

Some startup inspiration: Homes of the world’s billionaires - edw519
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23676776/

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manvsmachine
Maybe it just me, but I never found the huge, marbleized, gold-plated mansions
to be particularly appealing. Across the street from where I live, there are
rows of multi-million dollar mansions that look like they were ripped right
out of Scarface, and I just wonder what the motivation is... Don't get me
wrong, I intend to have a nice living arrangement when it's all said and done,
but I feel like that amount of luxury would actually detract from the
livability.

~~~
pg
What people like about those places is the idea of living in them.

Unlike physical stuff, ideas can be arbitrarily expensive, so they comprise a
lot of what gets sold to the very rich. I suspect practically everyone who
owns a Picasso, for example, likes the idea of owning a Picasso more than they
like the actual painting.

~~~
Alex3917
Seth Godin wrote a whole book about this. (All Marketers are Liars, my
favorite SG book as it were.)

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noonespecial
The great thing about modern life is that the rich no longer live _different_
lives, they just waste a bunch of space they don't live in, glue diamonds to
everything, pay more for the same food, and then live pretty much the same as
everyone else.

Health care is about the only thing left that challenges this notion and I
expect we'll get that worked out in the next 50 years or so.

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brlewis
Don't fantasize about a mansion. Fantasize about an excited user.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=74030>

~~~
sanj
I know that wasn't intended to sound salacious, but it does!

~~~
brlewis
Only to you, sanj. :-)

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mynameishere
They are atrocious. If I had a billion dollars, I would build something like
this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein>

(Actually, that is practically the perfect example of atrocious living
quarters, but if you're going to do bombast, do it right.) If I had 10s of
millions, I would pick up one of these, which are sometimes surprisingly
cheap:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau>

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trekker7
If material goods are any motivation, I personally think this is far better to
visualize:

<http://www.yafanet.com/pics_news/2007-11/ferrari599_4.jpg>

:-)

~~~
pg
<http://www.eclipseaviation.com>

~~~
trekker7
killing me man... my profit targets just got pushed up from $300,000 to
$3,000,000! :-) The Moller Skycar (www.moller.com) is also an exciting
project, although I don't know when it will hit mass market.

~~~
papersmith
The Skycar is an awesome concept. I have been keeping track of it for a few
years now. They are already mass producing the m200 flying saucer that only
carries one person to fund the development of the Skycar.

~~~
hugh
Moller Aerospace is based here in Davis, and I don't see any signs of them
mass-producing anything.

As far as I know, he has a single prototype which may or may not hover when
attached by a wire to a crane. There was a press release about six months ago
which said they were entering production, but as far as I know it hasn't
happened.

~~~
asdflkj
He was sued by the SEC in 2003 for making false claims about his product
(among other things). Considering he has been working on it for 40 years, it's
probably all a scheme to relieve investors of their money.

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gibsonf1
There is definitely not a good correlation between high wealth and high taste
(especially given the picture of the first house). But I would love to be
proved wrong by some increasingly wealthy Ycers here :)

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moog
No mention of this guy?
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6712605.stm>

~~~
Hexstream
That doesn't inspire me at all.

~~~
Shooter
Buffett inspires me...the rest turn my stomach.

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mhb
How about Dilbert's Ultimate House?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=141389>

