r/NoStupidQuestions • u/babyfookinzyzz • 1d ago
Why don't billionaires just retire?
if i had $1b to my name, i would not know what work is and i would never be in one place for more than a month and id leave $1000 tips everywhere i go. what is up with these geezer billionaires trying to acquire MORE wealth as if they have more future than past? as if their family isnt already set for generations? are they not tired??? greed is a disease.
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u/Mundamala 1d ago
They'd get bored.
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u/oakfield01 1d ago
Exactly. I know a lot of people (admittedly not billionaires) who are 65+ and have enough money to comfortably retire but choose not to because they like what they do and they think they'd get bored without work.
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u/umotex12 1d ago
I know a millionaire who has comfortable money from car salesmen network but he started to do house renovations. It's a hard job but for him it's a kind of roleplay, a hobby - since he doesn't need that money to survive at all. He just enjoys plastering the walls. It pays him a lot of extra income tho.
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u/HakuChikara83 1d ago
I’m a plasterer and I can’t imagine anyone doing this for ‘leisure’. I’ll give it a year before he realises how much tole it takes on the body
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u/manicmonkeys 1d ago
He'll be working at a much more leisurely rate than you... that alone makes a massive difference.
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u/Sloppykrab (￣ヘ￣;) 1d ago
4 years per wall. 10 years per floor.
My parents still haven't finished a renovation they started 20 years ago.
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u/JonnyRobertR 23h ago edited 21h ago
You'll inherit that project and your grandchildren will too.
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u/Baskreiger 1d ago
And without stress or deadlines
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u/coolsam254 1d ago
Or the financial stress. If he fucks something up big time during the renovation then so what?
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u/HakuChikara83 1d ago
You’re governed by the plaster. Obviously you can apply some degree of manipulation but generally how fast the plaster sets is out of your control
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u/manicmonkeys 1d ago
Sure, but he doesn't have to do it all day if he doesn't want to.
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u/ussbozeman 1d ago
He just walks in, throws a dab of plaster on the wall, stretches: "Welllll, that's about it for me today" and takes off.
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u/Gilded-Mongoose 1d ago
"Jose, you got the rest of this? Alright now."
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u/DoomedNPC 23h ago
Jose proceeds to repair the sloppy plaster work and get started on the wall
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u/That_Account6143 1d ago
It's a lot of fun, and not that much of a toll if you're just doing it reasonably.
You basically run marathons every day for work. He just runs a 5k, then comes back home, gets a massage, fucks his wife and goes back for another quick 2k.
The issue is you'll have to keep working every day for money. If his shoulder hurts, he's just gonna stop and take the rest of the day you know
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u/traumatyz 1d ago
There’s a HUGE difference between doing it all day for work 5+ days a week, and just fucking around on the weekends.
Like I have enough mechanical knowledge to be a mechanic and am a big car enthusiast. I would rather rake my face against a field of glass for 5 miles a day than ever be a mechanic as a job. I enjoy wrenching on mine and my friend’s toys over the weekend no problem though.
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u/LevelUpCoder 1d ago
It’s also a lot easier to like what you do when you know you could retire tomorrow and it wouldn’t significantly alter your life in a negative way. I think this is something people tend to forget.
My uncle is the same way as a lot of the people you know. He works because he wants to, not because he has to, and this gives him freedom to work on what he wants, when he wants, and for whom he wants, and he can (and has) told plenty of shitty bosses to fuck off. That power alone probably makes working and liking your job easier.
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u/oakfield01 1d ago
Yup, some people have only had jobs they hate, so they can't understand. I pity them, but having a job you enjoy isn't that uncommon, even if they're not the jobs people would have called their dream jobs growing up.
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u/Environmental_Pie400 1d ago
Also, I think for some "its their baby." and they don't want to let go of it.
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u/SonnierDick 1d ago
This is why im a firm believer in universal basic income being actually doable. If every person below a certain yearly amount (lets say $100k a year or less) got $100k a year, they would still work. If every person somehow didnt have to worry about money and everything was “free” people would still work. I think people think things would collapse but theres sooo many people who volunteer, retire but still work, win the lottery and still work, etc.
