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Comment by drnonsense42 | Hacker News Reader

Many ultra wealthy individuals did not come from a highly privileged background. Larry Ellison, one of their motivating examples, had essentially no advantage compared to say Bill Gates. Sergey Brin and Warren Buffet certainly had some advantages but they should not be treated the same as the Waltons by any means. Of course, if you take the expected value of privilege of the 1%, you’ll find a high level. So, it seems to me the notion that people treat wealthy individuals separately from the broader group means that people are acting fairly and rationally to some degree. The authors ignore this nuance altogether, assuming that any individual nuance is a fallacy, and the article seems to indicate that their only purpose is to make people ignore individual success stories and to jade people into treating every wealthy person as equally privileged.

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> Many ultra wealthy individuals did not come from a highly privileged background.

4 is by no means "many."

Look at the billionaires list and say that again with a straight face:

https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

> The authors ignore this nuance altogether, assuming that any individual nuance is a fallacy

The authors are talking about the 2,500 billionaries in the world (there are 22,000,000 millionaires in the USA).

It's funny listening to you tolerate lavish wealth for individuals more than groups while criticizing an article that says people tolerate lavish wealth for individuals more than groups.

I think you should go read the list you yourself decided to link more carefully. You will find many more than 4 billionaires who grew up with at most a lower middle class background.

It looks like you're struggling with reading comprehension, so let me make it more clear. The article takes the position that viewing individuals in the billionaire class differently based on their individual story is wrong and provides a means manipulate people into viewing them all homogeneously. I do not "tolerate lavish wealth" or think these people should have so much command over society, that is the subjective word choice of the authors to describe their interpretation of a phenomenon, but I personally do think many of these people who come from very little deserve more respect and success than wealthy scions who, at best, have every advantage, or at worst, do nothing at all with their lives and yet command extreme wealth.

Interestingly, the wealthy who inherited their wealth tend to flaunt it much less (being medially known) than the ones who are "self-made". They probably know why.

That's probably because they have been used to being wealthy since birth and have always being around other wealthy people, so it doesn't register as a special thing as much as someone who transition from non-wealthy with non-wealthy friends to wealthy.

I don't think this is the case.

It's just a class thing. They're taught not to flaunt wealth or talk about money, it's seen as crass and lower class.

No, I think that deep down they know they don't really deserve the wealth (or at least they understand our society frowns upon privilege, both on left and right). If you are self-made though, you can at least somewhat convince yourself that you deserve it. The exceptions to this are narcissists like Donald Trump.

Id guess only a small percent have this realization. The rest enjoy the privileged life and find a way or another to justify themselves that they deserve it. If I were born into a privileged family I'd probably be the same..

>The exceptions to this are narcissists like Donald Trump.

I think he's that way because he's bluffing.

Easy to understand. When you are self-made wealthy you have a lot more pride and ego which can correlate with flaunting wealth.

When you merely inherit wealth and grow up around it all the time, you may wrestle with imposter syndrome and wonder if you still would have been just as wealthy if you didn’t start off that way. Your life may be a struggle to find your way out of the shadow of your ancestors achievements and make your own identity. This creates insecurity. Until you have made your own significant accomplishments you may not be comfortable flaunting your wealth, and even then there is a tendency to try to rewrite history to make it seem like you were less fortunate than you actually were.

analytically what you say makes sense, but in reality individual people have muscles, hair and mental focus -- more of less of those. Look at the outrageous flaunting that goes on in the ghettoes .. or the demure life of a modest family member in a high-scale estate. The exceptions have to define the rules, because, there is no "2.5 children" if you get my drift

Yeah, it seems like they cherry-picked individuals who largely earned their wealth. I would think the bias might be opposite if the individuals they chose instead inherited their wealth.

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