Why are Musk and Bezos cartoon villains? First, you need to understand horizontal inequality, illusory control, self-selection bias, quantified self-worth, and the evolution of overconfidence.
I was on the phone with my 23-year-old son the other day, and he said something to the effect of, "I have job income and investment income. I need a third source of money." My heart sank as I tried to figure out what we had done wrong to rear this money-hungry future Homo horribilus. When I tentatively asked why, he said that there were two reasons: (1)He never wants to be afraid to walk away from a job if he is ever asked to do something he feels is unethical (he's in a field in which such concerns are not unfounded); and (2)He's been watching McKenzie Scott, and "what's she's doing looks like a lot of fun, and [he'd] like to be in a position to do that sort of thing someday, too." So my heart recovered, and I asked him what he was planning to do to to create this third income stream. He replied, in the nonchalant way that only a 23-year-old can, "Oh, I'm going to publish a book." I love the exuberance of youth! :D
This was fascinating! Thank you for the detailed explanation.
The last paragraph is important and necessary if we are ever going to course correct our country. The income inequality is staggering and immoral. No one in America should go without food, shelter or medical care. Ever. A just society should not have - or allow - billionaires.
OR, redirect the money currently channeled by central banks into private banks, into social programmes instead.
The central bank should still have inflation as a primary concern, but my hunch is feeding a grass-roots economy versus the trickle-down ideology, could be the answer to most of our social issues.
After college, I struggled to discover my employable skills. I had a humanities degree and didn't plan to stay in academia. I stumbled into an entry-level tech job, and within a few years, I felt secure paying for rent and groceries. As my salary increased, I more easily absorbed emergency expenses like doctor visits and car repairs, started to save for retirement, took modest vacations, and bought a small home. I felt fabulously wealthy, realizing that many of my peers (elder Millennials) did not have this kind of financial security. If they felt snackish, they couldn't afford to just pick up a pre-made sandwich. I could.
A decade into that career, I was earning $100k/year. Had I been driven solely by salary, I would have asked my bosses for more. Other people in the office plainly earned much more than I did, and if I'd been a different person who played his cards differently, I suppose I'd've earned more. (In other words, if I'd been someone else, I would've had that person's bank account.) If I wanted, I would've stayed in that career, or at least in some adjacent professional scene, and tried to earn more and more.
Instead, I quit the career to devote my time to activities I truly care about. I earn and spend less than I used to.
Which is to say, I think some personality types are content with eating just enough berries off the bush to avoid starvation, as we prioritize certain values, freedoms, and modes of interaction with others. For me, it's the freedom to think through this comment at 8 in the morning, for as long as it takes me to have a complete thought, without having to jump in my car and race to an office where I type fake-sounding emails all day.
It isn't only a matter of personal choice, of course. Everyone has our own minimum of what we need to survive and thrive, and our minimum viable income will increase if we have to provide for others (kids, etc.). There are personalities who are happy "with nothing," so to speak, but everyone's "nothing" is a bit different, and it always adds up to be something. Childless people like me want to take ourselves to the movies now and then. I actively avoid the financial condition of what for me is not-enough, as I know I function very poorly when I'm in that headspace. A few people thrive on asceticism, but even saints need a bowl of soup.
Most of us spend a lot of time asking ourselves "How much is (or would be) enough?" We're looking for a sweet spot that's above our personal minimum but below our maximum. Billionaires never ask that question at all, as you explain. They just ask: "Which door has the bigger prize?"
Our own financial enoughness is driven on various levels, social and psychological, by what others decide is possible for us — or by our informed opinions on what is possible for us. There are pay gaps based on race, gender, education, etc. All kinds of feedback loops can make it difficult for any particular person to break out of those demographic patterns. The whole economic structure is profoundly unfair, and it's a big problem for someone who doesn't have enough. But if a person believes that we — by privilege, luck, hard work, all of the above — do have enough, we may not feel motivated to keep climbing the ladder. We just say: This is the person I am, I'm fed and housed, I'm interested in many things that have nothing to do with money, and financially I can settle here.
I agree completely with this - and it’s very much the same for me. Money isn’t everything, particularly if it means surrendering your mind to something you dislike.
I don't see Bezos as a villain on the scale of Musk. He invented something incredibly useful. And hasn't said anything publicly that makes me wish he would disappear. Musk— with his one-man fertilization program — is a classic case of overestimation. But he is a major force in technological breakthroughs, even though his grasp of human interaction is dreadfully below par. I suspect that the reason he's backing Trump is that his policies favor the rich. Period. Simple as that.