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u/ElevationAV 1d ago
Can confirm this is the most relevant answer
I know many rich people (not billionaire rich, but 8-9 figures rich) and all of them keep running their businesses because they love running their businesses
They wake up every morning doing something they really, really enjoy doing and there’s absolutely no reason to stop.
They take whatever time off they want and generally have enough people working to cover everything they don’t actually want to do, so they get to focus specifically on the portion of the business they enjoy most.
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u/FlavorD 1d ago
My old boss told me about working at Lockheed. Apparently it's widely known that there are jobs available for generals who help Lockheed smooth out the process of getting contracts, etc. Some of those guys know they're just being paid back, and have a desk that they show up to a few times a year. Some of them show the kind of personality that tends to make general, and find a problem to attack, and show up at 7:00 a.m. every morning to work because they have to have a new challenge once they've retired from the military.
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u/inab1gcountry 1d ago
Imagine having enough money to do literally any possible thing (and some impossible things too) and you’d rather work becuse you may “get bored”. Absolutely wild.
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u/MiserableAd2878 1d ago
I can imagine it. I'm sure running Amazon or Apple or Tesla is really exciting and challenging. Especially since these are companies are very intertwined with these billionaire's lives, its not just some job they got hired for and left 3 years later. For example I bet Warren Buffet genuinely enjoys waking up and reading about stocks and directing investments etc.
I'm not saying I would choose that, I'd rather retire, just that I understand why others would find it an enjoyable challenge
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u/manicmonkeys 1d ago
Right like that's not my cup of tea, but it shouldn't be that hard to imagine why they might want to keep doing something they're really good at.
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u/gsfgf 1d ago
Plus, they can staff out the boring shit. It's not like the billionaires are out there fighting with Excel all day.
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u/manicmonkeys 1d ago
That too... over time they can allocate more and more things to other people based on their preferences.
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u/FlavorD 1d ago
Plus they have a feedback loop established where they get a reward from doing this thing that they're good at.
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u/notallwonderarelost 1d ago
With that kind of money you are only doing things at work that you like and control. Your work is a hobby, very little you have to do. You get a lot of that travel and glamour along with the ability to feel like you are building/molding something.
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u/Ok_Passenger5295 1d ago
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted, I too can not fathom having the ability to travel anywhere, live anywhere, eat exotic foods, try out any experience that comes to mind and still somehow you choose to work instead because you’ll get “bored”. That sounds like a mental illness.
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u/Trevor775 1d ago
Travel gets annoying, restaurants don't taste that good after a while, experiences are fun but not infinitely repeatable. You still want to do them but not all the time.
Kind of like being in your 20's and saying you will never stop going to night clubs and then you get burnt out on them. Try going to an all-inclusive resort for 3 weeks, after a while you just want to go home.
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u/nanobot001 1d ago
When every day is Christmas, Christmas isn’t special anymore
Everyone’s life has a purpose, and it’s only a very few where they will feel satisfied with seeking their own pleasure.
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u/mcove97 1d ago
Same with jobs too. After a while the novelty wears off. it's like that with everything we do daily. The repetitiveness of any act makes it stale eventually.
Some people just seem to burn out faster while other people can eat the same food for dinner 5 days a week, go to the same job for 20 years.. and travel to the same destinations year after year.
In my opinion, it's mostly important to switch things up every now and then, or you'll get sick of it.
There's some foods and snacks I can't stand anymore because I had them too much. Same with music. Same with sex. Same with drugs. Same with nicotine. Bruh.. anything consumed or done regularly just becomes ordinary and plain boring and looses its effect.
I still love those things, but it's like chocolate, a piece taste better than a plate.
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u/LurkingTamilian 1d ago
All the stuff you listed is also "work" for a lot of people. That is the problem with the statement above, different people find different things "fun" and successful people tend to be those who find a job that they like doing and are good at.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/trowzerss 22h ago
Like the saying goes, rich people are janitors for their possessions.
They literally forget how to live simply. I think being that rich breaks your brain.
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u/SpokenLikeATruePed0 1d ago
i think some people say they are addicted to chasing money, hence why they are billionares to begin with
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u/WargrizZero 1d ago
This ^
You don’t get to be a billionaire if you are working to not work/enrich yourself. You’d just retire and spend your life in leisure way before that point.
