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Comment by officemonkey | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget Notch. He took his money and bought a mansion and became a DJ.

TBH, if I made a pile, my interests would change dramatically. And running a successful company would not be nearly as validating.

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Lately, I thought a lot about an anecdote we used to tell in Germany about business consultants. It goes somewhat like this: A consultant meets an old fisherman at a small port. The fisherman is done fishing and enjoying himself. The consultant asks why the fisherman isn't taking a loan to get a bigger ship and fish more. Because he would make a lot of money to do whatever he wants. The fisherman said that he is already doing that, fishing in the morning and enjoying the sun on a bank at port in the evening.

I came to realise, that I'd rather be the fisherman. Which doesn't mean the other approach is wrong, so.

How would the fisherman feed himself if he broke his arms? Alternatively, what if he wakes up one day and finds that all the fish near his village have been fished out of the ocean by other, more entrepreneurial fishermen?

If had money saved up, at least he could buy food for him and his family.

Social safety net and sustainability regulations. It’s not normal in much of the world to spend your life with the looming fear of being bankrupted by a serious illness or to treat natural ecosystems as a zero sum game to be exploited.

And please, can we agree that this our collective project and that we want to pool money so all of us have backup if/when needed?

Longer version: https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...

To be a creator with the freedom to create and not have to make money anymore would be amazing.

Look at Jim Carrey and George W Bush for example. They're pretty much set with money, and now they can paint their hearts out.

W was set for money two generations before he was even born. Imagine if he'd just stuck to painting...

Look, I'm no fan of Bush II and I don't want to turn this into political theater, but the presidency was corrupted long before Bush II. I'd almost guarantee that his policy was set forth in an almost "dynastical" form, that has been around since Carter's interventions in the Middle East. Maybe before.

That being said, I wish they had all stuck to their post presidential passions... minus the political fund raising.

The bush family has a history of being politicians all the way back to the late 1800s

> Don't forget Notch. He took his money and bought a mansion and became a DJ.

Or the CEO of Goldman Sachs, a successful DJ who became a banker.

Just looked him up - he had a crazy year in 2018. Became CEO of Goldman, divorced his wife, released an EDM single that debuted at #39 on the Billboard EDM charts, and his personal assistant committed suicide after getting caught stealing $1.2 million of wine from his private cellar.

Only if my company was in the business of breaking new ground, i.e. scientific discovery or innovative engineering. That's why the likes of Alphabet and Facebook have research divisions (including for things rather far afield from their core money-making products): to give execs and talent a greater sense of purpose and to create/develop important stuff.

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