Fascinating article. And it all makes sense. Thankfully, I’ve never wanted to be a billionaire. And I had to laugh at the two questions. When I inherited a chunk of change years ago from my mother, the first thing I did (after donating to the amazing hospice center) was to fulfill my promise that “if I ever get some money, I’ll donate to” xyz cause. And I did. Not a lot of money in the scheme of things, but I never felt better in my life! Yeah, I’ll never be obscenely “rich”.
If you look at the list of Forbes 400 richest individuals and select only those who started with poor or modest resources the list would be 100. Many, maybe the majority on the 400 list, earned their billion by self-selecting the right parents. My view would be that, overall, billionaire personality traits are diverse and likely reflect the population in general. Even among the 25% or so who have self-made wealth I think you would find that a lot of them didn't start out trying to make a billion dollars but did get incredibly lucky. I generally agree that broken systems allowed many of them to accumulate wealth but only those who set out to exploit those broken systems have the characteristics that you broadly apply to billionaires. What you attribute to the quest for billions is more likely a quest for status and power and the reason one billion isn't enough is because two billion buys more.
Anyway, I think the temperaments you should identify are competitiveness bordering on sadism and self-confidence bordering on narcissism and not wealth that define this group. These members are not only trying to game the monetary system but any system where status and power can be accumulated. Your solution of creating fair systems though, I think is correct. As I recall Mackenzie Scott got $41 billion from her split with Jeff Bezos; gave away $16 billion, and now has over $100 billion. I think Mackenzie is neither machiavellian nor ruthless. I believe she has the good fortune to be in a system where not all of the stakeholders are able to bank their share.
The numbers from the top of my head for M. Scott seemed they couldn't be right so I checked. It seems in 2019 she got ~$36B, has given away ~17B, and as of June 2024 still has at least $34B although in 2020 her net worth was $62B so some of that wealth may be in accounts that no longer can be counted as "net worth". I don't think that it changes the validity of the example but I just felt uncomfortable posting numbers so far off.
I was on the phone with my 23-year-old son the other day, and he said something to the effect of, "I have job income and investment income. I need a third source of money." My heart sank as I tried to figure out what we had done wrong to rear this money-hungry future Homo horribilus. When I tentatively asked why, he said that there were two reasons: (1)He never wants to be afraid to walk away from a job if he is ever asked to do something he feels is unethical (he's in a field in which such concerns are not unfounded); and (2)He's been watching McKenzie Scott, and "what's she's doing looks like a lot of fun, and [he'd] like to be in a position to do that sort of thing someday, too." So my heart recovered, and I asked him what he was planning to do to to create this third income stream. He replied, in the nonchalant way that only a 23-year-old can, "Oh, I'm going to publish a book." I love the exuberance of youth! :D
This was fascinating! Thank you for the detailed explanation.
The last paragraph is important and necessary if we are ever going to course correct our country. The income inequality is staggering and immoral. No one in America should go without food, shelter or medical care. Ever. A just society should not have - or allow - billionaires.
Of course you're right. We can't take away their toys. We can, however, tax them.
OR, redirect the money currently channeled by central banks into private banks, into social programmes instead.
The central bank should still have inflation as a primary concern, but my hunch is feeding a grass-roots economy versus the trickle-down ideology, could be the answer to most of our social issues.
Eat the rich. Lightly sauteed with a nice Chianti.
I do wish I was your neighbour 😂😉👍🏼
After college, I struggled to discover my employable skills. I had a humanities degree and didn't plan to stay in academia. I stumbled into an entry-level tech job, and within a few years, I felt secure paying for rent and groceries. As my salary increased, I more easily absorbed emergency expenses like doctor visits and car repairs, started to save for retirement, took modest vacations, and bought a small home. I felt fabulously wealthy, realizing that many of my peers (elder Millennials) did not have this kind of financial security. If they felt snackish, they couldn't afford to just pick up a pre-made sandwich. I could.
A decade into that career, I was earning $100k/year. Had I been driven solely by salary, I would have asked my bosses for more. Other people in the office plainly earned much more than I did, and if I'd been a different person who played his cards differently, I suppose I'd've earned more. (In other words, if I'd been someone else, I would've had that person's bank account.) If I wanted, I would've stayed in that career, or at least in some adjacent professional scene, and tried to earn more and more.
Instead, I quit the career to devote my time to activities I truly care about. I earn and spend less than I used to.
