What Do the Rich Want? | Hacker News Reader

What Do the Rich Want?

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14 pointsdurmonski14 comments

From my (limited) experience with individuals that I'd genuinely call "rich", is that they largely just want experiences.

Those experiences could be the thrill of creating a rocket and launching their car, that experience could be hanging out with penguins in Antarctica or going with your extended family, or helping an individual or group either with your connections or via no-strings-attached cash money.

I think people look at the rich, and the ultra-wealthy, and assume they're all some knob that wants to show off his or her fancy cars, fancy watches, fancy homes, while treating their employees like slaves and cackling maniacally. I think those types are far from the rule though and are in fact the exception. I think most people, that have self-built the bulk of their wealth, are much more 'normal' but just operate at a grander scale. Instead of paying the last 2 dollars of the single mother's grocery bill in front of them then going home feeling good they hand someone 10,000 for tuition or a medical bill or they cut a million dollar check for a charity/foundation/hospital and feel better but not as good as that person that helped that person in the checkout line because they know they've got far more money than they need but also know they can't just throw it at every issue because it wouldn't be the best use of the money - if John Trillionairington the First started handing out million dollar checks, you'd have a fair number of people buying 200k dollar cars and a Rolex for each wrist and going "come on John, give me more you cheap skate, this stripper needs more tips!" (see: many significant cash prize lottery winners).

Well, if they are really just climbing the social ladder, then taxing them 90% only changes the magnitude of the ladder but not their relative position in it, right?

Honestly I don’t really care what the rich want and I’m not interested in having any elite group with that much power over us. This whole thing just sounds like an apologetic, like “if we just give the king more concubines, maybe he’ll stop beheading us.”

This video seem so wrong headed. It never asks those people want they do it for. And it also starts off on a terrible premise that they doing evil deads. You say this on a computer built by capitalist, on internet built by capitalist, on a website built by YC capitalist who empower other capitalist.

Capitalism is literally just a system where people can trade things they want for things they need. And capitalist build things people want. If people wanted economic safe,environmental goods they could have it given they would give other resources to gain them. Look at tesla, spacex, apple computers, kiva, and all the companies that build environmental friendly tools.

If anything remotivation needs to be done to government not capitalism but that system is far more broken than the capitalist system that seems to be working fine in comparison to every other system.

You could just as well have complained that those criticising feudalism were still eating food and wearing clothes and using weapons built under it.

Capitalism isn’t trade. It is a system of production where the means of production are privately owned (by capitalists/the bourgeoisie) and are laboured with by those that don’t own property (the workers/proletariat), while the owners appropriate a portion of the value of that labour as profits.

You can't just redefine what adam smith said about the concept of modern capitalism. What you described can be easily said about north korea. The elite own everything and the workers own nothing. Is north korea capitalist. NO! Cause the workers can't built or create anything of their own.

In the US thats why 80% of the millionaires are self made. Because someone in a middle class or lower class can make something people want and people can choose to give them money. Working and not owning anything isn't static in this system

I gave you an expanded textbook definition. Here’s Wikipedia’s: “Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.”

Have you been to the DPRK? Who told you the means of production there aren’t controlled democratically by workers? Was it perhaps media owned by capitalists with a vested interest in slandering alternatives to capitalism?

But you can't expand a definition that was already define. You can make apples also include oranges just because you don't like the definition of what an apple it.

Wikipedia's definition also describes it in terms of who owns the means of production and what motivates production.

I think this may be broken by a very likely fact that many rich people work to get rich precisely out of anti-social motivations: they want to be safe and shield themselves from society with their money. Many are also simply sociopathic, and in a technology-driven world, that works better and better, because ability to make person to person deals - which takes being liked, and a sociopathic person won't be liked by other rich people they need to make deals with, because they can read people very well - that ability progressively matters less and less.

I know a guy with about a hundred million bucks net worth. He just simply works in his room all his life and doesn't have any partners, employees or clients. And you'll get more and more people like that. Can you motivate them with honour?

If I was wealthy I wouldn't want more money. I would want my existing money to go further. If you can make sure everyone relatively is poorer than you it's much easier for you to gain status.

I think it's weird how the video suggests that we should channel greed to good causes instead of money because you can just set up an economy that rewards good causes and achieve the same result.

There is also the suggestion of using taxation to "take away their wealth" yes you can do that or you can do something far worse. Lower unemployment(and underemployment) and cause income inflation. It will eat away at the wealth of the rich far faster than taxation would and they can't run away because they would not only have to move themselves but also their companies.

"cause income inflation. It will eat away at the wealth of the rich far faster than taxation would and they can't run away"

I'm not sure what "income inflation" is, so assuming it's just currency inflation, that may be a bad move as the rich hedge their wealth better than the poor. Also, for US the inflation is not easy to do, for it being a global traded currency. The most important thing to realize though, is that those rich people living in your country is in fact wealth accumulated (mostly) by your country. You can have the chance to bid those rich for many things that will benefit society at broad and there is a high chance that they will care about the things happening in your shared county/state/country more than about what happens somewhere else. The smart move is to find ways to tap into that wealth by enrolling their cooperation instead of looking for effective ways to cut that wealth away.

In free market democracies, lots of satisfied customers.

How about a little love and frankly, some gratitude dammit! /s

everything, please

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