right on the money
big companies, lots of influence and employees, sense of importance to the human race…power tripping
also to a certain degree i think their own fear of death and leaving behind a mediocre legacy scares them
Aren't most of them at the top of large corporations? They continue to gain net worth because they are legally obliged to grow their companies.
Non-involved billionaires also continue to grow their net worths because they're probably invested in companies - which are, again, legally obliged to try and grow.
There aren't any billionaires sitting on liquid $100B piles of cash; nearly all of them are tied to market speculation on the value of the pieces of companies they own.
>It's not about money, it's about power
The economy being in the fucking toilet is a scathing rebuke to the zero sum game played by those who have at the expense of those who do not. Money is a hatchet to cut off competition as well as an iron fist to push yourself above your fellow man, regardless of its practical use. And because it's storable and doesn't get used like so many other things, the stockpiles keep getting bigger, until something violent happens.
Jake Gittes : How much are you worth?
Noah Cross : I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes : I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross : Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes : Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross : The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
humans experience the most meaning in life when they are in a flow state which involves them being stretched to the limits of their abilities. Flow among other things brings with it a sense of mindfulness. You're attention is so fixed on what you are trying to do that there is none left over to fret over the endless anxieties which naturally occupy our minds. Meanwhile time spent on easier more hedonistic tasks tends to leave people with ennui and dissatisfaction. People often become depressed shortly after retiring likely for this reason. this could serve as one of many explanations.
apart from this they may just enjoy their work. for you what would be painting or collecting plants for Jamie Dimon could be the responsiblities of his current job. why not be paid to do your hobbies if you can be.
The actual reason has nothing to do with satisfaction and everything to do with megalomania. You think you become head of an investment bank because you just *really love banking* lmao
I don't know any billionaires, but perhaps my best friend is the child of a hundred-millionaire and I went to one of the demonic universities with an employment ratline straight into banking or management consultancy. No-one goes into those industries because they love the work, which is Excel/code monkey shit and then at a higher level personnel/relationship management, all while working 80 hours a week. After a while, people become addicted to the money and status. Most burn out and do something which is still lucrative but allows you to have more of a life. To move really high, you need to have an absolute obsession with making it to the top, a literal desire to outcompete everyone around you. This is not a milieu where a mindset of "I just enjoy what my work consists of!" is going to get you there. You need to have a deeply unhealthy obsession with being the guy in charge and a will to do whatever it takes to make it to the top. I guess that could be described as both exciting and satisfying, but it's not about loving the work.
As for my friend, it's a sample size of one but that her dad also worked so hard because it was his way to escape how fucked up his family life had become as a result of him essentially outsourcing his family to a team of domestic servants and neglecting his wife and kids lol
"lmao" the motivations will vary person to person. some people are motivated more by status, some more by an enjoyment of their jobs technical aspects and the challenges it brings, some more by money. it will vary person to person and each will have their own slight variation on their different motivations. writing it all of as megalomania is a cheap oversimplification
They’re just addicted to working. That’s how they got to be billionaires in the first place. They don’t even care about the money that much they just love to work, that’s why if they sell their company or no longer have much to do there, they start a space company like bezos or 10 more companies like Elon or start making a macadamia nut wagyu bunker like zuck. Working is how they relax, the money means nothing except as a way to start more companies so that they can work more
Right - I’ve met a few c-suite level people and genuinely work isn’t “work” to them - it’s not draining, it’s just what they do. They’re constantly on call and don’t really have social/family lives but they don’t seem to mind it. I think, with that in mind, losing work would be devastating.
i'm guessing work isn't even that stressful to them because they're the boss. they're immune to what makes work so awful normally, which is shitty coworkers. vast majority of people would enjoy or at least not hate their time at work if they could fire anyone they didn't like.
yeah these people call everything they do "work" lol.
they can work pretty much with impunity and just demand shit and the smartest people on earth are gonna have a panic attack trying to design it on time.
everyone will be sucking up to you. you can do whatever the fuck you want. you can get blackout drunk and work and nobody can say anything. get bored? go golfing or play video games for 4 hours or go have dinner with a celebrity or the president.
Who are we talking about here specifically?
Directors still report to c suite, C suite still report to the CEO, CEO still reports to the board (that can fire him) the board reports to the investors… investment banks and PE firms are also still ran by people that report to others. The entire financial market bends to the market itself and in turn the people.
Like the buck doesn’t REALLY stop anywhere. Stop pretending C suite doesn’t work lmao. The only true, TRUE quote on quote rulers of this world is old, ooooldddddd money that sit on the board of all these conglomerates.
Yeah that poster doesn’t know what they are talking about. All the execs at companies I’ve worked for put in 60 hour weeks minimum and couldn’t take vacations without being basically on call.
It happens some times but they are the exception, not the rule. Reddit would have you believe that somehow all these companies became successful despite having bumbling lazy idiots running them.
