Yes, we are in agreement, sometimes accumulate, sometimes effect. Especially since, when money is made most important in a system, it might be the only way to make a change to the system, such as making it less important. The tricky thing is knowing when to do either, and whether it'll be possible to switch between the two, seeing, as again, power corrupts etc. You may think, finally, I have enough for myself to be comfortable, but what about your immediate family, what about providing for decendents... Is it simply power corrupt or is it more that people who seek it are ambitious types who would continually be ambitious. Would it occur to those who wanted wealth to then change the system from being controlled by wealth. I have none of these answers.
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I have been reading a book called "Algorithms to Live By" and I just read a page about bacterial resistance (p 200 in the paperback). The question in the 1940s was does bacterial resistance to viruses occur because the bacteria responds to a virus or because random chance. Salvador Luria realized that if you raised multiple generations of different lineages, and then exposed them all to a virus, if it were reaction they'd all have roughly the same amount of resistance. If it were chance mutation, it would be more wildly dispersed. Those that mutated earlier in ancestors, would pass it on to all, they'd all survive. Those later would have it fewer descendants with resistance. Some would have no resistance. That is what he found. When I think about rich people who stop amassing wealth and then distribute wealth, I notice it is generally the same. Either not at all, or a little, or everything. A person evolves over time, like bacteria over generations. This suggests that an evolution early on, not something after they've amassed wealth, leads them to give back or perhaps effect the system. Thus, this gives credence to the idea that if a person truly does not want to live/act zero sum, wants to change things later, that once they receive wealth they will be more likely to have "resistance" to the "virus" of "power corrupts." Otherwise, there would be more even amount of "giving back." Real data would need to corroborate this, but anecdotally this gives me hope that someone with good intentions will do good things with money. It also gives me little hope for those who have accumulated wealth/power and have a history since their earliest evolution (childhood) of being zero-sum, or worse charges against their character.
You are someone educate and well informed, adaptation is what you need when you want to build wealth. You can be on the side of power and be a corrupted person or a man that spread his fortune for good causes.