This may sound a bit weird but haven't you noticed they all are psychopaths? Although high functioning ones. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezoz... These are not healthy people mentally. But they are rich and powerful.
Are you a psychopath for driving your car for a holiday trip, even though there's people dying in 49 degrees heat in Greece? It's really not that different from Jeff Bezos flying his spacecraft.
Not that I'm saying it's ok, obviously Bezos's company is operating in real scummy ways. I'm just saying it's not a sure sign of psychopathy. Frankly, I don't think being a psychopath is compatible with their achievements, but I'm no psychologist.
Also, they're not that powerful. People keep saying this as if they're somehow super powerful because there's a big number next to their name on the Forbes list. 90% of their assets are tied up in stocks that they're not gonna sell soon. Bill Gates couldn't eradicate polio because some broke warlords in Afghanistan started propaganda against him. It took Jeff Bezos 20 years before his spacecraft did anything semi useful, and he still can't land a deal with NASA. If he really is a psycho, why was Zuckerberg so nervous at his senate hearing?
How is that at all relevant? Name one thing any of them cannot buy just because the vast majority of their wealth is invested. Bezos was putting a billion a quarter into Blue Origin - yes that's a small percentage of his wealth but there's no reason to assume more money would have gone faster.
And that's buying it for yourself. I think we can easily see the history of rich people buying presidents if not the presidency.
I don't think this analogy is reasonable. Let's evaluate what is observable and controllable in both scenarios.
Scenario A: I don't observe anyone dying as I drive. I have no control over people dying in Greece.
Scenario B: Jeff Bezos was frequently reminded of more down-to-earth problems (before and after his space trip). As Amazon CEO and richest man in the world, he's had a lot of control and influence over the wellbeing of others.
>Bill Gates couldn't eradicate polio >Jeff Bezos 20 years before his spacecraft >Zuckerberg so nervous at his senate hearing
Totally not super powerful people.
Also, there are lots of tax free ways to get to your money without selling stocks.
If they’re under so much stress and disconnected from the average person, it’s time to stop crowning kings.
None of us have to believe in extreme ownership, and enabling stressed people, as it just leads to abuse.
Not just abuse of individual employees, but society, our personal agency, and environment.
Equating stuff you would have to sacrifice your work and support network and forgo your livelihood to help as a normal person vs literally no effect on your day to day is pretty absurd.
If you think the life of a billionaire is so difficult, why don't they just give it all up and live a normal life? Clearly one is preferable to the other.
Also, literally none of this even touches upon being two-faced, abusive, and compulsively lying for profit, which was the context.
It is weird that this billionaire excuse flex didn't exist 5 or so years ago. Someone started pushing this meme really hard. And MacKenzie Scott's ability to liquidate $4B in a year shows that they really can do something with all those zeros if they want to and it won't single handedly crash the NYSE.
It seems like it’s in the interest of everyone to be financially literate in how the ultra-rich operate in order to form better thought out policy positions.
Musk said he is in the asperger spectrum. Among other things, it generally makes you not care what other think about you. And may lead to behaviour that is "acted" because all social interactions may be a difficult exercise.
Humans are complex and deep. And sometimes awful. There are more dimensions to a person than a good/bad guy or psycho/normal.
And with asperger - neurological diversity expands this space in ways it makes it very hard for neurotypicals to intuitively tell what the hell is going on.
Nobody is excused for bad manners. But not having any would not make person a psychopath.
> asperger spectrum
This is no longer recognized in the DSM-5.
DSM-5 replaced everything with autism spectrum disorder.
The way you put it sounded like the thing didn't even exist. Whereas, it was just a name change. If that wasn't deliberately misleading, it might as well have been. Someone who isn't familiar with these issues might have looked things up briefly, then concluded that someone was lying.
In my view, intellectual honesty demands taking care not to create such misleading situations, even at the cost of strongly "scoring a point." Especially at that cost!
Asperger/autism - it's still a spectrum that's affected with neurological function.
So we are talking about neurologically distinct persons who may have been called in some instances as "being on the asperger spectrum".
What is the current accepted terminology for this neurological profile?
(I have close family diagnozed by neurologists 'on this spectrum' - and it is very much a specific neurological profile whatever we may call it).
Personally, I do care how I am percieved. I want to be a legitimately good person. However, we sometimes do things that make it look like we don't care what others think of us because it doesn't always occur to us that what we are doing isn't normal. Even when beforehand we think of what a normal and appropriate thing to do might be we could totally miss the mark and do something weird that gives the impression that we don't care.
I know very closely several diagnozed asperger spectrum persons - I should have written their behaviour may seem non-caring when in fact they may try their hardest to behave as neurotypical would and to act in the best manners they understand. But human interactions are really complex and difficult.
Musk said he is in the asperger spectrum.
I dated a woman on the Autism spectrum. This has been discussed in many books about Aspergers: People on the spectrum can resemble sociopaths and psychopaths on the surface. They are not. However, the appearance of insensitivity can often look like it to laypeople.
Easier to get to the top - and stay there - if you don't care about anything (or anyone) else. Even better if you can do so while projecting a different image.
This may not be true for all CEOs. If you choose only the billionaires as examples, there could be some selection bias at play.
I, and many scholars, would argue that traits for a successful CEO are about the same as a criminal.
Great many are not often good men.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/peop...
[1] https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2021/01/leadership-styles-a...
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/bill-ga...
For more context, there's this famous story: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
Also add Jobs and many successful surgeons (or so I am told) to the list.