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Comment by forgueam | Hacker News Reader

A depressing reality to this question is to just look at the current crop of billionaires. None of them need money, yet many of them spend their time pursuing more.

I know all of us have these quaint answers about all the noble or fulfilling things we would do, but the data doesn't seem to support that.

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I've met people who were born into enough money they never needed to work, and a lot of them are just pretty normal people sans jobs. I think the interesting question here would be how would you live if you had enough without working, but little enough that you still had to think about how to stretch it over a lifetime. E.g. are you flying first class to spend a few days skiing in the Alps this weekend? Probably not, but you can make sandwiches and go for a hike instead of clocking in to work.

The specifics do matter. You can have a very comfortable month-long international trip for certainly low five figures. (Obviously can do less but a few $K/week for a couple is a reasonable baseline.) You can also quickly add to the tab by picking the luxury hotels, first class flights, limos, etc. that may or may not add a lot to the experience considering.

I've traveled a lot and sometimes the splurge is really worth it. Often, it's not unless the money involved is just pocket lint to the person.

I agree - I've travelled enough on my own dime and the corporate one to know that you definitely don't want to get the cheapest room on Expedia, but satisfaction doesn't scale linearly with the amount you spend. Filet mignon doesn't automatically beat a nice warm rock to sit on.

See Selection bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

There's a bit less than 3000 billionaires, are you sure you're not just hearing about a very vocal minority?

Not to mention survivorship bias, the ones that reach that kind of wealth like money more than (other people's) life itself, often quite literally.

Glass half full, or glass half empty? Look at the ones who are doing noble/fulfilling things.

Because the work they do is satisfying and interesting. Take that away and they’re less of a person. They can’t stop because the person they are is tied up with what they do.

I mean, I think it is a different scenario. The kind of person who makes a billion dollars has something going on in their brain that makes them want to keep going. Think about it: by the point where they've made a billion dollars, they've long since passed on the opportunity to retire comfortably. They already had all the money they needed, and, faced with the chance to stop, they decided to stay in. They flew past $10MM, past $50MM, even $100MM—far more than anyone could ever spend unless they really tried—all while saying "no, I'm not done yet". I would not expect someone with this mentality to suddenly stop at $1 billion. They are in it for something other than reaching the point of not having to work anymore. I'm not saying I admire them, in fact it sounds like a terrifying inner life to me.

On the other hand, the rest of us, the 98.7% of people who are only working for the paycheck that allows us to do the other things we actually want to do instead of our jobs. The extent to which we work is the extent to which we must pay for those needs. Remove the need to work, and we wouldn't be working anymore—not at those jobs, anyway.

What I'm saying is, I believe non-generational billionaires are weird outliers, and we can ignore them for the purposes of this question.

Our CEO is obsessed with "engagement." He has a problem where older employees are not engaged and are retiring in droves, and the incoming employees couldn't give two shits less about the company. They keep begging retirees to return.

I think this is microcosim of our wider economy. If it is, output is going to fall off a cliff, soon.

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