can to, it's called LSD

It's addiction.

Simple as that.

Just like a crackhead or a heroin junkie can do whatever crazy shit a non-addict would never even think of, so do the rich billionaire money-addicts.

Just look at the difference between CEO's and mega-class actors. Lots of actors can be addicts, yeah, but not many of them are that addicted to money, and while they might buy things we consider ridiculous, they're not actively ruining society, just benefitting from capitalism.

Whereas people like Bezos are addicted to money and actively ruining the world. He could lose 99% of his wealth and still live the same, barely fucking notice a thing in his quality of life.

NYTimes sucks and I don't link them anymore but for thus exception as an opinion piece from Sam Polk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html

He wrote a whole book about it

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27274419-for-the-love-of-money

The three of them probably fucked children at some point

I collect stacks of papers that reach the ceiling and leave me with limited room, I'm a hoarder and need mental health.

I collect large sums of wealth and money with no intention to use it and it affects me mentally just managing, successful at business.

Y'all act like these weren't at the right place at the right time. It's mostly luck and social circles that makes those people what they are.

Truthfully, there isn't a self made billionaire. They have built upon the legacies and funds their families have at only the right time. Like Gates, he's a Harvard drop out not because he couldn't make it, because he had the right opportunities afforded to him at that time with familial connections to setup Microsoft in one of the cheapest places possible, the garage, so to save money not because they had to but wanted to. Even Warren is the success of his family lineage. Most if not all are just nepo babies.

I would only want to accumulate more so that I could do more to help people. When you're past a billion, you essentially print money on a near permanent basis on it just existing.

I could see becoming a billionaire from an idea too quickly to spend it, but 99.99% of the time this is correct.

I think you're dreaming if you think that's possible.

Interesting, any links or info about that?

The people could still vote differently. The billionaires have influence but we have to give up the idea of free will to let them be the cause.

They are that rich because monetary policy is frantically trying to force them to spend their money by dropping interest rates and doing QE; because the CPI excludes asset prices, substitutes goods for cheaper goods, and performs subjective deductions on goods to reduce their price in the basket even though they dont help the poor afford food and rent.

If the money supply grows at 7-8% and the stock market grows at 10% how can the poor possibly be made better off, when they are lucky to get a 2% cost of living adjustment and their minimum wage is actively being debased to push up stock values?

It’s mostly luck and social circles

and sociopathy.

Yeah cause religion was all pure and good before it was "bought" in the mid-1900s. \s \s \s

For a time, American Christianity taught that rich people didn't go to heaven.

It was still a net harm on society, but it was no fan of the rich assholes and robber barons.

That then was warped into Prosperity Gospel.

"I'm also morally broken but all I got was this t-shirt" -- communists probably

They gotta make it up in volume! /s

Two of them likely did. Elon couldn't get an invite to those parties, but he definitely tried.

ROFL. That's an ahistoric narrative. The Great Depression was caused by a lack of liquidity caused by a failure to respond to mass withdrawal. FDR then made it worse with the New Deal, causing a double-dip that only resolved itself with the WWII wartime economy.

It was the lack of Federal Reserve banks and the failures of their predecessor organizations. Vaguely blaming "capitalism" is purely ignorance combined with intellectual laziness.

The modern problems can be laid at the feet of Reagan and Nixon, mostly. Bush Sr and Bush Jr contributed. But it's mostly Nixon and Reagan that helped corrupt the antitrust framework. The fallout breaking up Ma Bell and the Microsoft Antitrust case about Internet Explorer were both critical decisions instrumental to this deterioration.

I was just thinking this exact same topic coming home from the vet!

Idk, I'm wondering if this is innate or not. If you "succeeded" at everything you tried because you were set up for success (right place, right time, with the right people around, etc), I think it could be quite easy to think of yourself as more than you are. Especially if you're surrounded by Yesmen.

Just read the book bro

It's extremely unlikely, for sure, but not necessarily impossible. You could release a piece of digital content, like a game or an album or program, that becomes wildly popular extremely quickly. Again, not likely, but strictly speaking possible.

that becomes wildly popular extremely quickly

That's not going to make you $1b. Maybe tens of millions, but not billions.

I guess you could sort-of argue that it's what happened with Minecraft, though that took more than 5 years from the alpha to the eventual acquisition. But, it's true that he went from typical middle class type wealth to a billionaire overnight when that deal closed.

But, in almost every other case someone's going to make far less than $1b on their first deal. And then they're going to be multi-millionaires who either start giving their money away, or try for $1b.

And what caused the mass withrawal?

Gee, would've been a shame if all that money from them was redistributed to the poor. Seriously!

We so, so need to have just a hard limit on how much money/monetary goods one can own.

Well, yes, anecdotal evidence exists for literally any claim under the sun.

whoosh

Are Gates, Bezos, Soros, Buffett, Elon, and Thiel in the room with you right now?

Anyway, there's a lot more to it, but I won't burst your bubble or anything. Your secret is safe with me

If it's so easy why aren't you a billionaire?

In reality running a company is a dog shit unrewarding chore. You need to build something really extraordinary to punch into mainstream and hope competition won't catch up

I think both can be true simultaneously, no? I don't think the point is that it's easy. I also doubt it's just hard work, elbow grease and a bit of luck to become so ridiculously rich. I think every single dollar billionaire has probably done, at the least, morally dubious things, and in most cases probably outright lied, stolen, and abused people in the pursuit of power.
A billion dollars is just such an egregious amount of money in a world where so many have so disappearingly little in comparison.

I think it's the other way around. If you're successful beyond certain scale you get entangled into politics whether you want or not

you need to build something really extraordinary

Is that what Elon Musk did? Give me a fucking break.

Is that what all of these people did? https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/03/all-billionaires-under-30-have-inherited-their-wealth-research-finds

The only possible way that could happen is through inheritance

Is that what Elon Musk did?

Under him Tesla built an electric car that didn't look like a soapbox on wheels. 10 years ago same people who hate him now, praised him like a deity for that. Under him starlink was built and works world wide.

Musk is the biggest case of falling out of grace after getting into politics

Look, you can't even say he created Tesla. The man has never created anything worthwhile in his miserable life.

Nuance is foreign concept for this one. Building a car isn't a one person endeavor

No, I mean he literally had nothing to do with the creation of the company

Creation of company has nothing to do with building a good product. Before Musk they made Tesla Roadster - which was a commercial failure.

He has never created anything of value in his life.

No you just hate him, you can't acknowledge the idea that even shit people do good stuff sometimes.

Just because it also requires the connections, power, and wealth along with some rather humble basic competencies doesn't mean that the reason they are able to out-compete and become billionaires among their peers isn't this.

The car designs were already done by the time he bought the company. His first pure Musk design was the Cybertruck, a soapbox on wheels.

Also, a lot of inherited wealth and getting lucky. For some reason, rich people that go bankrupt keep getting second chances.

He also called that recuse diver a pedophile out of no where. Everything before that could be explained by him trolling other rich people.

Feel free to read Friedman's Economic History of the United States. His treatise is the most authoritative on the subject and has withstood decades of peer review.

There is quite literally no need to be making stuff up, like you're doing.