I don’t think he was ever a billionaire, though he’s certainly done quite well for himself. Since leaving Apple, he has founded several new companies and projects, focusing a lot on education and philanthropy. He was also involved in founding the EFF.
He’s an engineer first and foremost, and several of his projects never achieved mainstream success, partly for being, IMHO, ahead of their time – for example, a programmable universal remote in the 80s, and a GPS-based item tracker in the early 2000s.
As far as I know, he has never been involved in any notable scandals.
Reminds me of this tweet from Merman_Melville: “Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it’s probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day” The experience itself is probably harmful and changes the person. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/18e0c77d-e341-4343-bbeb-80a0c47c8be9.png
Studies have shown that people change at a certain amount of money, like they cross a line in the sand. When you can buy anything everything just becomes yours by default in your mind. And anyone who can’t do that are basically sheep dogs - useful but not worth your time. These studies were done in the twenty-tens and the number then was between 20 and 30 million for most people. Imagine your view on the world if you have 100 times that amount.
There’s a whole bunch of people that deserve to become billionaires a lot more than people in tech and that would have a much better impact on the world if they did. I would much rather have a bunch of billionaire physicists, immunologists, virologists, pediatricians and so on.
No he didn’t. He made atx and worked closely with the guy who make markdown. He also was part of the group that made RSS and contributed to the early CC.
I have a standing theory that once a person is no longer concerned about their welfare or the welfare of their descendants, they go crazy.
Like, once you reach a point where survival is no longer a problem, that part of your brain goes nuts. It’s not a flawless theory, since philanthropy is a thing and people like Dean Kamen exist, but it’s a thing that seems to happen an awful lot.
I think it’s more that billionaires have very few people to surround themselves with except for sycophants and other billionaires.
Nobody says no to them, everything they’ve ever done was the right thing according to everyone around them, so why should the next thing they do or say be wrong?
Covid really really accelerated the craziness among them.
Survival no longer is a problem to literally everyone in north america. yeah people die, but, when was the last time you have heard of anyone who is not anorexic starving to death? People still talk like survival is an issue, but that’s because they actually mean not being comfortable.
This is simply not true. Starvation isn’t the only thing that kills people - they die of easily treatable medical issues all the time because of lack of health insurance. Unhoused people die of exposure every summer and winter.
I mean i tried to make it painfully obvious I wasn’t talking about medical conditions, car accidents, or crackheads being stupid, but i guess i had to come back and spell it out.
You’re missing the point. The risk might not be very high on average, but if you don’t want to end up on the streets, regular people still have to kind of function inside the system somehow and continuously work for regular income. The will to survive is part of what drives them to do so.
Billionaires on the other hand, wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to be able to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. On the contrary, they’d have to try really hard to get rid of all that wealth. Major fuck-ps and intentional money burning excluded, the chance that they end up having trouble getting their basic needs fulfilled is miniscule. THAT is the difference.
I’ve worked for several very, very rich men. The pattern I notice is that they always get surrounded by people who make sure that they never, ever hear “no”.
Imagine living in a world where every inane thing that comes out of your mouth, somebody immediately makes it their mission to try and make it happen. You no longer get any kind of useful feedback from the world and your opportunities to learn from feedback are greatly reduced.
I agree, I think in the end, it does make them crazy.
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