We recently figured out that a major problem with the SIAI Visiting Fellows program has been that we don't give Visiting Fellows a context in which they know how well they're doing - they're picking up rationality tricks of the trade, but there's no counter that goes up when they do.
I suspect that rich people who aren't just measuring their progress by net assets, acquire this problem with their entire lives - now that they're not holding down a job, they no longer have any sense of what constitutes "progress".
Existential angst mostly just consists of having one or more problems you don't know how to identify ("My life lacks obvious progress indicators" having not even occurred to you as a hypothesis for describing what's wrong) and so you find that everything you do to try to address the problems you think you have, never solves the real problem. http://lesswrong.com/lw/sc/existential_angst_factory/. If there's anyone out there who's reading this and thinking "Yes, that's me", you can go ahead and email me (Eliezer Yudkowsky) because problems like this really should be solvable. Similarly, now that we've figured out what was wrong with the Visiting Fellows program we're going to try to fix it, etcetera.
Another possible problem with the Visiting Fellows program is that you're selecting for fairly unambitious/non-driven people. See this Less Wrong thread:
(Which suggests that the personality development agenda the Visiting Fellows program is currently pursuing may not succeed in transforming Visiting Fellows in to folks who are more driven and productive.)
I and at least 2 other people who have had a decent amount of direct contact with the Visiting Fellows agree on this.
Of course, another possibility is to make being a Visiting Fellow more like having a job--even relatively non-driven folks seem to be able to frequently get stuff done in job-like contexts. It's just that the portion of the population that's able to succeed in deadline-free not-intrinsically-fun self-directed activity seems to be pretty low. (And FWIW Eliezer, I am pretty sure you are part of this portion of the population--the fact that you're frequently disappointed with the amount you get done is a strong indicator. The real problem is when a person isn't disappointed with the amount they get done because their bar for themselves isn't set very high.)
I have experienced a lot of the lack of progress indicator angst you mention. I'm nowhere near rich and it isn't that important of a goal to me in itself, but since leaving college at 19 (I'm nearly 26 now), I haven't had a 9-5 job. I played online poker professionally for 4-5 years and I've been a developer for the last 2. My development work has either been a set my own hours/work from home arrangement or contract work. I'd say the struggle to live with some kind of structure while also maintaining the high level of freedom and flexibility that I can't stand to be without has been the defining challenge of my life so far.
I'm very glad that I've been able to get out of the box and do my own thing, but it's also made life a lot more difficult in many ways. It's been harder to develop consistent social circles since these tend to center around college and work. Even though I'm pretty good at making friends, at least for a fairly introverted person, I rarely feel like I really fit with whatever groups I fall in with--I tend to go back and forth between feeling insecure and being bored and annoyed by others' seeming conformity and lack of imagination. A bit of social anxiety is involved as well.
I've also never been able to maintain a consistent circadian rhythm. At this point I've just given up on worrying about it and regularly stay up for 30+ hour stretches when I'm not tired or have a lot to do. I've found it easier to just go with it than trying to force myself into the 'normal' way. This also contributes to feeling weird or different from others though--just feels like I'm on another wavelength a lot of the time.
Not sure why I decided to share this exactly. I can definitely imagine having a lot of the same issues as a billionaire. I suppose that's why it doesn't seem a particularly worthwhile goal to pursue. I'd rather focus on finding a good creative writing group or learning to meditate or finding a place/way to live that helps me find more balance and belonging. Things that would have a tangible impact on my day to day being. Making a lot of money seems beyond a point to get in the way if anything.
I don't know if there's anything in particular to blame, but our society is quite exclusionary in many ways toward folks who go off the beaten path, even if they are otherwise kind and productive people with plenty to offer. Generally reasonable people can be very judgmental about things like not having a college degree or a normal job or typical sleep patterns. I've learned to take it in stride for the most part, but it leaves sort of a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose wealthy people may have to face some irrational prejudice from others as well.
"Existential angst mostly just consists of having one or more problems you don't know how to identify ("My life lacks obvious progress indicators" having not even occurred to you as a hypothesis for describing what's wrong)"
This has nothing to do with existentialism, much less existential angst. Don't know where you got this definition.
"In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing."
If "worship" means anything it means an unconditional, faith based obeisance.
