Summer Camp for the Ultra-Wealthy Teaches Kids How to Stay Rich | Hacker News Reader

Summer Camp for the Ultra-Wealthy Teaches Kids How to Stay Rich

bloomberg.com

29 pointsIbethewalrus17 comments

Better idea: A camp where they have to struggle as the working poor for two months and get shit on by cops, bureaucrats, banks and angry customers.

You can't mimic being poor. Enduring whatever isn't that hard when you know it's just a temporary game. At the very least, you don't get the psychological effect.

Despite that, it would still be useful.

That’s right, but I doubt the “would still be useful part.”

I’m not sure there’s anything more harmful to society than wealthy folk who think they were poor once, but were not.

Short-lived poverty feels like a game to me. It’s entirely motivational. The psychological toll doesn’t set in until repeated let-downs begin sinking in, and opportunities start evaporating. It begins undermining every other aspect of well-being and it really seems like somebody is playing a trick on you. This is why poor people prefer to be surrounded by other poor people. It helps to be reminded you’re not alone, which is what truly puts a person over the edge..

> ... poor people prefer to be surrounded by other poor people...

I'd challenge that assertion. I think people like to be around friends, and society tends to put people in a position where the only friends they can have are in the same economic strata.

If people who feel deprived are frequently reminded of their relative deprivation, they will tend to dislike it. If your friends all talk about their vacations in Bali and $300 dinners, most people will find themselves feeling at least a little inadequate no matter how wonderful, kind, loving, and compassionate those friends are.

The same thing will happen even via more subtle means as people give moderate-cost gifts or wearing clothing that is visibly more expensive.

You're 100% correct. People like to be around friends. It's perhaps worth considering that there might possibly be more to it than just that.

Well, you’ve exposed yourself as having never been poor for any real length of time. So you’re wrong, but things could be a lot worse.

"I was poor but then I pulled myself up by the bootstraps by getting access to my trust fund again"

Nah what you do is tell them it's 2 weeks.

Then pull them out after 2-4 years instead.

That's a wonderful idea, well worth exploring! Surely having that experience would teach people some empathy, some sympathy, and some compassion for their fellow human beings.

My general experience is that deliberately inflicting pain and misery on people in an effort to teach them is an excellent instructional approach. Mostly it tends to teach those people that you are an ass, rather than whatever the intended lesson happens to be, but I'm sure that's incidental.

At the absolute least you might identify those who are sociopaths and those who haven't been completely corrupted by wealth.

You're completely right. It would be a great way to tell them apart.

The normal kids will be the ones who resent you for inflicting pain and misery (as they understand such) on them for no reason they understand. The sociopaths will be the ones who figure out what you are hoping to impart to the children and regurgitate it back at you.

Love it. The super rich are so drastically removed in their experiences from the 99 percent of the population from birth how can they ever have empathy or understanding for the rest of humanity?

Combine that with the massive power and political influence that comes with money and the chances are they're not looking out for the best interests of society as a whole and humanity ends up having revolution after revolution...nothing changes with our primitive human monkey brains.

Having multigenerational wealth is actually very uncommon and hard to do. I wish them luck.

Seems like a brilliant marketing strategy from UBS. And it's a great way for wealthy youths to make friends and learn about responsibly managing and preserving wealth.

WTF is going on with that URL? I get and endless loop of what appear to be redirects.

P.S. Update: It appears to be something in my browser configuration, perhaps a bad extension update.

“Average age of 27” ???

This is hardly the summer camp the title would lead you to believe.

Summer camp for the poor teaches the glory of revolution against inherited wealth. /s

This headline is a microcosm of what's wrong in America today.

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