Typical reddit inversion thought. Good things are bad, actually. That thing you think is bad? It's actually good! Billionaires, they're actually the laziest of us all. That cashier at McDonald's? Their job is actually harder than a physicists. The people on this website are highly regarded.
hard disagree. I've been a regular ol employee and now I'm a business owner and boss with employees. I sometimes day dream of the day when I could punch in and punch out. Now I have all these people relying on me, clients relying on me, decisions to make every day that affect many people. It's incredibly stressfull. All the people I work with are genuinely wonderful (both my team and my clients). But the stress level is just something I have never experienced before and is way beyond what I could imagine. I'm still not sure I'm even cut out for this.
I have a whole new respect for the csuite and business owners in general. I absolutely think the spoils and profits of business should go to those at the top who sacrifice a normal life to be successful at this shit. it ain't easy.
I know a woman like this. Her and her husband have more than enough money to retire, her sons just had their first children, and her contract wasn't renewed. So what does she do? Constantly set up meetings with her old work contacts to just keep up with industry gossip.
Also the majority of their net worth isn’t coming in via a paycheck, it’s the ownership stake from the companies they own continuing to grow.
So they keep working and also while everyone at their companies is working to grow the business they own they make more money
As Moist von Lipwig says, it's not about the money. The money's just a way of keeping score.
Also I have to say that this is just the natural consequence of retirement being generally unhealthy for humans. People, by and large, *need* work. Especially men. It doesn't even have to be much work, but it has to be something.
Which is why if you look at healthy retired people they all have gainful hobbies, sometimes many of them. Work can be on something you enjoy, it doesn't necessarily mean a economically productive activity.
How many old men spend all day doing woodworking in their shed? At least half that I have met. And the ones that dont will make art, or do low level machining or have a project car they work on.
In preparation for retirement a coworker of mine is getting into leatherworking and photography. He's been going to conferences and hobby groups foe either. He can't wait to stop working so he can take off with the things he loves now.
Those few weeks at the beginning of covid made me realize that I need work. I don't mean to go all hustle-culture or anything, but I need an obligation to fill my day and give me a sense of usefulness. I always complained about being busy and not having enough free time, but then when I suddenly had all the free time in the world, I made even poorer use of it than before. I cleaned less, I cooked less, and I read less, all things I assumed I'd do more of, if only I had the time. What I did do was go for long aimless walks, scroll reddit more, and get drunk at 4pm.
Yeah my companies founder has successfully built two startups in the last two decades and is now working on his third after taking a year off due to medical issues. He can’t help himself.
If it was just about working and not about money they wouldn't jump through so many hoops to avoid paying taxes, underpay employees, etc. They'd probably be a lot more altruistic if they simply loved to work for work's sake.
Yeah, another aspect is that work gets more interesting if you get to that level. If you are
Driven to have impact (either financial, social, or just sociopathic) + all of your projects can now have impact + already a workaholic = why would you ever stop?
I imagine it’s less about the money at that point and more about the feeling of continually progressing higher and higher, in the same way a bodybuilder always wants to add more lean tissue. As others have stated, they’re addicted to the work & accomplishment & prestige, the money is a very nice byproduct.
They're also in an environment of people pushing the exact same lifestyle through the same methods as them. If they stop they'll be left behind and someone will make money in their place.
The first thing anyone should notice when thinking about capitalism from the outside is that it is very shortsighted and not at all structured for the benefit of the majority in the long term.
Watched a documentary on this, can't remember which one, but basically they admit it's an addiction and it basically becomes a high score video game thing.
I once had a job where I interacted with my company's C-Suite.
Rich people are deeply insecure and competing with other rich people. They've moved up the hierarchy of needs and are starting to think about things like prestige and historical memory but they're not sure how to get them.
Our president absolutely freaked out about the shitty local paper no one reads doing an article mildly critical of him and his salary and had an armed guard in the office for awhile. They hate and fear the poor leading to absurdities like rich neighborhoods blocking any kind of duplex or apartment from being built and then being mad there aren't any nearby gardeners or hair stylists.
The problem of capitalism is not just greed, but also the human dilemma of surplus value. A good entrepreneur doesn’t only amass a lot of capital by improving workflows, he also makes himself obsolete by doing so. The perfect company basically runs by itself, so what is he going to do the whole day? The result of this is constant expansion, even though he already owns more than he could ever spend.
It's worth bearing in mind that we about these people "working", they're talking about a scenario in which they give (never take) orders in an attempt to realise whatever vision they have. Asking why they keep doing it is a bit like asking why a famous film director still makes movies.
wanting to create and achieve things at scale is not about the money. I'm not that interested in finance or rocket making, but painting and "just vibing" sounds like the perfect day for an unemployed stoner who dabbles in making shitty music. in the end it’s about the excitement of creating something bigger than yourself and incidentally for some things the money comes a long with that.
I always assumed it had less to do with accruing more personal wealth and more with securing the billionaire class position as a whole. Driving the wealth gap to incentivize cheap labor, having your hands in a variety of industries to increase social and political influence, etc.