If you define "worship" as merely seeing something as larger or more important than yourself, then yes, everyone "worships something". But this "observation" is not profound but rather a verbal card-trick leaving you with nothing useful. What interesting is the difference between worshiping a God, formulating a rational, ethical system, attempt approach reality scientifically, cultivating the "be here now" attitude and what-all, rather than the comforting new age claim that "all beliefs are really the same".
I found it an interesting read, perhaps a cautionary tale. I suspect that if you are an entrepreneur 'to get rich' and you succeed and find you are depressed all the time because you don't know who your friends are, some (possibly material) portion of your new found wealth will go toward counseling.
I had the non-unique experience of being a multi-millionaire for 2 weeks in the summer of 1999. Which is to say that on paper, in terms of options and restricted stock, and stock which was currently owned but embargoed (due to my companies acquisition) was 'worth' millions.
I really had to sit back and think hard about what that meant, would I retire in 4 years?, keep working ? join a venture firm? The stock went from $120/share to $0.83/share before I could sell any of it so I never had to actually answer those questions but I found that how I felt when I was 'rich' was different than how I thought I would feel. I don't know if that is a common experience or not.
I find the idea that someone wouldn't really feel financially secure unless they had $1b in the bank sad. But I looked at what Google paid for Eric Schmidt's 'security detail' and I realized that at some point you become a 'soft target' for people who would acquire money through violence or extortion. I would hope to avoid becoming one of those targets. I've heard that if you are ever in danger of acquiring too much wealth you can 'fix' that by buying an airline. (with props to Sir Richard Branson)
Reminds me of the evergreen Joseph Heller anecdote:
"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.'"
You remind me of a great Chris Rock skit on the difference between Rich and Wealthy. Specifically the line where he says "if Bill Gates woke up tomorrow with Oprah's money, he'd jump out of a fuc*in window".
Wealth is relative. Rich people have problems too. Rich people can be unhappy. At the heart of this is that we're all human. I'm still struggling to figure what exactly we're trying to prove by asserting otherwise... This article, and all like it, are just so silly.
Remember that documentary from about 5+ years ago about spoilt rich teenagers? I think it was called Born Rich. Anyway one of the things that one boy said really stuck with me (not sure what his name was but he was generally unhappy, and I think he later sued the publishers):
'People think because I'm rich I must be happy. But they don't realize that my happiness is connected to so many material things, if just one of them goes wrong it can ruin my day.'
Or something to that effect. More material comforts = more dependency for happiness = greater likelyhood of misery (or at least, 'peevement' or angst). He was talking about all the expensive toys that had to be maintained properly, special meals he liked to have, elaborate plans for essentially simple social occassions, and so on.
I highly recommend everyone watch this documentary. It was produced by Jamie Johnson (as in the heir to Johnson & Johnson) who interviewed his friends for their candid feedback on what it's like to be wealthy. None of them knew this would be a public documentary so they were pretty open without the typical political correctness.
Somewhat surprisingly to me, I found the most mature amongst his peers to be Ivanka Trump. She acknowledged her wealth, but at the same time made it clear that given her head start in life, she planned to work hard to make her own path in life. And judging from accounts from a couple people who went to school with her at Penn, she's pretty sharp. I liked her.
But most of the others seemed to fall into two groups:
1) At a loss for what they should do in life given the massive amount of wealth they knew they had at their disposal. One of the main concerns for this group is just not to lose the family's money. (Jamie Johnson himself and his father fell into this category)
2) An arrogant disdain for those not in their self-determined "class". This disdain is not necessarily reserved for the middle/low classes, but could also be applied to "new money" or those with just single/double digit million net worth.
One respondent, the heir to an enormous fortune, says that what matters most to him is his Christianity, and that his greatest aspiration is “to love the Lord, my family, and my friends.” He also reports that he wouldn’t feel financially secure until he had $1 billion in the bank.
I think this guy needs to crack open his Bible, and read a bit of Matthew 19:20-22...
[20]The young man said, "I have obeyed all of these. What else must I do? [21]Jesus replied, "If you want to be perfect, go sell everything you own! Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in Heaven. Then come and be my follower." [22]When the young man heard this, he was sad, because he was very rich.
I can't think of anything more to say. I just hope I didn't just start a religeous flame war.
