This story starts with 2 friends of wildly differing economic status.
The poorest among them, they call him the philosopher. For the sake of brevity, we shall call him Loso from this point on. Like all philosophers who never went through any rigours of a proper philsophical education, he spent his days reading and writing stream of consciousness thoughts bordering on sophistry, or so he assumed, but he did observe that people actually took it seriously and overestimated what he wrote. The worst is they could even gleam some wisdom out of it through 100% intellect from the readers and 0% from his merit. He truly believes that whatever he has to say, and he says a lot, are mostly brain farts from a very confused individual, which he assumes must be grating to read.
His favourite pet theory is how if you do it all again with a good sampling of, say, a repitition of a 100 times, patriarchy will reign supreme for long period of history like it did historically. The X factor of physical might is just too much of an advantage as an effective tool to subjugate and imprint your wills on others. It’s often the one with the strongest military might that shape the world, and physical strength is the base denomination underneath for a long period of time in our collective history. Thus, it might be logical to conclude that the reason women’s rights gained so much ground at the turn of the 20th century was due to the dwindling advantage of physical might in military power, for a press of a nuclear missle doesn’t hinge on how strong your finger strengths are. Sounds intellectual, but he never did cross references any of it because it is too much work, and the reality is he still needs to work for sustenance and decided that maybe putting more effort into his job might give him a better outcome as he brain farts earn him no breads, no matter how much it impressed his richer friend.
The richer friend, to put it simply, is shameless, so,we shall call him Sham. But he is shameless in a way that fascinates the Loso even though he draws a lot of ire from others. The way he makes full use of his generation wealth, all provided by his family without a single day of hard work, from a very young age is astounding to Loso. So astounding, in fact, that Loso often finds it admirable and sees a true form of pure philosophy from the action of his friend.
From the age of 16 onwards, Sham stopped any further education with one goal in life, not subjecting himself to do what he doesn’t want to do ever again. He had had enough of the routine of mandatory schooling for 10 years. The only takeaway he had was that any form of labour is torturous, and he had no career aspiration, no dream, and nothing particular that he wanted to do professionally. His lifestyle is also surprisingly frugal and minimal, for luxury does not entice him. The other takeaway, a more important one, is he found Loso, but we shall leave that for chapter 2.
He has a lot of hobbies but does not want to engage them in such a way that monetary will flow to him. He thinks it sully the sanctity of it. The more important aspect is he hates the pressure of expectations, and when money is invovled, a certain level of that will occur naturally. “Leave the sullying to things I care not about,” he proclaimed one day. The actions he took next were shamelessly brilliant.
His family is rich, rich enough that he can sustain a lifetime without any income. He knows it, but as shameless as he is, he is no bum. One day, after deciding not to pursue further education, he went to his father and cooked up a story of how he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He utilized Loso’s knacks of writing rubbish that sounds intellectual and requested him to conjure some bullshit business idea, and he would do his part to mucked out some ridiculous accounting to demand a loan of 1 million dollars from his father.
It worked, and Sham was 1 million richer. He then did no business at all and proceeded to put in 70% of it on a dividend stock with an annual yield of 5%, and 30% of it on speculative growth stock. This was right after the subprime crisis, but right before the market went on a record-breaking bull run.
Money just compounded and rolled in without much effort from his side. His dividend itself had already gained him more than enough to sustain his lifestyle!
He then bought private properties, maxed out the loan from banks, and lucked out with the hottest housing market due to low interest rate and flipped it soon after for a shameless amount of profit. The only capital he spent was on the down payment. He didn’t even pay any mortgage as they were paid off from renting tenants.
His net worth and liquidity at this point of time must be 10 of millions with constant stream of passive incomes from his investments, and that’s not accounting of the wealth his family have where he has every intention of inheriting it with zero guilt. He often tells Loco that he is just waiting for his family to die out, so there will be an injection for a larger buffer of cash. He loves that assurance and doesn’t particularly care about familial bonds. He is also not proud of his accomplishments.
To add insult to injuries, throughout the 10 years, he spend all his time hanging out with Loco and writing his passage to wealth on online forums. He has also read 1000 of books, played 1000 games and watched 3000 movies, and travelled to over 150 countries.
“Loco, I worked a total of 50 hours or less for my wealth with no money from my own. Sully the things I care not about, and I had made it damn sure I sullied it.
To show how farcial all these are. I stand on my soapbox and proclaim to the whole world, and you can attest to that, of how despicable I am, exploiting and utilising fully on my inborn advantages from no merits of my own. I despise it, but I despise the people who have the same advantages as me yet choose not to take on the steps that I did. It’s sanctimonious to not fully utilise the resources available to you.
It’s even more grating pretending to acknowledge it while not taking full advantage of it. You already benefited from it through having the best environment with a secure safety net, knowing you can afford to take risks and end up none the worse. Thus, isn’t it the logical conclusion to shamelessly exploit it all to your advantages to attain full liberty? The only justification and solace I can find from advatanges so despicable is to flaunt it and show how truly despicable it is”
It’s outbursts like these when Loso thinks that his friend is the true philosopher as he acts upon his conviction to the tee. And unsurprisingly, this is one of the many reasons why Loso admires his friend. It’s true awe and total support that Loso provided from his side of their friendship.
Not long after Sham thinks that he had enough money to last him a lifetime, he proceeded to move in with Loco in a shabby looking 2 bedroom apartment that they rented, 90% of which came from Sham’s pocket. But before we proceed, it might be interesting to rewind time back to the period when these 2 friends met and provide a more detailed background for our 2 protagonists.
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