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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Either of the mentioned was at one point of their career someone who would have been considered at least belonging to "counterculture".

Unfortunately, money and power corrupts, and lo and behold, one day you wake up to find you have become the very thing you once swore to destroy.

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Maybe, some of them were poor young iconoclasts some day. That's not when they joined the fashionable trend of Burning Man though. When they joined their trend, they were well into their power (or at least, in the case of somebody like Holmes, pretense of it). Because that's what is fashionable, of course, and they couldn't afford not to be part of "counter-culture" - it's so gauche not to be part of it!

Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals.

All of the people mentioned have been in millionaire to billionaire families since birth, so based on that alone I am not sure I work with the same definition of “counterculture” as you are.

Millionaire is not some ultra privileged status in the United States, an upper middle class family with a paid off house in a somewhat decent area will have a net worth in the neighborhood of 1 million dollars.

Number of millionaires in the US: 23,831,00.

Yet again, different idea of “privilege”, I guess?

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

Not sure how this relates to my comment

Being part of the upper <10% in your own country is “privilege“ for me. Being part of the upper <2% worldwide is “privilege” for me. Not seeing that as “privileged” is a sign of privilege for me. Not understanding what I referred to is privilege for me. And not “counter-culture”.

Maybe wisdom gives another perspective on the ideals we had in our youth?

there's nothing wise about hoarding

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