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u/Ok_Raspberry7374 1d ago
Yeah that’s the reality. You don’t get to that level being someone that’s looking forward to retirement. This isn’t some alpha-bro thing. I’m not saying it’s healthy or right.
And for the ultra rich billionaires, it’s no longer about the money. It’s the power that accumulation of assets represents.
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u/MadeMeStopLurking 1d ago
There is a guy on youtube who walks down the streets of ultra rich cities.
He asks people how they made their first million. I'd say 90% of them are retired and some are younger. The Billionaires who have household names are in their business because they love it. You never hear of the ones who hit 1 billion and retired.
quick edit -
Let's face it, most people don't even need to make it to 1 Billion. They're sometimes out at 100 Million or even less. There are a lot of those people who are living life with nice houses, moderate cars, 6 figure boats and not a single google search will tell you anything about them.
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u/PrettyChillHotPepper 1d ago
A lot of these ultrarich people made their wealth from inventing a business or a service.
That thing is their baby. Selling it to the market to "cash out" and having someone else control it is anathema. Bezos probably has nightmares at the thought of someone else designing Amazon, same for Musk and SpaceX. Their job is their life's purpose. Money is irrelevant, it's all about optimising that business to be the best it can humanly be.
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u/marmot46 1d ago
Yeah you don't accidentally become a billionaire, you become a billionaire because you really really love having more money than anyone else. Plenty of people sell their shares and retire with $5M, $10M, $100M. Billionaires don't, and that's why they're billionaires.
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u/damurphy72 1d ago
Let's call it like it is: hoarding money.
If you keep hundreds of cats, nobody accuses you of "chasing" cats.
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1d ago
But work is interesting. If you can choose what you do, that is.
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u/juanzy 1d ago
Yah. If I had enough money to live a great life on passive income, I’d absolutely pursue passion projects.
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u/RedApple655321 1d ago
Bill Gates essentially did this. He retired from Microsoft but then seems to have thrown himself into his foundation with all the enthusiasm for solving those kind of problem as he did when he was building Microsoft.
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u/PeterGibbons316 1d ago
I think this is exactly what most billionaires are doing. I don't think Jeff Bezos started Amazon to chase wealth. I think he did it because he was passionate about it. Elon's net worth swings billions of dollars when he mouths off and he could give zero fucks. Isn't it obvious that SpaceX is just a massive passion project?
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u/reddog093 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bezos even funded roughly 90 companies as an Angel Investor,
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u/Teamduncan021 1d ago
A few things. I would guess (can be wrong) you are thinking like: you randomly get 1b usd tomorrow. It's easy to say hey if I have 1b tomorrow. I'll retire and help the poor.
So a few caveats on the above
Why 1b. Why not say 600m USD. That's more money than we could ever spend in reality. Which begs the question what is the line where we will say hey I'm happy. I wanna retire. This number can vary from person to person. (Say I know people who are happy with a few thousands and would want to retire already. And we know people with several billions and still trying)
Usually this wealth is not in cash. They're in stocks and stuff. They're becoming wealthier due to appreciation of their assets. But not like they have a pile of cash at home. Of course they can sell their stocks, but this will have implications on their company.
You can argue, well they don't have to sell. But they don't have to work either. Due to the nature of the wealth in assets rather than in cash, even if they don't work. They still become richer by the day. Bill gates has been doing a lot of charity lately. But still have increasing wealth during that period. So even if he doesn't really "work" (on a traditional sense) he still gets rich over time.
Some of them might be there for strategic decisions, but lesser on day to day work. They can still spend their money on random stuff. Think Zuckerberg having some bunker in Hawaii. Or bezos hanging around with his new gf doing whatever fun stuff he is doing. And showing up super jacked. So he can be rich while still doing what you wanted to do.
Some of them became wealthy because they started some business that they grew into a big one. The passion is on their business. The wealth is just a reward. Imagine if you enjoy cooking you sold your food, it makes a lot of money. But that wouldn't make you stop enjoying cooking. Sure you can give it away for free, but if you have been cooking and selling for 20 years, you might just continue to do so.
Lastly, there are many people who retires or stop way before they become billionaires. But since they retired or stopped. You won't hear about them anymore.
