All I know, is if I was worth $200B and owned the island of Lanai, you would never hear from me again. Ellison, Musk, Zuckerberg and the rest of these weirdos are deeply damaged human beings.
When they do, you don't hear from them/about them as much! Chuck Feeney gave away his billions, but he's hardly ever mentioned.
Though, there's also the argument that making that kind of money makes you even weirder, and having seen glimpses of that through someone I know getting rich, that might also be true.
It seems the real trick is changing who you are, and realizing that, counter to what you may have learned as a child, lying to everybody, especially your friends, is actually a good thing. We only hear about these stories because they get told. Far more mysterious is the lottery winner who got $20 million who calls up Dave Ramsey and asks what to do with it so their son doesn't become a waiter. That is, someone just waiting for their parents to die and get their inheritance. You'll never hear about their boring life where they lived comfortably and gave money to causes they believed in and helped people they know anonymously and didn't cause a scene.
If it's possible for money not to change a person, we wouldn't hear about it, almost by definition, so we can only conclude that it does.
There was a thought experiment posted on Reddit and I think was from elsewhere. Something like:
Imagine you get $1 million dollars a day. You can't keep it -- it's all gotta get spent. You can invest it, sure, but those holdings aren't going to go up as much as, like, another $1 million the next day. And you have to spend it
So at some point you're going to start doing stuff basically on a whim. You're going to get 3 Lambos in different colors -- because you can. You already have the harem, you already have donated to most causes you care about. You've already got a house (houses, really), so now you start thinking about political causes you're mildly interested in, on top of ones you strongly are. And then you can get petty; if you don't like person X? Take out ads on billboards... cuz you can. Or fund their lawsuit against Gawker, cuz fuck em. etc. etc.
Obviously.
We're talking hundred's of billions of dollars here; $20 million is already a big fortune where 2% interest gets you $200,000.
These people (on paper) have 5 orders of magnitude (100,000x) more. At that point you aren't doing all the questionable things it takes to get there for the money. IMO you have to be broken in some way, shape or form to do what it takes to get there.
> We're talking hundred's of billions of dollars here; $20 million is already a big fortune where 2% interest gets you $200,000.
$20 million at 2% interest is $400k a year
> These people (on paper) have 5 orders of magnitude (100,000x) more.
Musk's wealth ($200B+) would be 4 orders of magnitude (10,000 times) higher
> For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Take his stock. Distribute to the people who built the empires.
The USA system is made this way. There are other systems in the world (namely the scandinavian countries) that don't allow individuals to accumulate that amount of wealth.
And to be fair though, the players do make the game too.
However, in a democracy, all citizens are players.
This is a common misconception. The Scandinavian model has changed rapidly the last few decades. Sweden now ranks higher than the US in number of dollar billionaires per capita, even if none are at Ellison level yet.
Edited to add: in fact, the Scandinavian model has always been more about equality of income, rather than wealth. There are, and has been throughout the 20th century, wealthy dynasties as well as industry tycoons who has largely been left alone by the social democratic system, and indeed viewed more as an important part of the system than anything else. Since the 90s, though, it has changed rapidly, such that today there is no tax on wealth, inheritance, gifts or real estate, as well as a low corporate income tax.
1. Scandinavian countries impose higher taxes on their rich VS the US. It does not have to be a wealth tax. Think effective tax rate. 2. Income inequality is lower there compared to the US.
It is a very different system than the US, it's frankly strange to have to argue that.
Let's hate the dude too :)
In a more enlightened society, one not prone to misusing information to persecute one another, he'd arguably be right.
It's likely much simpler: Larry thinks the solution to (his) immortality - or longevity at the very least - may be contained in Americans' collective DNA, and AI may be able to tease the answers out.
Mapping DNA is just another part of that schema.
I wish the billionaires were doing this. Instead they are hoarding wealth like angry dragons and comparing piles.
Put another way, what kind of a sicko keeps going and amasses 20000x "fuck you money"?
I agree with you for someone that has a miserable client-service job, such as an investment banker that is still slaving away so he can keep up with the Joneses.
But Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison can do whatever the fuck they want. They don't need to take shit from anyone, and they get to build products and shape the world.