Which is to say, I think some personality types are content with eating just enough berries off the bush to avoid starvation, as we prioritize certain values, freedoms, and modes of interaction with others. For me, it's the freedom to think through this comment at 8 in the morning, for as long as it takes me to have a complete thought, without having to jump in my car and race to an office where I type fake-sounding emails all day.
It isn't only a matter of personal choice, of course. Everyone has our own minimum of what we need to survive and thrive, and our minimum viable income will increase if we have to provide for others (kids, etc.). There are personalities who are happy "with nothing," so to speak, but everyone's "nothing" is a bit different, and it always adds up to be something. Childless people like me want to take ourselves to the movies now and then. I actively avoid the financial condition of what for me is not-enough, as I know I function very poorly when I'm in that headspace. A few people thrive on asceticism, but even saints need a bowl of soup.
Most of us spend a lot of time asking ourselves "How much is (or would be) enough?" We're looking for a sweet spot that's above our personal minimum but below our maximum. Billionaires never ask that question at all, as you explain. They just ask: "Which door has the bigger prize?"
Our own financial enoughness is driven on various levels, social and psychological, by what others decide is possible for us — or by our informed opinions on what is possible for us. There are pay gaps based on race, gender, education, etc. All kinds of feedback loops can make it difficult for any particular person to break out of those demographic patterns. The whole economic structure is profoundly unfair, and it's a big problem for someone who doesn't have enough. But if a person believes that we — by privilege, luck, hard work, all of the above — do have enough, we may not feel motivated to keep climbing the ladder. We just say: This is the person I am, I'm fed and housed, I'm interested in many things that have nothing to do with money, and financially I can settle here.
I agree completely with this - and it’s very much the same for me. Money isn’t everything, particularly if it means surrendering your mind to something you dislike.
I don't see Bezos as a villain on the scale of Musk. He invented something incredibly useful. And hasn't said anything publicly that makes me wish he would disappear. Musk— with his one-man fertilization program — is a classic case of overestimation. But he is a major force in technological breakthroughs, even though his grasp of human interaction is dreadfully below par. I suspect that the reason he's backing Trump is that his policies favor the rich. Period. Simple as that.
BTW, I signed on because I love Borges.
"... just as many of the people who would make the best politicians are those who least want political power...."
In Thomas More's novel, Utopia, anyone who seeks office/lobbies/pushes to be elected...is... permanently barred from holding office.
Fascinating article. And it all makes sense. Thankfully, I’ve never wanted to be a billionaire. And I had to laugh at the two questions. When I inherited a chunk of change years ago from my mother, the first thing I did (after donating to the amazing hospice center) was to fulfill my promise that “if I ever get some money, I’ll donate to” xyz cause. And I did. Not a lot of money in the scheme of things, but I never felt better in my life! Yeah, I’ll never be obscenely “rich”.
If you look at the list of Forbes 400 richest individuals and select only those who started with poor or modest resources the list would be 100. Many, maybe the majority on the 400 list, earned their billion by self-selecting the right parents. My view would be that, overall, billionaire personality traits are diverse and likely reflect the population in general. Even among the 25% or so who have self-made wealth I think you would find that a lot of them didn't start out trying to make a billion dollars but did get incredibly lucky. I generally agree that broken systems allowed many of them to accumulate wealth but only those who set out to exploit those broken systems have the characteristics that you broadly apply to billionaires. What you attribute to the quest for billions is more likely a quest for status and power and the reason one billion isn't enough is because two billion buys more.
Anyway, I think the temperaments you should identify are competitiveness bordering on sadism and self-confidence bordering on narcissism and not wealth that define this group. These members are not only trying to game the monetary system but any system where status and power can be accumulated. Your solution of creating fair systems though, I think is correct. As I recall Mackenzie Scott got $41 billion from her split with Jeff Bezos; gave away $16 billion, and now has over $100 billion. I think Mackenzie is neither machiavellian nor ruthless. I believe she has the good fortune to be in a system where not all of the stakeholders are able to bank their share.
The numbers from the top of my head for M. Scott seemed they couldn't be right so I checked. It seems in 2019 she got ~$36B, has given away ~17B, and as of June 2024 still has at least $34B although in 2020 her net worth was $62B so some of that wealth may be in accounts that no longer can be counted as "net worth". I don't think that it changes the validity of the example but I just felt uncomfortable posting numbers so far off.
Tell you what: give me $1 billion and I promise to be humble. 🤣 Seriously, thank you for the explanation. Very informative.