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tarot_scholarI'm a big fan of Benebell Wen, generally speaking, but I'm a little too cynical (or socialist?) to entirely buy into "the 1% made it because they did the magical equivalent of working hard, turns out you just don't want it as much as they do!" line.
She and others are right to point out that economics, broadly speaking, functions a lot like magic: it's a weird amorphous thing that exists only because we will it to exist. More than five minutes of reflection on the concept makes that clear enough (see also: Sapiens, Sacred Economics). There are a lot of people who really, really, WANT to make a shit load of money, and who think about it all of the time, and are obsessed with it and are ready and willing to sacrifice anything they can to do so. Most of them stay poor, and not because they didn't want it enough.
Prosperity gospel is bullshit when organized religions preach it (do right in the eyes of the Lord and you'll be blessed financially!) and it's bullshit when esoteric hermetic practitioners preach it. The good news, at least, is that the occult is such a weird and disorganized bunch that we lack a 700 club exhorting viewers to send in money to get good with God. There are definitely unscrupulous practitioners, of course, but they lack an entrenched and efficient nation-wide machine for exploitation.
And even if we assume for a moment that each of these 1% billionaires actually for-real bootstrapped themselves into obscene wealth because they can't stop won't stop, I think it's fair to ask: why is this something to emulate? Hoarding all that wealth makes it instantly useless; money only has value when it's in circulation, facilitating transactions between people. A million dollars brings more value into human lives when it's spent on repairing roads, feeding the hungry, or purchasing art than when it's sitting in someone's bank account. That kind of magic isn't a blessing but a curse. The King Midas kind of curse, with a wide radius of collateral damage and where absolutely no one benefits and there's only suffering for everyone involved (remember, in the story his own daughter turns into gold as well; from her perspective, her father's obsession with wealth killed her).
She and others are right to point out that economics, broadly speaking, functions a lot like magic: it's a weird amorphous thing that exists only because we will it to exist. More than five minutes of reflection on the concept makes that clear enough (see also: Sapiens, Sacred Economics). There are a lot of people who really, really, WANT to make a shit load of money, and who think about it all of the time, and are obsessed with it and are ready and willing to sacrifice anything they can to do so. Most of them stay poor, and not because they didn't want it enough.
Prosperity gospel is bullshit when organized religions preach it (do right in the eyes of the Lord and you'll be blessed financially!) and it's bullshit when esoteric hermetic practitioners preach it. The good news, at least, is that the occult is such a weird and disorganized bunch that we lack a 700 club exhorting viewers to send in money to get good with God. There are definitely unscrupulous practitioners, of course, but they lack an entrenched and efficient nation-wide machine for exploitation.
And even if we assume for a moment that each of these 1% billionaires actually for-real bootstrapped themselves into obscene wealth because they can't stop won't stop, I think it's fair to ask: why is this something to emulate? Hoarding all that wealth makes it instantly useless; money only has value when it's in circulation, facilitating transactions between people. A million dollars brings more value into human lives when it's spent on repairing roads, feeding the hungry, or purchasing art than when it's sitting in someone's bank account. That kind of magic isn't a blessing but a curse. The King Midas kind of curse, with a wide radius of collateral damage and where absolutely no one benefits and there's only suffering for everyone involved (remember, in the story his own daughter turns into gold as well; from her perspective, her father's obsession with wealth killed her).
