1. The attention and adulation is your drug. I think there's no shortage of people who fall into this category.
2. To convert that fame into opportunities you wouldn't otherwise have; and
3. To convert that fame into money.
Obviously if you're just plain rich then (3) is moot. If you fall into (1) then money can buy you fame to a degree.
So that leaves (2). Wealth will give you many opportunities fame will but certainly not all. Or at least the costs to replicate that are truly ludicrous, like being a star in a Marvel movie, spending a year on the ISS, going to the Moon, that sort of thing.
The way I see it the downsides of fame are significant. I've heard tales from people who worked in media years ago that the very stars who now want the media to leave them alone and to respect their privacy would beg them for stories and coverage just a few years earlier.
I don't think I'd want to be ultra-wealthy (as in a billionaire+). At that point you're almost removed from society. I imagine you end up moving in circles with other ultra-wealthy people that are actually quite small. You risk being a target of the desperate, the criminally minded (fraud, kidnapping, blackmail, that sort of thing) and the mentally unstable.
And really what is the practical difference between having $20m and $2b? Sure you'll have nicer houses and more of them. You may well have a super-yacht at that point. But who cares? I know I don't.
You could say "you would if you had $2b" and maybe that's true. I'm sure I'd buy a nicer place but I think I'd still want to keep a relatively low profile.
> And really what is the practical difference between having $20m and $2b? Sure you'll have nicer houses and more of them. You may well have a super-yacht at that point. But who cares? I know I don't.
I found this Reddit comment [1] insightful on that front. Don't know to its validity but have seen it linked to in a few different places.
> $1billion
> I am going to exclude the $10b+ crowd, because they live a head-of-state life. But at $1b, life changes. You can buy anything. ANYTHING. In broad terms, this is what you can buy:
> Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back. I have seen this first hand and it is mind-blowing the level of access and respect $1 billion+ gets you. In this case, I wanted to speak with a very well-known billionaire businessman (call him billionaire #1 for a project that interested billionaire #2. I mentioned that it would be good to talk to billionaire #1 and B2 told me that he didn't know him. But he called his assistant in. "Get me the xxxgolf club directory. Call B1 at home and tell him I want to talk to him." Within 60 minutes, we had a call back. I was in B1's home talking to him the next day. B2's opinion commanded that kind of respect from a peer. Mind blowing. The same is true with access to almost any Senator/Governor of a billionaires party (because in most cases, he is a significant donor). You meet on an occassional basis with heads-of-state and have real conversations with them. Which leads to ... influence ... (continued)
Even just in terms of money. $20 million invested is--depending upon your assumptions--something like $1 million/year ~risk-free without touching the principle. (OK, a diversified portfolio is probably going to do better than that but that gives something of a baseline.)
Obviously that's a pretty nice passive income stream. But it's not really have a couple nice homes in prime locations, hire full-time assistants, fly private jets everywhere, etc. sort of money.
1 million per year is a fat budget. You can get close enough to that lifestyle by renting slices of the components on-demand and being more efficient from wasteful (and preyed upon) apex lifestyle.
For instance: private air travel in USA. Find some friends with aligned lifestyles and together buy a high performance twin engine propeller passenger plane that seats 8 people for about 5 million.
There are agencies who will take care of all of the complexities of owning and operating this aircraft and renting it out while you’re not using it. With careful decision making you can bring the aircraft to close to net zero steady state operating cost as the revenue flights paying for maintenance, storage, liability etc. You also get access to a stream of excellent pilots on demand.
These agencies can also book you on a larger plane in their portfolio when you want to go further and for some reason aren’t willing/can’t fly first class commercial.
Real estate is much simpler—tons of fabulous rentals all over the world. And an assistant surely could be hired somewhere for 100k or less annually.
$1 million/year without working is very rich. You could definitely have multiple houses and full time assistants. I have two houses and part-time assistants at an income of $300k. And most of my time is dedicated to work at someone else's company, owning all of your own time makes them much more wealthy than me.
I'm not really arguing with that. But there's a difference between being very comfortable and money basically being a non-factor even for expenses that the typical person would consider a complete extravagance/unaffordable and cost basically being completely irrelevant.
In fairness, I suspect that they're cold and unpleasant because of all the vultures that constantly circle them.
When you're being constantly hounded by people that believe that you being wealthy means they inherently deserves a share of it, that'll probably distort your worldview real quick.
