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The best things that Bezos (and arguably Bill Gates) did was get divorced. Observe the ex-wives doing what a normal/sane person would do with that amount of mon
by jrm4 2y ago
The best things that Bezos (and arguably Bill Gates) did was get divorced. Observe the ex-wives doing what a normal/sane person would do with that amount of money.
- anonzzzies 2y agoYep, that has been really interesting to watch. But those are anomalies; why can't we have less weirdos that make money?
- yoyohello13 2y agoBy definition, average people will make an average amount of money. It takes extraordinary people to make extraordinary amounts of money. Unfortunately, our system seems to be optimized to reward extraordinary psychopaths.
- montagg 2y agoThe money itself also isolates them and makes them more likely to become psychopaths, imo. It's a positive feedback loop on whatever differences allowed them to obtain that wealth, and those personality features eventually metastasize.
- aylmao 2y agoIMO because you have to be a psychopath/sociopath to make that amount of money. We're talking hundred's of billions of dollars here; $20 million is already a big fortune where 2% interest gets you $200,000. These people (on paper) have 5 orders of magnitude (100,000x) more. At that point you aren't doing all the questionable things it takes to get there for the money. IMO you have to be broken in some way, shape or form to do what it takes to get there.
- varsketiz 2y agoDont hate the player, hate the game :)) The USA system is made this way. There are other systems in the world (namely the scandinavian countries) that don't allow individuals to accumulate that amount of wealth.
- aylmao 2y agoNot hating, just describing. And to be fair though, the players do make the game too.
- varsketiz 2y agoIn this case I mean the players are the sociopatic billionaires. However, in a democracy, all citizens are players.
- fragmede 2y agoYes, I probably should have voted a couple extra times to make sure my vote counted, much like a billionaire can, by paying millions of dollars to a marketing firm to do advertising of every kind to push their agenda. Shame on me.
- mrguyorama 2y agoYou don't have a game without players.
- 2y ago
- geodel 2y agoAlso why can't we have sun little warmer in winters and cooler in summers. It will be so good for my heating and cooling bills.
- red-iron-pine 2y agocuz it will collapse the global ecosystem and plunge huge populations into climates they're not prepared for.
- _fs 2y agoI often think back to this 90s 60 minute interview with Bezos and wonder, what happened. He was already a billionaire at this point, but he felt so much more ordinary, down to earth, geeky. He seems very much like the developers I meet all the time. What was the catalyst to the changes we see in him today. https://youtu.be/u-SFaIhzpsw?t=74 https://youtu.be/u-SFaIhzpsw?t=74
- cjrp 2y agoContinued exposure to the kinds of people that hang around with billionaires, I’d guess. That can change a person.
- fragmede 2y agoAnd being that rich in and of itself, I imagine. Tony Hseih of Zappos is another interesting story where, if I had that kind of money, wouldn't I try and help all of my friends, if they knew about it? It seems the real trick is changing who you are, and realizing that, counter to what you may have learned as a child, lying to everybody, especially your friends, is actually a good thing. We only hear about these stories because they get told. Far more mysterious is the lottery winner who got $20 million who calls up Dave Ramsey and asks what to do with it so their son doesn't become a waiter. That is, someone just waiting for their parents to die and get their inheritance. You'll never hear about their boring life where they lived comfortably and gave money to causes they believed in and helped people they know anonymously and didn't cause a scene. If it's possible for money not to change a person, we wouldn't hear about it, almost by definition, so we can only conclude that it does.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago> And being that rich in and of itself, I imagine. There was a thought experiment posted on Reddit and I think was from elsewhere. Something like: Imagine you get $1 million dollars a day. You can't keep it -- it's all gotta get spent. You can invest it, sure, but those holdings aren't going to go up as much as, like, another $1 million the next day. And you have to spend it So at some point you're going to start doing stuff basically on a whim. You're going to get 3 Lambos in different colors -- because you can. You already have the harem, you already have donated to most causes you care about. You've already got a house (houses, really), so now you start thinking about political causes you're mildly interested in, on top of ones you strongly are. And then you can get petty; if you don't like person X? Take out ads on billboards... cuz you can. Or fund their lawsuit against Gawker, cuz fuck em. etc. etc.
- sangnoir 2y ago> why can't we have less weirdos that make money When they do, you don't hear from them/about them as much! Chuck Feeney gave away his billions, but he's hardly ever mentioned.
- fragmede 2y agoWhat weird stuff have you heard about Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Zhang Yiming, Jayshree Ullal, or Alex Karp? There are plenty of people who you don't hear much about, but because you don't hear much about them, the other ones tend to take up all of the air in the room. Though, there's also the argument that making that kind of money makes you even weirder, and having seen glimpses of that through someone I know getting rich, that might also be true.
- cyanydeez 2y agoYou know how during WW2 they studied the damage of returning bombers, and, tried to figure out where the armor went? It's like that.