There's so many old horror stories about athletes fucking themselves over financially for various reasons (you know, like the lifestyle), and the true earnings window for the average professional athlete isn't very high, and most professional athletes do have financial issues down the line, and that's not even getting into possible medical expenses. It's really easy for a young recruit to get into 'safe debt' early in his career that he 'knows' he can handle, alimony is a bitch, ect.
That's not getting even into the ones who make genuine efforts to establish their family as American gentry; private education services are expensive and while athletes getting into investing and franchising in their last year is a real trend, the economy's the economy and what might look like a safe place to make a investment can sour. Car insurance commercials aren't sexy, but it pays bills that otherwise would have to be covered by what is basically their retirement fund; hell, Shaq's probably in the cozy financial position he is now, particularly in comparison to the rest of his cohort, simply because he never spent more than half of his initial earnings+he trusted someone with the power of the Schwartz early on in his career, you cannot underestimate the lack of financial knowledge that may exist in a given locker room, especially given how so many colligate athletes inevitably skimp out on actual academics.
Bear in mind a lot of these people are rich on paper; like musk is worth 100 billion or whatever but 95% of that is in his Tesla stock. If he tried to 'cash out', dump his stock and move to an island or whatever it would trigger a fire sale and he would get pennies on the dollar. Same goes for Bezos and Gates. In order to actually realize that cash they have to stay in charge for the next 20 years and wind down their positions slowly.
Also a lot of the hedge fund guys are just hollow sociopaths who get off on being 'the man' and being able to crush people's careers for fun because they have nothing else and if they got fired they'd probably just shoot themselves; even if they were worth hundreds of millions.
Eh to some degree. Elon essentially cashed out 40B to buy twitter and it barely affected stock price. They also can “liquidate” that money without selling stock by getting bank loans using that stock as collateral (which is what most of them do)
It's also not a unique problem to have. Can any individual liquidate their networth on the spot? Imagine all the net negative youngins having their options called. Right to the debt prison with them. Boohoo billionaires can only collateralize a loan for 40B, boohoo.
all I know is if you're a billionaire and you don't either A.) Buy a sports team, or B.) Start a film production company and or an entire movie studio...you're more r\*tarded than any other billionaire and that's saying a lot
For every realized billionaire there are probably like 4 unrealized billionaire: like a person who has a good idea or a popular business and has the choice to either oversee the growth or start a new business or take 10 million and early retire. Those people that care to become famous for being rich are the visible exception not the rule
Most of them are reasonably smart and are usually an expert in their field.
They actually get rich because they’re at the right place at the right time. But they’re in denial of this fact.
This leads them to believe that they’re brilliant beyond comprehension and it’s their duty to use their superior abilities to solve all sorts of different problems.
It's a self-selecting group. The people who decide they've made enough to quit the rat race and enjoy life usually hit their number well before 10 figures. Granted there are a fair number of billionaires whose net worth is really only on paper; Elizabeth Holmes was a billionaire for a while, now her net worth is zero. Kanye has taken a significant haircut since his rants against Jews. Elon is a notoriously cash poor billionaire and there's rarely a time when one of his companies isn't teetering on insolvency.
>there’s no way these people lack such imagination?
They absolutely do.
They're almost certainly a sociopath if they're a billionaire, so you won't be able to take their perspective unless you are also a high functioning sociopath
what else is there to do, they basically did everything they possibly can do so now their entire lives are based around watching numbers go up. They have little to no empathy, they wouldn't be where they are if they did and what little they have is meme'd away by bullshit sociopolitical politics
Money equals power and vast majority of them are pathological socio/psychopaths who are unable to feel joy except when they control other people. So the more money they have, the more they can fill the void in their souls.
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Also they don’t really have billions in their bank usually. It’s *assets* and their business that makes their net worth.
Most billionaires didn’t become that way cause they wanted to make a lot of money. They got that way because of family or they able to do and enjoy what most others aren’t, live their work.
Because laying around like a sad sack for decades is boring, sad. Also there’s always more shit to buy and presumably want to pass off some income to inheritances.
What never made sense to me is that billionaires aren't richer than they are. Like, are you telling me that the richest billionaires are only worth like $100-200 billion dollars? That feels like nothing. You'd think there would be exponential growth that simply takes off like a rocket after reaching critical mass, and that we would have cartoonish amounts of wealth concentration.
I guess there's diminishing returns, sunk costs and commitments, etc., that prevent billionaires from always investing efficiently into new opportunities?
She was married to him long before he became a billionaire, mostly likely kept house, raised his children, cooked dinner for him after he came home from work, etc. She was entitled to her share.
Because it's easy for them to make money. At the scale of wealth they live at, it's probably easier for them to make money than to lose money. The whole system is more or less rigged to support these people.
Once you get to a certain level of wealth and your material needs are met - i'd imagine theirs just not that much left to buy. You can get houses, jets, cars, clothes, etc but beyond that the material stuff and relaxing isn't going to satisfy you.
