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> (As long as I am ranting: what the hell is up with billionaires, anyway? Quite a few of them have accumulated more money than they could spend in a hundred li

> (As long as I am ranting: what the hell is up with billionaires, anyway? Quite a few of them have accumulated more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes, but still they want more. It’s disgraceful.) I mean its more like equity than real money they can directly spend. Also most of their wealth is in companies that are no where near worth their marketcap, such as Tesla which isn't even close to VW in sales, yet somhow is worth more. So once the hype dies down, or the founder sells enough stocks, the market cap is going to take a nose dive for sure. And as rich as elon is, we have seen how he is putting Billions into twitter, so they can spend it, just not in normal lifetime stuff.

bin_bash 4y ago
Economics Explained did a great video on the topic of how diversification is a big problem for some billionaires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeRN7LE1LQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeRN7LE1LQ
seanhunter 4y ago
I have met and worked with a few billionaires now and they all had one thing in common which I think explains some of this well. Firstly, they spend the _vast_ majority of their time with enablers, fluffers and sycophants fulfilling their every whim, constantly telling them how great they are and how brilliant all their ideas are etc. It's bad for anyone's ego to have only that sort of feedback. Someone once told me that because people are scared of giving powerful people bad news his theory of the organisation was a tree of monkeys. When you look up all you see is assholes and when you look down all you see is smiling faces. Well billionaires are at the top of most trees and so all they hear is good news and all they see is smiling faces. That means they become disconnected from reality to the point of seeming unhinged to the regular mass of people. Secondly, the billionaires I have met hang out a lot with other billionaires or similar ultra-rich folks. They are envious of people even more rich and successful than them until you get to the very top and there they are paranoid about losing their status to others on the rise. This makes the first phenomenon more acute and they radicalise each other. You can see this in the DMs that were published between members of Elon's circle leading up to the twitter acquisition. All sorts of people were telling him how brilliant a job he was going to do at twitter and how his idea of taking an axe to the org chart etc was the a surefire recipe for success.[1] [1] Check this out and you'll probably cringe like I did https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-musk-texts-twitter-trial-jack-dorsey/671619/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...
- carapace 4y ago
  One of my favorite jokes from the Simpsons: Homer and Mr. Burns are chilling in the rocket house Homer: Mr. Burns, you're the richest man I know. Mr. Burns: Ah yes, but I'd trade it all... for a little more. - - - - > people are scared of giving powerful people bad news Robert Anton Wilson called it the "Information Disease": people lie to those that have the power to hurt them, so hierarchical systems are controlled by elements that perforce have bad information.

bin_bash 4y ago

Economics Explained did a great video on the topic of how diversification is a big problem for some billionaires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeRN7LE1LQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeRN7LE1LQ

seanhunter 4y ago

I have met and worked with a few billionaires now and they all had one thing in common which I think explains some of this well. Firstly, they spend the _vast_ majority of their time with enablers, fluffers and sycophants fulfilling their every whim, constantly telling them how great they are and how brilliant all their ideas are etc. It's bad for anyone's ego to have only that sort of feedback. Someone once told me that because people are scared of giving powerful people bad news his theory of the organisation was a tree of monkeys. When you look up all you see is assholes and when you look down all you see is smiling faces. Well billionaires are at the top of most trees and so all they hear is good news and all they see is smiling faces. That means they become disconnected from reality to the point of seeming unhinged to the regular mass of people. Secondly, the billionaires I have met hang out a lot with other billionaires or similar ultra-rich folks. They are envious of people even more rich and successful than them until you get to the very top and there they are paranoid about losing their status to others on the rise. This makes the first phenomenon more acute and they radicalise each other. You can see this in the DMs that were published between members of Elon's circle leading up to the twitter acquisition. All sorts of people were telling him how brilliant a job he was going to do at twitter and how his idea of taking an axe to the org chart etc was the a surefire recipe for success.[1] [1] Check this out and you'll probably cringe like I did https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-musk-texts-twitter-trial-jack-dorsey/671619/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...

carapace 4y ago
One of my favorite jokes from the Simpsons: Homer and Mr. Burns are chilling in the rocket house Homer: Mr. Burns, you're the richest man I know. Mr. Burns: Ah yes, but I'd trade it all... for a little more. - - - - > people are scared of giving powerful people bad news Robert Anton Wilson called it the "Information Disease": people lie to those that have the power to hurt them, so hierarchical systems are controlled by elements that perforce have bad information.