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Comment by cccsss | Hacker News Reader

I took his reply in the AMA as “Yes I do this, but it’s dumb that I get credit for it because it’s a pretty common idea.”

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It piques more people’s attention if it is attached to a famous name.

Sounds like a U.S. thing too. Worshipping of rich people, who must be rich because they are virtuous (Weber) therefore if you copy their habits you can be virtuous too, become rich and go to paradise.

On my way to make 9 babies in order to become the next Elon Musk.

Really? You can’t think of any examples of any other country doing this?

Of course people in other countries do this, but anecdotally it does seem to be more common in the US. I think it's something to do with the American dream.

I have lived in France and Germany and 95+% of the articles I have seen that follow this exact pattern to use as selling argument for $SomeTechnique$ the exact number of millions or billions someone made using $SomeTechnique$ were from the US.

Perhaps you don't pay attention. It striked me because I couldn't care less about the lives of billionaires. People laugh at the 9 years old girl who wants to become Madonna but that dream is no more irrealistic and is IMHO less stupid than becoming Elon Musk.

And no, I'm not gonna make 9 babies. If I have a child one day I want to do half of the parenting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the...

Strange. Countries everywhere have this. I don’t quite understand your rambling, but maybe it’s you who isn’t paying attention if you miss this?

The spirit of capitalism comes from the US and has a religious background. Nowadays, many countries have a strong US cultural influence, no shit. I wish I was smart enough to make this up, but it all comes from this very famous book which summary I provided. Maybe reading books is not your thing, but I find it interesting.

It’s strange. This has been an idea for a long time. 30 years ago we did this in elementary school for reading contests. So, yeah it is weird to call it the “Seinfeld Strategy”.

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