I would add that most commentators on this passage don't draw the conclusion "having money is evil," but rather, that Jesus saw that this man's attachment to his wealth was a problem. In hearing this command, the man realized that his wealth was his god, and though he wanted to follow Jesus, he could bring himself to give up this rival god.
This may sound like a "soft" interpretation because it allows for being rich and also spiritual, but then again, it also means that Jesus' implied indictment may apply to non-millionaires like me. If my focus is money or prestige or whatever, I'm in the same boat. You can't follow Jesus half-heartedly.
To your point of advice: it does seem that if you've got $50 million and it's causing you anguish, you could certainly get rid of it and do a lot of good in the process. And I imagine the stigma from regular people would largely turn to respect.
I'm very suspicious of this piece. On the one hand, it's an interesting thing to read for those of us who aren't "super-rich" (if a bit... obvious). On the other, it feels like it's an apologia for the ever increasing class divide. "Don't worry about not having money, you wouldn't be happy anyway".
Honestly, I would be quite fine with a shitload of money and a meandering purpose in life. I think that's true of most people, including the larger subset of the "super-rich" that didn't choose to whine in an article in the Atlantic. Most people have a meandering purpose in life anyway, and mixtures of reliable and unreliable friends. It's not something special royalty gets to lay claim to.
The primary difference appears to be that the royalty can choose who they want to be, where-as not all of the plebeians have that luxury ("dream it, live it" self-help bullshit aside, one still has to pay for food and shelter and dependents). And the poor rich children are depressed because they have all their options open to them...
I seem to be saying this a lot, but here it is again: cry me a fucking river. :-)
There is nothing wrong with being rich and in many ways it can be a positive good in the life of any person to have the ability to shape one's time in optimal ways as opposed to being a slave of financial necessity.
But the perils of being rich are legion, as detailed in this interesting piece.
As I grew up, I always had to work for most anything I got and, in retrospect, I believe that the financial necessity that drove a good part of this was actually a big part of my character development. I always wonder what it would have been like on that front if I were continually faced with the temptation, as a rich kid, of bypassing the pain and difficulty of such challenges in favor of indulgences that were readily at hand. This must be an enormous problem for young people who have inherited significant wealth.
In any case, this piece portrays those with some measure of wealth from an interesting angle and nicely highlights that all that glitters is not gold, even if it literally is gold.
"One thing you learn when you get rich, though, is how few of your problems were caused by not being rich. When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard."
When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard.
That seems to be what college (esp. summers and spring break) is for, at least at a good school: giving you a sense of what life would be like if free from economic bullshit (as it is for the rich, the only people attending college 150 years ago). It's better in most ways, as only the most successful or wealthiest adults actually enjoy adulthood more than college, but college is not perfect. I had fun, but I wouldn't want to go back. And how many college students are writing novels, or even engaging in the amount of reading and writing that an aspiring novelist needs to be doing? A few, but not as many as who "want to write someday".
"But just as the human body didn’t evolve to deal well with today’s easy access to abundant fat and sugars, and will crave an extra cheeseburger when it shouldn’t, the human mind, apparently, didn’t evolve to deal with excess money, and will desire more long after wealth has become a burden rather than a comfort."
Power attracts the corrupt, and it does corrupt. This is why handguns are (for a certain type of person, i.e. those who are explosively impulsive) so dangerous. Holding one gives the power of life and death.
Being in power tends to make people arrogant, short-sighted, and less creative than they'd otherwise be. Power relationships are generally negative on both sides, thus worse than zero-sum.
Early in his academic career, Schervish was a committed Democratic Socialist. But around 1990, he began interviewing wealthy people and decided that his Marxist instinct to criticize the rich was misguided.
If Schervish had felt this way, it’s because he didn’t read Marx carefully enough. The whole point of Marxism is not “rich people are bad”—the Communist Manifesto is brutally critical of those who think that capitalism could be reformed by making rich people nicer. The point is that capitalism as a social structure is bad, because even well-meaning members of the bourgeoisie have incentives to oppress the working class, and those who do not follow those incentives will eventually find themselves at the bottom of the heap.
(I am not a Marxist myself, but this misreading is one of my pet peeves.)
I am experiencing the awkwardness of a change in personal wealth as we speak.
