bombings, the green mania, and the Trump derangement syndrome
Swap bombings with shootings and it's just like most of the beautiful places in America, just without several taxes.
...and more wealth and higher incomes. Lessnot forget, we Europooreans. Swedish GDP/capita -- or better yet, disposable incomes -- is like one-third below America.
As a hypothetically semi-retired urban homesteader, why should I care about that?
perhaps not. Just the general good stuff that comes with a richer surrounding? (infrastructure, culture, communal buildings)
Selling stocks and debt to buy Bitcoin isn't grifting. If someone voluntarily offers me a 4% interest loan for me to buy Bitcoin and pay them back with a fraction of the gains, am I supposed to say "no, sorry, I don't like money and I feel bad for you"? Hell no, the market is a competition. It's a learning experience for the losing side of the trade.
you're supposed to realize that grift is grift, that we're here to make the world better, that there are ways to make profits we should pass on.
Also, the dudes are mostly issuing stock, e.g., printing paper, to buy bitcoin. Nothing virtuous about that
It's not just printing though. There's someone on the other side buying, and it's all being conducted honestly. The company says outright, "we're going to buy Bitcoin with this money, and pay you in fiat with a fraction of the gains." Who's fault is it that the corporate world rather own company stock than physical Bitcoin?
In most cases we can't persuade wealthy investors to buy Bitcoin. They don't get it. They think it's risky and dumb. But they will buy stock in a Bitcoin treasury company or an ETF because it's listed on NASDAQ, which to them means the investment is safe and smart. And it might even be better for them to be buying layer four paper Bitcoin than government bonds.
It's a perfectly virtuous trade. The Bitcoin treasury company gets to accumulate more Bitcoin, and the customer gets a higher ROI than they would from treasury bonds. The difference in profits comes from the fact that the company did the work of knowing what Bitcoin is and taking action on it, while the customer wanted a lazy alternative to learning something new.
When the guy in Turkey saw that inflation was getting bad, and he started stacking cars to hedge with something that wouldn't inflate as much as the currency, the government accused him of grifting. Yes, it's a silly way to make money, but it's not grift. It's self-preservation.
Overfinancialization is, more often than not, a reaction to government overreach. Making money from arbitrage and leverage doesn't happen in a vacuum. In this case it's a correction against the prevailing forms of grift. Investors who don't do research deserve whatever gains, losses, or opportunity cost they get from whatever they choose to invest in, especially when the terms and conditions have already been made clear and explicit.
Making the world better starts with us, with our world, with the people who know how to make it better and are doing the work by driving up the price of Bitcoin.
I don't think so; jury is still out on this. All the treasury company inflow is either fast hedge fund money or Bitcoiners, who otherwise would have held BTC, deluding themselves.