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They take large risks, and do work that not many people would be able to do - there aren't that many Bezoses and Musks out there. It's not just luck and circums

by ericd 10y ago

They take large risks, and do work that not many people would be able to do - there aren't that many Bezoses and Musks out there. It's not just luck and circumstance, despite the current common narrative around success. That's certainly one component, but people at least partly make their own luck via their outlook and skills. If you want people to continue to take large risks, you need to offer them good rewards if they succeed, and/or reduced downside in the case of failure.

bigtimeidiot 10y ago
>If you want people to continue to take large risks, you need to offer them good rewards if they succeed Is this what you think drives people like Jobs? The guy who had billions, worked relentlessly, and died of Cancer at a fairly young age?
- pyre 10y ago
  I had a teacher in highschool that put it this way (paraphrasing): "After a certain level of wealth, it just becomes a game and money is just points to keep score."
- ericd 10y ago
  The reward is the power to do what you want, and bend the world to your whim. Money is the enabler of that. And yes, I think that the power to do what you want is a very large driver for people like Jobs, Musk, and Bezos. If you prevent them from getting lots of money for their efforts, you necessarily limit their ability to gather power. Everyone seems to always think that money is for getting a faster car or a bigger house, because that's most people would buy a car or house if they had money, but that's not really the primary driver past a point.
Terr_ 10y ago
> there aren't that many Bezoses and Musks out there How would you disprove this belief, short of an alternate-universe device? To me, it feels a bit like saying: "There aren't that many apex predators, therefore Leo the Lion must have incredible intrinsic properties"... Ignoring the fact that the local ecosystem doesn't allow that many contenders in the first place, and overlooking how many baby lions Leo kills.
- ericd 10y ago
  Anecdotally, if you know a lot of people who act like them. I know very few that are that driven in the face of no further material wants. Not everything needs to be proven. You need to have a bit of a lust for power to want to push to those levels. The ability to kill all your other competitors does imply something about your intrinsic properties. But I don't think that's very apt in this case, Musk and Bezos aren't intentionally killing lots of competitors in the cradle. The ecosystem comparison might be a bit more apt, and there are certainly a number of people who are very driven and long-term-focused who never achieve the same heights, because you can only have so many megacorps in each field. But I think those people that don't achieve the peak still end up much better off financially than pure luck and circumstance would imply. I was mainly arguing against the sad-sack sour grapes tendency I've noticed recently to say that very rich people are just luckier, and are no more deserving of their status than anyone else. That is, frankly, bullshit, unless it's inherited. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to give the educational and financial resources for everyone the opportunity to thrive, I certainly think we should do more there. Bolstering our state university system so that it once again offers everyone the chance for a very cheap high quality education would be a great start.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    I think that human nature biases us so strongly to inventing stories/causes (even when there are none) that it's almost impossible for us to accidentally assign too much importance to random factors. It's a constant (and often un-examined) uphill battle against stuff like the "hot hand" fallacy or fundamental-attribution-error. That's why I feel the default assumption should be that they got there by chance rather than that there's some kind of narrative cause we find instinctually pleasing.

by ericd 10y ago

bigtimeidiot 10y ago

>If you want people to continue to take large risks, you need to offer them good rewards if they succeed Is this what you think drives people like Jobs? The guy who had billions, worked relentlessly, and died of Cancer at a fairly young age?

pyre 10y ago
I had a teacher in highschool that put it this way (paraphrasing): "After a certain level of wealth, it just becomes a game and money is just points to keep score."
ericd 10y ago
The reward is the power to do what you want, and bend the world to your whim. Money is the enabler of that. And yes, I think that the power to do what you want is a very large driver for people like Jobs, Musk, and Bezos. If you prevent them from getting lots of money for their efforts, you necessarily limit their ability to gather power. Everyone seems to always think that money is for getting a faster car or a bigger house, because that's most people would buy a car or house if they had money, but that's not really the primary driver past a point.

Terr_ 10y ago

> there aren't that many Bezoses and Musks out there How would you disprove this belief, short of an alternate-universe device? To me, it feels a bit like saying: "There aren't that many apex predators, therefore Leo the Lion must have incredible intrinsic properties"... Ignoring the fact that the local ecosystem doesn't allow that many contenders in the first place, and overlooking how many baby lions Leo kills.

ericd 10y ago
Anecdotally, if you know a lot of people who act like them. I know very few that are that driven in the face of no further material wants. Not everything needs to be proven. You need to have a bit of a lust for power to want to push to those levels. The ability to kill all your other competitors does imply something about your intrinsic properties. But I don't think that's very apt in this case, Musk and Bezos aren't intentionally killing lots of competitors in the cradle. The ecosystem comparison might be a bit more apt, and there are certainly a number of people who are very driven and long-term-focused who never achieve the same heights, because you can only have so many megacorps in each field. But I think those people that don't achieve the peak still end up much better off financially than pure luck and circumstance would imply. I was mainly arguing against the sad-sack sour grapes tendency I've noticed recently to say that very rich people are just luckier, and are no more deserving of their status than anyone else. That is, frankly, bullshit, unless it's inherited. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to give the educational and financial resources for everyone the opportunity to thrive, I certainly think we should do more there. Bolstering our state university system so that it once again offers everyone the chance for a very cheap high quality education would be a great start.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  I think that human nature biases us so strongly to inventing stories/causes (even when there are none) that it's almost impossible for us to accidentally assign too much importance to random factors. It's a constant (and often un-examined) uphill battle against stuff like the "hot hand" fallacy or fundamental-attribution-error. That's why I feel the default assumption should be that they got there by chance rather than that there's some kind of narrative cause we find instinctually pleasing.