I have a friend I met at 16 via a t-shirt venture. We would hang out & work on his company. As time progressed we would hang out off and on. After an extended gap in communication, I emailed him to get his number & he came by to pick me up.
We drove for about 15 to 20 minutes until we reached an office warehouse. He then told me, "welcome to his company". He had started what is now one of the country's top promotional products companies. He now owns a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, $3M home, and more.
I feel awkward around him & I think he feels the same at times. We are both entrepreneurs but he has had more success financially. I've since taken a major interest in philanthropy. I recently asked for a contribution toward my non-profit & it was amazingly awkward as well. LOL, I was sweating... I felt like a panhandler.
Lastly, when I ask how he's doing & about other things outside of business I feel fake. It's usually a general response as to not seem ungrateful as mentioned. But, I genuinely want to know.
Nearly everyone who chases positional goods in a global context is bound to end up depressed. When you're in the habit of evaluating your wealth in comparison to people who are wealthier than you, two overarching considerations necessarily define your value:
* You're not wealthy enough; and
* There's always someone wealthier than you. [1]
[1] Caveat: In principle, someone has to be the wealthiest in the world, which means the other ~7,000,000,000 people are not.
There seems to be a self-similarity at play where society looks roughly the same from a very wide range of vantage points. The elite see the elite within the elite and feel like outsiders in comparison. An important Buddhist meditation is a prayer of gratitude for being born human; how often do people remember how lucky they were to have human births, on a planet where we are 7 billion out of ~10^30 living beings (counting bacteria and plants, which Buddhists generally don't consider sentient but which are living).
Anyway, at the three-digit millionaire and billionaire level, it's all about score-keeping and social status for those who care at all. Most billionaires are not quite at the pinnacle of the social elite, and no one stays at the tip-top of that for very long. Wealth is more stable, at the upper tiers, than social status, which is lost to age if nothing else takes it away.
I wonder how this article would read if one were to substitute 'smart/intelligent/clever' for 'rich'. I think I do spend a lot of time chasing knowledge to compete with others, only to find that I don't have 'enough'. As much as I like it, it does feel like I am living 'a life of quiet desperation'.
This was one of the more intriguing and thought-provoking articles I've read in a while. As someone who always had enough to get by, but never enough to spend without consequence, the goal of "being successful and having money" was always one I sought to obtain. While younger I always assumed all my problems would be solved by such a venture. I've learned that will never be the case on my own, but the concerns the wealthy state are interestingly complex - much more so than the standard concerns of a middle-income family/person. I can imagine the shock of a life of toil to get rich, only to find that your life and problems are exactly the same or even more complex.
The sole reason why being happy with the present will do more for you than anything else.
My favorite part is towards the end, "rich stare into the abyss a bit more starkly than the rest of us."
Not being rich, but being able to use my imagination and reason to figure out logical conclusions, I have come to realize that it is not about what you have, or who you are, but about how you're being. In the end everyone dies naked and alone regardless of how much or little money/friends/love/whatever you have.
The thing I kept thinking of, especially whenever they were talking about "enough to be financially secure" was a quote from Ted Turner just after he donated a billion dollars to the UN. (I can't find the quote online, I saw it on TV)
It went something like this:
"I've found that a person really can't spend more than $200 million dollars in their lifetime. Even if you make no attempts to save it or spend it wisely, it's very hard to squander $200 million so badly that you are left with nothing" (that was the gist, at least, but this is from memory)
[+] [-] Eliezer|15 years ago|reply
I suspect that rich people who aren't just measuring their progress by net assets, acquire this problem with their entire lives - now that they're not holding down a job, they no longer have any sense of what constitutes "progress".
Existential angst mostly just consists of having one or more problems you don't know how to identify ("My life lacks obvious progress indicators" having not even occurred to you as a hypothesis for describing what's wrong) and so you find that everything you do to try to address the problems you think you have, never solves the real problem. http://lesswrong.com/lw/sc/existential_angst_factory/. If there's anyone out there who's reading this and thinking "Yes, that's me", you can go ahead and email me (Eliezer Yudkowsky) because problems like this really should be solvable. Similarly, now that we've figured out what was wrong with the Visiting Fellows program we're going to try to fix it, etcetera.