They are nice party tricks but add negligible value to your life. Money at those levels is mostly useful to project power, if you don't care about that then I don't see the point. There is a reason many billionaires live relatively normal lives without any of the things mentioned in that post.
Interesting reddit article, I have only spent time with aone billionaire, and while his home was amazing, you would never know he was that rich. Very kind and honest person who does not spend much money at all. He would fix his clothes rather than buy new but ALWAYS pick up the tab at dinner. Not all 1B+ people fit into that description.
An extra reason for being famous (could be included in #2 of the above list) is to amplify your positive impact in the world. E.g. if Bezos wasn't famous i'd probably never learned about his business strategies (costumer first, risk taking & innovating, etc). IMO this is the best reason for being famous.
What is so special about customer first? I work for a small unknown company, my product managers and support team do “customer first”, I doubt any of them are reading Bezos biography or philosophy. This is just common sense and being nice to customers, that’s all.
I hope people don’t learn his “work employees to death” and related philosophy ...
Bezos named it Amazon so it would appear high in alphabetical order. In pre-search engine world of 1994 it was a big deal. New sites would be found by consumers through site directories.
Interesting tangential fact: Ford Motor Company was not Henry Ford's first automotive company. He previously started the (less descriptive) Henry Ford Company (his second automotive venture) which was bought and turned into the Cadillac brand.[1] Cadillac would eventually become General Motors.
Combine that with the split between the Dodge brother investors, and all the Detroit "Big Three" manufacturers can be traced to Henry Ford. [2]
There is no way to escape the envy and judgement from your "friends" even if you are just a "little" rich. A friend of mine, who is a former Googler, and keeps a "low key" lifestyle just tries to keep all the "triggers" that people use to recognize wealth out of their life because they value their friendships.
Isn’t it possible to become a billionaire without anyone knowing?
What if you just get there quietly through private investment?
Not a billion, but I’ve built up a decent chunk myself and nobody seems to know or even suspect that about me. Nobody begs me for anything more than spare change, no sycophants, nobody trying to impress me. Marketing for luxury goods doesn’t even reach me.
I could easily see myself reaching a billion in a few decades just through private investment, and there must be thousands of people doing the same. I imagine there are many more who have earned millions publicly, then sold their stake and went to a billion privately.
"Optometrist Herb Wertheim may be the greatest individual investor the world has never heard of, and he has the Fidelity statements to prove it. Leafing through printouts he has brought to a meeting, you can see hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks like Apple and Microsoft, purchased decades ago during their IPOs. An $800 million-plus position in Heico, a $1.8 billion (revenue) airplane-parts manufacturer, dates to 1992. There are dozens of other holdings, ranging from GE and Google to BP and Bank of America."
"The Microsoft shares he bought during the IPO, which have been paying dividends since 2003, are now worth more than $160 million. His 1.25 million shares of Apple, some purchased during its 1980 IPO and some when the stock was languishing at $10 in the 1990s, are worth $195 million."
The Bloomberg billionaires index does exactly this... Out private billionaires.
First off it's hard being a billionaire and people not knowing. You're going to make a splash somehow. But there's still plenty of billionaires, especially in emerging market countries, that have still to be uncovered.
>I could easily see myself reaching a billion in a few decades
So your plan to "easily" become a billionaire is to "follow Warren Buffet" and make decades worth of out-performing private investments?
Wait until you learn that markets don't go up forever, and that paper profits on out-of-touch valuations aren't cash. As they say, "everyone's a genius in a bull market".
Whats your endgoal? I was thinking the other day about fortune, wealth and becoming wealthy. I’d very much prefer to not pursue becoming wealthy and concentrate on a diferent goal. I don’t think I could change the world in a financial sense, I might as well contribute positively from a different angle that is not from a wealthy position. That’s why I am asking you what your endgoal is since you chose anonimity and not to flaunt your wealth. I suspect you don’t need any kind of validation or any other ego tickling so do you have an endgoal that you’d like to pursue through your acumulated wealth?
I plan on following in Warren Buffett’s footsteps. Without his influence, I would be working the graveyard shift at a gas station right now.
End goal career-wise is to amass as much wealth as possible by giving smart and capable people a path to building new things that benefit everyone, and then direct that amassed wealth toward the betterment of humanity before I die.
I’m not sure exactly how I’ll do that.