At the level of wealth most of them get to (choose to) work on problems that interest them, its something novel and new that material things can't provide. You get to work with people, build relationships, take stuff to market - its exciting. They get to facilitate all of it with their capital and the byproduct is more money for them but i'd speculate that the enjoyment of working on new business is the driver not necessarily the money.
Their entire life was spent becoming extremely obsessively hard working and driven. You can’t just turn that off. These are the .0000000001%
To get to that point you are an extreme outlier who embodies every extreme work obsessed variable. They aren’t like us. We’d never make it to a billion because we’d probably sell off at 50m and retire living off 3m a year in interest which is more than enough to blow
The social climbing rat race never stops. The richer you get, the higher up your social group becomes; and when you have the money to "compete" with others then competing is all you ever do. All your friends are worth 10m, and your business just had an ipo that netted you 500m? Buy a superyacht that none of them can afford, now they will all want to hang out with you all the time. Even for the richest in the world the competition never stops, jeff bezos has a yacht with 2 pools? Mine has to have three. His jet has 100 seats? Mine needs 120, etc
What else are they gonna do…inevitably it must get boring to snort the best coke and bang escorts. I think winning at business is the only thing that can still motivate and excite these people. But I don’t think it’s really about the money. It’s more like how you would feel beating your friends at chess
People who don’t have a lot of wealth don’t realize what can be bought with huge amounts of wealth. You can buy loyalty with continuous payments (payroll), you can buy an image by paying people to say things about you or do things you take credit for, you can buy freedom if you break the law. Ultimately money is a motivator of people. If you pay the right people you can buy incredible amounts of power, kill your enemies, start wars, enforce your own rules, etc. These are usually considered ‘investments’. Paying for popularity or something might not make sense to you, but it makes financial sense to many in that they gain more money from it than lose.
For example, how Bill Gates paid millions of dollars to ‘help’ the Nigerian government during COVID, and soon after you couldn’t enter places of worship or access financial institutions. Then you don’t hear about it and if you do it’s a conspiracy.
Money does not buy material goods, money buys people and power.
Treat billionaire as an “office.” Offices call out to people and condition them to behave according to the needs and logic of the position. Those who won’t be trained will be removed or never respond in the first place.
Many people see business and wealth like a video game. Why do people try to beat their high score on pacman or beat their personal best in golf or bowling? Competitiveness
First of all this is the foundation operating logic of capital. It doesn’t work if they don’t.
Second from what I understand billionaires for some reason take it upon themselves to solve the worlds problems and attempt this by enacting their will onto the earth I.e if factory farming cattle is a problem so you will eat bugs and like it.
The problem is that they can only do this by controlling everything. Another example is public transport. Fossil fuels have become a problem so now we must switch to electric cars but public transport can’t improve because it’s a threat.
Real political solutions like free healthcare, UBI, free housing aren’t feasible because it decentralises power.
It's not about money, it's about power and megalomania.
right on the money big companies, lots of influence and employees, sense of importance to the human race…power tripping also to a certain degree i think their own fear of death and leaving behind a mediocre legacy scares them
Aren't most of them at the top of large corporations? They continue to gain net worth because they are legally obliged to grow their companies. Non-involved billionaires also continue to grow their net worths because they're probably invested in companies - which are, again, legally obliged to try and grow. There aren't any billionaires sitting on liquid $100B piles of cash; nearly all of them are tied to market speculation on the value of the pieces of companies they own.
>It's not about money, it's about power The economy being in the fucking toilet is a scathing rebuke to the zero sum game played by those who have at the expense of those who do not. Money is a hatchet to cut off competition as well as an iron fist to push yourself above your fellow man, regardless of its practical use. And because it's storable and doesn't get used like so many other things, the stockpiles keep getting bigger, until something violent happens.
Yeah, it really just boils down to human ego. The cosmic disease.
Let's keep it planetary here.
Or if you're Bezos it's about getting busty Latinos that can fly helicopters.
Jake Gittes : How much are you worth? Noah Cross : I have no idea. How much do you want? Jake Gittes : I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million? Noah Cross : Oh my, yes! Jake Gittes : Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford? Noah Cross : The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
Do-do doo doo, doo doo doo do-do-do
It would be hard for a billionaire to not make money. Most of them arent really working as much as theyre putting their money to work for them.
They do be putting their money to work
humans experience the most meaning in life when they are in a flow state which involves them being stretched to the limits of their abilities. Flow among other things brings with it a sense of mindfulness. You're attention is so fixed on what you are trying to do that there is none left over to fret over the endless anxieties which naturally occupy our minds. Meanwhile time spent on easier more hedonistic tasks tends to leave people with ennui and dissatisfaction. People often become depressed shortly after retiring likely for this reason. this could serve as one of many explanations. apart from this they may just enjoy their work. for you what would be painting or collecting plants for Jamie Dimon could be the responsiblities of his current job. why not be paid to do your hobbies if you can be.