[+] [-] astrofinch|15 years ago|reply
http://lesswrong.com/lw/4wm/rationality_boot_camp/3qmd
And this Robin Hanson blog post:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/06/lazy-hurt-less-than-st...
(Which suggests that the personality development agenda the Visiting Fellows program is currently pursuing may not succeed in transforming Visiting Fellows in to folks who are more driven and productive.)
I and at least 2 other people who have had a decent amount of direct contact with the Visiting Fellows agree on this.
Of course, another possibility is to make being a Visiting Fellow more like having a job--even relatively non-driven folks seem to be able to frequently get stuff done in job-like contexts. It's just that the portion of the population that's able to succeed in deadline-free not-intrinsically-fun self-directed activity seems to be pretty low. (And FWIW Eliezer, I am pretty sure you are part of this portion of the population--the fact that you're frequently disappointed with the amount you get done is a strong indicator. The real problem is when a person isn't disappointed with the amount they get done because their bar for themselves isn't set very high.)
[+] [-] danenania|15 years ago|reply
I'm very glad that I've been able to get out of the box and do my own thing, but it's also made life a lot more difficult in many ways. It's been harder to develop consistent social circles since these tend to center around college and work. Even though I'm pretty good at making friends, at least for a fairly introverted person, I rarely feel like I really fit with whatever groups I fall in with--I tend to go back and forth between feeling insecure and being bored and annoyed by others' seeming conformity and lack of imagination. A bit of social anxiety is involved as well.
I've also never been able to maintain a consistent circadian rhythm. At this point I've just given up on worrying about it and regularly stay up for 30+ hour stretches when I'm not tired or have a lot to do. I've found it easier to just go with it than trying to force myself into the 'normal' way. This also contributes to feeling weird or different from others though--just feels like I'm on another wavelength a lot of the time.
Not sure why I decided to share this exactly. I can definitely imagine having a lot of the same issues as a billionaire. I suppose that's why it doesn't seem a particularly worthwhile goal to pursue. I'd rather focus on finding a good creative writing group or learning to meditate or finding a place/way to live that helps me find more balance and belonging. Things that would have a tangible impact on my day to day being. Making a lot of money seems beyond a point to get in the way if anything.
I don't know if there's anything in particular to blame, but our society is quite exclusionary in many ways toward folks who go off the beaten path, even if they are otherwise kind and productive people with plenty to offer. Generally reasonable people can be very judgmental about things like not having a college degree or a normal job or typical sleep patterns. I've learned to take it in stride for the most part, but it leaves sort of a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose wealthy people may have to face some irrational prejudice from others as well.
[+] [-] DaniFong|15 years ago|reply
I mean -- we're made of dancing particles! That's hilarious!
[+] [-] gnosis|15 years ago|reply
This has nothing to do with existentialism, much less existential angst. Don't know where you got this definition.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lisper|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavidMcLaughlin|15 years ago|reply
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction
[+] [-] joe_the_user|15 years ago|reply
If you define "worship" as merely seeing something as larger or more important than yourself, then yes, everyone "worships something". But this "observation" is not profound but rather a verbal card-trick leaving you with nothing useful. What interesting is the difference between worshiping a God, formulating a rational, ethical system, attempt approach reality scientifically, cultivating the "be here now" attitude and what-all, rather than the comforting new age claim that "all beliefs are really the same".
[+] [-] crasshopper|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] schrototo|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dspeyer|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ChuckMcM|15 years ago|reply
I had the non-unique experience of being a multi-millionaire for 2 weeks in the summer of 1999. Which is to say that on paper, in terms of options and restricted stock, and stock which was currently owned but embargoed (due to my companies acquisition) was 'worth' millions.
I really had to sit back and think hard about what that meant, would I retire in 4 years?, keep working ? join a venture firm? The stock went from $120/share to $0.83/share before I could sell any of it so I never had to actually answer those questions but I found that how I felt when I was 'rich' was different than how I thought I would feel. I don't know if that is a common experience or not.
I find the idea that someone wouldn't really feel financially secure unless they had $1b in the bank sad. But I looked at what Google paid for Eric Schmidt's 'security detail' and I realized that at some point you become a 'soft target' for people who would acquire money through violence or extortion. I would hope to avoid becoming one of those targets. I've heard that if you are ever in danger of acquiring too much wealth you can 'fix' that by buying an airline. (with props to Sir Richard Branson)
[+] [-] westbywest|15 years ago|reply
"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.'"
