Almost like being a billionaire requires being a terrible person willing to take advantage of others to get ridiculously too far ahead.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6688834/

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cperciva a day ago | parent | next [-]

Are Patrick and John Collison terrible people? My impression is quite the opposite; they're smart, hard working, and care deeply about making the world a better place.

There's a Canadian billionaire who is famously always donating to hospitals and suchlike. He's had tens of thousands of employees for decades and I've never heard anyone say anything bad about him.

I know another billionaire in Vancouver who isn't known for donations. Actually most people don't know he's a billionaire. He is generous though; he just insists on being anonymous when he gives large amounts.

I suspect the issue is less "billionaires are horrible people" and more "the highest profile individuals from any group tend to be the narcissists".

	▲	captainbland a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think it's clear that rhetorically you can't single out individuals without proof but at the same time it's also fair to say there is just a lack of information. The argument that, for the most part, you need to extract from and exploit others to get to this level of wealth is relatively strong and has correlates with other negative behaviours I would say is the core issue at play here.
	▲	parthdesai 21 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's a useless reddit trope. As usual, humans are complex, and billionaires are no different. Look at Mark Cuban for example, he is trying to bring affordable medicines to common people in USA (I don't know the finer details). Or Jim Simons, who for all accounts did a decent bit of philanthropy and provided funding for academic research.

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georgemcbay 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Almost like being a billionaire requires being a terrible person willing to take advantage of others to get ridiculously too far ahead.

Turns out that taxing their wealth is an intervention.

We need to do it if only for their own good to save them from the pressures that cause them to act increasingly antisocial.