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Empty Mansions: Don’t be old and rich in New York City
- jfasi 13y agoI hate to be that guy, but why was this posted to hacker news, the site dedicated to news for hackers?
- tannerc 13y agoExactly what I was wondering. As much as I would love to be both (or either) rich and in NYC, I don't see how this is relevant to the community.
- larrys 13y agoI will take four guesses. 1) Written by Philip Greenspun: "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology" 2) Published under harvard.edu domain. 3) Money 4) NYC
- mturmon 13y agoYour #1 is most of the explanation; Phil is a net.personality from way back ("Travels with Samantha", 1994), as well as a pithy writer of several perennial pieces of HN text (like: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science).
- larrys 13y agoI agree. Although the question isn't really why is it posted (anyone can post anything) but more "why is it being upvoted"? Separately why do people when stating an opinion need to say "I hate to be that guy"? To me that equates to "I'm not sure of my opinion and treading lightly". (I really do want to know your thoughts on my question btw.)
- peter_l_downs 13y agoIf you hate being that guy, don't be that guy.
- rfnslyr 13y agoSometimes we can't all be the guy we want to be.
- mikeash 13y agoThat's fine when you want to be a guy who saves kittens and fights cancer but end up leading a more mundane life. But when it comes down to not wanting to be the guy who makes a certain kind of comment, well, just don't do that. It's easy!
- ternaryoperator 13y agoI believe it was a lovely piece of irony.
- 001sky 13y ago...only gets to the FP by upvotes. just sayin.
- yaskyj 13y agoFrom the Hacker News Guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Under "What to Submit": "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Since it's being upvoted, then I guess it's gratifying enough people's intellectual curiosity.
- larrys 13y ago"then I guess it's gratifying enough people's intellectual curiosity" Taking into account (see my comment "four guesses") the question is would this happen if: 1) Written by a Dental Hygienist at SUNY Binghamton? 2) Published under a community college domain? 3) No link to big money. 4) Place it happened was in a suburb of Cincinnati Oh?
- tedivm 13y agoMost of the articles posted here are about making money, although they are biased towards making money with technology. This is more of a "hackers who want to start companies" site than purely a hacker one. Considering how many of the people on this site expect to be ridiculously wealthy at some point, I'm not surprised that a story like this made it to the front page.
- Systemic33 13y agoI think Hacker News also has a great deal of people with a personal interest in anthropology and human psychology, since both are very relevant to a startups success, knowing people is valuable. This is where this story brings value, because it reveals dark and sinister sides of humans, to leech from people, exploiting their generousity. Regardless of how big the fortunes are, that is incredibly deplorable.
- prawn 13y agoI didn't submit it or upvote it, but read the piece and found it interesting. For me, the value to HN isn't so much of dealing with wealth but one of being that quick distraction wondering how a problem like this might be solved to better society, and whether it can be ultimately solved.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- antonius 13y agoAlthough the doctors and nurses were taking care of this woman as best they could, their ultimate goals were purely monetary based on her large wealth. Sad.
- fleitz 13y agoYes, truly despicable, personally I forgo a paycheque for the honour of working for the wealthy for free. These doctors and nurses have some gall as members of the working class to consider acting like those they serve. Who do they think they are? Millionaires?
- antonius 13y agoOne of her doctors tapped her for more than $1 million in loans that he would never repay. Because that sure is working for free right?
- mikeash 13y agoThere is a vast gulf that exists between working for free and blatantly defrauding your patients. Most of humanity lives within that gulf. From your tone, I suspect you may not.
- fleitz 13y agoFrom the sounds of the article everything they did was legal... Just as her father buying his senate seat was... Just as the various ways in which Montana copper mine strikes were dealt with, just as the way Montana came to become a state. I suspect you may be uncomfortable with the moral foundations of US law and how that country and its wealth came to be as well as the legal means by which one may acquire wealth in the United States.
- pstuart 13y agoJust because it was legal doesn't make it moral.
- Aloha 13y agoThe book being reviewed here is one I've been meaning to pickup and read for a while, just been lazy about it. Huguette Clark was literally a living fossil - possibly the very very last holdover from the gilded age, really a very sad story. Though by all accounts - she was happy largely - so maybe not so sad in absolute terms over all.
- vinceguidry 13y agoI'm going through it now. It's a fascinating account, to be sure.
- Aloha 13y agoI just read it, having done so it appears she was largely happy, and in her place by her own choice.
- fleitz 13y agoWhat an unfortunate event to befall a family of who acquired such wealth by honest means: In an 1907 essay Mark Twain portrayed Clark as the very embodiment of Gilded Age excess and corruption: He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time.[5]
- vinceguidry 13y agoNot sure if you actually read the book, but it outlines the spirit of the times Clark lived in very well and makes the argument that Clark never stooped to the tactics of the so-called robber barons. He paid his employees well and gave back to communities. He was known as honest and fair to those who dealt with him. His political failings could be traced back to a socially awkward nature. Politics was messy business back then and it was impossible win a race completely honestly. Nothing he did back then was any worse than what everyone else did. It even examined Clark's history with Twain and Twain's own relationships with Clark's business rivals. That particular rant was very likely politically motivated.