I actually think most philanthropic organizations do more harm than good. I think an effective non-profit would probably look like a boring faceless middleman, affecting positive change by influencing capitalistic markets to serve the underserved. By serve I mean serve, not provide goods to.
I also have my own idea of what it means to better humanity. I think there are better ways to feed and shelter people than feeding and sheltering them.
Whatever I do, it’ll probably be really boring, won’t provide for any photo ops, and there’s a good chance it might even seem pointless and ineffective to most people.
It means enabling them to do it themselves and not make them dependent on someone's aid. Creating such an environment and opportunities, bootstrapping them so to speak.
You mean by creating an economy where everyone is paid sanely, instead of an economy geared to moving wealth from people who don't have it to people who do?
Both of those methods are accessing the public markets. Private investment means investing in non publicly traded companies. Like venture capital... For example
> And really what is the practical difference between having $20m and $2b? Sure you'll have nicer houses and more of them. You may well have a super-yacht at that point. But who cares? I know I don't.
At $20m you can shape your own world, and your family's. But at $2bn you can change society. You can buy a lot of influence both by directly spending the cash to accomplish goals and by bribing politicians to act on your behalf.
My understanding of the question of "why want to be a billionaire" is that it ultimately comes down to the circles of people you associate with. You might own a small company and might take in $1 million in income a year. Great. Well if your friends are making $5 million a year and have X Y Z you might want to push yourself to get there. Imagine being friends with Jeff Bezos, you wouldn't really ever feel like you're successful enough. It's probably the worst for people born into being rich, because they get born into that world and get friends and family who are already bought into being at whatever that level is. And they have to either reject it or try and get there.
I think the same problem exists at pretty much all income levels. I'm having sort of the opposite problem currently. I make considerably more money than most of my friends, mainly just because I was a cs major and they chose other paths. I can afford to go to nice restaurants, bars, whatever, but my friends can't and I don't make quite enough to pay for all of them to go with me. I do find myself wondering what the point is sometimes. for now I'm happy to have people over and pay for pizza/beer, but it seems a little awkward.
$20m is not really that much. You can spend that buying a new nice house in LA or a new penthouse in New York. If you have a large family (say 5) and your kids are adults/studying then $20m networth is not really that much to make them live the good life. (Not that I’m saying it’s a good thing to do so).
$25m @ 10%/year (assuming your actively investing a have no real estate) can afford you a good baller life around US most expensive cities if you are single or just a couple.
> I don't think I'd want to be ultra-wealthy (as in a billionaire+). At that point you're almost removed from society. I imagine you end up moving in circles with other ultra-wealthy people that are actually quite small. You risk being a target of the desperate, the criminally minded (fraud, kidnapping, blackmail, that sort of thing) and the mentally unstable.
That's been the reality of Denmark's richest family (richest ever since CF Møller, head of Mærsk, died a few years ago). They've had numerous run-ins with people after a slice of their wealth. This lead them to keep as far from the public eye as possible (according to one piece I read) until they were the most talked about Danes of the season last year, as they tragically lost 3 of their 4 children in a bombing that was aimed to wipe them out.
It's hard to imagine a worse scenario to survive as a parent or sibling.
I can name you lots and lots of broke poets and writers from the last thousand or so years, but I can only name you a handful of wealthy people that died more than 100 years ago: Rockefeller, Carnegie, maybe the first Rotschilds (which one, though?), Jakob Fugger and the Medicis.
I generally agree with you, but I think a counterpoint is that the dynamic which currently obtains, where the merchant class is on equal footing with the political class in terms of power and influence, is a relatively new phenomena. For most of history, people simply farmed the land and the only notables were the (relatively small) political class that wielded power, mostly at the tip of a sword.
Thought exercise: A malicious but trustworthy djinn appears to you. He tells you that one minute after your death, he's going to release magically faked evidence that you were a violent pedophilie.
All of your remaining friends and family will believe this, and the case will be so bad that your name will become associated around the world for the sheer heinousness and reprehensibility of the things you supposedly did. However the djinn is willing to bind himself to not doing this, but you have to pay him $1 right now.
If "nothing matters after you are gone", then you wouldn't even be willing to pay $1 to avoid this scenario.
While I’m alive, I would gladly pay $1 if it would avoid a traumatic experience for my friends and family (or even a stranger). I don’t see how this hypothetical changes that. In particular, it’s not about the memory of me, it’s about how that memory affects the lives of those who might care about me.