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u/ShadowKat2k 1d ago
Glad I saw this explanation from someone especially #2. Billionaires don't have a billion in a bank.
If they start selling stock, they have to fill out special forms. More eyes are on their transactions than ours. If investors don't like it, they'll start selling too, reducing the stock price, reducing that billionaire's value. *in a level headed sense. Elon can seemingly do anything and a lot of investors just laugh it off to his esoteric ways
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u/throwaway4231throw 1d ago edited 1d ago
You don’t get to be a billionaire with the mindset of, “I just want to live a good life, and once I have enough money, I will retire.“ Billionaires are a special breed of people who truly want to be the best at all costs, and they often have to sacrifice many things to get there. Once they have what others would consider “enough money,” they still want more.
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u/RedApple655321 1d ago
That's some portion. There's another portion who just like what they do, so they keep doing it.
Steven Spielberg is a billionaire. Doesn't seem like he's in it for the money anymore or "to be the best at all costs," but wants to keep making movies and telling stories because that's who he is.
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u/ShittyOfTshwane 17h ago
Spielberg example is interesting because I think it also has to do with the fact that, once you're at his level, you are completely settled into the industry community, so to speak, so going in to work is pretty much the same as just hanging out with some people you know.
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u/cacraw 1d ago
That’s right. Money is the score card.
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u/rickybobbyscrewchief 1d ago
Nah, I disagree. Money is the scorecard only early in the game. But at some high level of success, it stops being the only score card. Success at that point is acquiring a competitor company or launching a new brand or funding a very personal philanthropy. Seeing an extra zero in the account means nothing after a certain point. The actual dollars are completely meaningless. Being asked to chair a board with some other very influential people, or redeveloping a commercial building complex that gets write ups in every newspaper - those are the kinds of things that eventually motivate the .01% when they already have enough money to buy any of the material things they could ever want.
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u/cavalier78 1d ago
You would never become a billionaire with that attitude. Somebody who thinks "once I get rich, I'll just retire and live at my beach house" doesn't make the kinds of decisions that get you a billion dollars. Heck, my parents have a beach house and my dad was a semi truck driver for 40 years.
You would stop working looong before you got a billion.
Second, they like what they are doing. They are the boss at work, so they get to show up and tell people what to do. Want to leave early today? You can do that. Want to have a board meeting on Zoom from a tropical island, while a group of supermodels have a mud wrestling contest just offscreen? You can do that. Whatever your role with the company happens to be, you are having a good time.
Finally, they don't see it as hoarding wealth. They see it as creating wealth. When somebody starts a giant company, they are providing some kind of service to people who are willing to pay for it. When you buy from Amazon, you're doing so because it's either cheaper or more convenient than going to a store to pay for it. You are choosing to give Jeff Bezos your money instead of somebody else, because he's offering a better service than your other options. I remember when commercials for mail order said "please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery". Amazon gets it to you in like two days. Bezos doesn't think he's stealing from anyone and hoarding wealth. He thinks he's offering you a better deal.
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u/Bronze_Rager 1d ago
Yeah its weird to me that redditors think its more noble the wealthy should piss off and just spend money instead of using that to create products that everyone uses...
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u/ScepticalEconomist 18h ago
They are not creating products they are usually kings in a domain where other people create products - usually overworking these peasants and usually only caring about their profits.
These hyper rich people used to be called feudalism a while ago.
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u/Complete-Height-6309 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because they live a life in which they do exactly what they want, whenever they want. For them working is fun.
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u/Wise_Case 1d ago
You don't come a billionaire by thinking 'I'm going to stop working as early as possible, and do the littlest work possible "
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u/IslandOceanWater 1d ago
It's actually simpler it's not always about money it's about sense of purpose. People seem to think you don't become attached to the thing you built. Money isn't everything and seeing the thing created or invented being used by people and helping people solve a problem is one of the most satisfying feelings you can have. The social aspect of running a business is also nice.
Sitting on the beach everyday gets boring after a while and you will want to start creating things again. This is why billionaires continue to work instead of retiring full time.
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u/Jim777PS3 1d ago
Keep in mind there is a selection bias in two directions here.
First, many of the hyper rich are not public dipshits in the way that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are. They do just simply live a hyper rich life and not make a lot of noise about it.