Musk, for example, wants to get humans to Mars. To the extent he cares about money anymore, it's in service of that goal, which does require a LOT of resources.
You’re stuck with standard experiences that any plebeian can buy with money.
"Standard experiences any plebian can buy with money" includes things like westward solo circumnavigation which is a more elite group than humans who have walked on the moon. And you don't really even need that much money to do it. More money wouldn't really make you any more likely to succeed. So not everything comes down to money, you can do some incredible things without much.
The reality is that it takes absurdly few resources to make a normal and well adjusted human happy. Happiness doesn't come from money, though unhappiness can come directly from poverty. If you are fed, housed, and have enough free time to explore your interests, and have sufficient social connections, that's usually all it takes. The way quality scales also means that unless you are playing dumb ideological games like "Getting the best", you will have satisfaction beyond your dreams at a 2X price point from the basics. Eating steak every day isn't that much more expensive than eating beans and rice every day, and certainly doesn't require taking home $100k more than the US average.
Even in a high cost of living port city in a liberal place that embraces weirdness and hasn't built a new housing unit in a decade, $150k total before taxes gets you the ability to outbid most other people looking for housing, enables you to afford buying the expensive eggs just because you feel empathy for chickens, allows you to buy beef when it's not on sale as a regular experience because it's more convenient than finding recipes using cheaper meats, allows you to buy a very nice car and pay exorbitant parking for it, gets you more healthcare than you can use, gets you an overpriced getaway vacation a year, and still putting plenty of money into retirement accounts and a savings account, pays for cheaper colleges, allows you to afford an overpriced gaming computer AND consoles, allows you to buy a new VR headset you never use etc. With a small increase in pay or an ability to live away from the city center, you can raise kids with good expected outcomes. Kids are expensive but the people insisting on $50k a year private schooling are literally insane.
If you are still not satisfied with "stuff" at that point, the problem is not money, the problem is you.
The hedonistic treadmill (and more importantly, normalcy bias) does NOT imply that already rich people will seek more wealth. It implies that people who seek wealth will never be satisfied by the amount of wealth they currently have. People who don't seek wealth but still get it will be satisfied with that amount of wealth. If you are happy with your minimal needs met, you will still be happy as a millionaire, and if you are not happy with your needs met, you will continue being unhappy as a trillionaire.
Some broken people have "I need more money" as a trait. We shouldn't build society to optimize around them.
The moment you breach a billion dollars net worth, you should only be allowed to be paid in teams of psychologists dedicated to finding out your fucking issue.
Examples: Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott
Those are basically the same thing though. Acquiring extreme wealth filters out people with empathy; they either never had it or lost it.
Even after climbing the mountain, they can’t stop, they can’t help themselves. It’s just how they’re wired. They don’t know what enough is or feels like.
they're just a well managed brand, and you, nor anyone else reading this, has any insight to what they're actually doing.
like, can you prove they didn't drop $10 million, quietly, on The Donald's campaign via TrumpCoin? cuz they could have, and we can't prove shit.
He's Indian so not many on HN will know about him.
One such story may be that Timmy is working hard at your company to help his sick grandma and he needs to stock price to increase 10% this year in order to do so. If you don’t deliver then his grandma will die. Multiply the that by 1000 Timmies with 1000 grandmas and I could see why it might be hard to say no.
When Larry shows some for me, I’ll show some for him. Only one of us is in a position to cause the other harm.
I don’t think empathizing with a Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos is going to get me anywhere. Normal people? Sure, I’ll be a giver.
* You become that rich only if hoarding money brings you joy and is your key driver
* You can buy a lot of things, thus one of the few challenges is becoming richer than the peers
"Risk-averse" (really, wealth loving) people, uh, loving amassing wealth.
No, I'd imagine if you had $200B we'd see your name everywhere.
The "E" in CEO is to listen to a room full of noncommittal, hedging, sycophantic people and then chart a course based on their weak signals.
Arguably the CEO needs all of the talent of a dart thrower; but they're the one that takes the stand, or fall, of the decisions made.
I agree they're replaceable. I don't agree that they're not needed. :)
High compensation can be offset by the risk a position entails.
Example: CISOs are feeling a lot of pressure these days