I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand why not one billionaire has ever said “I’m happy merely being a multimillionaire with more than I and my children could ever spend in multiple lifetimes, maybe I’ll spend the rest of my unimaginable wealth on solving some of the world’s problems, and have a beloved reputation and enduring legacy as a bonus.” Not a single one of them is interested in being a hero, they ALL want to be villains. It really is like they have some kind of brain-rotting disease as a result of that wealth that utterly destroys their humanity and makes them greedy beyond all reason and practicality.
I have an aunt who’s retired now, but used to work with high-income clients for a large, well-known bank. She once told me there seems to be a sweet spot, around 5 million a year, where people seem content and still kind of “normal,” or at least not too changed by their wealth.
I can’t imagine what it’s like living with that much money, but it’s been a long-held fantasy of mine to win a big lottery jackpot, keep a decent nest-egg and have loads of fun giving away the rest to every good cause I can think of. I rarely play and never won more than $4… but it’s a nice (if impossible) dream.
$5M per year is about $100,000 per week. $20,000 per work day. Assuming an 8 hour work day then those 10 minutes in the bathroom come to $417, or more than a week’s pay for a minimum wage worker. Bonkers
5 million a year is still such a vast amount that it makes me really curious what causes a change beyond that. What can someone afford at 6 million a year that they couldn’t at 5 million, that’s so worthwhile it destroys their interest in anything beyond accumulating infinite wealth?
I apologize if I’m ranting here but I still cannot get over it. It makes no sense that the ultra rich have no ambitions for spending their excess wealth on changing the world (for purposes other than just making themselves richer) once they’ve already guaranteed they can buy anything they want, for life. I realize a lot of these people are sociopaths and that’s part of how they became billionaires, so maybe helping people out isn’t their thing, but even so:
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None of them is egotistical enough to want a reputation as “the person who ended world hunger” or “the person whose funding cured cancer” or some other equally impressive boon for humanity that would ring through history? They ALL think that “biggest number when I die” is the absolute height of fame and the best legacy they can achieve? None of them want to be loved rather than hated by the majority of people, and are willing to spend their wealth to essentially buy that love via helping folks out? Elon Musk clearly wants desperately to be liked, but instead of spending a penny on helping anyone, his best ideas are buying a social media company so he can fill it with bots and Nazis, licking Trump’s boots, and paying someone else to get him to a really high level in a video game.
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None of them have any personal passions or causes they care about (that aren’t ultimately related to the goal of getting richer)? They don’t even have to be about anything but their personal interest and ego. Not one has ever said “I really don’t want to get Alzheimer’s, so I’m going to sink every penny into getting it cured as quickly as possible”, or “I think tigers are beautiful so I’m going to spend whatever it takes to make sure they don’t go extinct within my lifetime” or “I want laser eyes, I’m going to spend billions to singlehandedly advance the science of cybernetics by a century”? To use Musk as an example again, he obviously is a sci-fi fan, yet his brain is so stunted that his best attempts to achieve a sci-fi utopia are an angular truck, a hallucinating plagiarism machine (that’s still somehow smarter than he is), a broken, dangerous robot taxi, distant dreams of Mars colonies, and bringing back fascism. All of it done as lazily and incompetently as possible.
Peter Thiel and Sam Altman are reported to have invested or donated a couple million into anti-aging companies. Honestly everything about it manages to sound like more venture capitalist nonsense rather than actually supporting research, which you could do so easily through existing channels, but I guess they aren’t capable of imagining any other way of doing things? I don’t know.
Likewise, one thing that’s amazed me is they never seem to want to make anything other than money. Like for instance nearly everyone who plays games has had some idea they’d like to see developed. But then I suppose this is where Musk’s steel truck, rap song, and SNL appearance come in, and…I want to say he shouldn’t have tried but I’m not sure he did. Even the things he talks about inventing are all so obviously not actually important to him, just jokes he thinks sound good to investors.
The exception I can think of is there are some very rich directors, even a few billionaires, and some of them actually do at least have things they like and want to try. But everyone from a business background seems to be completely hollow.
I’d be happy to be mostly not more abnormal for only $1,000,000 a year.
I don’t think that’s due to altruism by any means. They don’t want to die.
Oh, very much so. I’m just looking at Hanglyman’s point that to a large extent, billionaires won’t even spend money on things to help themselves unless they expect a return. And honestly the way it’s reported I’m not sure if Thiel would be satisfied with Methuselah Research keeping him out of the grave unless it came with financial opportunities.
I think this is it. They are empty inside.
Imagine you have more wealth than you will ever need to do anything you ever wanted, yet you have no passions. No hobbies. No interests. Nothing to wake up for. Nothing at all in your life that you would love to do, even if you didn’t get paid for it.
If they weren’t such a parasitic cancer on the planet, I’d maybe feel sad for their soulless, empty lives.
“All I want is the chance to prove that money won’t make me happy.”
I have the same fantasy as @Nightflyer . I rarely play the lottery (although I did win $20 once!). I’m amazed by the number of people who walk up and buy $20, $30, $50 worth of tickets at a time. Maybe there are more independently-wealthy folks out there than I think, but I suspect that’s not the case.
Early in my lottery-playing career, my wife and I found ourselves buying tickets multiple times a week. Money was tight, but we would still buy one or two, dreaming of what we could do with the jackpot. I eventually realized that what we were doing was “dream investing” - we had no investments and had no money to put into stocks, but that wouldn’t matter if we won the jackpot. In essence, we were “investing” by hoping for a lottery win. 
That realization was the shock I needed to break the habit; today, I’ll buy a ticket if the jackpot has grown large, but I do it for the excitement/entertainment rather than something I count on for the future.We’re not and will never be billionaires, but I have a reasonably happy life.
I get a lot of entertainment out of my $2 - whenever I buy a ticket.
Exactly. Throwing a couple million out of billions into longevity isn’t a serious attempt to make it happen, so I can only assume it’s somehow tied to making a profit, just like some rich folks do a small amount of altruism just for tax breaks. Likewise, Musk has no true passion projects, only grifts.
To be fair, is anyone in the book really that bad when you have Bezos there to compare against?
I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think of it first.
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