All wealth is envy, isn't it

 The classical forms of success are pretty women, political power, and ostentatious wealth such as gold. 

 Intuitively, these are all in fact the same form of wealth. Or rather, they are illth, since they're bad for you.

 It seems strange. Having a beautiful wife is far from inherently unhealthy. If you have gold or silver you can buy joy and discipline and glory.

 Political power is inherently criminal. That part makes sense. It's a game where everyone competes to see who can betray whom. What if treachery and dishonour are bad tho...

 Then you realize it's mortals corrupting the glorious wealth.  The point is inspire envy and resentment.

 The wealth isn't the pretty women or plenty of women. The point is that someone else can't have the women. Hence the focus on harems, which inherently deprive some man of all female contact.
 The wealth isn't the coinage or the decorations or the big statues and buildings, it's the fact that you don't have them.
 The wealth isn't the political power. The point is that you want the political power but can't have it. The political power can be used to take away the things you do already have.

 Envy. Resentment. Illth. Sin. 

 

 Like everyone else, I have a perception blocker for envy. When I see it, even in someone else, it's normally transmuted to something else, to ensure I'm never aware of my own. On top of this, for my past service, I enjoy the privilege of feeling envy weakly if at all. Combined, it is easy for me to forget it exists. 

 While I feel dumb for taking this long to notice the envy thread, especially as I've specifically pondered the issue before, I can't see any way I could have reasonably found it. Even after finding it, I'm not sure how exactly it was done.

 Regardless...

 

 The wealth is incidental. Which is why these games reliably destroy the polities which engage in them. The point isn't to have the toy, which means the absolute level of toys doesn't matter. The point is to ensure your brother wants the toy, so that it bothers him when you take it away.

 

 The point isn't to have the stock to retire. The point is to have stocks that are doing better than yours. 

 It's all so tiresome. My fault for expecting better, of course. 

 

 Having been locked out of competition for money or sex or political office, you're tempted to take your ball and go home. This resentful impulse is nevertheless an opportunity to realize illth was never good for you in the first place. It's not something worth resenting or envying.
 Moderns do no such thing. They compete for likes and follows on fucking twitter. "I produced mindless logorrhea, and someone clicked a gay little heart icon more on mine! ENVY ME!" The competition is that much more vicious because the stakes are so low...

 The newer forms of illth are the same thing as the old with one additional layer of sophistication. Vows of poverty are supposed to inspire envy due to being so rich you don't need to value coinage. Signalling evolves to counter-signalling. Vows of chastity are supposed to signal being so rich that even as a total incel you would inspire envy. Etc. Displays of crass materialism in rap and hip hop are all like, "Lol you admit to being so poor you need money lmao." Being contemptible, rather than resentible, is what makes it crass. Stalin was, on paper, poorer than dirt. He got away with it due to having the political power to ad-hoc loot whatever he damn well pleased. That's what you get for having such a crass materialist form of accounting that can't figure in Stalinesque assets...but of course, accounting can't be anything else. Nobody with political power will let it become legible like that.
 The fact it's illth instead of wealth would become too obvious.