Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

This is poverty. That's your fault. There's a form of poverty that is not having enough, and this is a real

and a tragic problem, a stroke of bad luck, and often a social injustice. And it's a shame the way

that society looks down upon those who are struggling, as if it's always their fault, as if it says

anything about them as a person. But there was another form of poverty that Seneca talked about,

and in fact knew himself, and it was this form of poverty that was actually pathetic.

It's the poverty of wanting too much. All Seneca had to do was look around Rome to see it.

There's a famous story of a man in Nero's court who threw himself at the emperor's

feet, crying that he was down to his last million. My God, Nero replied, how can you bear it?

And sadly, this is a form of poverty all too common in the first world, perhaps even in your

social circles. People who make good money but spend it even better, whose appetites outpace

even their enormous incomes. In many cases, their poverty is self-inflicted, the result of

a lack of self-discipline, not so much of laziness, but of excess. And there are also

people whose poverty comes merely by comparison, although they have

quite a bit compared to others, they only have a little and thus feel poor. And both these forms

are not only pointless and irresponsible, but they are an insult to the people who actually are

struggling. They're an insult to the people who have the misfortune of not being worn into money,

or not working in an industry where fortunes are more

readily made. And it's an insult to philosophy, too, as Marx Reelis reminds us, because there is so

little actually needed for a good and a happy life. Poverty because of where you're born or what's

happening in the world is tragic. Poverty because you are entitled and reckless and envious and insatiable,

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