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I thought about the same recently, in the context of the Epstein files. You don't become a billionaire by being moral. Each time you don't do something because
by sznio 8mo ago
I thought about the same recently, in the context of the Epstein files.
You don't become a billionaire by being moral. Each time you don't do something because it's wrong, you lost opportunity to make more money.
You start with smaller things, then your standards slide more and more, until you are a billionaire, and you're so corrupt there isn't anything for you to do except make more money.
Which makes me wonder, how many people went to Epstein's island not because they like diddling kids, but because they needed to network with Epstein to make more money. How many actively participated just to be in his in-group? Not because they enjoyed, they just were so corrupt that they would do anything for business.
- renewiltord 8mo ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 8mo agoWe're all capable of seeing the difference between Taylor Swift and Epstein and his crowd. Well, almost all, apparently.
- renewiltord 8mo ago> You don't become a billionaire by being moral If you’re ESL, that statement actually doesn’t specifically reference Epstein et al. If you’re not ESL, I suggest a remedial course and then the statement doesn’t specifically reference Epstein et al.
- jacquesm 8mo agoWhat an incredibly dumb and insulting comment.
- jordanb 8mo agoOf course the grappling to find one good billionaire begins. While Taylor Swift is not nearly as obviously evil as the tech bros, she grifts the shit out of her fans. I do think it's kinda evil to create a parasocial relationship situation with millions of young girls and then mine every last penny of disposable income out of them. She could have just as easily superstar multi-millionare with far less grifting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKWE1fH0pDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKWE1fH0pDo
- shevy-java 8mo ago> she grifts the shit out of her fans People are free to use their money. I am not sure why that should be the fault of Taylor?
- FireBeyond 8mo agoAren't many of Swift's fans children? That being said I think comparing Swift to the likes of Thiel and Musk is comedic at best.
- shevy-java 8mo agoI don't think Taylor is close to lead any villain-list of superrich. Teter Phiel using money to buy influence and influence legislation or Melon usk, the guy fidgeting about with his right arm constantly pointing skywards - these guys definitely would be way before Taylor. But the main issue is why a few hold so much money. There needs to be a mandate to re-invest and improve the conditions on the planet past a certain threshold. Using their money to undermine democracy - now that should be a perma-jail offence.
- renewiltord 8mo agoAgreed. I propose choosing $1m as the threshold unrealized and realized summed. A 100% wealth tax on anything over that should help reduce inequality.
- hn_acc1 8mo agoThis can't be said in any kind of good faith. You'd put a lot of people in bigger cities out on the streets, including people who never worked above "bookeeper" or "factory worker" whose houses happen to be in a desirable location 40 years after they bought them.
- renewiltord 8mo agoSo just because they were bookkeepers we should let them hoard wealth when most Americans could not afford an unexpected expense? To a person with $100 in their checking account both a millionaire and a billionaire are impossibly far away. I think what’s happening here is that a bunch of millionaires are complaining that there are people richer than them so they want the limit higher than them. But they don’t realize they’re the problem. They’re the top 3% while people are suffering.
- jacquesm 8mo agoThis the mindblowing thing about the whole Epstein saga: so many people knew about this. And yet, the mutually assured destruction of having been associated with Epstein was enough to effectively impose a code of silence on all of them.
- frm88 8mo agoHave you ever heard of the Bohemian Grove? The birthplace of the Heritage Foundation? There you have them all, in one club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Grove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Grove
- jacquesm 8mo agoNo, I never heard of them, so thank you for the pointer.
- defrost 8mo agoSecret Men's Business is global: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weld_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weld_Club They have such clubs in your part of the world no doubt? (Netherlands, IIRC?) The fostering of circles of trust, backed up with Kompromat, to strengthen elite solidarity, ease insider trading, treat handshakes as binding, and cover up the odd "unfortunate incident" is seemingly as old as time. #PigGate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate is loosely related.
- savanaly 8mo agoCan't you also make money by making a good decision that benefits you and another party? I feel like I do this all the time, just on a relatively small scale.
- troosevelt 8mo agoYes, and when you see people excusing those actions even here on HN, that's exactly the mindset they have. Who is to say otherwise? There isn't some objective scale, it's all utilitarian.
- trinsic2 8mo ago> There isn't some objective scale, it's all utilitarian. I'm calling this out. That's a personal belief, not everyone sees the world this way. Some of us believe that some things are objective and deontological. IMHO our move toward too much utilitarianism has created the corrupt conditions we are living in
- cootsnuck 8mo ago"Good" is subjective. But yes, all wealth creation requires working with other people. No one is an island. And most people are increasingly disturbed by the types of decisions required to amass more wealth than sovereign nations.
- ambicapter 8mo ago"relatively small scale" is doing all the work in this sentence, no?
- tsimionescu 8mo agoNot at the scale of billions of dollars. Sure, some of their money comes from positive contributions to society. But you don't get to be a billionaire if you restrict yourself to that. Millionaire? Sure, possible.
- yoyohello13 8mo agoYou can make a huge amount of money that way, but not the MOST money.
- troosevelt 8mo agoIsn't this kind of Nietzsche's slave morality? I don't, for example, think Phil Knight is an immoral person who intentionally did wrong things, though his company certainly has. You don't just become a billionaire and become corrupt, you have a mindset that justifies what you're doing and you conveniently excuse yourself or are unaware because you're dealing with things outside of your scope because a single person can't handle that much authority without delegating to people who will inevitably do corrupt things. PK didn't start out wanting to be a billionaire, he just wanted to sell shoes and maybe become a millionaire. I suspect the vast majority of people who interacted with Epstein did it just to make connections and they made excuses, eg, Gates. I'm more likely to call someone immoral who interacted with him post-conviction than a billionaire, but generally labeling people moral/immoral instead of their actions misses why people do what they do. Very few people want to be considered immoral, but many people don't have an issue excusing immoral actions. Does that make sense? If you want to get people top stop doing things like this, you have to attack the actions, not the person, because when you say all billionaires are immoral, it gives them nowhere to retreat, it gives them more reason to dig in, because who are you but some seemingly envious person who's made just as many compromises, just at lower levels?
- shevy-java 8mo ago> I suspect the vast majority of people who interacted with Epstein did it just to make connections and they made excuses, eg, Gates. I am not sure about that. Sex may have played a factor in this. I use the word "may", as I don't know for certain, but I don't buy into the "just to make connections". The superrich don't really need to "make connections" on an island where underage girls party.
- bityard 8mo agoIf making increasingly immoral decisions is all it takes to be a billionaire... then man, I have truly been wasting my life's potential
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoYou also have to be lucky. Have you tried being more lucky?
- overfeed 8mo agoNecessary - but not adequate.
- BlueTemplar 8mo agoOh yeah, plenty of that, even scientists and thinkers were tempted, we had plenty of details even before the 'files', thanks to Maxwell's phone book : https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyone-in-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyo...