Suppose you're an average middle-class person who works for a tech company when the company is bought out for a huge amount of money and your stock is now worth $10 million. It's liquid today. You just received a check for $10 million. What do you do? #
Answer: You buy things to see if there was a reason to make the money, and it turns out there really wasn't. You would have been just as happy in the big house in the rich neighborhood or the smaller house in a more modest area. #
Then what if you reach another level, now you have a check in your hand for $100 million, then $1 billion, then $25 billion and keep going. It doesn't stop there. At each level you are compelled to find something fantastic that you can use that money for. Some power that the new level of wealth gets you. #
We saw in Succession, they played out the lunacy, the people use a lot of space, but they're still just people. If they loved someone or someone loved them, they'd be much happier than all the happiness all that money ever gave them. #
Having such large useless amounts of money is a not only a problem for the rich folk, we've found out, it's a problem for everyone else too, because eventually they get around to buying political power and they start using the money to change other people lives, always for the worse, it seems. #
We need a new game that only super rich people can play that doesn't hurt the rest of us. I'm not advising anyone to do anything. But I think this is what I've been writing about on my blog since the beginning. #
I didn't understand why, for example, Evan Williams didn't just make technology and give it away, after having made billions from Twitter. #
Why did Bill Gates have to accumulate so much money and threaten the independence of the open web, a miracle, to get it? Why not use your power to make miracles before you retire, start doing the good you were promising to do later, right now? What good, in hindsight, did the extra billions do for anyone, including Gates? When his power was at his peak, in the 90s, he could have done a much bigger thing for the world, give us a free new level of communication that would be available equally to everyone. #
Elon Musk, having done some incredible things in computers, finance, cars and space, had to invent new challenges that only his wealth can buy, and eventually came up with things that only the US Treasury could buy, and some things like relocating the human species on Mars, that no amount of money can buy (or so scientists say). He needs to receive an award of love and gratitude for not using his wealth to make everyone else totally miserable (including himself, it seems).#
PS: I haven't yet read Evan Osnos' new book about billionaires, but I want to. He's done some great reporting in the past. #
PPS: See also: Transcendental Money, or money that replenishes itself, ie money that transcends time. #
PPPPS: Ted Turner said "I bet you’re all wondering what it feels like to be a billionaire. It’s disappointing really. I’ve learned that great wealth isn’t nearly as good as average sex."#
Last update: Saturday June 21, 2025; 11:47 AM EDT.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)