Billionaires are not billionaires because they're smart. They are rich because they are broken in a way that allows them to completely ignore morality in order to gather more wealth in a doomed attempt to fill the unfillable hole inside them. (David Stack)
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[–] 64 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Whenever I see people say: "I don't get it, if I were <insert billionaire's name here>, I'd immediately ".

survivorship bias

Anybody who is the kind of person who would spend their money to fix societal problems isn't going to wait until they're a billionaire to do it. They'll do it as soon as they think they have enough money to make a difference. That's what will prevent them from ever becoming a billionaire. It's a survivorship bias thing. Every billionaire you see is a person who could have fallen into the "trap" of helping other people with their absurd, vast wealth. But, they survived that temptation and instead kept accumulating wealth like a dragon in some fantasy story.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I could see becoming a billionaire from an idea too quickly to spend it, but 99.99% of the time this is correct.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I think you're dreaming if you think that's possible.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    It's extremely unlikely, for sure, but not necessarily impossible. You could release a piece of digital content, like a game or an album or program, that becomes wildly popular extremely quickly. Again, not likely, but strictly speaking possible.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    that becomes wildly popular extremely quickly

    That's not going to make you $1b. Maybe tens of millions, but not billions.

    I guess you could sort-of argue that it's what happened with Minecraft, though that took more than 5 years from the alpha to the eventual acquisition. But, it's true that he went from typical middle class type wealth to a billionaire overnight when that deal closed.

    But, in almost every other case someone's going to make far less than $1b on their first deal. And then they're going to be multi-millionaires who either start giving their money away, or try for $1b.

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