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Comment by erikb | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree. But the set of rich people and the set of billionaires are only overlapping. They are not the same. And funnily it's not even true that one would be a subset of the other. It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death. But at least I personally would say if you are starving you are certainly not rich. Rich means having the ability to get what you need and a lot of things you want, including things that are unavailable to most. Would you agree?

It can be considered a subtle difference, but it's the point I'm trying to make. Stop worrying about the number "one billion US dollars" and instead start worrying about becoming rich.

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> It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death.

While "possible", the kinds of scenarios that lead to a starving billionaire are the kinds in which _everyone_ starves (ie widespread famine). If one's paper is actually worth $1B there are some sane people who would pay a large sum to buy it for a discount. Say $500M. I would argue that billionaires are able to live fundamentally easier lives than non-billionaires and most difficulties they face can be solved by 1) paying money or 2) accepting sub optimal outcomes (eg, not working on their business to make it outperform the S&P 500).

I do agree with a good chunk of your sentiment about socialized skills that allow the elite to recognize and interact with each other and the basic idea that managing large amounts of money is not fraught with perils (scammers, sales people, poor advice, open hands wanting "their share"). A simple example of that is lottery winners. They know how to spend millions, but not now how to make it last or make it work.

I disagree. I've grown up with people from both rich and poor ends. The poor struggle with trying to pay their bills. The rich may be running an operation that makes $20,000 a day, paying $17,000 in daily operating costs. They don't sleep at night, worried about when these costs get too high. While they don't worry about starving, they carry heavy burdens. They can go on more expensive vacations, but they may be too stressed to even start.

And the more power you hold, the more people want it. Competitors, colleagues, employees, spouses and children. I have seen many rich people have their wealth ripped apart with years of family squabbling.

The optimum to tweak for is freedom, not wealth. You want the freedom to not work, but with great power comes great responsibility. The optimum may be a little less than being a millionaire. Billionaires possibly push far beyond the optimum. Many wake at 4, lacking the freedom to have a lazy Sunday or to just diss Zuckerberg on Twitter without it being sensationalized.

I honestly cannot understand the point you're trying to make.

Also,

> It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death.

Can you provide an example?

It's also hard for me to see where our experiences diverge so much that we can't understand each other. Maybe you don't know that billionaires are not having this billion dollars on their bank account, but instead it's a calculation of assumed ownership of stock, houses, derivates etc?

If you have a billion dollar on a bank account with a bank that would cash that amount of money, then I'd say yes you are rich. But the Forbes list is mostly guessed values that are used in calculations, based on real but unknown values that may change a lot between one day and another.

I hope that was the point. If not give me some hints or explain your point of view more detailed. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that we actually share the same view but express it differently.

Please tell me how many on the Forbes list are starving. Hell, give me an example of any billionaire ever that ended up starving. The point you’re trying to make has no basis in reality.

You talk about correlation, statistics. I talk about logical conclusion.

No you don’t!

Classic example is doing a startup (and failing to take off). You have a very large nominal wealth, but you practically bankrupted yourself, because as a founder you probably spent all your money to try to raise more funds, or on sales, or on product development.

Yes, the Forbes list is different.

And yes, erikb's point about being a billionare is strange, because not many people would consider anyone a billionare just because someone funded a company with nominal value 1B$.

However, erikb is right, that rich people have cheap access to enormously powerful success multipliers. (They can very realistically - almost literally - get a cheap loan from any of their dad's neighbour, or get in touch with anyone, and so on.)

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