6 ms·

There's a reason that people with money and power don't always experience good outcomes. Sure, you can do what you like on your jet, and therefore expose yourse

by M_Grey 10y ago

There's a reason that people with money and power don't always experience good outcomes. Sure, you can do what you like on your jet, and therefore expose yourself to risk that most people never experience. Likewise skiing off-piste or a number of other equally silly activities that you can do, but absolutely shouldn't.

fulafel 10y ago
Probably they have a different idea about risk management than more risk-averse people. Worrying a lot about very low probability events is not compatible with the risk-taking typically required to make a lot of money. After all millionaires are largely a "survivor club" filtered from high risk appetite workaholics.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  I don't know about that. I think mostly it has to do with having the power to pick and choose critical service providers, bully them, etc. If Michael Jackson and Steve Jobs had not been as wealthy and powerful as they had been, they would also both probably be alive. Neither has much to do with being risk-takers, although you might be right that a higher arousal threshold desensitized them to risk. It may also be that people used to winning, on some level, expect to keep winning. Either way, we're not just talking about Fortune 500 C-levels here, plenty of people with loads of money and power did nothing to get it, and have no special qualities associated with that ability to get it. They still often have bad outcomes.
  - komali2 10y ago
    I feel like Steve Jobs is an odd choice... He turned down treatment I thought?
    - redler 10y ago
      He wasted precious time indulging quackery.
      - andruby 10y ago
        But even if he was't rich I'm pretty sure he would have done the same.
      - adventured 10y ago
        Which more likely has absolutely nothing to do with him being rich. His quackery behavior was very high on the scale before he was rich post Apple IPO.
      - tluyben2 10y ago
        Anecdotal but I notice in my circles only less financially well off people endulge in quackery. The latest is that you do not need treatment for anything if you do enough marijuana and reiki (not to mention a lot of poor people burn their last money on reiki training....) especially not doing chemo when they sbould is hard to witness.
        pm 10y ago
        I can't say I know anyone who's indulged reiki, but I've got a lot of flak from my brother telling me that cannabis cures cancer, when I told him that I was doing chemoradiotherapy for my Stage 3 rectal cancer. Today I've finished a cycle of six weeks of treatment, and while I'm extremely tired, the signs are good that it's in remission. If I'm lucky, I'll have a full pathological response, i.e., it's gone. Despite the number of people who go through cancer, it's rarely brought up in polite conversation. It wasn't until I got it myself that all manner of people came out of the woodwork to talk about how someone they knew had gone through the same thing. Many of them have been using concentrated cannabis oil (which my brother also said I should do). After reading a couple of studies, it does have a positive effect on cancers, but the level depends on the type of cancer. In the case of colorectal cancers, it seems to stop the cancer but not kill it, most likely due to the CB1 receptors in the tumour being hypermethylated (as in, the gene isn't being expressed). The level of evidence isn't that of a systematic review, but it's enough for me to give it a go and certainly enough for further research. Unfortunately, the two sides of the argument seem to think that it either doesn't do anything (there's not enough evidence) or that the medical establishment is just a ruse and that cannabis cures all cancer. I prefer to use my critical thinking skills and get the best of both worlds. I can understand why people might indulge in quackery - I've got surgeons telling me they need to cut out my rectum and part of my lower intestine, even with a full pathological response. Possible side effects are shitting 3 times a day (not so bad) and erectile dysfunction (worse). This has been the gold standard of care for 15+ years now, and the surgeons don't give a fuck about my quality of life, they just want to cut. There's mounting evidence to show this might be overtreating the problem, and that you can get away with a heavier dose of chemo with the radiotherapy. Frankly, I don't want anyone cutting anything out of me unless it's absolutely necessary, but it's hard finding an advocate who would be willing to tell the surgeons to fuck off. I'm lucky, in this sense: I understand the research and I have access to upcoming studies (I used to work at an institute that did systematic reviews of evidence). Most people won't have such advantages, so they just sit there and do what the surgeons tell them to do, as if they don't have any options other than no treatment. If that's all the choice I got, I'd be wary of the medical establishment too.
