
Secret Fears of the Super-Rich - gammarator
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/secret-fears-of-the-super-rich/8419/
======
Eliezer
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.

~~~
danenania
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.

~~~
Eliezer
Well, it sounds like you know the problem (you haven't found a community you
like yet) and have ideas about how to solve it (finding a good creative
writing group; I would also try science fiction conventions, hacker dojos, a
Unitarian church and your local Less Wrong meetup). I can't think of much else
to say - if you know where your problems are coming from, you know how to
solve them better than I do.

~~~
danenania
Thank you, it's encouraging to get the sense I'm on the right track. Those all
sound like good ideas. I think living near a hacker space would be ideal as a
way to work independently but still be part of something. Some of my relatives
are Unitarians and I've always admired the philosophy--it's like religion
distilled down to the good parts. I haven't heard of Less Wrong but I'll check
it out.

I'm going to move soon, most likely to SF or Oakland, where I don't have any
real friends or contacts to speak of. I'm very excited at having the chance to
fully restructure my life, but the wimpy worrier in me is worried that being
alone will cause me to freeze up. Ah well, suppose all I can do is try :)

------
DavidMcLaughlin
"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."

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction>

~~~
crasshopper
I can't stand this platitude that there are no atheists in foxholes. I have
been inches from death and never questioned my atheist beliefs.

~~~
DavidMcLaughlin
What an interesting thing to take away from the quote, maybe I assume too much
because I've read the whole speech but certainly I did not think he meant to
say what you are implying.

What I took from it personally is that people tend to find meaning in life
from something - a deity, a job, money, fame, looks, their own business - and
that it doesn't really which of those you choose you're essentially taking a
leap of faith that it will deliver happiness.

~~~
crasshopper
David,

I find DFW's perspective interesting but overly didactic.

The above was not meant as a takeaway or summary of what he wrote.

------
ChuckMcM
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)

~~~
westbywest
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.'"

~~~
michaelochurch
That is an awesome quote. The viral r-factor here is at least 1.

~~~
pixelbath
What does that term mean?

~~~
pixelbath
So the "r" stands for what, repeatability? Where did this jargon originate
(and more importantly, why do web searches only turn up insulation values)?

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
reproduction:

It is a math model for infectious disease
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infectious_disease)

------
Tycho
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.

~~~
DevX101
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.

All around, great documentary. Go see it.

~~~
kenjackson
Just checked, it's on Netflix Instant Play. Just added it to my queue. Thanks
for the recommendation.

~~~
flyt
for the lazy: <http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Born_Rich/70008257>

------
athom
I like this part:

 _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
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.

------
ezy
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.
:-)

~~~
gallamine
"Honestly, I would be quite fine with a shitload of money and a meandering
purpose in life"

I think part of the point of the article was to say, "no, you probably
wouldn't."

~~~
ezy
And my point is that I understood what the article is saying on the surface,
but there's a definite subtext here aimed at those who are not as fortunate
enough to be able to (easily) discard one ill-fitting "purpose"(vocation) for
another that fits better.

Or in essence, I don't believe what the article is implying, and it has
nothing substantial within it to make me believe it.

~~~
arn
How about this take.

Happiness is relative, and your personal happiness likely settle down to the
same place. So if you get a huge windfall (millions of dollars), you will be
happier for a short term, but ultimately, your happiness will fall back to
your normal levels. At that point you have different concerns, but you still
have concerns.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
"At that point you have different concerns, but you still have concerns."

Concerns differ in terms of criticality. "I lack motivation because I don't
NEED to work" is a very different concern from "I work 60 hours a week and
still can barely put food on the table". The former may seem like a major
concern when it's happening to you, but from a non-relative perspective, it's
still much less serious than the latter.

------
grellas
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.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
"But the perils of being rich are legion,"

Your perils are legion when you're suddenly the target of a squad of ninjas,
or surrounded by a hostile armed gang. There being a social stigma attached to
being rich or there being higher expectations on you because you're rich are
miles away from a legion of perils. "My friends look at me differently" or "I
tend to take the easy road whens stuff gets hard" are drastically less severe
of problems than "I can't afford my kid's medical bills" or "I'm having a hard
time providing for my family while saving for retirement". Yeah, their lives
have problems, but that inevitable - if our lives didn't have some risks or
tradeoffs, we'd go insane from boredom. But their tradeoffs and risks are very
far removed from their physiological and safety needs.

~~~
billybob
I think you're taking the situation too lightly. Is the threat of death worse
than wanting to be dead, for instance?

If something makes you intensely unhappy, you would resent somebody else
saying "bah, that's not a problem."

------
arn
Relevant discussion/quote from pg from previous thread on "fu money":

<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
_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".

