| ▲ | mingus88 6 days ago |
| I’m not that surprised. To reach the level of billionaire, it’s pretty much a requirement that you abandon all empathy and ethics. What’s surprising is that nobody in their circle has educated them on the concept of a win-win. These people could be folk heros, universally loved and respected in ways buying a social media platform and banning all the haters will never accomplish. |
|
| ▲ | QuercusMax 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| That's what's so incredibly stupid about the tariffs, immigration crackdowns, etc. Life is not a zero-sum game, and treating it like it is just makes it worse for everyone - unless you're the sort of person who really gets off on having other suffer worse than you. |
| |
| ▲ | Terr_ 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's less that they "get off on" suffering (though I'm sure some do) and more that they believe some conclusions: 1. The universe simply does not permit an arrangement of humans that isn't a hierarchy of exploitation and suffering. 2. There is a "natural" hierarchy which is also a just one, where good people deserve to exploit and bad people deserve to suffer, and of course I'm not one of the bad people. ("Just-world fallacy.") 3. Anyone who says don't need to build a Torment Nexus for anyone is a sneaky liar trying to trick their way upwards into a layer in the hierarchy they don't "deserve." So it's not as simple as sadism or greed, they'll tolerate some being stepped-on as long as they've been convinced that the "right people" doing the stepping and the bad people are getting stepped on more. A relevant free ebook from 2006: https://theauthoritarians.org | | | |
| ▲ | munificent 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A group of people who all agree that life is not a zero-sum game and cooperate effectively based on that premise will be very efficient, productive, and outcompete other groups. They are also a honeypot begging to be exploited by bad actors for whom life is a zero-sum game. Once a critical mass of those asshats show up, all of the trust that led to the greater efficiency and productivity breaks down. Greater trust between good actors is efficient but opens the door to free riders. Lower trust is inefficient but handles bad actors. I think basically all of human history is a meandering line around this unstable equilibrium of trust. | | |
| ▲ | QuercusMax 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Basically: assholes ruin things for everyone. | | |
| ▲ | throwawayoldie 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I think you just wrote the epitaph for the human race. | | |
| ▲ | nehal3m 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Maybe we should have written that on the Voyager Golden Record, although anyone capable of picking it up and deciphering it would have probably already avoided the scenario that doomed us. | | |
| ▲ | throwawayoldie 6 days ago | parent [-] | | "Third planet of this Class G star dominated by psychotic tool-using apes. Stay away." |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | AyyWS 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What society or culture survived by taking the high road? I'm reminded of Princess Leia's quote: No! Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons. | | |
|
|
| ▲ | bluecalm 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What about a guy who made a popular Java game in his spare time and sold it to Microsoft for 2 billion?
What in that process required forgoing empathy and ethics? That's just one example. There are plenty of rich people who got there fairly and created a lot of value along the way. |
| |
| ▲ | Supernaut 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I take it you're referring to the same guy who, after taking his money, wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and that privilege is a "made up metric"? That guy? | | |
| ▲ | bluecalm 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes. Things you mentioned are unrelated to how he made his money. |
| |
| ▲ | ryoshoe 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The "pretty much" disclaimer in their comment covers this case. But it doesn't dispute their idea that most billionaires reached that level of wealth by exploiting others | | |
| ▲ | bluecalm 5 days ago | parent [-] | | It depends how you define "exploit". How is Jensen Huang "exploiting" others?
He started a GPU company, hires a lot of people, pays some of them very well, pays others not that well. I don't think you can say he is "exploiting" them though.
He made lives of hundreds of thousands of people much better. If anything I think he should be celebrated and I am very happy he is a billionaire. How is Roger Federer exploiting others? He played a competitive game, won a lot of tournaments, accepted a lot of sponsorship money. He is now a billionaire. Did he need to give up ethics and morals to get there? What kind of blame is that really? |
|
|
|
| ▲ | RajT88 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Unless you are a founder of a unicorn startup. I used to hang out with one of the GitHub founders before it was a thing - he was engineering director when MSFT bought them out and now is a billionaire (single digit billions but still): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Hyett Probably more the exception than the rule. |
