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| ▲ | literalAardvark 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think they are, and strongly. The drive to achieve that level of success often comes from weaponized poor self esteem. Well adjusted individuals just chill out after a few million and work on whatever is fun/important for them. Only rarely does this also happen to be something that can take you from 10M to 1B. (and if it can it would take a lot of work you can't be bothered to do unless it's some core value like helping the poor beat malaria) | | |
| ▲ | thatguy0900 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Trump saying recently that he hates hanging around successful people and prefers losers because he doesn't want to listen to other people's stories really speaks to the poor self esteem angle |
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| ▲ | th0raway 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It comes down to two things. One is the well documented issue of how, when you are that rich, you are treated differently, and how that will ultimately modify your behavior. The other is the prerequisites to get to the job. Chances are you aren't fully self-made, receiving no investment. From convincing investors, to having immense faith in a project that cannot be obviously good, as otherwise you'd be building what already exists, to the personality to handle the road upward. This second effect happens in all kinds of places where you have to jumps througha lot of hoops to just get to get there. Every hoop discards candidates, and promotes different things. Sometimes in ways that make sure that nobody capable of attaining the job is fit to actually do it well. You can see the issue all over the place, once you track people's careers. Sometimes things that should be disqualifying for a role are actually requirements in practice. | | |
| ▲ | kevincox 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. > - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | | | |
| ▲ | SimianSci 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | - Own a monopoly
- Inherit your fortune
- Run a criminal enterprise Using just these three filters alone, you encompass more than 99% of all billionaires in existence.
The amount of billionaires who do not fit into these categories can barely occupy a family sized vehicle. The criteria here suggesting that there is a specific sociopathic personality requirement to being a billionaire as each category can be argued as harmful to societies. | | |
| ▲ | nostrademons 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I've been thinking that you can divide businesses on two axes, Scalable - Many customers
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Short-term/ Ponzi Scheme | Monopoly Long-term/
Transactional -------------------------------------- Relational
Contracting / | Consulting /
Retail etc | Therapy etc
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Non-scalable - Few customers
And mathematically, only businesses at the top of the graph are capable of generating a billion dollars. Hence, if you are looking to be a billionaire, the path lies either through a Ponzi scheme or through a monopoly. Both of them, in their most pure form, are illegal, and the challenge in the business model is to execute on them while staying just barely on the right side of the law. | | |
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| ▲ | psadauskas 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Right? If I had enough money that I could make a serious dent in local or even global poverty without noticing the change in my lifestyle, and I just... chose not to, I have no idea how I could sleep at night. | | |
| ▲ | csallen 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Huge numbers (billions) of people have enough money to make massive changes to the lives of those less fortunate than them, but don't, and prefer instead to make incremental upgrades to their own lives. New rugs, more savings, first-class airline tickets, eating out a few more times a month, etc. This is just human nature. People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below. | | |
| ▲ | conception 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Aaron Swartz had a good take on this -
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall | | |
| ▲ | nostrademons 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I remember wrestling with this in my therapist's office when Aaron died. I had known him tangentially - we hung out in the same IRC channels, and had several mutual friends in the Cambridge/Somerville techie crowd that he would hang out in person with. As a college student and young adult I had always envied his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google, when it was still a nice place to work doing things that I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to actually carry out. I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their altruism. It is adaptive, in a survival sense, to think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too much about other people. Ironically, this is what my therapist was trying to get me to realize. But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1 than x, after all; you could give everything you had away and mathematically, it would lower your net worth significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at x+1. Why can't they donate instead, where their wealth would do an order of magnitude more good? There actually do exist people who are like that: they would rather spread their wealth around the people at wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are far more generous than rich people are. That is why they are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people at level x-1. | |
| ▲ | phist_mcgee 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | RIP |
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| ▲ | unfitted2545 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I also think this could be a symptom of an economically unequal society (which creates a higher range of x), and is a big reason why it's important to fix it, on top of the extra money to the state. So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible with human nature? | | |
| ▲ | nostrademons an hour ago | parent [-] | | Communism doesn't eliminate power relationships, it just papers them over with politics and bureaucracy instead of having them legible with prices and wages. In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker, because the government would get it all. Instead, they got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual harassment of secretaries. In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned by government bureau run by party members. It was not uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these shortages never seemed to really hit the party members responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks. And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce economic inequality need to focus on power rather than money. There have been a number of policies that do meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor: they're things like the 13th amendment to the (US) Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system, free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own living against people who would seek to restrict that freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage. |
