HN must be the only place on the web where billionaires are propped up. 98% of you, are already in the SQL result set, of the next layoffs at your big five...
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Uninformed HNers grouse endlessly about the wealthy and megacorps in without understanding their actual psychology, motivations, and sources of power/income. Then they are left wondering time after time why all their campaigning and efforts against them comes to naught.
There’s nothing to understand. Power begets power and self interests are pursued to the detriment of others partly because individuals have limited understanding of the full system and partly because of plain selfishness. You can debate how big each part is, but there’s a systemic issue here.
Oh you should see the Musk-adjacent subreddits. Not to mention MAGA. Billionaires are still worshipped on the “wealth == success” basis by many, many people.
You either jumped to express your opinion without reading previous comments, or you are not being honest, cause it's not about "all billionaires good" claim
"If it's worth your time to say something false, it's worth my time to correct it". I don't take a stance on who is right, but your dismissal here, which doesn't deal with the truth of the matter, is worse than both.
Talk about living a sheltered life style. I did too until doing my obligatory military service. Now I don't even correct a quarter of wrong things I hear.
There's literally nothing in my previous commentary which "props up" anyone. The layoffs mention suggests that as someone who may lose job I must support anything said against billionaires whether correct or not. I sincerely urge you to re-visit your position cause putting political statements above facts amounts to dumbing down oneself, with a potential to become an enthusiastic koolaid drinker if you see what I mean.
If your not tugging the line of no-nuance criticism, then you are agreeing with the bad people.
Big difference between propping up and trying to correct an extremely naive and childish view someone has about rich people.
Your opinion is not an argument, every scientific study proving you are wrong demonstrates the truth:
Maybe UC Berkeley is good enough for you?
"Upper Class More Likely to Be Scofflaws Due to Greed, Study Finds" - https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/upper-class-more-likely...
"Does money make you mean?" - https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk?t=311
"Wealth and the inflated self: class, entitlement, and narcissism" - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23963971/
"Multiple studies show that drivers of expensive, luxury cars are significantly less likely to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks and more prone to committing traffic violations compared to drivers of budget-friendly vehicles" - https://www.ralphaschwartzpc.com/blog/study-luxury-car-drive...
"Polish millionaire apologizes after snatching signed hat from child at US Open" - https://abc7ny.com/post/video-goes-viral-polish-millionaire-...
Who is naive here?
I suppose, the most naive is the one who believes we can't read comments above, and see where it started, and who's trying to pivot.
Btw, I opened the very first "scientific proof" you offered, and it happens to be a story with no links or data about one cool student's deep studies where people who believe stealing isn't so bad steal more often, and that's why upper class is bad-bad. So how do I know you didn't even try to read it before posting?
"...In seven separate studies conducted on the UC Berkeley campus, in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide, UC Berkeley researchers consistently found that upper-class participants were more likely to lie and cheat when gambling or negotiating; cut people off when driving, and endorse unethical behavior in the workplace.
“The increased unethical tendencies of upper-class individuals are driven, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed,” said Paul Piff, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper published today (Monday, Feb. 27) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences..."
Wow! So I correctly described it? It's a student's work, there's no data attached, and the whole matter is about "greed to be the most significant predictor of unethical behavior" just expressed in class war terms.
Keep ignoring ALL other studies and the credibility of a good one. You know, gas lighting reality, is not a pleasant way to go trough life...
"The rich are different: Unravelling the perceived and self-reported personality profiles of high-net-worth individuals" - https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop....
"Tax Evasion and Inequality"- https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.20172043
"...Drawing on a unique dataset of leaked customer lists from offshore financial institutions matched to administrative wealth records in Scandinavia, we show that offshore tax evasion is highly concentrated among the rich. The skewed distribution of offshore wealth implies high rates of tax evasion at the top: we find that the 0.01 percent richest households evade about 25 percent of their taxes. By contrast, tax evasion detected in stratified random tax audits is less than 5 percent throughout the distribution..."
"The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01099-3
The point I was responding to was claiming rich people lose their ability to self-regulate. You are posting about them being mean, more narcissistic and more greedy.
>> posting about them being mean, more narcissistic and more greedy.
Traits they exhibit plenty more, than the general population: "The “Why” and “How” of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit" - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6970445/
https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk?t=310
https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk?t=371
Bankman-Fried — FTX -> misuse of billions in customer money for investments, influence, political contributions and personal interests despite enormous wealth.
Bill Hwang — Archegos -> extreme risk-taking, market manipulation and deception that ultimately imposed billions in losses on banks.
Alex Mashinsky — Celsius -> personal profit from token sales while customers were misled and ultimately left unable to access billions in assets.
Bernie Madoff -> massive Ponzi fraud sustained for years despite already having wealth, status and an elite financial reputation.
R. Allen Stanford — Stanford Financial -> diverted billions from investors to finance his businesses and lifestyle despite extraordinary existing wealth.
Leona Helmsley — Helmsley Hotels -> billionaire convicted of tax evasion and fraud involving personal luxury expenses. The sentencing judge explicitly described the conduct as motivated by "naked greed" and an arrogant belief that she was above the law.
Elizabeth Holmes — Theranos -> maintained sweeping false claims to investors while building a company valued in the billions, resulting in hundreds of millions invested on false premises.
Trevor Milton — Nikola -> repeatedly exaggerated his company's technology and achievements to stimulate investor demand and support its stock price.
Karl Sebastian Greenwood — OneCoin -> helped sell a fictitious cryptocurrency to millions of victims who invested more than $4 billion while he personally received hundreds of millions.
Miles Guo — GTV / investment schemes -> former billionaire convicted of using lies and misrepresentations to extract more than $1 billion from followers
Do Kwon — Terraform Labs -> deception surrounding a huge crypto ecosystem that culminated in roughly $40 billion in losses
Joseph Lewis — Tavistock Group -> billionaire who admitted abusing confidential corporate information by tipping friends, employees and romantic partners, while his company separately admitted securities fraud involving concealed share ownership.
Elon Musk — X -> Changed the platform algorithm after Biden posts outperformed his, massively increasing exposure of Musk own posts.
Jeff Bezos — Venice -> turned his 2025 wedding into a three-day billionaire spectacle that prompted protests over the privatization and commodification of the city.
Mark Zuckerberg — Meta -> commissioned and publicly displayed a giant Roman-style statue of his wife while simultaneously building one of America most extraordinary private compounds.
Bryan Johnson — Blueprint -> turned his own body into a multimillion dollar anti-aging project, including receiving plasma from his teenage son in an unsuccessful rejuvenation experiment.
Larry Ellison — Oracle -> built a personal real-estate empire including ownership of 99% of a Hawaiian island
Then you have the Narcissistic in Chief: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
There are 3,428 billionaires, 28,000+ $100-millionaires, 2,300,000 $10-millionaires on Earth and you've only managed to list about a dozen people. Not very persuasive.
Your objection seems to be that his list of examples was, in fact, a list of examples. :-)
It seems you misunderstood my comment. I'm not arguing against them being more narcissistic or greedy compared to the baseline population. I'm saying that was not the original point I was objecting to. I'm not sure what your list of examples is meant to accomplish.
the irony of you getting your panties in a bunch over being disagreed with is simply delightful. not so different than those pesky billionaires, are you?