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version

Well-known member
It's difficult to wrap your head around. Like that thing about there being more possible games of Go than there are atoms in the universe. You just go "what?"
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the interesting things about capitalism at this level is how it's totally lost any connection to its Darwinian side. There's no survival of the fittest in the marketplace anymore. Instead you get businesses like Amazon and uber haemoreging money until the competition is wiped out and they have a monopoly.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
With Americans (and, noticeably, among a new generation of Indians) the tech billionaire is culture hero. We talked about this a bit with Jobs in the disruption thread. The world-shapers, the dreamers of dreams. The world-spirit made flesh.

"The business of America is business" President of the United States of America Calvin Coolidge, January 1925
 

version

Well-known member
Billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel denies being a vampire

Peter Thiel, 200 year old extropian vampire, spoke today from his orbital space fortress ...

In defense of Peter Thiel's vampirism

Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested in Young People's Blood

‘I’m not a vampire,’ says billionaire Peter Thiel after years of young blood injection rumors
 

luka

Well-known member
Zuckerberg has been a pretty boring one so far he just looks like a shoddy android
 

version

Well-known member
They're almost like Marvel characters at this point. You get a fair few people with their own particular billionaire boogeyman or hero, be it Trump, Soros, Zuck, the Kochs, Elon Musk or whoever else.
 

version

Well-known member
Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark don't have any superpowers, they're just very capable billionaires.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't get Zuckerberg either, I get the impression that he leads exactly the same life he would lead if he was earning thirty five k selling insurance and simply leaves hi his tens of billions in the bank untouched. Must be a trick, I bet he's doing something extremely weird and illegal that no-one else has even thought of in his spare time and fooling us by being so normal. If I was in his position I would employ people to think of new perversions for me to try out and if it's occurred to me he must have thought of it too.
 

Leo

Well-known member
When I was little that was what people used to say but now we've caved to the US and it's a mere thousand million. In fairness there seems to be no logic to the naming system, if a hundred is ten to the second power and a thousand is the third, then why is the next power with a name the sixth? And then the ninth?
But a billionaire has a thousand million pounds which is an obscene amount. And Bezos has a hundred billion which means he's a tenth of the way to an old English billion.

guess the name changes whenever another comma is added to the numerals: hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, etc.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I don't get Zuckerberg either, I get the impression that he leads exactly the same life he would lead if he was earning thirty five k selling insurance and simply leaves hi his tens of billions in the bank untouched. Must be a trick, I bet he's doing something extremely weird and illegal that no-one else has even thought of in his spare time and fooling us by being so normal. If I was in his position I would employ people to think of new perversions for me to try out and if it's occurred to me he must have thought of it too.

I mean, he's an introverted computer programmer, essentially. It's a crass cliche of course but he surely must be "on the spectrum".

He lives on a 700 acre estate in Hawaii (or at least one of his houses is there) so he's obviously not living a "normal" lifestyle.

Sexually he seems pretty boring (if that's the word) - married to his college girlfriend with a daughter.

There's some pretty good threads on Ask Reddit about people's encounters with the superrich...

e.g.


"A while back some guy on here was talking about his experience working as a sort of personnel manager for a billionaire and how things are just wildly different for them.

The specific example he used was how things work when these people want to go on a trip, and give any notice at all to their employees.

What happens is that an advanced team gets sent ahead by a few days to scope out the rented/bought location and report back exact dimensions for closet space, drawer space, etc. People back at the home go through the clothing, jewelry, etc, and draw up a priority list which is sent to the advanced team. The advanced team then spends the next two days purchasing the list of items. Entire wardrobes, jewelry sets, makeup kits, bathing supplies, etc. Anything they cannot get (not enough time, or is one-of-a-kind like the family heirloom watch the rich dude wears every now and then) is relayed to the house-team. The family's schedule is arranged such that the moment the family leaves the house on the day of travel, a whole team of people rushes through and packs up all the remaining items (only after the family leaves, you wouldn't want to deny them access to their items for even a few seconds) which are then sent ahead to the airport while the family has a lunch or something somewhere. Upon landing, their luggage takes one route (direct) and the family takes a similarly indirect route (unless otherwise directed) such that by the time they get to the location all of their items are not just unpacked but in their proper organized locations and ready for use without any of the advanced team ever being visible to the family.

What happens when the family leaves the location? The same situation in reverse, but quite frequently all of the repurchased items are just disposed of in some method. It's just easier, if not cheaper, to rebuy them each time the family goes somewhere if they aren't travelling to too many different locations in quick succession."
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
They're almost like Marvel characters at this point. You get a fair few people with their own particular billionaire boogeyman or hero, be it Trump, Soros, Zuck, the Kochs, Elon Musk or whoever else.

Epstein was a sort of supervillain. (Although I don't think he was a billionaire, he "only" had hundreds of billions)

You can imagine an X rated James Bond movie where Daniel Craig parachutes in to massacre Epstein's private army.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/broken-jeffrey-epstein/id1478460758?ign-mpt=uo=4
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I noticed a headline the other day saying there are more Chinese millionaires now than American millionaires.

Makes me wonder if the West's attitude to billionaires will change when it isn't "our" people making most of the billions anymore (in the public perception).
 
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