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      He was a fruitarian, and that much fructose is pretty toxic for your pancreas.
  - jabl 10y ago
    > ... Steve Jobs had not been as wealthy and powerful as they had been, they would also both probably be alive. Steve Jobs got pancreatic cancer, IIRC. Which has a pretty low survival rate, per wikipedia 5% after 5 years from initial diagnosis. So most likely he'd be dead by now no matter what he would have done.
    - bipson 10y ago
      Not all pancreatic cancer is alike. IIRC he had a variant that would have had a ~80% chance of a favorable outcome, given he would have chosen the generally advised treatment
      - jabl 10y ago
        Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction.
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      Except that it was most likely caused by his high fruit diet. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/11/all-fruit-diet.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/1... http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2013/02/07/ashton-kutchers-fruitarian-diet-what-went-wrong http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2013/02/07/ash...
- closeparen 10y ago
  >millionaires are largely Pedantic, but. Families with $1m net worth are largely late-middle-aged (newly retired) salary workers with paid-off mortgages on their median-priced houses in suburban flyover country, plus ~40 years of 401k contributions and capital gains. They drive Toyotas and fly economy for their 1-2 yearly vacations because that's what left when the 15% 401k contribution, mortgage on 3bd house, children's educations, and groceries are paid for. Think teachers, bureaucrats, journalists (pre-internet), scientists, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, in roughly ascending order. What you'd call the upper middle class. There are about 8 million millionaire households in the US as of 2016 [0]. Private jets are more a feature of the Fortune 500 CEO Davos-going class. $1 million in income maybe, very different from $1m net worth. It's not generally useful to conflate these wildly different wealth levels under the same terminology. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
  - mark-r 10y ago
    You're taking the term "millionaire" too literally. There was a time when a million dollars really was well beyond the reach of a salary worker, but a century of inflation took care of that. The term is still used as a synonym for "really really rich". Last time I heard the true threshold for really rich was about $100 million.
    - closeparen 10y ago
      The internet personal finance community rallies behind The Millionaire Next Door, which talks about the habits of the people I'm describing as if they were the same rich elite that flies on private jets. As a result, I try to call out abuse of the term millionaire whenever I see it.
      - mark-r 10y ago
        I see your point, but "abuse" is in the eye of the beholder. It might be time to retire the word Millionaire, but unfortunately nothing has arisen to replace it.
maaaats 10y ago
Not sure why you are calling off-piste skiing silly, a rich man sport and something one shouldn't do. It's an incredible feeling, lots of fun, and if you have to walk up the mountain first it's a nice nature experience as well. Yes, it can be dangerous, but it's a risk you can manage yourself. So it doesn't have to be very dangerous if one follows common advice and also don't ski where there is a high risk of avalanches.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Yes, it can be dangerous, but it's a risk you can manage yourself. Probably what Michael Schumacher thought to himself, back when he could still think.
  - maaaats 10y ago
    Everything carries a risk, my point was that off-piste skiing doesn't have to be too much more dangerous than more mundane stuff, like driving a car.
intoverflow2 10y ago
Quad biking around your estate comes to mind.
leroy_masochist 10y ago
Re: skiing off piste being a rich man's sport, are you familiar with the term "ski bum"?
- bdamm 10y ago
  Many sports have the same "X bum". Even aviation!