~~~
nostrademons
It's not the same, though: with summers, spring break, and even college, you
know that you're time-limited, and have to scope your projects appropriately.
With creative work, you have as much time as you're willing to pay the
opportunity cost for.

------
Inc82
A quote attributed to Rudyard Kipling that's been floating around the
internet:

"Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you
will know how poor you are."

------
io
"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."

~~~
michaelochurch
s/money/power

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.

~~~
christonog
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power."

-Abraham Lincoln

------
sethg
_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.)

------
TheBaron
Great Read!

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
Has there been any research into why knowing this information in no way
reduces my desire to be super-rich?

~~~
tedunangst
It's going to be different for me.

------
RyanMcGreal
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.

~~~
michaelochurch
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.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
Has anyone ever studied wealth distribution to see if it's fractal based? It
would be interesting if human interaction followed the same design principals
as natural formations.

~~~
yummyfajitas
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Application...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Applications)

~~~
mmcconnell1618
[http://books.google.com/books?id=onNuF70-xRIC&pg=PR9&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=onNuF70-xRIC&pg=PR9&dq=pareto+fractal+wealth+distribution&hl=en&ei=dquLTZyxDMuD0QH9k42HDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=pareto%20fractal%20wealth%20distribution&f=false)

"Pareto found that the distribution of income was well approximated by a log-
normal distribution, except for approximately the upper 3 percent of wealthy
individuals."

~~~
crasshopper
The Pareto distribution goes as a power law -- the same distribution as self-
organizing processes.

~~~
crasshopper
Moreover you can generate a realistic wealth distribution via random auctions.

(Hopefully you are becoming inspired to do some agent-based computational
economic modelling! It's fun.)

------
spinboldok5567
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'.

~~~
sskates
Really? I think having a hunger for knowledge is great. Knowing I'll never be
satisfied ensures I'm not going to drift aimlessly.

------
methodin
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.

------
futuremint
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.

------
crasshopper
Is this really "the first time" the super rich have spoken candidly about
their lives? The film Born Rich is a counterexample.

Actually, the article contradicts itself: the byline says "the first time" and
paragraph 2 says the studies have gone on since 1970.

------
larrik
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)

~~~
gersh
How did Mike Tyson do it? He reportedly blew $300 million.

~~~
gamble
Bad advisors, bad friends, and bad investments.

If you've really got a fortune to squander, that's the way to do it.

~~~
elechi
That was only half of his problems. Divorce, a decent chunk of change. Battery
assault? Rape? Decent chunk of change. People literally stealing money from
you.

Tyson's problems had nothing to do with money. Money just made his problems
more expensive.

------
ianhawes
Also consider watching "The One Percent". It's about wealth and the expanding
class differences. It's available to watch instantly on Netflix.

------
6ren
> The fact that most people imagine it would be paradise to never have to work
> does not make the experience any more pleasant in practice.

The financially independent often choose to work anyway - so why not just
choose work you enjoy (or rather, find worthwhile/meaningful) in the first
place?

------
anagnorisis
The issue is a non-issue, but still legitimate and interesting.

Stress, poor decisions, emotional tumult, and being flung into life itself are
inexorable, and as unavoidable as breathing when you have a pulse.

Money is tangible, and as far as tangible things go..May well be at the top of
the food chain.

In day to day life, and superficial observation of others, the tangible is our
primary prism of experience and thought. It's not that this issue isn't
"real".

The mind is so complex and our emotions so strong, we're (benignly) selfish
and self-consumed to the point that day to day living and observation is done
through the "tangible", as our primary prism of experience and thought.

Money/wealth takes on significance. It simply is significant. And always will
he for those with and without.

But if we admit the ubiquitous behavioral pattern of our selves (as applicable
to money as seeing an ultra good looking person walk down the street; or
someone walk around with a 145 scored IQ test on their shirt..), we aren't
dealing with wealth and money, per say.

A deeper but likely impossible study would be having the recording of therapy
sessions with these people; and then juxtaposed with therapy sessions of non-
SuperRich.

Dollars to donuts that those who are 'happy' and Super Rich bear striking
resemblance, and actual distinct cross overs, to those 'happy' and not Super
Rich. The converse being true for those 'unhappy' and all in between.

Perhaps there is a tipping pt in both poor/rich directions, at certain extreme
ends; but in these instances, what are we dealing with, aside from the perks
or poisons of 'luck' in a distilled form, that is life's ace up the sleeve and
trump card.

And when it's just as possible to meet your wife while getting a latte, or
choke on the biscotti you get with it...luck shouldn't be taken for granted,
either.