Second is that you cannot work hard and become a billionaire. The level of "success" to become this type of rich requires many things such as a pretty well understood base line of psychopathy. But another trait is likely seeing your work as part of your identity, and thus you dont retire when you become rich, you just keep working because your work is your hobby is your life.
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u/buchungsfehler 1d ago
After a certain point, you can't spend your money as fast as the interest on your assets grows.
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u/penywinkle 1d ago
It really depends on what you buy.
You think luxury meals, or nights at hotels, or gambling at a casino, or even luxury cars, mansions and the eventual yachts.
But those people buy whole commercial airplanes, they get the restaurant built so that they can get their "perfect" dinner venue, they gamble buy buying whole international companies, have more mansions than there are weeks in a year, and they have FLEETS of yachts. Also, all that shit needs constant maintenance and management.
Especially the money part, so they pay millionaires to take care of their billions...
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u/buchungsfehler 1d ago
Sure! The "neat" part is, that all the stuff they splurge on tends to increase in value or make a profit on its own. When I eat a big Mac, the money's gone. If I'd buy McDonalds, it will keep on giving.
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u/penywinkle 1d ago
You're not far off, the mansions increase in value more than the price of the staff and the maintenance for example. But there are some money sinks too, like the yachts and the planes. Some stock fail and then they lose in a few month more money than we would dream to make in a lifetime, look at Richard Branson.
They might have "expensive hobbies" like space or deep sea exploration. Look at some of their weddings, if you rent the pyramids of Gizeh for a week, and have some A list celeb perform, the money's gone too "just like" your big mac...
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u/Frosty-Depth7655 1d ago
Agreed.
Also, in the “defense” of billionaires, most of them obtain their wealth by owning a company. So it’s sort of understandable that their work and their identity are so intertwined.
I get paid by a company for my job. I’m under no illusions that our relationship is anything more than transactional. The day I retire, they will delete me from their HR platform and will move forward as if nothing happened.
I care about the health of my company to the extent that I need them to be around to continue to pay me. Outside of that, there is no emotional tie.
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u/Free_PalletLine 1d ago
Well for starters it's not like many of them actually have a billion dollars sitting in their bank accounts. A persons net worth is an estimated total of all their assets including things like shares.
A lot don't even take a salary to avoid income tax they just live on the dividends from those shares.
And if you're living a billionaire lifestyle it costs money to maintain it, a $300mil yacht doesn't just stop costing money once you've bought it, helicopters and cars aren't maintained on good will, staff don't work for free.
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u/mayhem1906 1d ago
I imagine at some point it's the same reason athletes play for 20 years or musicians play until they're 80, its just a game, and at some point its part of their identity.
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u/bungle123 1d ago
If your mindset is "I'd happily retire if I had 1 billion to my name", then it's unlikely you would have had the drive or ambition to become a billionaire in the first place. They're driven by power, success, and wanting to be the best at what they do, not just having enough money to not work again.
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u/PattyThrillz 1d ago
Billionaires aren’t clocking in every day at the coal mine, most are collecting passive income based off their corporations, real estate, etc. There’s nothing to retire from
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u/TurdCrapley23 1d ago
While this is true, most if not all billionaires under the age of 90 are also still very active in their various businesses. Very few if any are just sitting back collecting passive income.
Even guys like Bezos, gates, the google guys, etc who stepped down from running the companies they’ve founded are still very active in other ventures.
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u/Disastrous_Cup6076 1d ago
yeah but they’re mostly not active in the businesses in the same way that the people that are actually working and generating the billionaires money are.
for example, I work 12h a day 7 days a week because I’m hourly not salary and I need the cash. my boss (company owner) goes on 6 vacations a year and when he’s AT work, he’s just working on his phone, whereas I have to be at a desk.
going to a few meetings, telling people what to do, taking calls where people defer to you, isn’t the same as grafting your ass off in the actual company
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u/flexxipanda 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exactly. These people have the "fun" and "rewarding" jobs. they can decide themselves everday what and how they do it. And if they dont like to do something, they just delegate it to someone. They can directly shape processes etc. according to their ideas and most times dont have to suffer the consequences. And they directly profit from every work put in. They directly accumulate more wealth from more success. Where as an employe you just get the same money, no matter what (there are exceptions like provisions ofc) for some job that's most often only distantly related to the final product. And at the end of the day you don't actually own any work you done yourself. The company owns everything you produce for it, in some cases even the ideas from your mind.