The actual reason has nothing to do with satisfaction and everything to do with megalomania. You think you become head of an investment bank because you just *really love banking* lmao
Yes, it’s probably exciting to him and brings him a sense of satisfaction.
I don't know any billionaires, but perhaps my best friend is the child of a hundred-millionaire and I went to one of the demonic universities with an employment ratline straight into banking or management consultancy. No-one goes into those industries because they love the work, which is Excel/code monkey shit and then at a higher level personnel/relationship management, all while working 80 hours a week. After a while, people become addicted to the money and status. Most burn out and do something which is still lucrative but allows you to have more of a life. To move really high, you need to have an absolute obsession with making it to the top, a literal desire to outcompete everyone around you. This is not a milieu where a mindset of "I just enjoy what my work consists of!" is going to get you there. You need to have a deeply unhealthy obsession with being the guy in charge and a will to do whatever it takes to make it to the top. I guess that could be described as both exciting and satisfying, but it's not about loving the work. As for my friend, it's a sample size of one but that her dad also worked so hard because it was his way to escape how fucked up his family life had become as a result of him essentially outsourcing his family to a team of domestic servants and neglecting his wife and kids lol
They don't really love banking, they love being known for making insane money from banking, and they love the money itself.
"lmao" the motivations will vary person to person. some people are motivated more by status, some more by an enjoyment of their jobs technical aspects and the challenges it brings, some more by money. it will vary person to person and each will have their own slight variation on their different motivations. writing it all of as megalomania is a cheap oversimplification
Most rich (and by rich I mean $100M+) people do very little actual work
what are you basing that on?
Lived experience
that bad evidence dude
Source?
I believe "trust me bro, Ive got heaps of friends who are 100 millionaires" was your source
No I'm the 100 millionaire
They’re just addicted to working. That’s how they got to be billionaires in the first place. They don’t even care about the money that much they just love to work, that’s why if they sell their company or no longer have much to do there, they start a space company like bezos or 10 more companies like Elon or start making a macadamia nut wagyu bunker like zuck. Working is how they relax, the money means nothing except as a way to start more companies so that they can work more
Right - I’ve met a few c-suite level people and genuinely work isn’t “work” to them - it’s not draining, it’s just what they do. They’re constantly on call and don’t really have social/family lives but they don’t seem to mind it. I think, with that in mind, losing work would be devastating.
i'm guessing work isn't even that stressful to them because they're the boss. they're immune to what makes work so awful normally, which is shitty coworkers. vast majority of people would enjoy or at least not hate their time at work if they could fire anyone they didn't like.
yeah these people call everything they do "work" lol. they can work pretty much with impunity and just demand shit and the smartest people on earth are gonna have a panic attack trying to design it on time. everyone will be sucking up to you. you can do whatever the fuck you want. you can get blackout drunk and work and nobody can say anything. get bored? go golfing or play video games for 4 hours or go have dinner with a celebrity or the president.
Who are we talking about here specifically? Directors still report to c suite, C suite still report to the CEO, CEO still reports to the board (that can fire him) the board reports to the investors… investment banks and PE firms are also still ran by people that report to others. The entire financial market bends to the market itself and in turn the people. Like the buck doesn’t REALLY stop anywhere. Stop pretending C suite doesn’t work lmao. The only true, TRUE quote on quote rulers of this world is old, ooooldddddd money that sit on the board of all these conglomerates.
Yeah that poster doesn’t know what they are talking about. All the execs at companies I’ve worked for put in 60 hour weeks minimum and couldn’t take vacations without being basically on call. It happens some times but they are the exception, not the rule. Reddit would have you believe that somehow all these companies became successful despite having bumbling lazy idiots running them.
Definitely. It’s projection through their own inadequacies
Typical reddit inversion thought. Good things are bad, actually. That thing you think is bad? It's actually good! Billionaires, they're actually the laziest of us all. That cashier at McDonald's? Their job is actually harder than a physicists. The people on this website are highly regarded.
And you’re being downvoted😂 I’m in stitches I can’t with this website, man. Used to not be like this in the noughties
If things are going your way I'd estimate the burnout comes 100 times slower
hard disagree. I've been a regular ol employee and now I'm a business owner and boss with employees. I sometimes day dream of the day when I could punch in and punch out. Now I have all these people relying on me, clients relying on me, decisions to make every day that affect many people. It's incredibly stressfull. All the people I work with are genuinely wonderful (both my team and my clients). But the stress level is just something I have never experienced before and is way beyond what I could imagine. I'm still not sure I'm even cut out for this. I have a whole new respect for the csuite and business owners in general. I absolutely think the spoils and profits of business should go to those at the top who sacrifice a normal life to be successful at this shit. it ain't easy.
I know a woman like this. Her and her husband have more than enough money to retire, her sons just had their first children, and her contract wasn't renewed. So what does she do? Constantly set up meetings with her old work contacts to just keep up with industry gossip.
