Some people are just extremely lucky (I'm guessing here. I hardly believe this happens).
Some people are technical geniuses, care little about the money, and end up having truckloads of them, being at the right moment with the right skill. Carmack his an example - read his writings, he's an amazingly humble person. Linus Torvalds, too, just to mention another person.
What about the rest of the billionaires?
We're talking about billions here, not just millions (!). The rest of the billionaires (must be) are A-type personalities who live for accumulating money and tearing the competition apart.
When you have such personality, and context, you never rest. Even when you're at rest; you're not on holiday, when you're on holiday. You need to be single minded and live almost single-dimensionally; being a psychopath is of great help. Steve Jobs is a perfect example.
Even if we take out the personality factor, we're talking about billions here - competition is extremely fierce.
As usual, of course, I don't mean that reality is black and white or "type-3" is every billionaire.
But it's important to have a clear understanding of how this works, to avoid daydreaming of being such a person (which by the way, I would never want to be).
This is a recurring theme in HN, and the usual agreed opinion is that after having a certain amount of money (upper middle class), there's very little gain in happiness by having more money.
And by the way, any middle class person has access to the best places on earth and best experiences out there.
I don't get what point you're refuting here. Why did you start this off "No, no, and triple no. Wake up call here." That seems like a really drastic response to saying "billionaires aren't like the rest of us" — which seems to be a fairly accurate statement, no? (unless everyone here are billionaire$).
So I'm guessing you were referring to maybe a different aspect of his post?
If you feel like a person's possessions define who they are, yes, a billionaire can never be like you. Don't you think that's a little limiting?
What about the millionaire businessman you meet at a conference? What about your neighbour who earns three times as much as you do? What about your other neighbour who makes half?
Some people are just extremely lucky (I'm guessing here. I hardly believe this happens).
Some people are technical geniuses, care little about the money, and end up having truckloads of them, being at the right moment with the right skill. Carmack his an example - read his writings, he's an amazingly humble person. Linus Torvalds, too, just to mention another person.
What about the rest of the billionaires?
We're talking about billions here, not just millions (!). The rest of the billionaires (must be) are A-type personalities who live for accumulating money and tearing the competition apart.
When you have such personality, and context, you never rest. Even when you're at rest; you're not on holiday, when you're on holiday. You need to be single minded and live almost single-dimensionally; being a psychopath is of great help. Steve Jobs is a perfect example. Even if we take out the personality factor, we're talking about billions here - competition is extremely fierce.
As usual, of course, I don't mean that reality is black and white or "type-3" is every billionaire.
But it's important to have a clear understanding of how this works, to avoid daydreaming of being such a person (which by the way, I would never want to be).
This is a recurring theme in HN, and the usual agreed opinion is that after having a certain amount of money (upper middle class), there's very little gain in happiness by having more money.
And by the way, any middle class person has access to the best places on earth and best experiences out there.