Rich Dog, Poor Dog: Anubistic Wealth and Poverty
For as long as the Prophet can remember, hacks have been busting the divine spheres about the millions of Italians living in poverty...
by The Prophet — 2026-01-15
1 Sure, but if you want to get rich you have to “compete”!
2 Rich?
What does rich mean?
3 For as long as he can remember, the Prophet has watched all sorts of hacks falling over themselves to bust the divine spheres about the millions of Italians living in absolute and relative poverty.
4 There is no doubt that some unlucky people are having a very hard time, but what nobody ever quite grasps is what wealth or poverty really mean.
Can you call someone “poor” because they earn less than x?
5 Forty years ago a factory worker in the south of Italy could buy a little detached house with a garden by working 8 hours a day, with some time left over for hobbies and family, while the “rich” Milanese businessman lived in 100 square metres of pigeon coop (an apartment block) and worked 14 hours a day.
6 Which of the two was richer? According to Anubism, the only truly scarce resource in a man's life is time.
7 Can you call someone rich who has no time for himself?
8 Is the man with designer clothes bought on a credit card, a rented flat “in the centre” and payments still due on the Porsche rich, or is the rich one the man who owns a house in the suburbs, drives a paid-off Fiat Panda and wears clothes he likes, even if they carry no label?
9 Can you call someone rich who lives like a rich man and is drowning in debt, or is the rich one the person with a good quality of life and a bit of money in the bank?
10 Is the man with the “big flashy car” and no money for fuel rich, or is it the man with the runabout who can afford to fill it up?
11 Someone who, the moment he has a bit of cash in his pocket, has to flush it down the toilet or gamble it on the lottery and then ends up homeless: is he poor?
12 Maybe he is at the moment he loses it, but he is rich while it is in his pocket.
13 The answer to what poverty is seems further away than ever.
14 Let us try to tackle the question another way.
15 Given that so far we have been talking about something subjective, let us try to answer the question...
...When can a person be called objectively poor?
16 Certainly when they spend more than they earn, or when they are convinced they must be able to afford to spend more than they earn in order to feel rich.
17 But does this feeling rich depend on how much money they spend as such, or on how many things and services they can buy?
18 Plenty of people work like mad to get the most out of their hours on the job, then flush the money down the toilet to buy themselves a “compensation” that by definition yields nothing.
19 (Household economics of the “compensatory” kind)
20 Did some big bad villain in society really plant in them the need for something they can't afford, or does the problem lie in their inability to tell what they need in order to be well from what other people need to see in order to think they are “rich”?
If you don't spend to look rich, are you poor?
21 In this light we could say that poverty is a lifestyle that becomes a high-yield resource: Not giving a fuck what others think saves an incredible amount of time and money.
22 Is a man who thinks he has to look rich to be attractive rich, or poor?
23 A man who believes a woman truly wants him because he looks rich is potentially the poorest of them all, in every sense... but he looks rich!... so how do we get out of this one?
24 When can a person be called objectively poor?
25 A friend of the Prophet bought himself a 50,000-euro watch after a long search. Is he rich?
26 No, he was simply looking for a watch as an investment, because he didn't trust the bank with his money, and thanks in part to his passion for watches he got a good deal.
27 But since he has a 50k watch, he must be rich? Absolutely not.
28 He invested his savings. So what?
29 Some time ago Eteroclito, a friend of the Prophet, after a lifetime of being careful with how he used his money, bought himself a “comfortable” boat to sail off into “retirement”.
30 An old friend said to him, affectionately: “Hey, you old bastard, bought yourself a yacht, have you?”...
31 Eteroclito answered, just as affectionately: “Hey, you old bastard, you've had two kids who cost twice as much as the ‘yacht’, and an ex-wife whose maintenance costs as much as a yacht, haven't you?”
32 The friend stood there silent and puzzled for a few seconds, then, adoring Anubis, said: “You're right!”
33 Eteroclito explained that he was the one who was really rich, because you can sell a boat, you can't sell a child.
34 A child costs far more than a boat.
35 Yes, boats and babies are the proverbial apples and oranges; children mean investing resources and love to give the gift of a new life.
36 That doesn't change the fact that they must be a carefully weighed and sustainable economic choice, indeed “the” most carefully weighed and sustainable choice a human has to make.
37 Bear in mind that, according to the latest figures, Italian women have on average 1.25 children each and Nigerian women 6.8.
So are Italian women poor and Nigerian women filthy rich?
