Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

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Arguably a lot of people are driven to be entrepreneurs because of the status.

The issue with the bankers is that they’re trapped in a local maximum.

A successful entrepreneur is probably the highest status role possible in modern society (think Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates) maybe even rivaling POTUS.

I don’t buy that entrepreneurs are not interested in status, they’re just making a longer term status play (and taking on more financial risk to do so).

Look at “30 under 30” lists, accounts on Twitter and their bios, there’s massive amounts of status seeking there. I suspect the successful low status people are actually the standard devs/IT employees, not founders.

An annoying part of this game is that it’s also high status to pretend you’re low status or that you don’t care about status (hence all the “I’m humbled to accept <high status achievement>”)

Dating is always awkward, doesn’t really matter what you’re doing (except maybe doctor).

> A successful entrepreneur is probably the highest status role possible in modern society (think Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates) maybe even rivaling POTUS.

Not even close. Regardless of the high esteem we may hold them in, the average person just sees them that you list as rich dorks. Compare and contrast with say Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio who, to use a stock phrase, men want to be and women want to be with.

Yeah that’s a good point, I wasn’t thinking of more classic celebrities like actors, musicians, and famous athletes.

Status depends on the social hierarchy. In the modern world, we are fortunate to exist in more than one social hierarchy, and can potentially choose which to be in. You have your workplace, family, local gym, neighborhood, online community, etc., and can have different statuses in each.

Being a business person is the ultimate status symbol in the USA. Look at our current president: he was elected because of his perceived "business prowess." Had he been considered merely a reality TV host, he would not have been elected.

If you think about it, it's odd that we even know the names of business leaders. But, I bet the typical American could name F500 CEOs than they could famous painters.

Status is relative. Going with the dating analogy:

Girls who are into IT will view Zuckerberg as higher status vs. Brad Pitt.

A girl who's into acting acting will view Brad Pitt as more 'high status' than Zuckerberg.

I think you may have confused "modern society" with TechCrunch/other mainstream tech publications. If this was a politics community, someone would probably say that "modern society considers Biden" as someone with the highest-status role.

I think we under-appreciate the role of context when we talk about status.

>the average person just sees them that you list as rich dorks.

gp has only listed tech entrepreneurs. Shocking as it may seem to us, the tech industry doesn't have a stellar reputation in some parts of the US/world. However we also have e.g. Donald Trump who ran on his identity as a "businessman" (however farcical), Elon Musk, or Oprah ( http://blackeconomics.co.uk/wp/oprahs-empire/ ), all appealing to different sorts of people, but their business acumen is not unnoticed nor unmentioned in each case.

Trump ran on his identity as Trump. The man successfully "built his personal brand" before that was even a thing. I don't know of an earlier example of "famous for being famous" either. He really is in a class by himself and he objectively proved that by winning the Presidency of the United States. One can actively dislike his personality and policies while still being honest enough to acknowledge his cultural impact.

Trump may be famous for being famous, but the idea of him being a business magnate has always been a core part of that image. That doesn't detract from the significance of his ability to appeal to people far from the usual coterie who read the Economist and who knew about the Trans-Pacific Partnership before 2015, but it does support the original argument that "entrepreneur" qua "business[wo]man" can be a gateway to high social status.

I think attractiveness confounds a comparison between Brad Pitt/Leonardo DiCaprio with Zuckerberg, Bezos and Gates. Is there an actor who isn't considered highly attractive that you think the average person would hold in significantly higher regard than successful tech entrepreneurs?

Jack Nicholson comes to mind. And Mick Jagger is ugly as sin and that doesn’t hurt his status.

I'm sorry but none of them are even remotely classifiable as ugly. Have you seen photos of younger Mick Jagger?

Young Mick Jagger could be a successful female model in 2020

It's interesting you should mention that, because successful female models are orders of magnitude lower status today than they were 25 years ago. Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, and Tyra Banks, to name a few, were massively high status, on the level of professional athletes and movie stars. Nowadays, not so much.

> because successful female models are orders of magnitude lower status today than they were 25 years ago.

No, they aren't.

> Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, and Tyra Banks, to name a few, were massively high status, on the level of professional athletes and movie stars.

So are Chrissy Teigen, Bella and Gigi Hadid now. Kendall Jenner, too, though more in the style of an athlete that is an massive on-the-field standout that takes every opportunity to generate negative attention off the field.

Tom Hanks?

I don't think actors and celebrities 'famous for being famous' are held in such high esteem anymore. I think that peaked in the oughties, and that the profession's renown's been in a slow decline since. This may in part be due to how replaceable and commoditized their industries have made them.

The average person may lust after famous person 'x', or be jealous of their resources. They may even follow them as a sideshow. But I've met very few people who want to be a celebrity, or admire more than one or two for their contributions to the world.

Celebrities may be able to capture our attention better, but put your average celebrity next to a reasonably successful entrepreneur, and ask the average person which is more praiseworthy, or admirable, and I think the entrepreneur will win 80% of the time (I say 80% of the time, because I'm certain a small number of high-level athletes and musicians break that rule)

Covid-19 really killed the celebritainment industry. They have to stay in the public mind to stay relevant. A movie will have a press push, some celebrities need scandals. The only celebrity we hear about consistently now is POTUS... and he is sort of a black hole in his own universe.

> I don’t buy that entrepreneurs are not interested in status, they’re just making a longer term status play (and taking on more financial risk to do so).

Trying to group all entrepreneurs together, I think, is a huge mistake.

I've definitely seen status driven entrepreneurs. Some of them are amazing.

But the ones that fill me with joy are the ones that clearly were sick of the world being incredibly bad at things, that could not accept humanity embarrassing itself so poorly, and who could not live with a planet that had so much wasted potential. And who responded. Who ventured forward, to make at least some data points, where humanity was doing it right. These people DNGAF about status, they only care about trying to generate some good, creating some value.

> But the ones that fill me with joy are the ones that clearly were sick of the world being incredibly bad at things, that could not accept humanity embarrassing itself so poorly, and who could not live with a planet that had so much wasted potential.

Yeah me too, Eliezer Yudkowsky comes to mind - there may be others but I think they're quite rare. Even in these cases I suspect status is some component though not the driving force (how much of a role it plays I think varies depending on the person and what they value).

People want to do something important/have purpose - I think it's hard to disentangle this from status because it's so tied up in how we see ourselves and what we often consider important. Millions of years of selective pressure and social behavior/hierarchies of intelligent primates can't really just be ignored.

There are some outliers, but I'm generally skeptical. I tend to think often the DNGAF persona is done because it's a signal of high status to not care about your status. I suppose at some level it's real though.

> Yeah me too, Eliezer Yudkowsky comes to mind - there may be others but I think they're quite rare.

Yudkowsky is not an entrepreneur, he's primarily a philosopher (regardless of his disdain for other philosophers) and secondarily an artificial intelligence researcher. Among philosophers and researchers, it's not hard to find someone who wants to improve humanity.

> Arguably a lot of people are driven to be entrepreneurs because of the status.

and it was a lot more fun doing it when it had no status at all.

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