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I think the idea to evaluate yourself or other people as Millionaire or Billionaire is crap. Being middle class has value, being upper class has value, being r
by erikb 9y ago
I think the idea to evaluate yourself or other people as Millionaire or Billionaire is crap.
Being middle class has value, being upper class has value, being rich has value, having a degree has value, having provided a meaningful recognisable addition to human development has value. It's so easy to have such a number drop to 50% or to zero even, without changing anything about your value, your opportunities etc. For instance if Elon Musk lost all his money tomorrow you bet he would still be able to attempt another huge project next week. But if I give you one billion dollar, you might still not be able to start a project of the same size, because you miss the skill, connections, track record etc.
The most important thing to worry about is actually doing something valuable for the people around you. The more people you can influence positively the better your life will become as well.
Example: In my country there's a start-up that tries to revolutionize the train system. All they achieved was to repair one second-hand train, rent the railway slots to drive once up south to north and once down north to south, a few days a week. Then they ran out of money.
But! It really influenced a lot of people positively, made great press, showed strong customer engagement. So even after going broke they were able to continue after a short break, because someone bought them. No money, no profit, loads of way-too-hard-work nobody else wants to do. And still they are able to get this working, because they provide something provably valuable.
- corporateslave2 9y agoThis is non sense, the life for the rich is far better than for the poor. If you don't believe that is true, then you haven't been exposed to it enough. Having high status in any society can have massive advantages. More leisure time, better mates, ability to purchase expensive health care and therapy, organic food, the freedom to go anywhere in the world, the list goes on and on
- erikb 9y agoI totally agree. But the set of rich people and the set of billionaires are only overlapping. They are not the same. And funnily it's not even true that one would be a subset of the other. It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death. But at least I personally would say if you are starving you are certainly not rich. Rich means having the ability to get what you need and a lot of things you want, including things that are unavailable to most. Would you agree? It can be considered a subtle difference, but it's the point I'm trying to make. Stop worrying about the number "one billion US dollars" and instead start worrying about becoming rich.
- ohquu 9y agoI honestly cannot understand the point you're trying to make. Also, > It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death. Can you provide an example?
- erikb 9y agoIt's also hard for me to see where our experiences diverge so much that we can't understand each other. Maybe you don't know that billionaires are not having this billion dollars on their bank account, but instead it's a calculation of assumed ownership of stock, houses, derivates etc? If you have a billion dollar on a bank account with a bank that would cash that amount of money, then I'd say yes you are rich. But the Forbes list is mostly guessed values that are used in calculations, based on real but unknown values that may change a lot between one day and another. I hope that was the point. If not give me some hints or explain your point of view more detailed. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that we actually share the same view but express it differently.
- ohquu 9y agoPlease tell me how many on the Forbes list are starving. Hell, give me an example of any billionaire ever that ended up starving. The point you’re trying to make has no basis in reality.
- pas 9y agoClassic example is doing a startup (and failing to take off). You have a very large nominal wealth, but you practically bankrupted yourself, because as a founder you probably spent all your money to try to raise more funds, or on sales, or on product development. Yes, the Forbes list is different. And yes, erikb's point about being a billionare is strange, because not many people would consider anyone a billionare just because someone funded a company with nominal value 1B$. However, erikb is right, that rich people have cheap access to enormously powerful success multipliers. (They can very realistically - almost literally - get a cheap loan from any of their dad's neighbour, or get in touch with anyone, and so on.)
- BeetleB 9y ago>This is non sense, the life for the rich is far better than for the poor. But is it far better than the life of the upper middle class? People have lots of problems in life. Money solves a minority of them.
- corporateslave2 9y agoMoney solves almost all of them. It's Marxist propaganda trying to convince you otherwise.
- mitchdoogle 9y agoWhat about health problems? Stress? Happiness? Money can only go so far to alleviate problems in these and other areas. When it comes to the biggest problems people have, I would agree that most cannot be solved with money.
- BeetleB 9y agoI can play the same game. >Money solves almost all of them. Capitalist propaganda. If it did, I wouldn't find rich people who have more problems than I do. Definitely would not swap places with some of them. Sure: If you take the same two people with the same intelligence, skills, and problems, having more money likely helps. But that's not the reality. Given any random two people - one in the upper middle class and one very rich - perhaps on average the richer one will be a bit happier. But if you give me any random rich person, it'll be trivial for me to find a happier upper middle class person. The difference in happiness is not huge, and the variance is high.