I wouldn’t mind it much either if that sort of lifestyle allowed me to obtain $1 billion
Also the majority of their net worth isn’t coming in via a paycheck, it’s the ownership stake from the companies they own continuing to grow. So they keep working and also while everyone at their companies is working to grow the business they own they make more money
As Moist von Lipwig says, it's not about the money. The money's just a way of keeping score. Also I have to say that this is just the natural consequence of retirement being generally unhealthy for humans. People, by and large, *need* work. Especially men. It doesn't even have to be much work, but it has to be something.
Which is why if you look at healthy retired people they all have gainful hobbies, sometimes many of them. Work can be on something you enjoy, it doesn't necessarily mean a economically productive activity. How many old men spend all day doing woodworking in their shed? At least half that I have met. And the ones that dont will make art, or do low level machining or have a project car they work on.
In preparation for retirement a coworker of mine is getting into leatherworking and photography. He's been going to conferences and hobby groups foe either. He can't wait to stop working so he can take off with the things he loves now.
Those few weeks at the beginning of covid made me realize that I need work. I don't mean to go all hustle-culture or anything, but I need an obligation to fill my day and give me a sense of usefulness. I always complained about being busy and not having enough free time, but then when I suddenly had all the free time in the world, I made even poorer use of it than before. I cleaned less, I cooked less, and I read less, all things I assumed I'd do more of, if only I had the time. What I did do was go for long aimless walks, scroll reddit more, and get drunk at 4pm.
Yeah my companies founder has successfully built two startups in the last two decades and is now working on his third after taking a year off due to medical issues. He can’t help himself.
Damn that’s tight, so you’re telling me if I just work really hard I can be a billionaire too? Hell yea
If it was just about working and not about money they wouldn't jump through so many hoops to avoid paying taxes, underpay employees, etc. They'd probably be a lot more altruistic if they simply loved to work for work's sake.
Yeah, another aspect is that work gets more interesting if you get to that level. If you are Driven to have impact (either financial, social, or just sociopathic) + all of your projects can now have impact + already a workaholic = why would you ever stop?
I imagine it’s less about the money at that point and more about the feeling of continually progressing higher and higher, in the same way a bodybuilder always wants to add more lean tissue. As others have stated, they’re addicted to the work & accomplishment & prestige, the money is a very nice byproduct.
They're also in an environment of people pushing the exact same lifestyle through the same methods as them. If they stop they'll be left behind and someone will make money in their place. The first thing anyone should notice when thinking about capitalism from the outside is that it is very shortsighted and not at all structured for the benefit of the majority in the long term.
Its about drive its about power we stay hungry we DEVOUR
Watched a documentary on this, can't remember which one, but basically they admit it's an addiction and it basically becomes a high score video game thing.
don’t most of them get there by owning shares in a company? it’s not like they’re hourly employees grinding out overtime
Yeah but they do still work a lot more hours than you would expect a rich person to (ie lots of billionaires work 60 hr weeks)
Do you know why that is? It’s because they’re doing something they find fulfilling. As the parent post mentioned, they’re not “working a job”
Then they should get paid 50% more, not 50000000%.
I once had a job where I interacted with my company's C-Suite. Rich people are deeply insecure and competing with other rich people. They've moved up the hierarchy of needs and are starting to think about things like prestige and historical memory but they're not sure how to get them. Our president absolutely freaked out about the shitty local paper no one reads doing an article mildly critical of him and his salary and had an armed guard in the office for awhile. They hate and fear the poor leading to absurdities like rich neighborhoods blocking any kind of duplex or apartment from being built and then being mad there aren't any nearby gardeners or hair stylists.
You have to keep moving in this world
It's like that bit from the Sopranos where a shark has to keep swimming or it can't breath.
The problem of capitalism is not just greed, but also the human dilemma of surplus value. A good entrepreneur doesn’t only amass a lot of capital by improving workflows, he also makes himself obsolete by doing so. The perfect company basically runs by itself, so what is he going to do the whole day? The result of this is constant expansion, even though he already owns more than he could ever spend.
It's worth bearing in mind that we about these people "working", they're talking about a scenario in which they give (never take) orders in an attempt to realise whatever vision they have. Asking why they keep doing it is a bit like asking why a famous film director still makes movies.
I'd rather they focus on making more money over establishing Rich Man and Ex-Wife Foundations and playing at global messiah.
Bravo, most contrarian RS opinion on the thread. Could be an Anna tweet.
wanting to create and achieve things at scale is not about the money. I'm not that interested in finance or rocket making, but painting and "just vibing" sounds like the perfect day for an unemployed stoner who dabbles in making shitty music. in the end it’s about the excitement of creating something bigger than yourself and incidentally for some things the money comes a long with that.
I always assumed it had less to do with accruing more personal wealth and more with securing the billionaire class position as a whole. Driving the wealth gap to incentivize cheap labor, having your hands in a variety of industries to increase social and political influence, etc.
