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Comment by throw2ih020 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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

Love to get absurd strawman arguments from the billionaire bootlickers.

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

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.

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.

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.

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