What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

Re:What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know not... by kortilla on Monday May 19, 2025 @03:07AM (#44027182)

The mobile phones they had were absolute garbage, service was abysmal, and the security was non existent.

There was no way to get to a smartphone without cumulatively trillions of dollars of investment in silicon, software, network rollouts, and so on. A person with 100 billion in 1998 could not have bought one despite it being a decade away for the entire population.

The very wealthy cannot get things that are that special and it’s actually pretty amazing. Warren Buffet has called out several times that he lives like a regular middle class American and the main exception is flying private, but if were forced to choose he would dump the jet over the iPhone.

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Re:What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know not... by rsynnott on Monday May 19, 2025 @09:02AM (#44029403)

> A person with 100 billion in 1998 could not have bought one despite it being a decade away for the entire population.

Oh? What d'you call this, then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator

Now, granted, most very rich people would probably not have _wanted_ one of these.

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Re:What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know not... by kortilla on Saturday May 24, 2025 @11:39PM (#44085336)

That’s not a smartphone. Re-read what I wrote. No amount of money would have produced anything close to an iPhone.

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