But you said that you don't care about things after being gone. So this clearly demarcates an exception to this.
You care about the wellbeing of your friends and family after your death, even though you're not "around to observe it". So there are at least some things that you value in life, that you still value after death.
Many people being value being respected in life. There's nothing particularly different about extending that value to being respected after death. At least not if you already assign valence to other values post-death.
There is a big difference between not being cause of hardship for your family and being remembered for the sake of being remembered.
The former rises out of natural empathetical feelings you've towards your close ones which will be a cause for grief and depression till the end of your life, you get it's b repercussions in your life itself, unless you're a psychopath who don't have any regard for others suffering. Surely you can't just ignore it as 'nothing matters after I'm gone' as in being remembered, because being remembered for the sake of being remembered is merely just for the ego satisfaction from that recognition when you don't even have a working brain to enjoy it and unless you are one of those types that crave for attention and not being remembered affects your current state too emotionally. Trying to be billionaire to be remembered is just like trying to chase the moon.
Just because the results of it are non-observable (fair assumption) to the person leaving some sort of legacy behind them, doesn’t mean that doing so isn’t valuable to them. It is the satisfaction you get while still living, knowing that after you are gone, some (hopefully positive) remnants of you will still live on.
That may be what you believe, but it's a fringe belief. I point to every statue, every hospital named after someone, every estate still generating income for non profits, every example of suicidal selfless sacrifice in history as evidence.
There is such a thing as a-causal trade. Newcomb problem, prisoner's dilemma, that sort of things.
Few people really don't care what happens after they're gone. We almost always want something to linger on, be it descendants, a master works, or just the world.
How many dead billionaires from the last century do you remember and can name without googling?
If it's just the feeling of being remembered for something then there are lots of other things you can do to make people remember you. Nobody remembers the rich merchants from 2000 or 3000 years ago but people still remember the conquerors who changed maps and the artists of those days whose works have been immortalized. Whether you like it or not, someone like Hitler or Tolkien will be more likely to be remembered than someone like Gates and no, Hitler won't still be considered as an irredeemable monster then, just like how people don't get offended by the conquests and massacres by Genghis or Napoleon unless for nationalistic/jingoistic reasons.
> Obviously if you're just plain rich then (3) is moot.
That's assuming that rich people don't want _more_ riches, which I would guess to be not true in more cases than not.
20M isn't quality of life wise too different from 2B, but if you got the chance to get 2B, legally and even morally, would you not?
Frankly, All people with a annual income of either $1B, $10M, or $100K likely live in closer and better quality of life than some medieval king. I'm thankful for our times.
Here's the view I subscribe to: "Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day."
I was always tempted to do a reality TV show where you get outside and are famous for a few months then forgotten about, for the reason that you could hopefully experience what fame is like and hopefully be forgotten about if you didn't like it.
The only wildcard in USA is lawyer fees in case of criminal charges, divorce and such. Make it $30-$50 mil, just in case and you'll live like a king without anyone knowing your networth, unless you want them to
1. The attention and adulation is your drug. I think there's no shortage of people who fall into this category.
2. To convert that fame into opportunities you wouldn't otherwise have; and
3. To convert that fame into money.
Obviously if you're just plain rich then (3) is moot. If you fall into (1) then money can buy you fame to a degree.
So that leaves (2). Wealth will give you many opportunities fame will but certainly not all. Or at least the costs to replicate that are truly ludicrous, like being a star in a Marvel movie, spending a year on the ISS, going to the Moon, that sort of thing.
The way I see it the downsides of fame are significant. I've heard tales from people who worked in media years ago that the very stars who now want the media to leave them alone and to respect their privacy would beg them for stories and coverage just a few years earlier.
I don't think I'd want to be ultra-wealthy (as in a billionaire+). At that point you're almost removed from society. I imagine you end up moving in circles with other ultra-wealthy people that are actually quite small. You risk being a target of the desperate, the criminally minded (fraud, kidnapping, blackmail, that sort of thing) and the mentally unstable.
And really what is the practical difference between having $20m and $2b? Sure you'll have nicer houses and more of them. You may well have a super-yacht at that point. But who cares? I know I don't.
You could say "you would if you had $2b" and maybe that's true. I'm sure I'd buy a nicer place but I think I'd still want to keep a relatively low profile.