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Comment by ang_cire | Hacker News Reader

Being and especially growing up rich tends to shield you from seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and I think that results in a lot of these rich tech bros being unable to properly analyze not just risk, but any negative externalities.

Every child starts out thinking, "if I was in charge, I could fix this. It's so simple!"

Then you actually see that when you make bad choices, you or others get hurt, and you realize that you don't always know what's best.

But these guys never get hurt, because they have the money to be shielded from it, so they end up being these delusional wrecking ball assholes, who think they know better than everyone else and don't need anyone else's consent (I.e. votes) to make whatever overly simplistic or authoritarian changes their underdeveloped brains concoct.

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I think you're talking about a specific form of the larger problem. The very wealthy only know the world of the very wealthy. They know nothing, let alone care, about people who aren't "in the club".

Every worse, they -- like pretty much all of us -- tend to think that most people are just like them, so they think not only that they understand normal people, but that they are normal people. And the ones that don't either tend to think that their will should be imposed on the rest of us because we're too stupid to understand what's good for us and/or just view us as resources to be mined.

I think that's true for one specific kind of wealthy person. Specifically those born into it. Its absolutely not true for the self-made. I do have a solution to this.

If you haven't paid your own bills with money you earned (no jobs from family) for the last 10 years, you can't run for office. Literally the mayor of Seattle has never paid her own bills and her husband has never worked either. There is no universe where someone with that life experience makes a good leader.

You're making it seem like the mayor is an out of touch nepo baby when she's living a regular life dedicated towards helping others.

You may want to get your info from more places than Fox News.

She is an out of touch nepo baby. Her policies haven't exactly been big successes. Jobs are leaving and the specific stated reasons usually have to do with her. Because of her tax increases and the Laffer curve, tax receipts are falling and there are now significant budget shortfalls opening up. If you didn't know this, perhaps you want to get your info from more places than MSNow/MSNBC.

Yeah the college professor's kid became mayor due to nepotism. That makes total sense.

You can dislike her policies but this is just bs: > "If you haven't paid your own bills with money you earned (no jobs from family) for the last 10 years, you can't run for office. Literally the mayor of Seattle has never paid her own bills and her husband has never worked either. There is no universe where someone with that life experience makes a good leader."

> You're making it seem like the mayor is an out of touch nepo baby when she's living a regular life dedicated towards helping others.

If it's true she has never paid her own bills and her husband has never had a job, then I'd like that sort of regular life.

If she has been paying her own bills or her husband has had a job in his life, then say so.

You can find her resume here: https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=3880890&GUID=4....

Her parents are biology professors. It's not like they're putting her on the board of companies.

> Literally the mayor of Seattle has never paid her own bills and her husband has never worked either.

Where is your evidence for this? It's a pretty strong claim.

The fact that its been verified by multiple sources, including the mayor herself.

That's just a claim, not evidence. If she's said it, it should be easy to link to an interview or an article showing these statements.

It's not true (https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=3880890&GUID=4...).

I figured that was the case, I just wanted to give them a chance to prove their point instead of just stating over and over again something false. I guess hunterpayne follows the "repeat a lie often enough" approach to truth and facts.

> Its absolutely not true for the self-made.

I disagree. From my observations, it's true nearly as often for that crowd as the inheritance crowd.

> Being and especially growing up rich tends to shield you from seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and I think that results in a lot of these rich tech bros being unable to properly analyze not just risk, but any negative externalities

other than musk, were the tech bros rich? most seem to have grown up middle class.

that said, the fact they are still rich suggests that they do know how to analyze risk. You don't keep your money if you dont have any concept of risk.

Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support.

https://thetechleaders.com/was-elon-musk-born-rich-exploring...

Compared the the majority of the population in the US, and like 95% of the population in South Africa, he seemed to grow up pretty damn wealthy. Musk himself told stories about his father having stacks of cash.

No, that isn't what made him rich now, holding onto paypal shares did, but part of the reason he could hold onto those shares is because he had a wealthy family supporting him so he could just sit on them.

If you don't think Musk grew up wealthy after listening to what he says about his childhood, I could only assume you also grew up in an extremely privileged environment and just don't realize how far above the median your life was.

> Musk himself told stories about his father having stacks of cash.

Do you have a credible source for this? At best I'm seeing EDS conspiracy nuts (and Erol, though he seems to be all over the place).

> No, that isn't what made him rich now, holding onto paypal shares did

I think there's a little more to it than that.

> Part of the reason he could hold onto those shares is because he had a wealthy family supporting him so he could just sit on them.

He didn't hold on to them long, at most a year or so after he left (the sale to eBay was 2002).

And why would his family be supporting him when he was already a millionaire and had paid off his 100K+ student loans?

Again, do you have any credible sources for any of this?

> Musk didn't inherit his wealth, nor did he receive above average family support.

that is an entirely separate question from if he grew up wealthy.

to be fair, i dont actually know how wealthy he grew up, i was relying on the general internet view that he did, but i haven't actually looked into it, so maybe that is wrong.

He grew up very wealthy. People act like "grew up wealthy" means "was given millions of dollars as a child", to disprove my point, when in fact growing up wealthy means your parents have the money to prevent your mistakes from biting you, which he had and did.

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