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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

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Most "normal" people would hit $5-30 million, realize they have enough money for themselves and their descendants to be comfortable in perpetuity with some decent wealth management, and either retire or change careers to a passion project. Going to 100s, 1,000s, or 100,000s of millions inherently filters for people who have either absurd greediness (seeing wealth as a scoreboard) or a desire for power.

This is it, it's absolutely a filter beyond a certain point. I have a family member, far enough removed I'll never see any of it, that sold a business in his early 30s for something like $35-40M. Set his kids up for life with trusts, bought some toys and a second home, and been just sort of hanging out ever since (this was 15-20 years ago). He's happy, has a ton of hobbies, and if you ever suggested he start another business or start putting his name on cap tables he'd laugh his ass off. It would never even occur to him that he should try to double, triple, 10x his money, because he already has 10x more than he'll ever spend.

And for what it's worth his kids are remarkably well adjusted and nice, if a little bit out of touch about what most people deal with.

Same, my father was a doctor and had tons of doctor friends from med school and work. Pretty much all of them just cared about 1. making sure the family was provided for and had excellent education, 2. patient outcomes and 3. being comfy at home.

I totally understand the point you're trying to make, but also...if your friend put their $40M in an S&P500 index 20 years ago, it'd be worth $238M today. So more like 6x rather than 10x, but still, not bad.

The people I know personally with that level of wealth will typically set up family trusts to do that and manage how the wealth is distributed to the family, generally some stipend for living expenses + covering education and healthcare costs. The original people setting up the trust give up direct access to that portion of the money for the benefit of their heirs and beneficiaries. i.e. it's no longer "their" money in the personal sense.

Whereas I have an uncle, a retired CEO, with perhaps the same amount of money. The man is a monster. However, per my cousin, I can't say for sure just when that nature revealed itself but certainly no later than 20 years into his career.

This is sorta the reasoning behind statements like "billionaires shouldn't exist".

It's not a statement that people shouldn't see fruits of their labor, but that past a certain point, its no longer about the fruits or even the tree, but the power that comes with it. In a democracy, those who get lucky in business are not owed power.

So yeah, billionaires and trillionaires shouldn't exist, because their existence is a side-channel attack on society. Pay enough money and rules don't apply. Past a certain point, that wealth should be heavily scrutinized and audited as if it's nuclear fissile material. Similar to the nuclear material, it can be productive for society, or absolute destruction.

Why don't we just cap every dev at 75k like Europe? Not sure how this argument helps society have the drive to be an outlier and create value.

I find it very hard to believe that there will be no motivation to create value if you can't possess more than $999,999,999.99

An absurd argument - 75k over a 20 year career as a dev is only $1.5 million (before living expenses and tax), which is a fraction of the $5 million lower bound in my original comment.

Love to get absurd strawman arguments from the billionaire bootlickers.

"Creating value" only means something if you can eat a spreadsheet.

My theory about this, as well as how it seems most powerful are abusers, is that you have to be willing to comprosmise your morality to get into that position in the first place. So it is not that being rich and powerful corrupts you, but you have to already be at least somewhat corrupt to get there at all.

Do sociopaths even have a natural sense of morality?

Morality and empathy are orthogonal ideas, I see no reason why someone with antisocial personality disorder couldn't develop a moral philosophy.

You can't get this far without being greedy in a neurologically abnormal way.

Most people would retire with "enough" long before.

It's both. Getting into the multi-billionaire levels of wealth takes a certain mindset that can probably be easily associated with some neurological disorders and personality traits that one could describe as 'monstrous'. But becoming that rich also disconnects you from the reality of the average person. Your time by necessity to maintain and grow such levels of wealth is going to be spent among other people who are either in a similar position, or want to be in a similar position and are trying to ride the coattails up the wealth ladder. And try as you might to avoid it, it will skew your mental state towards that disconnect unless you take significant effort to avoid the benefits that being at that level of wealth brings to you. Most people who would be willing to eschew said benefits are also probably not the ones trying to seek out such positions of wealth in the first place, so they're going to be severely underrepresented in the wealthy circles.

Well, you can also get relatively rich by marrying a monster- aka the state?

What? How do you marry a state?

I think maybe it's an awkward attempt at some comment on politicians being able to legally insider trade?

How does that work? I don’t get the analogy

essentially: gubrment bad

The latter. We even know what that monster is. It's psychopathy.

The sociopath part is what allows one to do what it takes to get ultra rich in the first place. Other than Gates, not one comes to mind who gives anything to charity, for example (yes, I’m sure one or two exists).

gates was so noble to even donate prescription medication in secret..

And at level that Gates operates charity of itself is form of power and influence. Not rich people spending money on these things is bad. But sometimes I just question motivations as a whole.

my understanding too was that his (ex)wife told him, basically, "what are young going to do with all of this?"

like he has literally everything he needs, and there is this massive number -- do something, anything with it. You have unlimited time, so chose to do something

It's also not uncommon for extravagantly rich people to form family-run charity organizations to distract their nagging wife or family members with a pursuit where they can lord over employees / recipients / organizations without having any profit metrics by which they could be embarrassed by their inferior business chops. This is doubly applicable if you need to distract a nagging hag while you're off banging Russian bridge players.

The first part of your comment is correct, the second part is both wrong and unnecessary glazing of Gates.

There's plenty sociopaths that give to charity, because it's a socially accepted display of wealth, and because it is quite convenient for tax purposes.

basal take, completely incorrect

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

the US is the most charitable country on earth as a percentage of GDP. There is so much philanthropy that the finance industry is building new businesses just to serve it

https://fintech.global/2026/04/29/the-philtech-revolution-wh...

What if extreme charity is merely sociopathic status signaling?

Does this include giving money to churches in USA?

Gates has spent many fortunes cleaning up his image, but he was one of the nastiest business practice worst monopolists ever.

"During Bill Gates’s tenure leading Microsoft, the company paid out an estimated $8.46 billion in publicly known antitrust settlements, competitor payouts, and government fines."

Gates is actually quite problematic (Epstein is a lot of the problem). If you need an exception to prove the rule, Buffett is a little easier of a fit.

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