
Churchill and His Money, or Lack of It - daddy_drank
http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2015/12/30/other-peoples-yachts-churchill-and-his-money-or-lack-of-it/
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hackercanon
What an incredible story. I must admit I had no idea that Churchill's status
as a popular writer was one of his keys to power.

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visakanv
The relationship between the writing of doctrines, books, etc and people
rising to power is a pretty interesting one.

See also: Obama's Dreams From My Father, The Audacity of Hope. Trump's
Crippled America. Hitler's Mein Kampf (the copyright on that is expiring very
soon). Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book".

In Ender's Game (fiction, but compelling), Ender's siblings go on to become
incredibly influential because of their writings. And it's also why things
like propaganda is so powerful, why we have phrases like "the pen is mightier
than the sword", books like Farenheit 451, and even, if you think about it,
the Bible, Koran, Torah, etc.

Books are powerful things, and people who seek power are typically associated
with them one way or another.

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marincounty
There's a lot of people who become filthy rich, and get to publish a book.

Kim Kardashian could string a few sentences together, and it would be a best
seller.

I am throughly shocked at what people read. I just don't get it.

(One day I will read Obama's first book. Why--because I believe he will go
down in history as one of our better presidents.)

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Someone
But it, IMHO, is unlikely Kim Kardashian would be awarded the Nobel prize for
literature
([http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1953/))

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Animats
There's a funny scene in some extra-long Churchill documentary, in the episode
that covers Churchill out of power after WWI. Scenes of Churchhill building
brick walls, chopping down trees, and pontificating about minor stuff.
("Winston Churchill, the Boring Years.", basically.) Churchill is talking to
Bernard Baruch, the financier, who, going into 1929, says the stock market is
overpriced and there is going to be trouble. Churchill is portrayed as very
Churchillian about investing - "We must be bold, and press on with resolve",
rather than getting out of the market. That doesn't work out well for him.

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djhn
Wealth and social standing do allow you to bend the rules quite a bit.

What are the best ways to get and leverage so much credit intelligently,
without having such initial wealth and status?

Are there institutions that offer credit based on some measure of
g/educational attainment/"future earnings potential"?

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visakanv
The short answer is to make stuff people really, really want. You get wealth
by creating it, and you get status from creating wealth. It could be software,
but it could be anything, really.

If you build a startup that has users who love you, you can raise money from
investors, get press attention, etc. Caveat being that it's a really, really
hard thing to do.

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tim333
cache
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peoples-yachts-churchill-and-his-money-or-lack-of-it/&hl=en&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