[+] [-] lefstathiou|15 years ago|reply
Wealth is relative. Rich people have problems too. Rich people can be unhappy. At the heart of this is that we're all human. I'm still struggling to figure what exactly we're trying to prove by asserting otherwise... This article, and all like it, are just so silly.
[+] [-] Tycho|15 years ago|reply
'People think because I'm rich I must be happy. But they don't realize that my happiness is connected to so many material things, if just one of them goes wrong it can ruin my day.'
Or something to that effect. More material comforts = more dependency for happiness = greater likelyhood of misery (or at least, 'peevement' or angst). He was talking about all the expensive toys that had to be maintained properly, special meals he liked to have, elaborate plans for essentially simple social occassions, and so on.
[+] [-] DevX101|15 years ago|reply
Somewhat surprisingly to me, I found the most mature amongst his peers to be Ivanka Trump. She acknowledged her wealth, but at the same time made it clear that given her head start in life, she planned to work hard to make her own path in life. And judging from accounts from a couple people who went to school with her at Penn, she's pretty sharp. I liked her.
But most of the others seemed to fall into two groups:
1) At a loss for what they should do in life given the massive amount of wealth they knew they had at their disposal. One of the main concerns for this group is just not to lose the family's money. (Jamie Johnson himself and his father fell into this category)
2) An arrogant disdain for those not in their self-determined "class". This disdain is not necessarily reserved for the middle/low classes, but could also be applied to "new money" or those with just single/double digit million net worth.
All around, great documentary. Go see it.
[+] [-] jreposa|15 years ago|reply
http://www.hulu.com/watch/174635/born-rich
[+] [-] daimyoyo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] athom|15 years ago|reply
One respondent, the heir to an enormous fortune, says that what matters most to him is his Christianity, and that his greatest aspiration is “to love the Lord, my family, and my friends.” He also reports that he wouldn’t feel financially secure until he had $1 billion in the bank.
I think this guy needs to crack open his Bible, and read a bit of Matthew 19:20-22...
[20]The young man said, "I have obeyed all of these. What else must I do? [21]Jesus replied, "If you want to be perfect, go sell everything you own! Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in Heaven. Then come and be my follower." [22]When the young man heard this, he was sad, because he was very rich.
I can't think of anything more to say. I just hope I didn't just start a religeous flame war.
[+] [-] billybob|15 years ago|reply
This may sound like a "soft" interpretation because it allows for being rich and also spiritual, but then again, it also means that Jesus' implied indictment may apply to non-millionaires like me. If my focus is money or prestige or whatever, I'm in the same boat. You can't follow Jesus half-heartedly.
To your point of advice: it does seem that if you've got $50 million and it's causing you anguish, you could certainly get rid of it and do a lot of good in the process. And I imagine the stigma from regular people would largely turn to respect.
[+] [-] ezy|15 years ago|reply
Honestly, I would be quite fine with a shitload of money and a meandering purpose in life. I think that's true of most people, including the larger subset of the "super-rich" that didn't choose to whine in an article in the Atlantic. Most people have a meandering purpose in life anyway, and mixtures of reliable and unreliable friends. It's not something special royalty gets to lay claim to.
The primary difference appears to be that the royalty can choose who they want to be, where-as not all of the plebeians have that luxury ("dream it, live it" self-help bullshit aside, one still has to pay for food and shelter and dependents). And the poor rich children are depressed because they have all their options open to them...
I seem to be saying this a lot, but here it is again: cry me a fucking river. :-)
[+] [-] grellas|15 years ago|reply
But the perils of being rich are legion, as detailed in this interesting piece.
As I grew up, I always had to work for most anything I got and, in retrospect, I believe that the financial necessity that drove a good part of this was actually a big part of my character development. I always wonder what it would have been like on that front if I were continually faced with the temptation, as a rich kid, of bypassing the pain and difficulty of such challenges in favor of indulgences that were readily at hand. This must be an enormous problem for young people who have inherited significant wealth.
In any case, this piece portrays those with some measure of wealth from an interesting angle and nicely highlights that all that glitters is not gold, even if it literally is gold.