by M_Grey 10y ago

fulafel 10y ago

Probably they have a different idea about risk management than more risk-averse people. Worrying a lot about very low probability events is not compatible with the risk-taking typically required to make a lot of money. After all millionaires are largely a "survivor club" filtered from high risk appetite workaholics.

M_Grey 10y ago
I don't know about that. I think mostly it has to do with having the power to pick and choose critical service providers, bully them, etc. If Michael Jackson and Steve Jobs had not been as wealthy and powerful as they had been, they would also both probably be alive. Neither has much to do with being risk-takers, although you might be right that a higher arousal threshold desensitized them to risk. It may also be that people used to winning, on some level, expect to keep winning. Either way, we're not just talking about Fortune 500 C-levels here, plenty of people with loads of money and power did nothing to get it, and have no special qualities associated with that ability to get it. They still often have bad outcomes.
- komali2 10y ago
  I feel like Steve Jobs is an odd choice... He turned down treatment I thought?
  - redler 10y ago
    He wasted precious time indulging quackery.
    - andruby 10y ago
      But even if he was't rich I'm pretty sure he would have done the same.
    - adventured 10y ago
      Which more likely has absolutely nothing to do with him being rich. His quackery behavior was very high on the scale before he was rich post Apple IPO.
    - tluyben2 10y ago
      Anecdotal but I notice in my circles only less financially well off people endulge in quackery. The latest is that you do not need treatment for anything if you do enough marijuana and reiki (not to mention a lot of poor people burn their last money on reiki training....) especially not doing chemo when they sbould is hard to witness.
      - pm 10y ago
        I can't say I know anyone who's indulged reiki, but I've got a lot of flak from my brother telling me that cannabis cures cancer, when I told him that I was doing chemoradiotherapy for my Stage 3 rectal cancer. Today I've finished a cycle of six weeks of treatment, and while I'm extremely tired, the signs are good that it's in remission. If I'm lucky, I'll have a full pathological response, i.e., it's gone. Despite the number of people who go through cancer, it's rarely brought up in polite conversation. It wasn't until I got it myself that all manner of people came out of the woodwork to talk about how someone they knew had gone through the same thing. Many of them have been using concentrated cannabis oil (which my brother also said I should do). After reading a couple of studies, it does have a positive effect on cancers, but the level depends on the type of cancer. In the case of colorectal cancers, it seems to stop the cancer but not kill it, most likely due to the CB1 receptors in the tumour being hypermethylated (as in, the gene isn't being expressed). The level of evidence isn't that of a systematic review, but it's enough for me to give it a go and certainly enough for further research. Unfortunately, the two sides of the argument seem to think that it either doesn't do anything (there's not enough evidence) or that the medical establishment is just a ruse and that cannabis cures all cancer. I prefer to use my critical thinking skills and get the best of both worlds. I can understand why people might indulge in quackery - I've got surgeons telling me they need to cut out my rectum and part of my lower intestine, even with a full pathological response. Possible side effects are shitting 3 times a day (not so bad) and erectile dysfunction (worse). This has been the gold standard of care for 15+ years now, and the surgeons don't give a fuck about my quality of life, they just want to cut. There's mounting evidence to show this might be overtreating the problem, and that you can get away with a heavier dose of chemo with the radiotherapy. Frankly, I don't want anyone cutting anything out of me unless it's absolutely necessary, but it's hard finding an advocate who would be willing to tell the surgeons to fuck off. I'm lucky, in this sense: I understand the research and I have access to upcoming studies (I used to work at an institute that did systematic reviews of evidence). Most people won't have such advantages, so they just sit there and do what the surgeons tell them to do, as if they don't have any options other than no treatment. If that's all the choice I got, I'd be wary of the medical establishment too.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    He was a fruitarian, and that much fructose is pretty toxic for your pancreas.
- jabl 10y ago
  > ... Steve Jobs had not been as wealthy and powerful as they had been, they would also both probably be alive. Steve Jobs got pancreatic cancer, IIRC. Which has a pretty low survival rate, per wikipedia 5% after 5 years from initial diagnosis. So most likely he'd be dead by now no matter what he would have done.
  - bipson 10y ago
    Not all pancreatic cancer is alike. IIRC he had a variant that would have had a ~80% chance of a favorable outcome, given he would have chosen the generally advised treatment
    - jabl 10y ago
      Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    Except that it was most likely caused by his high fruit diet. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/11/all-fruit-diet.aspx http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/1... http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2013/02/07/ashton-kutchers-fruitarian-diet-what-went-wrong http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2013/02/07/ash...
closeparen 10y ago
>millionaires are largely Pedantic, but. Families with $1m net worth are largely late-middle-aged (newly retired) salary workers with paid-off mortgages on their median-priced houses in suburban flyover country, plus ~40 years of 401k contributions and capital gains. They drive Toyotas and fly economy for their 1-2 yearly vacations because that's what left when the 15% 401k contribution, mortgage on 3bd house, children's educations, and groceries are paid for. Think teachers, bureaucrats, journalists (pre-internet), scientists, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, in roughly ascending order. What you'd call the upper middle class. There are about 8 million millionaire households in the US as of 2016 [0]. Private jets are more a feature of the Fortune 500 CEO Davos-going class. $1 million in income maybe, very different from $1m net worth. It's not generally useful to conflate these wildly different wealth levels under the same terminology. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
- mark-r 10y ago
  You're taking the term "millionaire" too literally. There was a time when a million dollars really was well beyond the reach of a salary worker, but a century of inflation took care of that. The term is still used as a synonym for "really really rich". Last time I heard the true threshold for really rich was about $100 million.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    The internet personal finance community rallies behind The Millionaire Next Door, which talks about the habits of the people I'm describing as if they were the same rich elite that flies on private jets. As a result, I try to call out abuse of the term millionaire whenever I see it.
    - mark-r 10y ago
      I see your point, but "abuse" is in the eye of the beholder. It might be time to retire the word Millionaire, but unfortunately nothing has arisen to replace it.

maaaats 10y ago

Not sure why you are calling off-piste skiing silly, a rich man sport and something one shouldn't do. It's an incredible feeling, lots of fun, and if you have to walk up the mountain first it's a nice nature experience as well. Yes, it can be dangerous, but it's a risk you can manage yourself. So it doesn't have to be very dangerous if one follows common advice and also don't ski where there is a high risk of avalanches.

M_Grey 10y ago
Yes, it can be dangerous, but it's a risk you can manage yourself. Probably what Michael Schumacher thought to himself, back when he could still think.
- maaaats 10y ago
  Everything carries a risk, my point was that off-piste skiing doesn't have to be too much more dangerous than more mundane stuff, like driving a car.

intoverflow2 10y ago

Quad biking around your estate comes to mind.

leroy_masochist 10y ago

Re: skiing off piste being a rich man's sport, are you familiar with the term "ski bum"?

bdamm 10y ago
Many sports have the same "X bum". Even aviation!