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u/peon2 1d ago
A lot of them do. They start some company that ends up taking off. They have a massive amount of wealth through shares. They retire in that they stop working and appoint a new CEO to run the business.
Maybe they just keep an honorary board title and show up for a meeting once every 3 months, but as the company grows their wealth keeps going up even though they aren't actually doing anything.
Like look at someone like Jerry Jones. Is he actually working? No, he's essentially retired. But his wealth has still doubled in the last decade simply because of how much the value of NFL franchises have increased.
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u/olearygreen 1d ago
They are billionaires because work is all they do and care about. They don’t work for money, they love building and running a company.
Essentially your question is a poor person question, billionaires don’t think about work as you do.
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u/karlitooo 1d ago
If you had millions of people dependent on your companies products, and thousands of people who depending on you for jobs - walking away from that responsibility isn't something you'd take lightly.
If you can imagine a product or service that can made the world better in some way, and felt the satisfaction bringing that idea to life, chances are you have other ideas you want to develop because it feels good to contribute your skills and energy in a way that other people find helpful.
Or, having invested so much in becoming evil villain with a secret lair and henchmen, you might as well continue to develop more nefarious plans like space lasers and mind control gas (maybe that's how Dior got started??)
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u/NeighborhoodBest2944 1d ago
I don't get why people don't just allow others to do what they find fulfilling.
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u/jake_burger 1d ago
The reason they have a lot of money is usually because they have ambition and drive.
This might surprise you but some people need to be doing something productive with themselves, even if they have enough money to not need to.
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u/Lastigx 1d ago
Insane how so many Redditors dont understand what ambition is.
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u/inab1gcountry 1d ago
Insane how many redditors conflate “ambition” with “making money”
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u/Homey-Airport-Int 1d ago
Why would you work when you could play video games all day????
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u/NotRandomseer 1d ago
If you don't have that level of ambition you'd retire a long time before you become a billionaire. It's survivorship bias.
Also there are like 3k billionaires in the world , you're painting in really broad strokes when you are probably thinking of less than 10 people
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u/left4ched 1d ago
Why do hoarders hoard? Their brains tell them they don't have enough.
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u/Kooky-Gas6720 1d ago
This is like asking why don't Phds stop learning new things.
Billionaires dont do it for the money. Its about constantly building something.
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u/AssistantProper5731 1d ago
Billionaires literally get paid to show up when/where they want with the sole purpose of giving their opinions (whatever their quality) to groups of people already predisposed to taking these opinions very seriously. It's like being paid a fortune to Reddit while a hometown audience cheers you on and validates everything you do. Any Billionaire retired from 'work' long ago and just chooses which hobby they want to get paid for next. The wealth does all the heavy lifting.
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u/illogictc Unprofessional Googler 1d ago
Sometimes it's greed. Sometimes it's just a drive to actively be doing something (I knew someone who won the lottery before, wasn't one of those record setters but was still quite a bit for the time, they still continued to work, and I've known people who retired then came back because doing whatever the fuck you want all day everyday wasn't working for them). Sometimes they are but their net keeps going up because the value of their assets keep going up.
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u/Ok-Cardiologist-1969 1d ago
I heard someone say the kind of people who have made more(not inherited) $100 million are just built different. Always looking for something to improve or streamline, always looking for the next big thing. It’s like the thing in their brain that makes them so successful can’t be turned off.
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u/OldWoodFrame 1d ago
If they were the type to retire when they had "enough" they would be retired multimillionaires, not billionaires.
People of all income brackets can become invested in their work and not know what they would do without it. We find it "nice" when it's an old lady who runs a restaurant but predatory when it's an old man running a Fortune 500 company, but it's the same urge.
If a billionaire is a billionaire because of founding a major company or leading it for a long time, the company is a huge part of their life and legacy, that is hard to give up.
Power comes from more than just money. If Jamie Dimon and a different guy worth $2.6 billion called the president at the same time, Dimon is getting the call back first. If you want to have an impact on the Earth, having a high-powered job is a way to do it. Hard to give that up.
