#illth

[ahumourlessworld]

“Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the Syndicate.

What difference does that make? He's dead.

Then his family will get it.

He didn't have time to have a family.

Then his parents will get it.

They don't need it, they’re rich.

Then they'll understand.”

[ahumourlessworld]

Why do we buy into ‘stealth wealth’ and the class who wear it?

We try to wear clothes like the super rich, but in reality they are just laughing at us

““Stealth wealth” is the name given to the clothes worn by the extremely rich – very fine wools in navy or grey, oversized coats, tiny handbags, whites so bright they’re almost blue, a thousand shades of camel, a whole caravan of them, a palette that whispers “taste” with a little lisp. Logos are replaced with secret codes – a clever little stitch at the hem, or a hoodie made of cashmere.

Woven through these merino wools and pale suedes are the codes and strappings of a life where the wrong type of collar, for example, betrays you as a gatecrasher, a fraud. For years now, the fashion press has monitored and marketed these clothes to the rest of us, frauds every last one, with the unspoken promise that if we spend the equivalent of the price of a car on our new jumper, we too might gain access to a world that doesn’t want us.

(…)

Perhaps I would mind this “quiet luxury” less if the clothes were fabulous. But, instead, they’re bloodless, grandly bland, dreary. They speak of money, not taste; of fear, not joy. Why should the rest of us buy them – what good are the clothes without the power? If we’ve learned anything from our good friends in Succession, it is the true horrors of being wealthy, the boredom, the panic, the interminable snacks. Why would we want to cosplay as a billionaire when we know that to be so is to live without trust, without shame, to be monstrous? What sick trick are we playing on ourselves? It makes me wonder about our relationship to politicians, too – rather than making him unelectable, why does the cash and privilege of a billionaire like Sunak (who once visited a construction site wearing a pair of £490 Prada suede loafers) instead seem to inspire so many people to doff their caps and run to Selfridges? These people are ruining our lives, and our response is to buy their shoes?

(…)

Buying into “stealth wealth” feels like buying a band T-shirt, except the band are the worst people in the world, and the T-shirt costs the same as a month’s rent, and the music is them laughing as they shout “Eat shit” from a car. With the greatest respect, no thank you.”

[azspot]

Why the economics discipline has ignored John Ruskin's seminal concept of illith, as in destructive activity.

Ruskin was trained as an art critic and historian, but he never confined himself to a single discipline. He moved easily between aesthetics, ethics, political economy and social reform because he believed these could not be separated. What disturbed him was not industrialisation itself, but the way Victorian society had begun to worship production while becoming blind to destruction. The new economy generated unprecedented riches, and yet it was clear that it also produced polluted rivers, disfigured landscapes, slum housing, exhausted workers, child labour, and widespread ill health. These harms were not accidents. They were integral to how the new wealth of the era in which he lived was being created.

It was in this context that Ruskin coined the deliberately jarring term illth. He did so because the language of economics had no word for what he was seeing. Everything that produced money was being counted as wealth, regardless of its consequences. Ruskin recognised that this linguistic and philosophical failure was not neutral. If an economy cannot name harm, it will reward it. Illth was his attempt to restore moral and material clarity and to insist that wealth gained through damage is not wealth at all, but its opposite.

Illth was not a rhetorical flourish. It was, at its core, an accounting intervention. Ruskin was arguing that an economy can expand numerically while impoverishing society in reality and that unless economics learns to distinguish between life-enhancing and life-destroying activity, it will systematically mislead both policymakers and citizens.

Hence the John Ruskin Question: If economic activity can generate “illth” — wealth that destroys life — why does modern economics still treat all growth as progress and all income as gain?

[sovereen]

illth replied to your post:

She’s a fish-troll-person, that doesn’t count. Like an actual bloopbloop finfin fish probably doesn’t. They probably get tired of water.

meenah is a pretty fishy prawncess and you need to knock it off meme-shit. i doubt they get tired of water.  do you get tired of oxygen.  if the answer is yes, stop breathing.

fishbxtch replied to your post:

cus we do 38I

:( poor meenah.  nomoby undersands (haha get it, sands) yoar plight ... 

[sovereen]

#Probably not.

meenah is a fish and she says they do.

[sovereen]

illth replied to your post:

whispers shrek

rotgrave replied to your post:

check yourself before you shREK yourself .

fucking god dammit nevermind bye

[sovereen]

rotgrave replied to your post:

youre dead kiddo

[sovereen]

:) yay he's here to kick your shreky ass.