There are countless stories of well-known and incredibly wealthy software CEOs such as Bill Gates and Larry Ellison crushing their competition, sometimes in ways that went beyond what was necessary to merely succeed. Outside of software, you only need to look at the financial sector to see rich people who got to their present position at the expense of others.

I don't think my comment was small-minded at all!

There are also countless stories of rich people who are very nice and got where they are through hard work and creating a lot of value for their customers, investors, and employees. But you didn't choose to focus on them. Why not?

"There are also countless stories of rich people who are very nice..."

Enterprise is great--I'm a capitalist, too--but who are you kidding? If all it took to get rich and create value was niceness, I'm pretty sure Hacker News would be largely unnecessary.

Seriously? You're going to make the leap from me saying that there are lots of rich people who are nice and create value to accusing me of saying that niceness is all that's required to get rich and create value? You really can't see the vast gulf between the two statements?

I take issue with your original statement because I think it's bullshit based on nothing. The laziest thing to do is just assume that all rich people got that way by screwing someone over. There are bad people at all levels of society, and I have no data to lead me to believe it's any more prevalent at higher levels of wealth. I doubt you have any data either. Feel free to post it if you do, but otherwise, this just seems like another empty, jealous rant against the rich.

I totally agree with you that there are some rich people who have earned their wealth. I never disputed that. My point, if you read carefully, is that they're rare. You asked why I didn't focus on them, and it's because it's hard to think of any examples of business titans who are known for their hard work ethic and nothing else. For example, I might have said Michael Dell, but it turns out that he just paid off the SEC to remain CEO of his company after it was discovered that 75% of Dell's 2007 (I think) revenue came from illegal anti-competitive payoffs from Intel to not use AMD chips.

What I said (which also happens to be what I meant) was that there was a higher probability that someone with a vast sum of money had reached their level of wealth by harming someone relative to someone without that same level of wealth. I didn't say "all rich people." And I gave some examples to support my point.

An example to support your point would be someone like Warren Buffet, who doesn't have the kind of reputation that Gates and Ellison have earned for themselves. He proceeded to amass his fortune, to the best of my knowledge, slowly and as ethically as one could hope for. I have a lot of respect for hard-working and successful people like Buffet, but also those who are worth a fraction of what he is.

On the other hand, I generally don't have a lot of respect for people who start off on the assumption that I am small-minded and jealous, and then go from there. If you want to make a point here that's fine, just don't pretend like I've said something that I didn't.

Maybe the difference in our opinion is our definition of rich. If you define rich as only those who are in the top 10 richest people in the world, then maybe you have a point (though I'm still skeptical). If you use a more widely accepted measure of rich or wealthy (say $5m in liquid assets) you include hundreds of thousands of people in this country alone. And you never hear anything about almost any of those people. They live quiet lives, building their business and spending time with their families. Who wants to write about that? So journalists cover the flashy bastards instead, which skews your perception. Read some research that's been done on the wealthy as a group before you go making conclusions based on a handful of the most extreme outliers at the top.

I suppose this has validity, but on the other hand, there are plenty of cut throats in the '2nd largest car dealership in Idaho' level.

Yes, but are there more than in the general population? That's what we're debating. And I'm skeptical that's the case, but even more skeptical that the claimant has any data to make such a strong claim.

Sure, I think that's how they get to these positions. Aggressive ambition and a lack of concern for the wellbeing of others relative to one's own wellbeing pays off. It seems pretty obvious to me.

I'm surprised such an ad hominem got so many upvotes. For much of human history the only way to get rich was to do so at someone else' expense. pg talks about this in one of his essays. As he mentions in said essay, the internet has changed this a bit but you can bet that some people are going to go with the tried and true methods of getting rich (e.g. Robert Mugabe).

The statement you quoted may be correct as stated, but it strikes me as a tautology (i.e. if you're not rich then of course you didn't "get there" at someone else' expense, you didn't "get there" at all).