Sometimes people ask, why do rich people keep striving for more money? What is the point of having $1B instead of $100M, or $10B instead of $1B, or $100B instead of $10B?

Sometimes the answer is given, that it's the same impulse as playing a computer game and money is the score.

But the last few days, something else occurred to me, watching the kind of disarray of various billionaire hedge fund types. A big attraction of wealth on that level must be the sense that you're smarter than nearly anyone else.

This situation punctures that and it seems like a lot of quotes in the news are about scrambling to save face and protect peoples' self images. I don't think they are actually outraged over monetary losses as such.

It's interesting that people are comparing it to Occupy Wall Street.

When playing a computer game, of course, after you get a high score, you start over at zero, and there's a good chance you switch to a different game.

Characterizing this as a "rich folk" vs "common folk" issue is hilarious. Aside from the early "common folks" that cashed out, there's also plenty of "rich folks" that cashed out as well[1]. As for the losers, well the hedge funds who were shorted initially definitely lost money, although it remains to be seen whether the "rich folk" hedge funds who shorted this week lost money. It also remains to be seen whether the "common folks" that piled on this week are going make a profit or are just going to be bagholders.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/large-gamestop-shareholder...

This doesn't deserve to be downvoted. Lots of rich investors are using this as an opportunity to further enrich themselves. The narrative that this is "David vs Goliath" is only partially true; in reality it's Goliath vs Goliath, except one of the Goliaths has David strapped to his chest to absorb any blows.

it's gamblers vs other gamblers, the size of their stakes dont matter much for purposes of sorting them.

> although it remains to be seen whether the "rich folk" hedge funds who shorted this week lost money. It also remains to be seen whether the "common folks" that piled on this week are going make a profit or are just going to be bagholders

My comment above makes no statement about who is going to eventually profit from this.

My comment is about how as soon as the "common folk" start to take their destiny into their own hands, the "rich folk" cry foul, to the point where Congressmen are issuing press releases, and there is talk of completely re-designing the entire system.

There is an awful lot of whining coming from one end of the wealth spectrum right now.

GME stock is like a consumable. You buy it and then it "disappears".