Cliff Notes: when I am Super-Rich and still neurotic, i will simply blame
myself, and move on in finding a year or two respite while penning an epic
book and psycho-behavorial study on the rich and poor, vis a vis therapy
sessions.

------
adovenmuehle
The takeaway I have from this is that people are people, no matter their
status: not sure if what they're doing is what they should be, insecure about
other's love for them, never satisfied.

It reminds me that we're all people, all human.

Also reminds me of a bible verse (Ecclesiastes 9:10): "Whatever your hand
finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going,
there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

Whether rich or poor, happy or not, we all die.

~~~
georgieporgie
_we all die._

That will probably be changing soon.

~~~
michaelochurch
Singularity is not going to eradicate death. Aging, yes. That will probably be
gone by the mid-22nd century, if not before. Death of the whole brain will
always mean what it does today: the end of one's earthly existence. Mind
uploading assumes there can be physical control over qualia, and there's
absolutely no evidence for that.

In the middle 3rd millennium, aging will be gone and death will be rare (very
rare, and exponentially declining so as to make humans post-mortal) but
extremely traumatic when it happens. "Breaking News: 134-year-old honors
student dies in lunar train crash." 4th-millennium humans will probably store
their brains in _very_ safe repositories and control robotic, replaceable
bodies through electronic telepathy. Some people alive will probably live to
see this, and if I take my next rebirth here, I probably will as well. But I
kinda hope not to "make the cut". A hundred years in good health I'd love, but
I don't really want to wait around till the heat death of the universe to pass
on.

~~~
orangecat
_Mind uploading assumes there can be physical control over qualia, and there's
absolutely no evidence for that._

Well, the alternative is magic.

~~~
michaelochurch
My religious viewpoint, as a deist who believes existence in a higher power to
be the most rational belief but denies the existence of "miracles", divine
interventionism, prophecy or revealed religion: qualia _is_ a miracle,
probably the only one in this world, and the only one we need.

------
unohoo
'A vast body of psychological evidence shows that the pleasures of consumption
wear off through time and depend heavily on one’s frame of reference.'

I loved this single,succinct line.

------
astrofinch
"He also reports that he wouldn’t feel financially secure until he had $1
billion in the bank." ... "Such complaints sound, on their face,
preposterous."

It may be preposterous for most anyone to feel financially insecure, given
that it's possible to survive through couchsurfing and dumpster diving and
what a high _historical_ standard of living this would provide.

The super-rich aren't the only ones who keep seeing their standards go up.

~~~
sskates
Agreed. Coincidentally this high historical standard of living is why it's
possible for so many people to start companies on their own without needing
access to large amounts of capital.

Although it might not seem like it compared to our super-rich peers, we are
rolling in wealth.

------
amitagrawal
A little off-topic but can anyone tell me why this story never took off when I
submitted it 16 days ago?

(I've read the FAQ). Moderators please feel free to delete it if this is the
wrong place.

~~~
sundars
what time of the day did you submit it?

~~~
amitagrawal
In the early morning

------
rythie
Humans are natural born problem solvers and we can't deal with not having any
problems to solve.

It seems to make sense for people to continue working after getting rich,
presumbably in a position of responsibilty, to give us a regular set of fresh
chalenges. e.g. Steve Jobs doesn't quit even though he is extremely rich and
also ill, he feels a responsibility to that position.

------
nl
Worth noting that many Silicon Valley nouveau-rich seem to derive great
satisfaction from their activities as angel investors.

It seems to me this is similar to those in the article who "satisfactions of
philanthropy", with the added bonus of having people who listen to your
advice.

------
paul
For the most part, money doesn't create problems, but it can certainly enable
and magnify them.

------
crasshopper
^ Best argument for progressive taxation.

~~~
anagnorisis
Even better argument for communism, no?

~~~
crasshopper
Not at all what I meant. I'm proud to live in a capitalist society with a
safety net. You can take a chance on a business knowing that you have limited
liability and food stamps awaiting you at the "bottom" rather than something
much worse.

I merely meant to imply that large amounts of wealth make a small
(negligible?) improvement to the top .001%, and that much smaller amounts
(like food stamps) can mean the difference between life and death to the poor.
The productivity gains (due to dampening entrepreneurs' risk aversion) caused
by refactoring wealth from the top to the bottom are another pro-transfer
argument I meant to reference.

Communism does not create wealth as well.

------
joelrunyon
the irony here is a lot of people will read this...nod their head...and then
get busy trying to get rich :)

------
michaelochurch
What I learned when I read this was that most rich people's lives are defined
(just like most others' lives) by money, which is a depressing thought. A
starving person's life will be defined by food-- organized around getting
access to it, with constant intrusive thoughts about it-- but for most of us,
it's not. We only think about food when we're hungry, we eat, and then we
think about something else.

Most people who want to be rich want escape from money's grip, and it seems
like that rarely happens. Either that, or freedom from money is not a
monotonically increasing function of one's allotment and these people have
overshot some sort of "sweet spot" at the level of the middling wealthy.

The grand takeaway was that living in a society ruled by money sucks even for
those who have a lot of it. I wish the world were more like college in the
sense that, when I was in college, I had no idea whether what my friends'
grades were, and people weren't stratified into socially insular tiers based
on GPA. The difference between a 3.9 and a 3.2 wasn't socially divisive in the
way that the difference between $20 million and $7.50 net worth is.