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| ▲ | scottyah 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We can also tell because anyone who can take the time to use a computer with internet to write a comment in well-formed English is already comparatively wealthy or connected enough to provide food and housing for dozens of people. |
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| ▲ | malfist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Elon tweeted that he'd fund ending world hunger if someone presented him with an actual plan to do that. UNESCO did. Elon did not act. | | |
| ▲ | dnautics 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | can you verify that the UNESCO plan would have ended world hunger? | | |
| ▲ | Den_VR 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It was a 6.6 billion dollar plan to alleviate famine in 43 countries for one year, so, no. |
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| ▲ | phatskat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump has largely not had that kind of money. He’s had a _lot_ of money, many many times more than most, but by all accounts except his own, those numbers are much lower than he likes to brag about. Well, they were - there’s been a troubling amount of money going out of the federal government that isn’t well-accounted for under his reign. He had the kind of money that can hire expensive projects on trust that payment in full will be rendered, but only kept his money by often not paying out. As with all things Trump, even up to the new ballroom not having a front door despite the massive staircase, his wealth is more in appearance, and less in actual assets…or was. Of course, someday maybe we will know the true extent or shortfall of his bank accounts | |
| ▲ | keybored 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don’t get puzzled that the criminal doesn’t use his ill-gotten gains for pro-social causes. Why would a person ever use anti-social means to acquire funds for pro-social goods?[1] This is not too disimilar from the case of the billionaire. [1] Excepting some Galaxy Brain philosophies like Effective Altruism | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you had that amount of money you would also be a sociopath. It's a precondition. Good news is that you would sleep fine at night. No matter how destructive your existence was, and how much of a net negative you were to the world, you would still think very highly of yourself. |
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| ▲ | sumtechguy 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I do not think it is the money that made them terrible. I know all sorts of terrible people that would do the exact same things. The only difference really is they do not have the money to execute on those ideas. Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes you more of who you are already. | | |
| ▲ | malfist 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I specifically did not say money makes them mentally ill, but rather the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, they just didn’t sell their piece of the closely-held business they started, and they spend their time skiing, reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and family. | | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >Do we have any actual evidence of this? to be fair, the original comment by malfist started with "makes you wonder", so i dont think they are asserting this as fact. >I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, some people would see this sentence as contradictory, and they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money And I’d say they’re literally wrong. They may be hoarding capital. And yes, some wealthy people do hoard money per se. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of people we just don’t hear about because they aren’t on social media talking about how rich they are. Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them. | | |
| ▲ | john_strinlai 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >They may be hoarding capital. while this distinction may be important to you, i dont think it really changes anything about malfists question/point. >Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them. and cigarettes cause cancer. not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad (smoking, too). (please note: i am not arguing for or against what you or malfist have said, just thought there was a little something lost in translation re: you asking for evidence after a conversation that started with "makes you wonder") | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > i dont think it really changes anything about what malfist question/point Of course it does. Turning capital into spendable or transferable wealth takes work. Plenty of rich people are just enjoying their lives in the same way retirees do. > not sure what this has to do with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad I’m saying the folks we tend to get upset about being rich at are also the rich who are prominently on social media. The problem isn’t that they’re rich. It’s that they’re on social media so much. I think there is a genuine argument to be made that even Elon Musk would have been a better-liked person, maybe even a better person, if he never got on Twitter. > thought there was a little something lost in translation re: "makes you wonder" Perhaps. And appreciate your clarifying for them. In 2026 I’m just sceptical of the “just asking questions” bit, particularly when it comes to cultural tropes. (And for what it’s worth, my query for a source was genuine. I’m always down to change my mind on a loosely-held belief.) |
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| ▲ | malfist 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's a hell of a difference between a multimillionare who has a successful business and a billionare. The difference between a person who has a million dollars and a person who has a billion dollars is about a billion dollars. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > a hell of a difference between a multimillionare who has a successful business and a billionare Yeah, I'm saying the ones worth hundreds of millions to low billions who aren't on social media are, in my personal experience, often fine people. The ones I don't like are the ones on social media, but that's also true of the folks worth a few thousand dollars. Plenty of billionaires are assholes. The world's GDP is over $100 trillion. That's going to produce diversity among the rich. | | |
