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Comment by ghoshbishakh | Hacker News Reader

"The winding road to his home was lined with black-suited, white-shirted, matching security guards, all equipped with matching sunglasses and earpieces." -- Do all super rich people live with this level of security?

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Super rich who are famous, probably. It's also a matter of convenience: you don't want thousands of people with "great investment ideas" to approach you constantly, and the security will not only stop you being assaulted but also stop randoms from coming up to you.

But I do know someone who is merely an heir, who doesn't need to live with a bunch of security all the time, because he's not famous.

So probably fame has more to do with it than wealth. Not sure what you do if you're famous but not wealthy, I imagine that could be problematic.

The German YouTuber Drachenlord is famous and poor, and he has been harassed for years.

People vandalize his father's grave, break into his home, the police don't come any more. It's cruel and the bullies want him to overreact so that they can also sue him in court.

> It's cruel and the bullies want him to overreact so that they can also sue him in court

Can't he pre-empt this by suing them instead? What's preventing that? I assume his state or the federal legal system has some way of dealing with this...

Legal system doesn't bother with harassment.

Harassment laws generally require a pattern of behavior. You can do surprisingly shitty things once without risk of losing lawsuits.

The problem with this is when you are a very public and controversial online person, and you attract hundreds or thousands of nutcases you disagree with you, you can get harassed plenty without anyone crossing over into territory where there is a cause of action.

Wow that was a wild ride

https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/s4sqnk/the_st...

> But I do know someone who is merely an heir, who doesn't need to live with a bunch of security all the time, because he's not famous.

This is why many junior/cadet members of foreign royal families like living in the US; they are anonymous here. Princess Victoria, the heir to the Swedish throne, was a student at Yale. Even the Windsors; not Harry and Meghan, of course, but Gabriella Windsor graduated from Brown without much public attention.

> Harry and Megan

Who?

I'm British and I've never heard of Lady Gabriella Marina Alexandra Ophelia Windsor (I looked her up). I'd be surprised if she gets recognised in the UK.

This story is from 2004 though, this is a long time before Bezos was "The man who could be the worlds richest man if he could keep it in his pants". This was back when he was just a moderately successful CEO.

"a moderately successful CEO"

in 2004 he was the founder, majority owner, and CEO of a company with a ~$19bn market cap. he was still firmly in the ranks of the ultra-wealthy.

He was among the world's richest 100 persons in 2004 to further that point.

Yes, number 84 on the list between... two people you couldn't name. Literally, one is an heiress, the other runs a high street fashion brand in the UK.

He was absolutely ultra wealthy. But there's a difference between ultra wealthy and being one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Jeff Bezos was on the long list of wealthy people in 2004, not the short list and it's easy to forget that the move from the long list to the short list isn't gauaranteed, and doing so doesn't require you to go out in public with extremely erect nipples.

Didn't bunch of his nudes and personal messages get leaked. Why wouldn't he apply same level of scrutiny to his personal data. baffling to me.

His personal data was most likely obtained and leaked by a foreign state, if memory serves me well. Said foreign state would also not be stopped by any number of men in black suites if it wanted to physically harm Bezos. That's simply an attack vector beyond any non-state measures.

> His personal data was most likely obtained and leaked by a foreign state,

never heard of this. I thought it was his fiance's brother?

I was referring to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos_phone_hacking_incid...

I did not know about the part of the story involving the brother, I must have missed it at that time.

Its in the webpage you linked

"In March 2019, AMI released a statement responding to de Becker's column that the only source for their story on Bezos was Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos's girlfriend, and that there was "no involvement by any other third party whatsoever."[24] A year later, Michael Sanchez sued AMI, stating in court documents that when the National Enquirer first contacted him, they already had "raunchy text messages and nude selfies exchanged" by Bezos and Sanchez's sister. Michael Sanchez denied giving AMI explicit photos, and accused AMI of hacking Bezos's phone."

I think famous not wealthy people (especially those that are victims of internet mobs) end up in hiding and it’s a pretty bad situation for them. There’s also the middle case too - I’m not sure what level of wealth Sam Harris has, but I don’t know if he’s able to afford this kind of security (and I know he gets a lot of death threats).

At some threshold of fame it seems like you just attract crazy people and the risk of them attacking you goes up substantially.

Tim Ferriss has a great blog about this (the risk from crazy folks as your fame increases): https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/

I know I would. Famous soccer players get burgled and robbed all the time with them and their family being threatened. Now imagine if you're a billionaire and the newspapers tell people every day how evil you are. It's not far fetched to assume criminals or a lunatic would act on it.

I know that the Albrecht brothers (Aldi) were running around without security for decades, Meckerle (Ratiopharm) did so too until his suicide due to the Volkswagen short squeeze and financial crisis, and Dieter Schwarz (Lidl) still does today.

I remember seeing a DW documentary a couple of years ago about how differently billionaires behave in Germany compared to the US ("The discreet lives of the super rich" was its name apparently). If one accepts the basic premise of the documentary (that the German billionaires avoid flaunting their wealth and strive to maintain privacy), it might explain why billionaires in Germany could live their lives without security while it would be unthinkable for their American counterparts.

Even in America, there are many discreet billionaires that’ll likely not need round-the-clock security.

Bezos, Musk, Gates, and the likes are high profile…but I don’t think anyone will notice if Jeff Yass or Jay Chaudhry walks on the street.

Years ago, I saw one of the household-name tech billionaires on the sidewalk in Cambridge, Mass., with (I think) their spouse, no security in sight.

It's not LA or NYC for celebrity saturation, but a lot of rich & famous people come through Cambridge/Boston (and their kids often go to school here), and nobody cares.

Mick Jagger went to a little bar in Charlotte before he was due to play in 2021 with The Rolling Stones at Bank of America Stadium, and nobody noticed him at all.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/mick...

Here's the link for the interested: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NXaVLXSZdEw

Apparently Steve Jobs had no security, and lived fairly simply:

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2012-feb-17-la-fi-tn....

Albrechts aren't a great example, considering one of them was bloody kidnapped. Although I don't know if the lack of security was before the incident or did they carry on guard-less even after that?

Well, that’s one thing that could happen without security, but imo that doesn’t necessarily make him as bad example.

I encountered security like that when I went to a party at a private Rockefeller estate. When I arrived I was confused as to why there was so much security but when we were inside there was priceless art everywhere, for example they had a head of a classical Greek statue placed next to a urinal in the bathroom.

Some things should never be in the hands of private parties.

We have volunteer election workers facing credible death threats in the US. If I had Bezos level money, I'd definitely have a couple of folks around to manage the potential crazies, just in case.

Maybe they can get more security when people are visiting for an event? Or maybe someone is always visiting?

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