38 Right? Because, as the saying goes, “The poor always pay their debts, it's the rich who don't”.
39 Could we conclude that the poor man is rich, or that the rich man becomes poor?
40 Whoever doesn't pay their debts breaks the second precept by busting the creditor's balls (assuming the loan was asked for willingly), so we could say that “being poor” is very Anubistic.
41 Since it seems impossible to define poverty, let us try to define wealth.
42 Some think being rich means having enough money put aside to “buy” your own time and work little or not at all; in other words, that wealth is owning your own life.
43 Others think wealth means having enough money put aside to face any stroke of bad luck... that is, to “be at peace” and safe.
44 Others still think the rich man is the one who spends a lot; but the one who spends a lot will find it that much harder to “buy” his own life.
45 Getting out of this question looks hard too.
46 All this busting of the spheres was meant to get us to at least one Anubistic statement: “Poverty is in our heads before it is in our wallets.”
47 At this point it is worth thinking it over carefully, because as Jung put it: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
48 Although the world has generated considerable real wealth and technological deflation has driven production costs down to ridiculous levels, the purchasing power of “Westerners” keeps falling over time, which unquestionably produces more “poverty”.
49 Quite simply, finance, using the violence wielded by super-states and states, has cut our purchasing power by at least four times over the last 40 years.
50 The subject is difficult and many-sided; taken the wrong way it ends up in the hands of the statists, who time after time run hate campaigns against anyone who “drives an SUV”, owns a second home, and so on...
51 This lets the envious (who may well be rich) hate the “fake” rich (who may well be poor).
52 All of it to the benefit of the parasites, who on one pretext or another screw everyone out of their money.
53 No, the younger generations have not become stupid or incompetent, nor lazy fuckers, and the problem isn't that they aren't competitive either.
54 How can we let Anubis inspire us to handle the situation as well as possible and defend ourselves from the impoverishing state?
55 Many years ago a woman friend of the Prophet told him that her daughter, when refused something she wanted, asked her whether they were poor.
56 She was so taken aback that she didn't know what to say.
57 The answer the Prophet suggested to her was: “Yes, we're poor, but don't worry, because whatever happens to you, there's all the money it takes to help you.”
58 Real poverty is when you can't cope with a disaster, not when you don't have a new toy or a designer T-shirt. This is the most Anubistic way of looking at it, not least because it is the one that lets you live without adoring Anubis at every bill.
59 Anubists know that the ballbusting in this world is infinite.
60 But Anubists also know that not busting your own balls is essential.
61 So the good Anubist shifts some of his time away from producing wealth and towards making the best use of it, in terms of personal satisfaction and of keeping the ballbusting to a minimum.
62 For example, the good Anubist avoids having his divine spheres crushed for a week at work, adoring Anubis flat out, only to blow all the money in a weekend.
63 You might as well stay home for seven days and get on with your hobbies.
64 After all, as Schopenhauer said, however it goes you will never be satisfied, least of all with money badly spent, because the satisfaction lasts next to no time.
65 It is also decidedly Anubistic to avoid at all costs falling into compensatory money management, typically summed up by the line “With the way I bust my ass, surely I can afford this or that?”
66 The answer is NO!
67 There is absolutely no point in working yourself to death, using up your life to feed voracious states, and then flushing the money down the toilet to give your existence some meaning.
68 A designer bag holds the same things as one without a label, and a Ferrari can go at most 130 km/h on the motorway.
69 Exactly the same as a Fiat Panda.
70 This doesn't mean you shouldn't buy the “Ferrari” or the “Gucci”, only that you should weigh up the costs and benefits properly.
71 Very likely a person could spend their money with more pleasure in the long run, if only they gave it a little thought.
72 And if they really can't find alternatives, maybe it's time to put more time into it.
73 Getting the most out of the money you spend makes economic sense, because it cuts down the Anubistic adorations needed to earn it and spares you from helping to subsidise the parasites, who, as everyone knows, “breed more the more they eat”.
74 Now, back when people in Milan used to say “get stuck in and work!”, because work always guaranteed purchasing power, the triangle of knowledge was the one and only benchmark for being “rich”.
75 That is: knowing, knowing how to do, knowing how to be.
76 What mattered was putting your effort into producing wealth.
77 Today, given the situation, the triangle that matters becomes: knowing how to produce wealth, knowing how to spend well, knowing how to save.
78 Today it is essential to understand that, to avoid “poverty”, you need to put a little less effort into producing wealth as such and give some time to other things.
79 “Knowing how to produce wealth” is, in itself, no longer a guarantee of “Anubistic well-being”.
