[kbenson]

I've always wondered about this. How much inventive is that? When the person thinks "if I work really hard and this, I'll increase my huge pool of money from an amount I can't easily spend given the rest of my life to an amount almost six times as much!", does that really resonate?

It's not like it's the same as $700 to $4,000, or even from $7,000,000 to $40,000,000. There are things you can buy to spend most of those amounts, but those are things it's not really worth buying multiple of (e.g. houses, super yachts), so at the point you have close to a billion dollars, what does another billion buy you, besides bragging rights?

I imagine there's some impetus to stick around because you want to see what you built succeed, but at some point I imagine you realize it's not really yours anymore, so why not leave and do what you want, instead of what other people want you to do? I mean, you literally have "fuck you" money.

[_audakel]

"PERSPECTIVE. The wealthiest person I have spent time with makes about $400mm/year. i couldn't get my mind around that until I did this: OK--let's compare it with someone who makes $40,000/year. It is 10,000x more. Now let's look at prices the way he might. A new Lambo--$235,000 becaome $23.50. First class ticket internationally? $10,000 becomes $1. A full time executive level helper? $8,000/month becomes $0.80/month. A $10mm piece of art you love? $1000. Expensive, so you have to plan a bit. A suite at the best hotel in NYC $10,000/night is $1/night. A $50million home in the Hamptons? $5,000. There is literally nothing you can't buy except."

[hbosch]

> what does another billion buy you, besides bragging rights?

The only real way to look at wealth is through the lens of power and influence. In day-to-day life, is $250 million that much different than $1 billion? Probably not. But when it comes to power and influence, $1 billion (or more) is an incredibly better place to be.

Once you get into this kind of wealth, you can attack global problems. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is probably the crown jewel, publicly, of the kind of power this sort of multi-billion USD wealth can accomplish. We will see in the next few decades what the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative can do for education, or what the Bezos Day One Fund can do for homelessness and poverty. Of course having huge endowments doesn't necessarily mean you will be successful in your mission, and plenty of these sorts of foundations are just set up to preserve wealth and establish political bastions of influence.

Imagine also the effect that comments from other prominent billionaires have on politics in general, or the economy. Warren Buffet can swing intraday trading to the tune of billions of dollars just by commenting on individual stocks or sectors. Mere millionaires don't have this kind of influence.

So sure... you make anywhere north of, what, $100 million? and you can retire comfortably. Maybe a couple hundred million more and you can have a trust that might stay solvent for a couple generations. But a billion dollars? Two billion dollars? You can now build your own rocket and send yourself to space, build towers and monuments, influence entire nations... With a billion dollars you have exclusive access to the only worldly things that are so luxurious that they cannot even be expressed in monetary value. The differences are staggering at that scale.

[ktta]

> We will see in the next few decades what the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative can do for education, or what the Bezos Day One Fund can do for homelessness and poverty.

Note that while I don't doubt that Zuckerberg will give away a big part of his wealth, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative is an LLC and not a 501(c)(3) like a 'proper' foundation should be.

Another thing to note is that it has been investing in startups, and not really giving away money, although the startups themselves seem to be for good purposes. So it might be a way for that money to make more, while putting it in noble causes?

Or it just was made that way because he would still retain control over the shares even though he 'gave' it to the initiative.

[JacobDotVI]

I'm not sure about the psychology of incentives angle, but this old post from reddit shows the monumental difference in wealth between $700M and $4B:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_i...

[beenBoutIT]

Reddit's unfriendly block-everything popup reminder for National Voter Registration Day got me wondering, does anyone know how effective these types of popups are? The less-obtrusive popups that allow you to still see whatever you came to the site for seem better IMO, but I'm curious if they're less effective.

[konschubert]

The sibling comment cites from this post.

[eldavido]

I'm not that rich. That said, two thoughts.

First, money at at level isn't earned to spend -- you're right about this. It's more a way of signaling status. Someone getting paid $30 million is less important than someone getting paid $40 million at the same company. This comes up a lot in athletics, too. It establishes your location in the pecking order, which is important in any hierarchical organization. You have to know who's boss.

Second, I think money can be a basis for talent competition. If one company offers $5mil/year and another offers $10mil, you'll probably take the $10 over the $5. Not that it will actually make a difference in your life, but just because it's 2x as much. Perhaps not everyone would make that choice and I think at those levels of wealth, it becomes quite a personal, idiosyncratic decision. But it does get hard to turn down.

Just some thoughts from a guy who isn't that rich.

[dionidium]

> but those are things it's not really worth buying multiple of (e.g. houses, super yachts)

Don't think consumer goods. Think:

* own and run a professional sports team

* spearhead a transit project in your hometown

* build 100 libraries with your name on them

* influence politics for a generation

* fund the cure for the rare disease that killed your mother

If all you can think to do with a few billion extra dollars is buy more consumer goods, you're not using your imagination.

[kbenson]

Is that supposed to be the majority of people that make that much money though? I think that's a small minority of people that are billionaires or close to it. When talking about incentives, I don't think most of those are really a huge draw.

And for the philanthropic ones, are you really going to say, "well, I better not stop now, because a few hundred million might not be enough..."?

There are plenty of things that huge amounts of money can be spent on, but I think in most cases those aren't things most people are specifically interested in. At least not enough to ultimately sway their opinion about leaving early.

[kevincrane]

> spearhead a transit project in your hometown

> build 100 libraries with your name on them

> fund the cure for the rare disease that killed your mother

Tax them at 90% and the government can and should do that all for them.

[beenBoutIT]

I like Jimmy Kimmel's proposal to tax the richest person in America at 90%(something along those lines). This way everyone at the uppermost top gives away more money in the process of avoiding the number 1 spot.

[amadeuspagel]

Or, you know, they could not try to make money in the first place.

[southerndrift]

Space exploration, artificial intelligence, architecture, art - there are enough bottomless pits on which you can spend endless amounts of money. Money is not only about consumption but also about creation. If you are into creativity then you have to stay around until you have made enough money for your goals.

[lacker]

Much more of the incentive is the desire to make Instagram a cool, popular, successful thing. Even though they sold the company to Facebook, it still felt like their creation the vast majority of the time. They were proud of what they had built and they wanted to make it a really popular thing that people liked to use.

There are plenty of billion-dollar acquisitions that don't work out at all. Instagram grew far bigger than it had been when they were acquired, in both financial impact and impact on the world.