Warren Buffett: Some Citizens Don’t Fit In Our Market Based Economy

One of the hallmarks of being a member of the global elite, is having a rather Darwinian view of human society. That’s because elitists need something to justify their actions in their own minds. They’ve made it to the tippy top of society, and they want to believe that they achieved this status because they are the best of what humanity has to offer. Why else would they be so successful? Obviously, they must be superior to every other human being on Earth, right?

In reality, they can’t bring themselves to face the truth, because it’s too ugly for many of them to accept. And the truth is, they’ve only attained so much power by being more cunning and ruthless than their peers, or they were born into ruthless families that laid the groundwork for them. It has nothing to do with being genuinely superior human beings.

Either way, they don’t want you to know what they really think of you, and your place in society. They don’t want you to realize that they view you as an expendable cog in their machine. Occasionally though, they’ll let their guard down and show you their true colors. Warren Buffett, the third richest man in the world, recently did just that when he was interviewed by Bloomberg (see the full interview here).

“You want everybody educated to their potential. You want people to reach their potential. That still won’t work for some people in a highly developed market system.

I mean if this were a sports-based system, you could give me a PhD in football, and I could practice eight hours a day, and I might be able to carry the water from, not onto the field, but from the locker room to the bench. There’s just some people don’t fit well into a highly skilled market-based economy.

They’re perfectly decent citizens. We’ll send them off to Afghanistan, but they are not going to command a big price.”

In his defense, he was previously discussing income inequality in that interview, and wanted to give more money to the poor through income tax credits, regardless of their value to society. He says that with the amount of wealth our society produces, there’s no reason why anyone should be poor. That by itself, wouldn’t sound very elitist to the average person.

However, he seems to believe that only the government can save the poor, even though their interventions into the marketplace are known to make people impoverished in the first place. If that’s not elitist, I don’t know what is.

It’s also pretty hard to ignore that last sentence. It’s sounds like he’s suggesting that certain people will never fit in our society, and there’s only one thing we can do with them. Apparently, they’re only fit to be cannon fodder in our imperial wars. That’s the only thing they’re good for right?

Sorry Warren, you’re not fooling anyone.