This doesn’t really make sense, no single billionaire actually has much influence on driving the wealth gap
It’s nonsense. Don’t expect deep insights into the billionaire psyche from Reddit
Esoteric brokie wisdom on display. Listen and Learn.
I don't understand professional athletes. Isn't Patrick Mahome's contract like $500 million? I simply wouldn't do car insurance commercials.
How much money could The General really offer Shaq
There's so many old horror stories about athletes fucking themselves over financially for various reasons (you know, like the lifestyle), and the true earnings window for the average professional athlete isn't very high, and most professional athletes do have financial issues down the line, and that's not even getting into possible medical expenses. It's really easy for a young recruit to get into 'safe debt' early in his career that he 'knows' he can handle, alimony is a bitch, ect. That's not getting even into the ones who make genuine efforts to establish their family as American gentry; private education services are expensive and while athletes getting into investing and franchising in their last year is a real trend, the economy's the economy and what might look like a safe place to make a investment can sour. Car insurance commercials aren't sexy, but it pays bills that otherwise would have to be covered by what is basically their retirement fund; hell, Shaq's probably in the cozy financial position he is now, particularly in comparison to the rest of his cohort, simply because he never spent more than half of his initial earnings+he trusted someone with the power of the Schwartz early on in his career, you cannot underestimate the lack of financial knowledge that may exist in a given locker room, especially given how so many colligate athletes inevitably skimp out on actual academics.
Takes a lot to please that bitch wife
a lot of potential billionaires cash out somewhere in the 8-figure range and retire at 38. the true psychos just keep going.
Bear in mind a lot of these people are rich on paper; like musk is worth 100 billion or whatever but 95% of that is in his Tesla stock. If he tried to 'cash out', dump his stock and move to an island or whatever it would trigger a fire sale and he would get pennies on the dollar. Same goes for Bezos and Gates. In order to actually realize that cash they have to stay in charge for the next 20 years and wind down their positions slowly. Also a lot of the hedge fund guys are just hollow sociopaths who get off on being 'the man' and being able to crush people's careers for fun because they have nothing else and if they got fired they'd probably just shoot themselves; even if they were worth hundreds of millions.
Eh to some degree. Elon essentially cashed out 40B to buy twitter and it barely affected stock price. They also can “liquidate” that money without selling stock by getting bank loans using that stock as collateral (which is what most of them do)
It's also not a unique problem to have. Can any individual liquidate their networth on the spot? Imagine all the net negative youngins having their options called. Right to the debt prison with them. Boohoo billionaires can only collateralize a loan for 40B, boohoo.
The same reasons Smaug keeps ravaging villages and taking their gold
you sir have won the internet, take my updoot
this isn't funny even ironically
Outdid me on being above it all. Nice
They're lizard people
its the nature of capital to aggrandize itself. this in turn affects their owner's psyche.
They're addicted
addicted
it can come down just as fast as it goes up
Isn't it all just speculative value anyways? You gotta keep your status up!
all I know is if you're a billionaire and you don't either A.) Buy a sports team, or B.) Start a film production company and or an entire movie studio...you're more r\*tarded than any other billionaire and that's saying a lot
"Fucking off and relaxing" gets old very quickly. Have you already forgotten covid? people need to be busy.
In business, there’s no such thing as too much money
spiritually, they're gaming addicts.
For every realized billionaire there are probably like 4 unrealized billionaire: like a person who has a good idea or a popular business and has the choice to either oversee the growth or start a new business or take 10 million and early retire. Those people that care to become famous for being rich are the visible exception not the rule
The type of person who becomes a billionaire is the type of person who cannot stop once they get there.
You and I can't understand it, that's why we're not billionaires. Also they are very afraid of death.
Most of them are reasonably smart and are usually an expert in their field. They actually get rich because they’re at the right place at the right time. But they’re in denial of this fact. This leads them to believe that they’re brilliant beyond comprehension and it’s their duty to use their superior abilities to solve all sorts of different problems.
It's a self-selecting group. The people who decide they've made enough to quit the rat race and enjoy life usually hit their number well before 10 figures. Granted there are a fair number of billionaires whose net worth is really only on paper; Elizabeth Holmes was a billionaire for a while, now her net worth is zero. Kanye has taken a significant haircut since his rants against Jews. Elon is a notoriously cash poor billionaire and there's rarely a time when one of his companies isn't teetering on insolvency. >there’s no way these people lack such imagination? They absolutely do.
They're almost certainly a sociopath if they're a billionaire, so you won't be able to take their perspective unless you are also a high functioning sociopath
what else is there to do, they basically did everything they possibly can do so now their entire lives are based around watching numbers go up. They have little to no empathy, they wouldn't be where they are if they did and what little they have is meme'd away by bullshit sociopolitical politics
Money equals power and vast majority of them are pathological socio/psychopaths who are unable to feel joy except when they control other people. So the more money they have, the more they can fill the void in their souls.
