> ‘“Net worth” is an unfortunate term, because a human’s “worth” is obviously more than just their wealth.’

I grew up in a fairly egalitarian 1980s Nordic society and English is my third language.

I remember the first time I heard “worth” used in this American idiom:

“Person X is worth $Y”

It was shocking; almost like the most forbidden thing you could say, a glimpse of eugenics. If a person’s worth is measured in dollars, what does that say about the worth of underpaid women and minorities and children with development challenges…?

In the decades since, Silicon Valley has moved so far right that this barely registers anymore.

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brettgriffin 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't understand this (and I didn't understand the point in the post).

When we discuss someone's net worth, we are specifically discussing their assets less their liabilities. We use it primarily to distinguish their purchasing power and credit-worthiness.

It is not a metric that is attempting to define their worth as a person. What standardized metrics could you possible use to measure that, and for what purpose would you use that metric?

If you're filling out a mortgage application in a Nordic country, are these hypothetical underpaid women and minorities considered more credit worthy regardless of their net worth and income?

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collingreen 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This doesn't seem to reflect the whole story or the gparent post about the word choice of "worth" instead of something closer to what you're describing. Trying to twist the point into credit risk also doesn't fit here.

To paraphrase gp, they found it shocking to have the word for a persons value to be the word used when describing how much money they have access to.

I've personally heard many people many times describe money and income as a way to measure either someone's value to society or how much society values them. This is very much in line with the gp - why would wealth have anything to do with your value as a person.

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fragmede 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It is not a metric that is attempting to define their worth as a person.

You may not read it that way, but when you've never encountered the question before, the first time you see it being asked in the first place, it's comes across, not as an innocent question on a form that's just a reasonable part of a big process, but as a confrontation of a foreign culture that you've read and heard a lot about your whole life, only to be confronted by in that moment: What are you worth as a person?

That's not a common question to get asked. Okay, fine, the questionnaire is only asking as a business process thing, but the estimate is at about $10 million when broken down for parts, but at the point where someone's asking that question in the first place, you have to ask why are they asking?

Which you also point out,

> for what purpose would you use that metric?

The difference between worth and net worth is only one word, but like "guys" and "you guys", that one word makes a world of difference.

How would you define someone's worth as a person? It's because we don't talk about that at all, that even the question of net worth in the first place comes across as having a slight whiff of eugenics, because we have no other standardized measurements. Net worth is the only evaluation of how much any given individual a human is worth that has a magazine for it and list of all the high scores.

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pavlov 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> “It is not a metric that is attempting to define their worth as a person.”

Yet that’s literally the word being used.

Imagine if a language called men “the better sex.” One could argue that it’s just a word and people don’t take it for its literal meaning. But you’d wonder why people go along with that. Don’t they notice what they’re saying? That’s the feeling I got from “person X is worth $Y” back when I first heard it.

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gishh 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Net worth is purely about assets minus liability. “How many dollars are attached to your tax identity and how many dollars of stuff can be taxed”

It has zero to do with the value of the the life of a person. You can conflate the two if you’d like, you’re picking on shortcut verbiage so we don’t say a paragraph of disclaimer text before talking about net worth.

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pavlov 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m not conflating the two. I’m describing my experience encountering a culture that uses “worth” to mean the sum of a person’s material possessions. My own cultural background had primed me to think of these as entirely unrelated concepts.

You can argue it’s just a word, and that’s fine. There’s a whole another philosophical argument about if / how much words affect beliefs and actions.

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gishh 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is just a word, or rather a phrase. Words are given meaning by people.

You’re attaching a different meaning to the phrase than is intended by the user of said phrase. This is a “you” problem and not some moral quandary.

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kuerbel 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm also not a native speaker and wondering the same. Why is not called net wealth?

	▲	gishh 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One can be very wealthy and have zero net worth. Wealthy in family, security, etc. The net wealth of a toddler in perfect living conditions is almost infinite. Their net worth however, is 0.