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because it’s not new, it was just wrapped in a good title. It’s astonishing how much a book with a good title can sell if it lands just right.

(Relatively) benign example: Mark Manson's "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck". Basically a summary of the greats of philosophy and psychology, age old but often solid advice, brings nothing new to the table, but repackaged as a blunt chat with your bro / self-help book so it's quite accessible. Padded out and repeats itself like most self-help books because $$$, sometimes contradicts himself, 8 million copies sold.

Bad example: Peterson's "12 Rules for Life". Same as above, but overly wordy because the author's vain, includes stuff like long discredited Jungian crap and religious nonsense, more egregious elementary mistakes, and mixed with his own stupid political opinions. Part of the alt-right pipeline. 10 million copies sold.

Honestly, I think schools should force kids to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and have a discussion on that.

Or maybe I should rewrite Meditations, title it "The 13 Rules of a Roman Emperor: How to Stop Giving a Shit and Live a Fucking Good Life." Adjust the vocab to that of a 13 year old and perhaps have a picture of Marco Aurelius chopping someone's head off on the cover.

Should probably write it under a pen name too. Lance Powercock, John Steel, Max Iron, Peter Powers, something like that.

e: Dick Hardy, Hank Killjoy, Vance Strongfist, Sebastian Steelsword, Roger T. Ripper, ...

So he got some factory in SE Asia or China proper to manufacture them for pennies, and he sold them for dollars. As I recall, he was proud of how low paid the labor was.

So just like every other cockhole who thinks they’re “self made,” he started with money, used that money to exploit far away people with less power than him, and sold a product that nobody needs to people who could have spent their dollars on something more useful.

First of all, the people who bought his wallets thought the wallets were useful. Maybe you would have spent the money differently, but people are free to spend their own money how they want. They decided they did need a new wallet, and his was available at a price they thought was fair.

As for the people making the wallets, it may be hard to believe, but it could be that working in a factory making wallets was a major improvement to their lives. A few years ago, Planet Money did an episode where they talked to a couple of women working in a T-shirt factory in Bangladesh, making $3 a day. For them it's a step up from the lives they would otherwise have led. They came from a village where they lived in a hut with a dirt floor and were often on the verge of starvation:

When Shumi and Minu were growing up, sometimes there wasn't enough food to eat. They had three younger sisters who all died before they were 7. Now, Shumi and Minu are able to send money home. It isn't much, but it makes a big difference in the village.

The differences in their lives are largely due to being able to work in the garment factory. It arrived a bit too late for Minu who was married off to someone who was effectively a bum. Her younger sister Shumi got to avoid being married off and lives a life of relative freedom:

Minu's father married her off when she was a teenager, following the local tradition. An unmarried daughter "becomes a big burden," her father told us. "I have to spend money on their food and lodging."

But, her sister was young enough to have other options:

Rather than get married off, Shumi dropped out of school to go work with her sister in a factory.

Shumi's personal life is nothing like Minu's. Shumi has her own savings account. She has a boyfriend. Back in the village, her family would never let her talk to a boy who wasn't a relative. But here on her own, she takes rickshaw rides with her boyfriend. They hold hands; he tells her he loves her.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure working in a garment factory in Bangladesh is a brutal job. It's a job no Westerner would be willing to do, even at the Western minimum wage(s). But, for some people, life before those jobs was even more bleak.

And, even better, sometimes the money flowing into a country doing things like garment work enables the country to improve its education system and emerge from poverty. Many of the countries that used to be used for garment manufacturing are no longer viable because the minimum wage workers will accept has gone up so much that it's no longer profitable to make the garments there. That's a great thing, it means their economies are so strong that they've moved on to better things.

The prime example of that is Taiwan, which was a garment manufacturing hub starting in the late 60s, but today is the world's source for computer chips. That wasn't the result of benevolent moves by corporations or rich Westerners to build up Taiwan. It was just that labour costs in Taiwan were initially low enough that they were a good source for low-skill labour. That meant money flowed into the island. It was invested in smart ways, and today it's a country with a very high quality of life.

There are a lot of problems with capitalism, but it tends to move money from rich areas to poor areas. And, many of the systems that were in place before capitalism resulted in much worse lives for the least powerful.