80 We've talked about it already, but it bears repeating: from the very first transaction you make, thanks to direct and indirect taxes combined, you lose about three quarters of the value you produced in tax.
81 At equal productive capacity, you have to work almost three hours to buy one.
82 Living in a territory where the economy is devastated by taxation, it pays handsomely to cut your spending and increase your free time.
83 So let us introduce the triangle of “Anubistic well-being”, where well-being depends not only on producing wealth but on knowing how to produce wealth, knowing how to spend well and knowing how to save.
84 Knowing how to save doesn't only mean spending less than you earn, but also protecting your money from the voracity of the state and of the financial system the state imposes.
85 I say imposes because nobody in their right mind would use a currency that keeps losing value, yet they have to, because the state forces them to.
86 Likewise, nobody would freely hand their money over to a bank that, through the fractional reserve system, can grant loans for amounts far greater than the deposits it really holds.
87 But the state forces us to, on the pretext that the “tax evaders” have to be kept in check.
88 Unfortunately, while you are busy producing wealth, every other player in the economic system is busy stealing it from you; putting time into protecting your savings can pay far better than working.
89 It is deeply counterintuitive, but the state-and-finance combine has no interest whatsoever in letting you get rich.
90 The state gains power when the ruled are poor, because that increases its scope for control and its political power.
91 The poorer the Dim Soul, the more he tends to ask for “more state”.
92 The reason the state seems bent on destroying the real production of wealth through bans, regulations and taxation does not lie in its incompetence or stupidity.
93 Destroying the economy is the prime interest of the state-dwellers... since, as everyone knows, they raise their own “salaries” regardless.
94 But surely finance, at least, has an interest in developing the real economy?
95 No!
96 From the Bible (Proverbs 22:7): “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”
97 I don't think this needs explaining: finance needs to get you into debt to make you a slave and to get returns out of thin air, because the money it lends you belongs to nobody, it is made up (see the money printer and fractional reserve).
98 These gentlemen have every interest in reducing you to poverty so they can then “lend” you the money.
99 Hence the emergencies they keep inventing, the pandemics, the wars and so on... every time they manage to create problems for everyone they have an excuse to print counterfeit money, robbing you through inflation and pushing you more and more towards credit.
100 The good Anubist, of course, avoids credit like the plague, unless it is for buying a factor of production that fits into a sound balance sheet.
101 No need to ask Anubis what the future holds: if you can't save today, tomorrow will certainly be worse!
102 “The Ant and the Grasshopper” has had its day: today, whether you play the ant or the grasshopper, along comes the state/finance combine and takes the fucking lot. Today, with apologies to Aesop, the fable would have to be rewritten and called “The Squirrels and the Jays”
103 In which the squirrels bust their asses hunting for acorns and stashing them away, then along comes the Jay and, as is well known, steals them, and the squirrels adore Anubis while they go looking for more acorns.
104 The Jay's behaviour is called “kleptoparasitism”; that of the state and finance is more properly called predation.
105 One way to defend yourself from this attack is to draw up a mini Anubistic personal balance sheet, and you'll discover unheard-of things...
106 The fridge or the washing machine, however luxurious the one you buy, will cost far less than coffee at the bar and other such little pleasures.
107 We often focus on saving on expenses that, properly accounted for, weigh very little.
108 The mini balance sheet will bring plenty of adorations, but also a big advantage.
109 Let's take a simple example: for a week you've been driving yourself mad trying to save on a fridge that costs about a thousand euros.
110 Fuck it, spend two thousand and put it in the balance sheet.
111 You'll find that fridge costs you about 25 cents a day; less than a cigarette, and a fifth at most of the coffee at the bar you happily drink without adoring Anubis.
112 With less than one working day a year spent putting the year's expenses into a balance sheet, you'll be able to manage your finances much better.
113 Bear in mind, too, that at least half of what you spend, thanks to VAT combined with the weight of taxation along the supply chain, is tax.
114 Then put under the heading “tax” every euro you've spent because the law requires it, and you'll see the adorations!
115 We worry so much about income tax, but the “after” is even worse.
116 Before closing, let the Prophet offer the Anubistic conclusion of all this bullshit reflection: Be poor!
117 Being “poor in the head” means being free; the “poor” man is very strong, because he is hard to blackmail.
118 The Poor pay their debts, the poor are not for sale, because they know how to live with a certain economic sense and are not easily corrupted: the “poor” are masters of their own lives and do not delegate politicians to steal on their behalf.