| I don't know anybody with Hoffman's level of wealth, but I have come across a fair number of people with close to a billion dollars of wealth that now split their time between enjoying time with their own family and then trying to pursue philanthropy and non-profits meant to improve everybody's life in the community. I run into them because of their attempts to improve the community. And there are those who do it super quietly, give big, and do everything they can to avoid getting credit for it; there's another Silicon Valley Reed that does this in my community. Steve Jobs apparently did this too, big donations but anonymously. Do not take the blabbering idiots on the All-In podcast as representative of all of Silicon Valley, the old Valley was far different than those people and there are still plenty of people that pursue wealth not for the purposes of their own self-aggrandizement and power. |
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| ▲ | pydry 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ive also run into a few and they were without question some of the biggest assholes I ever met in my life. I don't think theyre special. Years of being surrounded by yes men and sycophants will probably do that to most people. One of them in particular was much less toxic and relatable pre-billions. | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I don't think theyre special Where did you get that from the comment you replied to? They merely pointed out you couldn't paint everyone with the same brush, which is pretty much the definition of 'not special'. | | |
| ▲ | pydry 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't. The point was that that amount of money turns most people into assholes. Many of them donate money but it doesnt make them any less of an asshole. | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If we're casting aspersions, I guess based on my personal experiences of people in poverty, lower, middle and upper classes, then > most people into assholes might just be a you problem. Get out and meet more people, and if you're still surrounded by assholes, then the real asshole is probably you. People are people everywhere. Money really doesn't change that as much as you're implying. | | |
| ▲ | pydry an hour ago | parent [-] | | you seem weirdly committed to defending the billionaire class. most people probably do have the capacity to be raging assholes but society doesn't indulge their every whim and prejudice or stroke their ego constantly. so they aren't. |
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| ▲ | epistasis an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Power, including financial power, reveals who people really are without constraints. President Johnson has to be my favorite example of this, he spent a political career kowtowing to racists, enforcing racism where he needed to in order to acquire power, and then when full power was finally thrust on him by JFK's assassination, he flips and pushes through key legislation from the Civil Rights Movement. I certainly didn't put forward an idea that having money makes people less of an asshole. Somebody who gives it away in a non-assholish way certainly makes them less of an asshole. Or is your contention that anybody with money is an asshole, without exception? | | |
| ▲ | joquarky 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | At the very least, I would question the motive of people who defend billionaires. | | |
| ▲ | epistasis 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Who do you believe is doing this? The implication, I guess, would be me, but I wasn't talking about strictly "billionaires". What is the wealth cutoff here, and how? |
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