~~~
lutorm
I wonder if there's a selection effect at work here, in that the majority of
people who end up being very rich _are_ those whose lives are defined by
money. After all, why would you work your ass off to make more money than
possibly can have a meaningful influence on your life unless you were driven
by the idea of money alone?

~~~
noahc
It depends on the person here.

1\. Imagine a dude who just wanted to build something cool. Craig Newmark, of
Craig's List fame, for example would fall under this category. He's got enough
money to retire, yet he still works customer service, because that's what he
enjoys.

2\. Now imagine, someone who just wants more, more, more, more. It appears
Donald Trump might fall into this category. I don't know for sure, but he
seems to be purely driven by money and power.

You can become wealthy 'organically' in the sense that you didn't set out to
be wealthy. You can so get wealthy from the expressed intent to get wealthy.

~~~
hnal943
True, but I don't see Craig Newmark getting angsty because of his wealth.

------
sabat
_Enormous wealth takes care of so many day-to-day concerns, that the remaining
ones grow that much more frustrating._

It's hard for me to be sympathetic about this. They forget that the non-super-
rich have all their same frustrations, plus the day-to-day "concerns" (read:
money worries).

------
maeon3
The main difference between the stresses of the super-rich and the stresses of
the super-poor is that the rich have problems that they choose to have, and
the super-poor have problems that are forced on them.

The rich people could eliminate 100% of their stresses if they simply chose to
change their lifestyle.

The super-poor can't really eliminate their stress by a simple change up their
lifestyle, if the mortgage isn't getting paid, the car broke down and you need
medical procedure you can't afford and have no options, then these stresses
are WORSE stresses than the rich have.

The rich may have it worse, but it's their own darn fault for making it worse.

~~~
eru
The real poor would love to worry about mortgages and cars.

------
VladRussian
link bait. "Super-rich" in the title when it was only 25M threshold for the
article. 25M is hardly getting one into "rich" category. At 4% draw it is
1M/year, just 5-10 times a salaried employee level and even less than that if
a family of 2 earners is considered.

~~~
keiferski
The average person in the united states makes 2-3 million over the course of
_their entire life._

~~~
VladRussian
yes, in 2004 the income was median - 44K/year, mean - 60K/year, which is only
25-16 times less than 1M/year (25M equivalent at 4% draw). 20 times more than
average isn't "super-rich", it is even hardly just "rich"

------
cookiecaper
"Why should we labor this unpleasant point? Because the Book of Mormon labors
it, for our special benefit. Wealth is a jealous master who will not be served
halfheartedly and will suffer no rival--not even God: "Ye cannot serve God and
Mammon." (Matthew 6:24) In return for unquestioning obedience wealth promises
security, power, position, and honors, in fact anything in this world. Above
all, the Nephites like the Romans saw in it a mark of superiority and would do
anything to get hold of it, for to them "money answereth all things."
(Ecclesiastes 10:19) "Ye do always remember your riches," cried Samuel the
Lamanite, ". . .unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions,
and murders, and all manner of iniquities." (Helaman 13:22) Along with this,
of course, everyone dresses in the height of fashion, the main point being
always that the proper clothes are expensive--the expression "costly apparel"
occurs 14 times in the Book of Mormon. The more important wealth is, the less
important it is how one gets it." - Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley

“The worst fear I have about this people is that they will get rich in this
country, forget God and His people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the
Church and go to hell. This people will stand mobbing, robbing, poverty, and
all manner of persecution and be true. But my greatest fear is that they
cannot stand wealth” - Brigham Young

"Men of wealth among us, as elsewhere, who command their tens and hundreds of
thousands, who have their every want supplied, have more anxiety, care and
perplexity than many of you, who have to struggle for a comfortable living.
And if you were placed in their position you would be a great deal more uneasy
than you are now." - John Taylor.

Money is much more dangerous and troublesome than most people realize. These
three quotes testify to that, as well as most of the production generated by
rich people. Wealth destroys _many_ who finally get it.