| ▲ | malfist 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | And who are you to personally know enough billionaires intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level? | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > who are you to personally know enough billionaires intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt I'm not absolving anyone. I'm saying I know good people who are also billiionaires who most people have never heard of. The billionaires I've heard of I tend to dislike. But I think the correlate is the fame, not the wealth. > guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level? This is where the hoarding metaphor breaks down. If you build a company, is it hoarding to not sell your stake off to a private equity firm? Because practically speaking, those are their choices. Hold it, manage it and live off the income. (They all donate most of their incomes, but that's neither here nor there. You can be a good person even if not philanthropic.) Or sell it to a private equity firm and then have a pot of money to stare at. |
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| ▲ | nancyminusone 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Of course the money doesn't make them terrible. Being terrible makes them money. Lots of money. There aren't really other ways of obtaining so much money, which is why if you see someone that has that amount, they should be viewed with suspicion. |
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| ▲ | andai 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So, Hormozi boils it down to: > The wealthiest people in the world have: - A very big goal - Insecurity: Massive fear of never being enough - Impulse control to stay on goal This excellent list, I expand with my Daddy Issues Billionaire Archetype, which we see in basically all "ultra successful" people. (I haven't found any counter-examples yet, but I'm eagerly awaiting the first! It would be extremely valuable information.) But crucially, in the face of Unrelenting Standards, what's the difference between total collapse and astronomical success? The belief that you can do it.[0] It's not just "you need to be better than you are." It's "and I know you can." [0] Incidentally, I posted on this exact subject this morning! https://nekolucifer.substack.com/p/you-can-do-anything-if-yo... | |
| ▲ | ashton314 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Most don’t seem to think about morals or quality at all: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/introspection-andr... | |
| ▲ | fhdkweig 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To get moderately rich doesn't require a special personality type, but obscene wealth requires breaking laws and asking forgiveness later (throwing lawyers at the problem). Not caring who you hurt while reaching for a goal is a trait of sociopathy. | |
| ▲ | rhet0rica 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump specifically seems to hew awfully close to the symptoms of a long-term cocaine user. The hard drift into self-congratulatory vanity parallels that of Charlie Sheen during a certain infamous interview, for example, and at least two people (Howard Dean and Carrie Fisher) identified him as having compulsive sniffing reminiscent of a cocaine habit during debates prior to his first election. Remember that Trump is not a first-generation member of the upper class; as a nepo baby, he was born out of touch and has spent his whole life falling deeper into bizarre social bubbles and media silos that were tailored by his ancestors and peers to reassure them that they're doing the right thing. In theory plutarchs should be receiving world-class education from private tutors, but being arch-Conservatives by definition, these teachers are invariably out of date on mental health, and would be forbidden from teaching it even if they had modern material. Because of this isolation the ultra-wealthy often have certain very uneducated traits around self-esteem—which can paradoxically seem like the result of poverty. They do not have access to DARE or Sesame Street to give them the confidence not to take drugs when pressured, they've never seen Mister Rogers, their biological parents were always off running a business empire, and they have no surrogate figures because their nannies probably get fired at the drop of a hat, even for defending the child's interests. Ironically, American republicanism makes this worse; in a planned aristocracy, parents internalize the belief that their children deserve "the best" because they are meant to be "the best", but without that noble lie, there is no pressure to create a positive environment for the next generation of tyrant. To make matters worse, these families never start off with healthy values to begin with—which produces a founder effect of regressive masculinity that magnifies everything else I've just mentioned. | |
| ▲ | fhdkweig 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You aren't the first one to notice the correlation. It is a heavily studied subject. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wealth+and+sociopathy | |
| ▲ | keybored 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Aren’t sociopaths strongly overrepresented among the powerful? (Assuming that) It’s a bit astonishing that we discuss things like that, go huh, and then go about our day. Effectively acquiescing to rule-by-personality disordered. | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to Trump. Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too. | | |
| ▲ | malfist 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > still hasn't collapsed Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying" twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well... it worked. The shareholders were made whole, Elon got his vanity project, and the only people who got the short end of the stick were the loss-leader Twitter addicts. From a game-theory perspective that's a pretty impressive political polemic to achieve with purely private capital. When the dust settles the only person to blame is Jack Dorsey, who spent his halcyon years on Twitter pumping Bitcoin and looking even more coked-out than Elon. If people can't move on to better platforms then yes, they are doomed to eternal monetization by warring moron techbro tribes. |
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| ▲ | yoyohello13 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think that's what bothers me the most about the last couple years. These ultra rich people are just brazenly being scumbags and there is nothing anybody can really do about it. I imagine this is what people felt like in the middle ages when their King was going senile. | | |
| ▲ | scottyah 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think you're wrong and it's worse- there are a lot of things that many people can do about it, it's just that they choose not to. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Both are true. Some things can be done and are simple/healthy, like escaping social media. Others are fundamentally much harder and not worth the risk/trouble/time. |
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