On Tue, 4 Mar 2014 17:38:26 Tim Josling wrote:
On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 9:02 PM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
So when most people are craven cowards only the contrarians are brave?
No I don't think that making status displays (or meta status-displays) is related to being courageous. My point was that there are many ways of status whoring and no-one is immune from the temptation.
The issue of immigration in Australia is very much about cowardice.
$200K would be <long calculation>
This was only an anecdote and I have no aspiration to be awarded "pedant of the month" but whatever... I had translated 1975 dollars to present equivalents for the convenience of readers; this happened back when I lived in the country. in those days governments were less concerned about "money laundering" and you could readily get $50 notes, the equivalent of $300 now. The $100 note did not even exist at the time. The $200,000 is the 2014 equivalent of $30,000 in 1975. This was 600 notes or slightly over 1 ream. Quite doable in two overcoat pockets. My informant told me he saw this chap pay the deposit on a substantial farm with cash taken from his overcoat pockets.
ATMs and credit cards were both developed in the 60's. Neither of them was that widely used in the 70's. Back in the 70's if you wanted to be able to make unplanned purchases you simply needed to have sufficient cash. Having large amounts of cash is very unusual nowadays due to the fact that all major stores accept EFTPOS (and usually cash out), ATMs are everywhere that there are many people, and credit card payment is accepted for most things.
When someone who is wealthy is unable to perform basic self-care tasks such as cleaning their clothes then mental illness is the most likely explanation.
I knew someone who worked for him and he did not notice any signs of mental illness.
People always say that. Apart from the usual issue of people not noticing such things there's the additional factor that people are very unlikely to question their source of money. If someone is OK to work for then any other evidence of problems isn't going to be considered that much.
I'm not sure that failure to comply with white collar standards of "personal hygiene" is a very strong sign of mental illness. Inability to do so might be, but I have no evidence he was actually unable to care for himself. He seemed to be able to run very successful farming enterprises. In the farming community we ran into quite a few people who were unusual characters. Some were dysfunctional, others were not.
So your anecdote is not about someone who is unusually dirty who carried an inexplicable amount of money. It's instead about someone who worked on a farm and at the end of a working day was as dirty as any other farmer and who carried a large amount of money because ATMs and credit card facilities weren't invented soon enough to satisfy their financial needs. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/