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> Think of being a billionaire as a rare disease, though far less rare than it was a few decades ago—except that it’s a disease that’s self-inflicted, deserves

• surgical_fire 11mo ago
  To me it only suggests they are sociopaths. The common folk should generally just understand that billionaires are inherently evil, and everything they say and want will cause harm to society as a whole. It also suggests, typically, that they just inherited generatinal wealth from their sociopath ancestors.
• conception 11mo ago
  Note that it’s quite possible that the extraordinary thing is acute psychopathy and/or sociopathy to gather wealth at any cost.
  • bko 11mo ago
    Sure, that could be what results in billionaires. But I guess you would have to identify what opportunities you would have to take to become a billionaire that you don't take because it would be too mean. What's the model here? I hear billionaires "exploit" people, but anyone that's ever had to manage people, especially low wage employees, quickly realizes you can't just treat people like crap. Not for moral reasons, but it doesn't work. People will just quit on you on the spot. I've never heard any business owner espouse this theory because they're faced with the reality that building a business is hard and just being a dick doesn't work.
    • vacuity 11mo ago
      So no business exploits workers to a significant degree? I find this hard to believe.
    • pissmeself 11mo ago
      [dead]
• rpdillon 11mo ago
  It's strange to me that you conclude that accumulating six zeros indicates luck, but accumulating nine zeros indicates skill. Why doesn't it indicate just more extraordinary luck?
  • bko 11mo ago
    Because great wealth is accumulated through a series of bets. Moderate wealth (6 zeros) could be single or few transactions. For instance, you could have bought $1,000 worth of Bitcoin in 2010 much like people bet $1,000 on a sports game. You got lucky and became a millionaire. To become a billionaire I guess you could have bought $100k on Bitcoin as a gamble but that requires much higher conviction and discipline. If you're the type of guy to gamble $100k on random crap you're likely not going to be rich for long. But realistically people become billionaires by building businesses. And this requires a series of decisions. Picking the field, raising money, picking co-founders, hiring, product development, sales, etc. In other words its like flipping a coin to determine if there is bias. One flip doesn't tell you anything. Multiple flips tells you more. And the more flips, the more confident you are on bias. Getting to a billion usually requires a huge number of decisions so that the outcome tells you a lot more about bias (in this case real skill or insight of the individual)
    • idiotsecant 11mo ago
      Alternatively, there are a lot of people out there. Flip enough coins and some will come up heads 10 times in a row. You don't need some special talent, you need to start with money and connections and hit the right number of coinflips.
    • 542354234235 11mo ago
      It seems like the key to your argument is having more money to gamble with, like would come from family money. Like if your father owned an emerald mine, or your parents gave you a quarter million to start a business, or you started a hedge fund with a million dollars raised from “family and friends.”
    • rainsford 11mo ago
• kamranjon 11mo ago
  This line of thinking is why I think the tech industry has become so morally bankrupt. I don’t mean to judge because I think many people come to similar conclusions but I believe there has been a concerted effort to equate accumulation of wealth with genius, and to portray this anti-social behavior of endlessly accumulating wealth in a positive light. I really think this phenomenon should be studied because it will likely lead to some catastrophic outcomes for the country.
  • bko 11mo ago
    > accumulation of wealth with genius Where did I say genius? They did something impressive so a useful model is to say "they know something about this world" or "there is something unique about them". Not sure what you're referring to as anti-social behavior, but yeah I imagine extreme wealth generation means the person is likely to have some personal characteristic that could manifest as anti social. The smartest people I know are all ADHD or some other abnormality. How exhausting must it be to think that anyone with success got so through illicit means or luck. It's much healthier to come in with the assumption that there's something to learn from that person.
    • kamranjon 11mo ago
      I think the crux of this is that wealth is equated with success at the expense of all other qualities or accomplishments. As a result of this perspective, hoarding of wealth has become the norm and even the goal for many. If wealth means success, then make number go up = success, even if that incentivizes bad behavior. If wealth means success, our role models become degenerates.
      • bko 11mo ago
        I am not making a moral judgement that wealth is success or should be pursued. I am simply saying some people pursue wealth, like others pursue raising a family, excelling in a sport, starting a YouTube channel, whatever. If they're successful at it, I assume they know something about the world. Successful marriage and raising good kids: I assume you know something about psychology, the human condition, relationships Sports: I assume you know something about training and hard work YouTube: Marketing, trends, production Starting a business and becoming a billionaire is another pursuit and if you're successful I assume you know something about the world. You're successful in the sense that you set out to start a business that made a lot of money and you succeeded. That is all. I don't think pursuing one is greater than the other. I'm glad people in the world pursue all these things. Personally I don't want my children to try to become billionaires (or athletes, YT stars for that matter). If they have talents in this space, it may be worth pursuing but it's a great sacrifice in all other aspects of life. But chasing it without the talent or unique insight into the world would almost certainly fail.
• lapcat 11mo ago
  Imagine looking at the fattest people in the world and thinking, they must know something about food that others don't. Extraordinary. Everyone else knows that gluttony is bad, not good.
  • bko 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • lapcat 11mo ago
      > leftist discourse You jump to political labels awfully fast, based on a mere two sentences. > pretending not to understand things I'm not pretending anything. I also don't think I'm misunderstanding here. > thus making discourse impossible. You replied to me, so apparently discourse is possible. Let me add to the discourse: I think our fundamental difference is that you view massive wealth accumulation as success, whereas I view it as failure. It's reasonable for any person to want material goods, e.g., food, clothing, shelter, even entertainment, as well as some measure of security. However, at some point, a normal person is satisfied with their personal wealth. If you're never satisfied, always need more, more, more without limit, that's a psychological problem, and possibly a social problem too.
    • idiotsecant 11mo ago
      You have a strong emotional connection to the idea that rich people are rich because they're strong and wise. All the arguments you're making in this thread are post hoc justifications for this belief, which simply isn't supported by reality.
      • jdmoreira 11mo ago
        Some of them are wealthy because they are the best at playing the wealth game (and got lucky along the way). Why does everyone care about Cristiano Ronaldo? Being the best at kicking a ball is the stupidest skill there is (IMHO). at least becoming wealthy is a game that correlates with skills I care about.
• frogperson 11mo ago
  Yeah, extraordinarily bad. You dont make a billion dollars by being nice, you have to step on alot of throaths to gain that kind of wealth.
  • cwmoore 11mo ago
    You can step on a lot of throats without accumulating much at all, but in that case you’d make for a much lower profile target.
• johnsmith4739 11mo ago
  Factually wrong: https://www.datapulse.de/en/billionaire-self-made/ https://www.datapulse.de/en/billionaire-self-made/ Also, fundamental attribution error is a thing, and survivorship bias, too. Of course people are not diseases, what they do is, and is making things worse for all of us.
• mcphage 11mo ago
  > > Think of being a billionaire as a rare disease > I don't think people are a disease. "Being a billionaire" isn't a person, it's a transient state of being. If you have a cold, you have a disease, you aren't a disease.