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I'm specifically talking about his statement that "It’s definitely not a drop in the bucket for me" seems disingenuous when he appears to have a large amount of

I'm specifically talking about his statement that "It’s definitely not a drop in the bucket for me" seems disingenuous when he appears to have a large amount of wealth. I'm not disputing that he paid for the fee himself. It's almost like he's trying to make himself seem more relatable by saying the fee was a bigger deal for him than it actually was. To me, it comes off like he's trying to hide something

asabjorn 9y ago
I would imagine spending $6k is a consideration even for a millionaire. Spending the time to research and write a 101-page challenge to the patent seems like quite a considerable investment for anyone, dwarfing the $6k even for a middle class person. Why do you think $6k is not a consideration given his liquid capital? What do you expect his liquid wealth to be and what do you base that on?
- Fnoord 9y ago
  If he owns a house which is worth at least 5.5M USD then he's more than a millionaire; at least a multimillionaire. Just to put it in perspective: 6k USD is 0,6% of 1M USD. If I got a savings of 10k USD, and I donate 0,6% of that to EFF during Christmas, then we're talking about 60 USD while I keep 9940 USD or 99,4%. Even that doesn't tell us much though because your networth isn't descriptive to your income. If you own 0,5M but you don't have income that's something different than owning 0,5k but having 2k to spend every month.
  - bonesss 9y ago
    > If you own 0,5M but you don't have income that's something different than owning 0,5k but having 2k to spend every month. I think this is the key. Having a big fancy house usually comes with a big fancy mortgage, and who knows what his cashflow looks like. Did he invest his windfall and lose it? Did the tax man take it? Did his wife leave him soon after along with "half"? Any massive medical situations he's dealt with in his family? Is he heavily invested in a new project? The claim is not that $6,000 is a hardship to him, just that it is not "a drop in the bucket". Ie, $6K is not an amount he would spend unthinkingly because of having so much money. Depending on where you live it's not odd to know people in houses worth over a million but who couldn't pick up a another car because the monthly payments would be too much. Technically they can afford it, but practically it's not "a drop in the bucket", so they have other priorities.
    - musage 9y ago
      I lived in a town full of millionaires, and while I've met plenty who are just as or even more decent than the average person, there's also the ones who would spend 20€ on a piece of cake, but then not tip the waitress. Yet others seem to think that because they're so rich (and in their mind, that makes them important) they shouldn't have to pay for anything, even a penny is a penny to much for them, and the richer they are, the more time they spend whining about expenses. For some people, money is an end in itself, and that's because they have no personality worth writing home about and nothing else to fill their lives with. Nietzsche was exactly right when he said for some utterly impotent people money is the crowbar of power. But ironically, the more power they have, they weaker they become. As I said initially, I don't mean "all rich people", not by a long shot -- but anyone who is rich and still a fully fledged human being will know even more of the people I'm talking about than I do -- and there's plenty of poor people who are petty, too. Idiocy and insanity don't care much for class. But just because people do something doesn't mean there is a good reason for it, sometimes it's really just psychopathology combined with not having anyone who is strong enough and cares for them enough, and/or no accidents of life, that force them to stop going deeper into their dead end. They need help, not excuses. That is not aimed at the person in the article, just generally.

asabjorn 9y ago

I would imagine spending $6k is a consideration even for a millionaire. Spending the time to research and write a 101-page challenge to the patent seems like quite a considerable investment for anyone, dwarfing the $6k even for a middle class person. Why do you think $6k is not a consideration given his liquid capital? What do you expect his liquid wealth to be and what do you base that on?

Fnoord 9y ago
If he owns a house which is worth at least 5.5M USD then he's more than a millionaire; at least a multimillionaire. Just to put it in perspective: 6k USD is 0,6% of 1M USD. If I got a savings of 10k USD, and I donate 0,6% of that to EFF during Christmas, then we're talking about 60 USD while I keep 9940 USD or 99,4%. Even that doesn't tell us much though because your networth isn't descriptive to your income. If you own 0,5M but you don't have income that's something different than owning 0,5k but having 2k to spend every month.
- bonesss 9y ago
  > If you own 0,5M but you don't have income that's something different than owning 0,5k but having 2k to spend every month. I think this is the key. Having a big fancy house usually comes with a big fancy mortgage, and who knows what his cashflow looks like. Did he invest his windfall and lose it? Did the tax man take it? Did his wife leave him soon after along with "half"? Any massive medical situations he's dealt with in his family? Is he heavily invested in a new project? The claim is not that $6,000 is a hardship to him, just that it is not "a drop in the bucket". Ie, $6K is not an amount he would spend unthinkingly because of having so much money. Depending on where you live it's not odd to know people in houses worth over a million but who couldn't pick up a another car because the monthly payments would be too much. Technically they can afford it, but practically it's not "a drop in the bucket", so they have other priorities.
  - musage 9y ago
    I lived in a town full of millionaires, and while I've met plenty who are just as or even more decent than the average person, there's also the ones who would spend 20€ on a piece of cake, but then not tip the waitress. Yet others seem to think that because they're so rich (and in their mind, that makes them important) they shouldn't have to pay for anything, even a penny is a penny to much for them, and the richer they are, the more time they spend whining about expenses. For some people, money is an end in itself, and that's because they have no personality worth writing home about and nothing else to fill their lives with. Nietzsche was exactly right when he said for some utterly impotent people money is the crowbar of power. But ironically, the more power they have, they weaker they become. As I said initially, I don't mean "all rich people", not by a long shot -- but anyone who is rich and still a fully fledged human being will know even more of the people I'm talking about than I do -- and there's plenty of poor people who are petty, too. Idiocy and insanity don't care much for class. But just because people do something doesn't mean there is a good reason for it, sometimes it's really just psychopathology combined with not having anyone who is strong enough and cares for them enough, and/or no accidents of life, that force them to stop going deeper into their dead end. They need help, not excuses. That is not aimed at the person in the article, just generally.