feel compelled to shout out Jean-Baptiste Kempf (VLC) who refused to sell the project for 'several tens of millions' which makes me pretty confident that there's still people out there who will stick to their principles
The difference between 10 million and 10 billion is a factor of 1000. Ask yourself, if a job offered you 100 million instead of the normal 100k for a software engineer would you be prepared to do things you normally wouldn't do?
>Ask yourself, if a job offered you 100 million instead of the normal 100k for a software engineer would you be prepared to do things you normally wouldn't do?
Definitely not. But just to be sure, you should still make me an offer.
gonna be totally honest with you and you can choose to not believe me but nope. For one I like the peace of mind of sticking to my principles more than money secondly I already don't know what to do with my money and I make slightly less than 100k. most of my money is spent on books and the occasional dinner out with the spouse and fishing equipment, I genuinely can't make sense what I'd do differently with a million or quadrillion.
You'd buy long-term financial security with that kind of money.
You'd never have to worry that a significant unplanned expense would ruin your life. You come down with a major medical condition and end up with years of major medical expenses? Some drunk driver T-bones you and totals your car? Lose your job and spend a year or two unemployed? House burns down and you still owe the majority of your mortgage? None of those will ever be a concern again if you hold that $100M job for even a year.
As a German these are securities that basically every working citizen here has.
Medical expenses -> health insurance
Some drunk driver T-bones you and totals your car -> liability insurance is compulsory
Lose your job and spend a year or two unemployed -> unemployment insurance is compulsory, you get 60 percent of what you made for one year
House burns down and you still owe the majority of your mortgage -> uhg, got us here, we can't afford houses but there is private insurance for that
So even though I pay hefty taxes (or because I do), I still end up much richer than a developer in the US. In theory I don't even need to save up money for retirement, as the general pension fund has me covered (though with the current demographic development I don't fully trust that).
So I probably don't have a good reason to give up my morality of more money. Have been never tempted though.
So one thing people forget about serious illnesses is that it's not just about the cost of medical procedures. It's possible that the only doctors who know how to treat your particular condition are in another city, so there are travel expenses involved. Plus, if your health issues mean you can't work for a long period of time, that can also impact your finances.
(for what it's worth, I currently work for a company that makes software offering various kinds of secondary insurance, and I've spent the last few months learning about the kinds of things "cancer insurance" and "accident insurance" are for, and it's been an eye-opener)
And as for your car: yeah, liability insurance is compulsory in the US, but it's really painful to be hit by someone who's illegally uninsured. It actually happened to my mom a few years ago—she got lucky, her insurance was willing to pick up the tab, but she could've been on the hook for a lot of money if her insurance punted instead (to be fair, the damage to her car was entirely cosmetic, and her car was still operable, just with a car-sized dent in it).
> liability insurance is compulsory in the US, but it's really painful to be hit by someone who's illegally uninsured
In Europe this is covered and very rare currently. After the first four years the car need to pass an official exam each six or twelve months. No insurance means that you can't even start the test nor move the car from there except in a tow truck (paid for you). Driving with the test outdated means a fine and after some months your car can be deregistered automatically. It does not worth the trouble.
In that case there is an organism that pays you and then reclaim the money to the part without assurance, plus a hefty fine for him/her, by idiot. In Spain is el Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros and it belongs to the Ministry of Economy. Other countries can have their own systems.
Uninsured motorist coverage is a line item on my insurance documents. I know it is not required by every state but I don't know if there are states where it is not offered. I can't imagine choosing not to have that coverage if it were an option.
I don't think doing that through money is a good thing. I actually thought about that a lot when Tony Hsieh died, which probably a lot of people here are familiar with. He was incredibly generous, had the best intentions, but at the end of the day he created dependency relationships.
'Offering' other people a life well lived as if that should be my task and not theirs, and justifying things you otherwise wouldn't do has very big problems. Because you can always take it one step further, it never ends really.
You could start a business and hire people: offering others a chance is not necessarily about just donating money and letting others live as leeches.
Basically, anyone who's got kids is trying (struggling?) to impart this very life lesson: it's easiest to just get your kids what they want, but that's not the best way to raise them.
Sort of. Most relationships have dependencies of some sort, but Tony Hsieh's money allowed him to take it to the next level, and not in a good/healthy way. But there's money and then there's money. Or rather, there's being poor and there's poverty, and money fixes that. If someone is struggling and living paycheck to paycheck because they don't make enough money to live on (minimum wage hasn't been enough to live on for decades), enough money to dig them out of the hole can be literally lifesaving.
You can't teach a man to fish if he's dead from starvation.
>The difference between 10 million and 10 billion is a factor of 1000
Mathematically, yes. Practically, so what? 10M is a number that could provide all I could reasonably want for the rest of my life. 10B puts a target on my back, and for what? What does 10B buy me that 10M wouldn't? A life of isolation and extravagance? I can't say that I would turn down the chance to find out, but I'm FI already, and maybe it's lack of imagination but I already have trouble spending my modest discretionary budget as it is.
At 10B there are diseases I could fund cures for all on my own.
Heck I'd probably fund a couple tenure positions at a university on the condition that they research certain problems and publish everything to an open access journal. What does a bio lab cost to run, would 10 million a year cover it? That'd be 100 years of funding for 10% of my wealth.
