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Comment by kcatskcolbdi | Hacker News Reader

The notion that wealth prior to politics might deter in-office enrichment is understandable, but the reality is a bit more complex.

Wealth doesn't inherently negate the potential for conflicts of interest or policy biases that could benefit a politician's own financial interests. After all, the same drive that helps individuals amass their fortunes—ambition, competitiveness—doesn't just switch off once they're in a position of public power. And personal integrity isn't tied to one's bank account balance; it's about character and the robustness of political and legal accountability systems.

So, regardless of whether someone is wealthy before politics, without strong ethical standards and transparent oversight, the risk of using political office for personal gain remains.

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> And personal integrity isn't tied to one's bank account balance; it's about character and the robustness of political and legal accountability systems.

Absolutely disagree with this—you can't acquire a billion dollars without sacrificing major ethics.

Which ethics and how does one determine if they are major or not?

I’ve seen statements in this vein a lot. It’s quite vague and often confusing one’s relative morals for what society has collectively deemed acceptable.

Well, what do you consider ethics? I was coming from a place of you should give away all the money you don't need because the world would be better for it.

Notional wealth is just a number. A fair number of billionaires started something, retained equity, but exited their business that then went on to be wildly successful. Further many billionaires are born into their wealth. I think this pervasive attitude erodes both the standard the extremely wealthy should be held to and is overly simplistic. There are many billionaires who are at their core unethical. There are many who are very ethical but their outsized influence puts them in situations to make decisions with no easy answers. And there are many that are simply people that happened into the wealth randomly.

I'm not so sure of that. What ethics has, say, JK Rowling sacrificed? Warren Buffett?

This is a good question, it’s not like Warren Buffett ever offered predatory loans for mobile homes

Rowling isn't a billionaire. She probably could of been, but she's made a ton of charitable donations thanks to her having ethics.

Last I heard she had about £800 million which I'm sure keeps her and hers very very comfortable.

> risk of using political office for personal gain remains.

It may remain, however that doesn't mean the temptation isn't crippled.

A 1 billion net worth person is less likely to be tempted by a $50,000 "enrichment" opportunity compared to someone making $174,000 with a net worth of less than 100k.

A 1% chance of a 1% change in a $1B portfolio is worth $100k. Do you think it would be difficult to arrange for that 1% chance of a 1% change through plausibly deniable policy changes? Do you think it would be possible to achieve larger swings at higher reliability? How much do you think those plausibly achievable swings would be worth on a $1B portfolio?

Working for a living and owning things for a living provide very different incentive landscapes that are often opposed to one another. Assets pay you in proportion to how much you own, so "owning things for a living" is roughly synonymous with a net worth above a line that lands somewhere between $10M and $100M depending on how you draw the line. In any case, if you work for a living, you definitely do not want to be represented by politicians who own things for a living.

I mean, you'd think, but look at the petty corrupt bullshit Trump got up to! Going to his hotels with his secret service people... then overcharging them for rooms. Like, just ridiculous, and not a consequential amount of money for him, but he still _did it_.

> but he still _did it_

Did he? Probably not, when you look at all the facts.

Eh? I mean you could argue about how _important_ it was (personally I would class it as somewhat important, but very, _very_ funny; it's just so petty), but it did clearly happen; there's not much doubt about that.

I had not heard of this and was curious as to the context.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-organiza...

According to the NPR article, the SS has a $200 per-diem limit for hotel expenses and by staying with Trump at his hotel (where rooms run about $1k/night), exceeded this limit.

This raises the question: how do accommodations work for president's entourages when traveling? I have a hard time believing that they restrict themselves to Holiday Inn tier establishments. Hotel rooms in larger cities can easily run $500/night, especially on a short notice.

That is very exclusionary to would-be bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonations from people of lesser means.

As an alternative I propose the Aztec method. While they are in office, the elected is given every possible luxury and upon leaving their sacrifice is ceremonialized in a very public way so that all know the elected did not perform their duty for personal gain.

I don’t know about that - people in positions of wealth are fairly likely to shoplift. If you make $200k a year, why shoplift an $80 bottle of liquor? I would think the same holds true when considering your given scenario.

> A 1 billion net worth person is less likely to be tempted by a $50,000 "enrichment" opportunity

This is a good point. People act rationally all of the time, plus nobody has ever become a billionaire by compulsively capitalizing on every opportunity to gain wealth.

I like this point, but want to add that it's not a coincidence that people accumulate that much wealth.

Yeah. The risk of corruption doesn't just "remain" for wealthy politicians -- their investments give them a much more lucrative avenue through which they can get paid for policy and through which their well-heeled donors can monetize policy changes!

    A 10% chance of swinging a 001M position 10% is worth $10k.
    A 10% chance of swinging a 010M position 10% is worth $100k.
    A 10% chance of swinging a 100M position 10% is worth $1M.
    A 10% chance of swinging a 001B position 10% is worth $10M.
    A 10% chance of swinging a 010B position 10% is worth $100M.
    A 10% chance of swinging a 100B position 10% is worth $1B.

To you and I, lobbying and politicking is an expense. To the rich, it is an investment with expected monetary return.

Hmm, so THAT'S why there is so much seemingly-random legislation being introduced all the time...

Yep. It also explains a lot about the networking and social venues used by the wealthy. It's a completely different world with different rules.

> the same drive that helps individuals amass their fortunes—ambition, competitiveness—doesn't just switch off once they're in a position of public power

I was hoping it would switch off when they amass more money than they can spend in their lifetime

perfect is the enemy of good, if it will lessen how often corruption happens it's worth considering.

Begging the question.

> the risk of using political office for personal gain remains.

You're absolutely correct. I think the person you were replying to was being pithy about the fact we have essentially in-the-open legal corruption happening in the US today where politicians can get elected to high office with minimal personal fortunes and be millionaires before they complete their first term simply due to the nature of that corruption (for instance, legalized insider-trading for Congress).

Oh, I may have missed the nuance there, thank you!

I very much am against the corruption we witness so blatantly. Personally I thought that if wealthy people were elected to office we may be able to eliminate some of that, but it seems as though if anything they are just better at it.

I believe the insider-trading thing pretty small in real world impact.

Paid speeches, book deals, consulting payments and jobs for family members or after holding office are the more significant items.

We have a funny system where paying a politician $250k for a one hour speech to your company, trade group, union, political action committee or whatever is treated as a perfectly reasonable speaker fee, and totally different than just handing the politician the money in a briefcase. Or hiring a politician's 22 year old new-grad child at an executive salary.

IIRC most congress people do not beat the S&P.

While some of them beat Warren Buffett.

at the same time, we do want poor people to be able to represent people. It would also be bad if Congress was only out-of-touch rich people.

There was a bit of a brouhaha with the last few Congresses where incoming freshmen representatives who had poor backgrounds were having difficulty securing housing due to poor credit history, even though their new salaries put them squarely in upper tax income brackets.

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