
In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich - nickb
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/technology/05rich.html?ex=1343966400&en=37185230cd0560aa&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
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stuki
Seems to me, people are either of the kind that's happy as long as they have a
cold beer and someone to share it with, or the kind that will always be
sufficiently unhappy with what they have to bust their ass in pursuit of more.

I suspect Silicon Valley, like New York, is home to an over abundance of the
latter kind. While at the same time, those who can't understand continuing to
work like that despite having millions, are exactly those that would never
have bothered putting in the effort to get millions in the first place.

~~~
pg
It's not just a division between people who are happy with some amount of
money and people who always want more. There are also people who are
unsatisfied because they have a constant need to create things. I believe most
of the really driven people in Silicon Valley are of this type, actually.

~~~
augy
what about if you want to create good children? 60 hour startup work weeks
can't be good for that, can they?

~~~
nostrademons
You can't "create" good children. They'll resent it when you care more about
their life than they do.

I suspect people who work 60 hour workweeks have a tougher time _supporting_
their children (emotionally, not financially), but stay-at-home parents also
have trouble setting examples for their kids. It's all a tradeoff.

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zach
Well, there you go. If you wonder why a "normal" house in SV costs five times
more than in St. Louis or Dallas, this is a profile of the answer. For that
matter, I understand better why Athertonians live in $12M houses -- they'd be
$4M houses in other parts of the country, so curiously they're getting more
bang for the buck.

And it has a reciprocal effect. When a major component of life, one's house,
costs five times more, that depresses the wealth effect. When you're living
among the super-rich, same thing. If these folks were living in Buffalo, they
would be so acutely aware that they were exceptionally rich you wouldn't
expect them to have anything to strive for. So there's a lack of a sense of
privilege.

But it's also interesting to see the cavalier attitude toward wealth that it
engenders. To be the richest fellow in town and still strive for "just a
little bit more" requires a rare mindset. But yeah, stick a multi-millionaire
in a suburb of super-millionaires and golly, what's a couple million bucks?
Not much. I mean, it's not like you're going to quit your job or anything.

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ivankirigin
Do a back-of-the-envelope calculation for how much it would cost to do
something to an extreme: \- constant tour of the world \- ultimate gaming
setup \- beach bum in the tropics.

Then figure out how much you'd have to work to achieve it. In most cases, it
takes less than a full-time median wage 52 . 40 . 16, meaning I could do them
working far less than full-time.

"making it" is a state of mind. As is striving to reach an amorphous goal.
Happiness research is perhaps some of the most useless work in economics
because self reporting is so iffy.

If people don't feel rich, it has nothing to do with their absolute level of
material comfort. Almost everyone alive today is far more rich than all other
humans that have ever lived.

~~~
tipjoy
Most of us probably have those moments where we think of how great it would be
to live one of your 'extreme' examples, but we wouldn't really want to live
like that. Who wants to spend their lives just sitting around? In fact, most
people I know spend their free time creating things in one form or another,
and would do it 24/7 if given the opportunity.

Happiness is creating new things, and to the extent that money enables this,
it makes us happy.

------
vlad
Well, it's stories like these that make us pause and reflect that we are lucky
not to have such troubles.

------
ecuzzillo
I know a guy like that. His take on it is that it's a combination of social
pressure and families: families are often more expensive than any of
ivankirigin's doing things to extremes, and they get more expensive as you put
them in richer peer groups. I suspect that if you were single, being worth $10
million would sit with you just fine, even if you wanted to do extravagant
things.

(Not that that would make me choose to be single, though.)

~~~
augy
I need at least 10 million for my daughters sweet sixteen MTV birthday party.
If her party is not better than the other boys and girls parties than she
won't love me anymore : (

~~~
hello_moto
augy, I think your DNS mistakenly re-route you to news.ycombinator.com instead
of Slashdot.com

~~~
augy
I did not get re-routed and I wasn't being condescending. I just wanted to
show how extreme some families are with regards to money.

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rms
Well, that's slightly depressing... it's reflective of the fundamental
existential angst of humanity, we're just not made to be happy.

~~~
pg
Hardly. More that rich is relative. There's no absolute standard for wealth.
People compare themselves to their peers.

~~~
nreece
But, WE choose our peers. Then we compare and crib about it. We are fools
enslaved by time and space.

~~~
steve
Rich, for me, is changing the world.

If you gave me 10M tomorrow, I would still work my ass off to someday become
rich.

I would hate to be enslaved by my money because I'm supposed to be relaxing
just because I have a certain amount of it.

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bkrausz
I can definitely see that, having only been in California for 3 months being
an intern (i.e. having money in the bank for the first time in a while), it's
hard not to spend when everyone here has cool gadgets and such (though on the
scale of cell phones and monitors, not cars and houses...).

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RichM
So if living among people much more wealthy than oneself leads to so much
angst, why not try living among the lower classes? You ought to feel fantastic
then.

------
dood
An abject lesson in unchecked desire.

------
henning
And here I was, happy to have health insurance and enough to pay rent.

If only I were unhappy with millions of dollars.

------
weeblyrocks
This is exactly why you don't move out to Silicon Valley. Build your start-up,
get out, and enjoy your life. You might even have something left to give to
charity.

In Silicon Valley you'll blow your money on a huge house, a plastic wife, and
kids who want a BMW the moment they can drive. Oh, and don't forget the taxes.

