If I was a billionaire I would probably act like a spoiled 8th grader as well.

I'd like to think if I was a billionaire I would act the way that I think an ideal billionaire would, being shrewd with my money and making myself richer in an upright and respectable manner while also ensuring that the people who work with me get wealthy as well.

Proving to others that you can act like an 8th grader while pissing away $44 Billion (actually, closer to $33 Billion, maybe $24 Billion if we ignore the outside $9 Billion investors) on an asinine project and still living the life of private jets, and party yachts is the point.

Flaunting your wealth attracts supporters in this day and age. People *like* rich assholes. Its fashionable, or at least it was in the 2010s. The pendulum of society is finally swinging back and demonizing this outrageous display of wealth but we're still in an age where people literally worship wealth. Not the "figuratively literally", I mean literally literally worship as per the prosperity gospel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology).

Its not just Elon Musk, but also Arkk's Cathie Wood and Bill Hwang.

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The outrageous displays of wealth is proof that you've achieved God's good graces. Its basically Mandate of Heaven (Chinese concept) except the American version of it.

I read a comment somewhere a while back:

Once you make $999,999,999.99 dollars, congratulations you have won at life!

All future income you make beyond $1B goes to helping society.

You should probably get a say into where the money goes (so it aligns with your values, whatever those may be) but that's it. You are done enriching yourself personally.

I kind of like that (although I'm sure plenty of people hate it).

Norway doesn’t have that, but it does have a wealth tax, which I like. If your net wealth sums to over 2mnok (approx $200k), you pay some percentage of tax on that wealth, every year. There are plenty of exemptions, your primary residence is only worth a quarter of assessed value, and of course this is net wealth, so mortgages and things subtract from this. But it does mean that if you’re just sitting on a horde of gold, you’ll anyways pay taxes, which makes sense to me. Just because you became wealthy enough to stop earning any income doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for your share of keeping society running.

I've done some math on this. It's INSANE how tiny of a percentage you can usefully tax away and get enormous societal benefits. You really, really don't need to go all 'Beatles Taxman' on it and confiscate everything over X amount. You can take just 1% of the pool of wealth and come out with enormous funding by the standards of what we use social benefits for.

The play money is so many orders of magnitude beyond what's used to keep society creaking along, that it's positively silly. The tiniest of wealth tax percentages can amount to whole social services budgets. These social services stop people with pitchforks from going after the billionaires and each other.

> It's INSANE how tiny of a percentage you can usefully tax away and get enormous societal benefits

The problem in Norway's case is that the a lot of the richest people just moved to Switzerland or wherever...

A though occurred to me the other day. Taxes have become the offset for the inefficiencies capitalism. Each entity is independent, and therefore has to reproduce common things that could have been shared if society was organized differently.

Rabid liberalism is expensive.

Why would you do that when you can just hire PR to run a campaign about how great you are?

Why? I'd be hanging out with my loved ones in mountain cabins and beach houses. I truly cannot comprehend what makes these people want to spend their time and money on internet nonsense.

That's true: most people want to hoard wealth for personal consumption. That's the normal way for wealthy people to behave. Very few want to change the world. Some of those who want to change the world will change it for the better and some for the worse, but the hoard-and-consume lifestyle is most definitely the common lifestyle.

Are you equating engaging with internet nonsense to changing the world?

Helping vaccinate the 3rd world and fund the WHO, I can see a changing the world. Ranting on the internet 24/7, not so much.

Personally, I think the "spend time with loved ones and donate money" approach is the far preferable wealthy lifestyle over the "narcissistic egomaniac constantly talking about how theyre 'changing the world for the better' while mostly just being an asshole" approach.

From what I can tell, Most billionaires want to change the world.

Most are just far more considered and cautious in how they go about it, because getting it wrong _hurts_everyone_, including themselves.

If your character is about chilling and hanging out it's unlikely to be one a billionaire.

Most people getting into that group donthat by focussing their time on making money. This usually requires quite some dedication, which is a character trait you can't simply replace for going to the beach.

There are exceptions, but it's rare. And then there are the ones who got spoiled as a kid and were lucky with some decisions, like making some good real estate deals in Manhatten or finding the right partners to build some online payment service, who never learned about responsibility.

they are freaks poisoned by money and we should take it from them for the common good

One can also be very dedicated to the beach.

Do you see other billionaires wasting time on “internet nonsense”? This guy bought a social media network and was on it 24/7 before that.

Even Zuckerberg who made his fortune with social media seem to post less than him. I have never even heard of Bezos posting while Gates probably only post as PR for his foundation.

Yes, but the prompt was that I'm a billionaire. And I'm the way I am, and described the way I believe I would be as a billionaire. But there was no part of the prompt about the path I took to become a billionaire, just that I am one.

That's simply nonsensical selection bias. You just simply don't hear about the quiet,family oriented billionaires because they're quiet!

You're wrong. Look at Zuckerberg. He spends months of quality time with his family in Hawaii.

Right? I would be enjoying life to the fullest, privately. This guy has already reached end game, instead of enjoying it, he's squandering his name/reputation for internet points.

Honestly, he's squandering his name/reputation and his internet points.