- gcb1 13y agoso in conclusion they all lacked morals. or just being slightly less worse is enough for your ethics?
- vinceguidry 13y agoThat's a very interesting philosophical question, how to judge historical figures accurately in terms of morality/ethics. My own position on the matter is that standards tend to evolve over time, so when seeking to evaluate someone, you need to take that into account. If you just go by the Golden Rule standard of ethics, W. A. Clark was far more worthy than many of his rivals of his success. Politics, by its very nature, introduces a great number of potential moral pitfalls and there aren't always good and effective approaches to evading them.
- fleitz 13y agoHow truly sad, it must have been so hard for her only ending up with $310 million at the end of her life. It's far better to be old and poor in New York City, that way you can get food stamps instead of having to subsist on a paltry quarter billion dollars.
- joelrunyon 13y agoThere are other types of poverty besides the simple monetary kind.
- venomsnake 13y agoRead the story of Christina Onassis and think if you would gladly switch places with her. If that woman lived the last 20 years of her life without friends and normal human connections - it was a prison with gold bars but prison non the less. Why is that we always look on the poor people below us as "they deserve it", and on the richer than us that are not fortunate as "big deal - they have money" it is only us the the Goldilocks of suffering that deserve compassion from the universe.
- oijaf888 13y agoThe short wikipedia page about her seems to claim that she ran her father's business after his death for a period of 12 years. That doesn't seem like a prison with gold bars, it sounds like a career. Sure it seems like her personal life wasn't a fairytale but how many people's are?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 13y agoI'm mystified by the pro-aristocracy tone of the article: > There are some happy parts of the book. Clark uses her fabulous wealth to indulge a taste for the world’s best dollhouses and model Japanese castles, built by craftsmen in Germany and Japan. She pays an assistant to write down transcripts of Flintstone episodes. When she wants to make a little music, she takes a Stradivarius violin out of the closet (first she needs to choose which of her Stradivariuses to play). Yes, it's horrible that these people took advantage of her, but I find it very difficult to get that worked up over it. On the balance, she still won the cosmic lottery, inheriting a tremendous fortune she did nothing to earn, and getting to spend it on trivialities like dollhouses. Rich heiresses attract scumbags for precisely the reasons suggested in the book (they are easy to deceive), and in a way such activity is just the natural downside of inheriting a large fortune in the first place. Without justifying the behavior of any of the people involved, I can't help but feel my feelings of pity are better directed elsewhere.
- marquis 13y agoI'd agree except for the part where she wasn't getting the care she deserved, and she clearly spent a large part of her old age alone without friends. You can't blame the second part on wealth but at least the care home should honour their contract. That was mostly what got me in this article.
- kkowalczyk 13y agoI'm mystified by 'blame the victim' tone of your comment. Does any old lady deserve to be taken advantage by scumbag lawyers or accounts?
- fleitz 13y agoDid the old lady deserve the wealth of the indians who owned the land from which the copper was taken?
- greenyoda 13y agoDo you live in the U.S.? If so, it's likely that any property that you or you employer own was also taken from the Indians at some point. Maybe your ancestors even lived off slave labor. Are you offering to give back your own ill-gotten wealth?
- gcb0 13y agoAT&T and DMV does worse to me and i'm not even rich.
- badman_ting 13y agoIt's deplorable that so many stole from her. But as to the title, it's even sadder how poor people were systematically stolen from, historically and I'm sure currently to some degree.
- kens 13y agoThis sounds very similar to famous socialite Brooke Astor who died a few years ago at 105 in New York with a $198 million estate. There were all sorts of charges of elder abuse and stealing from her, and claims that she was forced to live in squalor. Her son and his attorney ended up serving jail time for grand larceny and forgery. She was married to the great-great grandson of super-rich John Jacob Astor. I find this to be an interesting example of how long wealth can persist in the US, and a counterexample to the "three generations shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves" theory. (As a random aside, her husband's enormously wealthy father died on the Titanic after being denied a lifeboat spot. I find it hard to imagine this happening to the rich and famous today.)
- mseebach 13y ago> (As a random aside, her husband's enormously wealthy father died on the Titanic after being denied a lifeboat spot. I find it hard to imagine this happening to the rich and famous today.) Well, with vastly improved safety regimes in effect across the board, it's difficult to find comparable situations. But you surely won't find third class passenger locked below deck while the upper crust is sauntering into the lifeboats. The super rich probably doesn't travel on the same vessels as the riff raff at all, but I'm not sure private jets are actually safer than commercial airlines.