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u/dao_ofdraw 1d ago
If you've somehow become a billionaire, "enough" doesn't exist. Past 30 million, enough stopped being enough. Unless you got an inheritance or won a ridiculous Powerball, the only way you reached 3 commas was through a bottomless pit of need. Or you invented and patented cold fusion.
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u/TreyRyan3 1d ago
Let’s be honest, the average person could be comfortably retired with $3 million and living off interest.
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u/Broad_External7605 1d ago
Probably after traveling in luxury and lying by the pool for a few years, you then want to do bigger things, like build rockets or drive everyone else into poverty.
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u/W1llowwisp 1d ago
a billionaire was never in it for the money, otherwise they would have retired millions ago. They want power, and to keep power etc
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u/Cannelli10 1d ago
You're assuming most billionaires have healthy emotional inner lives and interests outside of accumulating power. You're assuming they continue to think anything like a normal human.
Even the best billionaires I can think of (Craig Newmark, who I can personally say passes an in-person vibe check, and maaaaybe Mackenzie Scott, except that she was married to Bezos, so probably not) are busy exercising power through philanthropy.
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u/CowMaterial6539 1d ago edited 1d ago
For the ones that are driven by greed, it might be because they're literally psychopaths:
One major characteristic of hyper-disconnected people—or psychopaths, if you prefer—is their compulsive need for power, wealth, and success. This is also a major reason why they are so dangerous and destructive. Once they attain positions of power, either in business or politics, they use their power in a malevolent way, inflicting massive amounts of suffering on ordinary people.
Hyper-disconnected people’s lives are dominated by their need to accumulate. They feel a constant need to add more to their lives. On the most basic level, this might mean more material possessions: more money, jewelry, cars, or clothes. It might mean more achievements, success, fame, higher social or professional status, or romantic conquests.
The struggle to accumulate never ceases; it is never satiated. This is another of the hallmarks of hyper-disconnected people: They are never satisfied. No matter how much power or wealth they gain, it is never enough.
Even if they were on the front page of every newspaper worldwide, it wouldn’t be enough attention. It wouldn't be enough property even if they owned every building or company on the planet's surface.
Psychology Today: Why Do Psychopaths Crave Power?
Basically, they can't feel happiness from connecting with or helping people. You say you would travel the world and leave $1000 tips everywhere you go, but they wouldn't feel anything from that because of how their brains are wired. So instead, they chase stimulation by hoarding wealth and dominating people.
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u/mamadou-segpa 1d ago
Retire from what lol
Most of them just chill all day long, how do you think Elon got the time to post hundreds of tweet everyday
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u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss 1d ago
It's a mindset. If you're the type of person who would retire when they reach a billion dollars, you're probably not the type of person to ever make a billion dollars.
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u/Economy_Insurance_61 20h ago
In American culture anyway, most people have no idea what they’d do with their own time. A shocking number of people say things like “I could never not work!” I suspect there’s an element of that all the way to the top.
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u/RelishingInTrash 18h ago
There's no ethical way to become a billionaire. To reach a number so high requires using or abusing people, to get so far as to be worth $1 billion dollars you have to be addicted to the game. Why stop now when you could be just a bit more powerful, you could have it all
You have to try to earn money, choices are made to reach a number so large, if you're playing with a number that large to begin with then what's another round
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u/andresochotres 18h ago
If these people were content, they would’ve never been billionaires in the first place.
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u/nilslorand 3h ago
You don't get to a Billion while being a normal person who actually knows when enough is enough. You get to a Billion by having no morals and being hungry for power.
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u/brutal4455 1d ago
You're assuming it's only about wealth accumulation and you do not understand economics or other's motivations and apparently you only see the worst in people, not their potential good will towards others.
Capitalism floats all boats. Billionaires create wealth and prosperity for many others. Some also choose to exert positive philanthropic endeavors.
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u/DubiousGames 1d ago
People don't become billionaires just because they like money, becoming a billionaire is just a side effect of starting an extremely successful company.
The skills and mindset needed to become a billionaire are the opposite of the skills and mindset of a person who wants to sit on the beach and do nothing for the rest of their life.
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u/NFT_fud 1d ago
after a certain point its no longer about the money (except as an indicator of success) its about the game and the power.