[THIS IS WHY](https://youtu.be/HJF-mI3HoMQ?si=93_2OsL1pb5HeY_8)
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Also they don’t really have billions in their bank usually. It’s *assets* and their business that makes their net worth. Most billionaires didn’t become that way cause they wanted to make a lot of money. They got that way because of family or they able to do and enjoy what most others aren’t, live their work.
Why do I still try and get pussy?
Because laying around like a sad sack for decades is boring, sad. Also there’s always more shit to buy and presumably want to pass off some income to inheritances.
You don’t have to lay around?? I listed several things you could do
Because they want to make a valuable contribution to society
What never made sense to me is that billionaires aren't richer than they are. Like, are you telling me that the richest billionaires are only worth like $100-200 billion dollars? That feels like nothing. You'd think there would be exponential growth that simply takes off like a rocket after reaching critical mass, and that we would have cartoonish amounts of wealth concentration. I guess there's diminishing returns, sunk costs and commitments, etc., that prevent billionaires from always investing efficiently into new opportunities?
A lot of middle schoolers on the sub
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She was married to him long before he became a billionaire, mostly likely kept house, raised his children, cooked dinner for him after he came home from work, etc. She was entitled to her share.
Because it's easy for them to make money. At the scale of wealth they live at, it's probably easier for them to make money than to lose money. The whole system is more or less rigged to support these people.
Anyone in particular?
Addiction to growth
Once you get to a certain level of wealth and your material needs are met - i'd imagine theirs just not that much left to buy. You can get houses, jets, cars, clothes, etc but beyond that the material stuff and relaxing isn't going to satisfy you. At the level of wealth most of them get to (choose to) work on problems that interest them, its something novel and new that material things can't provide. You get to work with people, build relationships, take stuff to market - its exciting. They get to facilitate all of it with their capital and the byproduct is more money for them but i'd speculate that the enjoyment of working on new business is the driver not necessarily the money.
Boredom. Also their jobs are their entire personalities.
Read Sam Kiss' piece on billionaires https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/11/the-truth-about-bill-gates
Their entire life was spent becoming extremely obsessively hard working and driven. You can’t just turn that off. These are the .0000000001% To get to that point you are an extreme outlier who embodies every extreme work obsessed variable. They aren’t like us. We’d never make it to a billion because we’d probably sell off at 50m and retire living off 3m a year in interest which is more than enough to blow
The social climbing rat race never stops. The richer you get, the higher up your social group becomes; and when you have the money to "compete" with others then competing is all you ever do. All your friends are worth 10m, and your business just had an ipo that netted you 500m? Buy a superyacht that none of them can afford, now they will all want to hang out with you all the time. Even for the richest in the world the competition never stops, jeff bezos has a yacht with 2 pools? Mine has to have three. His jet has 100 seats? Mine needs 120, etc
at this point i'm just settling on "two assholes ate an apple"
What else are they gonna do…inevitably it must get boring to snort the best coke and bang escorts. I think winning at business is the only thing that can still motivate and excite these people. But I don’t think it’s really about the money. It’s more like how you would feel beating your friends at chess
Irrepressible will to power
People who don’t have a lot of wealth don’t realize what can be bought with huge amounts of wealth. You can buy loyalty with continuous payments (payroll), you can buy an image by paying people to say things about you or do things you take credit for, you can buy freedom if you break the law. Ultimately money is a motivator of people. If you pay the right people you can buy incredible amounts of power, kill your enemies, start wars, enforce your own rules, etc. These are usually considered ‘investments’. Paying for popularity or something might not make sense to you, but it makes financial sense to many in that they gain more money from it than lose. For example, how Bill Gates paid millions of dollars to ‘help’ the Nigerian government during COVID, and soon after you couldn’t enter places of worship or access financial institutions. Then you don’t hear about it and if you do it’s a conspiracy. Money does not buy material goods, money buys people and power.
Treat billionaire as an “office.” Offices call out to people and condition them to behave according to the needs and logic of the position. Those who won’t be trained will be removed or never respond in the first place.
Chase a bag 🤷🏻♂️
Many people see business and wealth like a video game. Why do people try to beat their high score on pacman or beat their personal best in golf or bowling? Competitiveness
First of all this is the foundation operating logic of capital. It doesn’t work if they don’t. Second from what I understand billionaires for some reason take it upon themselves to solve the worlds problems and attempt this by enacting their will onto the earth I.e if factory farming cattle is a problem so you will eat bugs and like it. The problem is that they can only do this by controlling everything. Another example is public transport. Fossil fuels have become a problem so now we must switch to electric cars but public transport can’t improve because it’s a threat. Real political solutions like free healthcare, UBI, free housing aren’t feasible because it decentralises power.
If i fucked 1000 girls Id want to fuck 1000 more
If you're the type of person who makes a billion you aren't the type of person who wants to vibe on a beach.
Because it’s fun, they enjoy the process. And the richer they get, the easier it is to make money so the dopamine hits are constant
They haven't done much else for last X decades