The best things that Bezos (and arguably Bill Gates) did was get divorced. Observe the ex-wives doing what a normal/sane person would do with that amount of money.
What weird stuff have you heard about Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Zhang Yiming, Jayshree Ullal, or Alex Karp? There are plenty of people who you don't hear much about, but because you don't hear much about them, the other ones tend to take up all of the air in the room.
Though, there's also the argument that making that kind of money makes you even weirder, and having seen glimpses of that through someone I know getting rich, that might also be true.
By definition, average people will make an average amount of money. It takes extraordinary people to make extraordinary amounts of money. Unfortunately, our system seems to be optimized to reward extraordinary psychopaths.
The money itself also isolates them and makes them more likely to become psychopaths, imo. It's a positive feedback loop on whatever differences allowed them to obtain that wealth, and those personality features eventually metastasize.
I often think back to this 90s 60 minute interview with Bezos and wonder, what happened. He was already a billionaire at this point, but he felt so much more ordinary, down to earth, geeky. He seems very much like the developers I meet all the time. What was the catalyst to the changes we see in him today.
And being that rich in and of itself, I imagine. Tony Hseih of Zappos is another interesting story where, if I had that kind of money, wouldn't I try and help all of my friends, if they knew about it?
It seems the real trick is changing who you are, and realizing that, counter to what you may have learned as a child, lying to everybody, especially your friends, is actually a good thing. We only hear about these stories because they get told. Far more mysterious is the lottery winner who got $20 million who calls up Dave Ramsey and asks what to do with it so their son doesn't become a waiter. That is, someone just waiting for their parents to die and get their inheritance. You'll never hear about their boring life where they lived comfortably and gave money to causes they believed in and helped people they know anonymously and didn't cause a scene.
If it's possible for money not to change a person, we wouldn't hear about it, almost by definition, so we can only conclude that it does.
> And being that rich in and of itself, I imagine.
There was a thought experiment posted on Reddit and I think was from elsewhere. Something like:
Imagine you get $1 million dollars a day. You can't keep it -- it's all gotta get spent. You can invest it, sure, but those holdings aren't going to go up as much as, like, another $1 million the next day. And you have to spend it
So at some point you're going to start doing stuff basically on a whim. You're going to get 3 Lambos in different colors -- because you can. You already have the harem, you already have donated to most causes you care about. You've already got a house (houses, really), so now you start thinking about political causes you're mildly interested in, on top of ones you strongly are. And then you can get petty; if you don't like person X? Take out ads on billboards... cuz you can. Or fund their lawsuit against Gawker, cuz fuck em. etc. etc.
IMO because you have to be a psychopath/sociopath to make that amount of money.
We're talking hundred's of billions of dollars here; $20 million is already a big fortune where 2% interest gets you $200,000.
These people (on paper) have 5 orders of magnitude (100,000x) more. At that point you aren't doing all the questionable things it takes to get there for the money. IMO you have to be broken in some way, shape or form to do what it takes to get there.
I am by no means a religious person (ex-Christian, in fact), but 1 Timothy 6:10 seems applicable here.
> For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
The USA system is made this way. There are other systems in the world (namely the scandinavian countries) that don't allow individuals to accumulate that amount of wealth.
Yes, I probably should have voted a couple extra times to make sure my vote counted, much like a billionaire can, by paying millions of dollars to a marketing firm to do advertising of every kind to push their agenda. Shame on me.
> There are other systems in the world (namely the scandinavian countries) that don't allow individuals to accumulate that amount of wealth.
This is a common misconception. The Scandinavian model has changed rapidly the last few decades. Sweden now ranks higher than the US in number of dollar billionaires per capita, even if none are at Ellison level yet.
Edited to add: in fact, the Scandinavian model has always been more about equality of income, rather than wealth. There are, and has been throughout the 20th century, wealthy dynasties as well as industry tycoons who has largely been left alone by the social democratic system, and indeed viewed more as an important part of the system than anything else. Since the 90s, though, it has changed rapidly, such that today there is no tax on wealth, inheritance, gifts or real estate, as well as a low corporate income tax.
Thanks for explaining some intricacies about taxes, however this does not disprove my point.
1. Scandinavian countries impose higher taxes on their rich VS the US. It does not have to be a wealth tax. Think effective tax rate.
2. Income inequality is lower there compared to the US.
It is a very different system than the US, it's frankly strange to have to argue that.
Nah, this is something you say about a dude who stole your highschool girlfriend, not about the absolute sort of psychopath who could, you know, literally give every kid in America free lunch with little to-no-effect on his own life and money, and just chooses not to.