[+] [-] arn|15 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104
"One thing you learn when you get rich, though, is how few of your problems were caused by not being rich. When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard."
[+] [-] michaelochurch|15 years ago|reply
That seems to be what college (esp. summers and spring break) is for, at least at a good school: giving you a sense of what life would be like if free from economic bullshit (as it is for the rich, the only people attending college 150 years ago). It's better in most ways, as only the most successful or wealthiest adults actually enjoy adulthood more than college, but college is not perfect. I had fun, but I wouldn't want to go back. And how many college students are writing novels, or even engaging in the amount of reading and writing that an aspiring novelist needs to be doing? A few, but not as many as who "want to write someday".
[+] [-] Inc82|15 years ago|reply
"Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are."
[+] [-] io|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelochurch|15 years ago|reply
Power attracts the corrupt, and it does corrupt. This is why handguns are (for a certain type of person, i.e. those who are explosively impulsive) so dangerous. Holding one gives the power of life and death.
Being in power tends to make people arrogant, short-sighted, and less creative than they'd otherwise be. Power relationships are generally negative on both sides, thus worse than zero-sum.
[+] [-] sethg|15 years ago|reply
If Schervish had felt this way, it’s because he didn’t read Marx carefully enough. The whole point of Marxism is not “rich people are bad”—the Communist Manifesto is brutally critical of those who think that capitalism could be reformed by making rich people nicer. The point is that capitalism as a social structure is bad, because even well-meaning members of the bourgeoisie have incentives to oppress the working class, and those who do not follow those incentives will eventually find themselves at the bottom of the heap.
(I am not a Marxist myself, but this misreading is one of my pet peeves.)
[+] [-] TheBaron|15 years ago|reply
I am experiencing the awkwardness of a change in personal wealth as we speak.
I have a friend I met at 16 via a t-shirt venture. We would hang out & work on his company. As time progressed we would hang out off and on. After an extended gap in communication, I emailed him to get his number & he came by to pick me up.
We drove for about 15 to 20 minutes until we reached an office warehouse. He then told me, "welcome to his company". He had started what is now one of the country's top promotional products companies. He now owns a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, $3M home, and more.
I feel awkward around him & I think he feels the same at times. We are both entrepreneurs but he has had more success financially. I've since taken a major interest in philanthropy. I recently asked for a contribution toward my non-profit & it was amazingly awkward as well. LOL, I was sweating... I felt like a panhandler.
Lastly, when I ask how he's doing & about other things outside of business I feel fake. It's usually a general response as to not seem ungrateful as mentioned. But, I genuinely want to know.
Anyway, that's my experience with this issue.
[+] [-] dstein|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|15 years ago|reply
* You're not wealthy enough; and
* There's always someone wealthier than you. [1]
[1] Caveat: In principle, someone has to be the wealthiest in the world, which means the other ~7,000,000,000 people are not.
[+] [-] michaelochurch|15 years ago|reply
Anyway, at the three-digit millionaire and billionaire level, it's all about score-keeping and social status for those who care at all. Most billionaires are not quite at the pinnacle of the social elite, and no one stays at the tip-top of that for very long. Wealth is more stable, at the upper tiers, than social status, which is lost to age if nothing else takes it away.
[+] [-] spinboldok5567|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sskates|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SergeyHack|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodin|15 years ago|reply
The sole reason why being happy with the present will do more for you than anything else.
[+] [-] futuremint|15 years ago|reply
Not being rich, but being able to use my imagination and reason to figure out logical conclusions, I have come to realize that it is not about what you have, or who you are, but about how you're being. In the end everyone dies naked and alone regardless of how much or little money/friends/love/whatever you have.
[+] [-] crasshopper|15 years ago|reply
Actually, the article contradicts itself: the byline says "the first time" and paragraph 2 says the studies have gone on since 1970.
[+] [-] larrik|15 years ago|reply
It went something like this: "I've found that a person really can't spend more than $200 million dollars in their lifetime. Even if you make no attempts to save it or spend it wisely, it's very hard to squander $200 million so badly that you are left with nothing" (that was the gist, at least, but this is from memory)
[+] [-] anagnorisis|15 years ago|reply
Then again, Ted's likely just referencing people who at least have shreds of sanity in them.
[+] [-] gersh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lurker14|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianhawes|15 years ago|reply