I don’t think about him all the time but it’s wisdom! Some people just seem to intuitively be better at understanding the mechanisms of the hedonist treadmill than others. I’d claim that all the tech billionaires we know of must be rather bad at it. Otherwise they had followed Tom’s example.
If Zuck had taken Yahoo’s offer to buy Facebook for $1B, neither you nor I would be talking about Facebook or Zuck at all right now.
I think that's kind of the point – I can't imagine myself being offered the choice of "enough money to do whatever you want forever" or "enough money to do whatever you want forever but also constant public attention" and choosing the latter.
if 330M people flip a coin 20 times in a row, someone will get close to 20 heads. that person might have been zuck. how much is talent and how much is luck, no one will even know.
Kindly look into Yahoo's board and large investors at the time. Your answer should be apparent. This isn't about Patriotism, and I'm not sure I understand the scare quotes. It would be just as much about Patriotism as the Patriot Act
If Zuck had taken Yahoo’s offer to buy Facebook for $1B, neither you nor I would be talking about Facebook or Zuck at all right now.
The only people that get to these insane levels of wealth are people who repeatedly let their bets ride, perhaps due to innately low risk aversion.