I'd probably follow it up by going to one of my cities troubled youth schools and offering full ride scholarships to everyone who graduates. Figure 100 students a year, 100k scholarship, that's another 10 million a year, so another 10% gone.
Tl;Dr I'm having no problems figuring out how to spend 10 billion!
A mansion/penthouse in a ritzy part of LA/NYC (Bezos's LA mansion alone was 1XX MM)?
A professional sports team?
A private jet?
The ability to call the leader of your country and either get through or get a meeting on the books?
Notice that what's interesting about a lot of those isn't just the initial cost, but many of them have quite high carrying costs.
But those are just interesting generalities. At that wealth you can (really have to) get creative. Paul Allen bought a bunch of rock star's guitars and a bunch of Sci Fi memorabilia, and then built a museum to hold them.
> 10M is enough for a large estate with privacy and natural beauty.
Where is that? Are you planning on living in the country? In most large cities, it doesn't seem like 10MM will be enough for you to live in an estate and still not have to work for ongoing regular expenses (food, etc.)
And it's fine you don't want any of those things. Better than fine, that's great. But there are a lot of things that you need more than 10MM for.
The ability to finance meaningful changes to the world - be they things like disease eradication, political movements, space endeavors. Rather than needing to band together with like-minded individuals and bring a voice to the table, you can outright create or buy a group to enable your vision (within the constraints of physics, and the political overton window)
It brings greater agency in the world than "the little people". Money lets you change the world, in increasingly larger ways, in your own image. Now, you don't have to, nor do you have to want to. Most people don't have the hubris for it, never mind the money. But even without the ego, if your niece is dying from a rare blood disease, you can get her medicine that isn't being made anymore because it wasn't profitable by buying the factory and operating it at a loss.
At 10M, you have, as you say, a modest discretionary budget. Which is to say, it's modest, and not extravagant. The things you can do frivolously while spending $300k/year is different than what you can do while spending $1mm/year, but as you've discovered, unless you get disgustingly ostentatious (I hear the poors only own one car, and drive the same car for longer than a month.), taking care of your creature comforts in a reasonable way isn't that expensive. Eating $400 steak dinner every night for a year is only $150k/yr ("only"). So, other than get ostentatious (what, you don't have multiple houses in multiple states?), what do you do? Change the world.
I mean, congratulations on having joined the two comma club, your little discretionary budget is cute. At 10B, your discretionary budget is probably not actually 1000 times larger, because that's a different game of liquidity, but what you can do without remotely threatening your principal investments is way larger. At 10M, if there was a reason you had to spend $5mm, you'd have to consider it very strongly before doing it. At 10B, you can get $1mm in cash from the bank and light it on fire for the hell of it because you had nothing better to do on a Tuesday night. If there's a movie you want made, you get to ask whomever you want to star in it. You want to have a movie made about your life, starring Nick Cage as you? He's having money problems, so he'll probably say yes.
10B puts you right above Steven Rales, wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Rales. Which is to say, if you want to be a recluse, be a recluse, but 10b puts you in the club of people who have wikipedia articles written about them, despite not being a household name or noteable. Edward Snowden has a wikipedia article, and he's not a billionaire, but he was forced to do some world changey shit to get that. You'd get that simply for having that kind of money. Poke around the Forbes billionaire list - https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/. See how many names you recognize as household names. 10b automatically dumps you in those leagues. Marc Benioff's #240 with an estimated $10b. Now, you may not want to be, but if you're familiar with his work, you can do anything like that, on that level. Own a local sports team. It's a bit different rooting for the local sports team when it's your sports team.
Personally, I'd fund science and research and the arts rather than have anything to do with sports. Affordable healthcare. Buy buildings and give buildings to Planned Parenthood so they don't have to keep moving around (something about protestors makes their neighbors nervous). Fix homelessness (which is a big problem, but I'm sure $10m/yr would help lots of aspects of it). Start a chain of coffee shops and over-employ people so that the people that work there have regular weekly schedules and can go to college.
I hate to say it, but that's really a lack of imagination. Instead of $10M principle with a modest discretionary budget, think of the unreasonable shit you could do with $10m every year. Some of it could even be good for other people.
But it's really all about agency. More money in the budget gets you nicer sheets to sleep on, fancier cars to drive, but money is power, and with $100 in your bank account, you desperately need that job. But with $10M in your account, you can tell your shitty boss to go fuck themselves. At $10b, you can buy your shitty boss' company just to fire your shitty boss. You also get to change the world how you want to be changed and guide the future of humanity. Okay you're not god but you get to personally make decisions to influence humanity's future. Edward Snowden gave up the rest of his life in order to do that. For $10b, you'd get to do all of the stuff that Bill Gates the philanthropist talks about. Or MacKenzie Scott after she divorced Jeff Bezos. And still live the rest of your life and not be exiled to Russia.
Not to remove any praise to JB, would he still have refused if the offer was in the billions rather than millions?
There's a point where it might make sense for him... even if not for bare personal/lifestyle reasons, a billion could be useful to fund plenty new or existing opensource projects in line with his principles.
I am sure that MailChimp founders were sincere in their unwillingness to sell company. But 12 billions is 12 billions. I am sure that author of VLC would sell his product for much bigger money, the only problem that there's no one to offer him bigger money.
