From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Mon Dec 09 2002 - 13:23:04 MST
James Rogers wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 08:10, Gary Miller wrote:
> >
> > Obsessive fear of losing what one has already worked so hard to achieve
> > is one of the drivers for achieving ever increasing power and wealth.
>
>
> I know these people; you are simply incorrect. Most of the people who
> acquire vast wealth (at least in the US) do so primarily as a
> CONSEQUENCE of their love of building things and creating value in the
> world.
Well, I think that Gary's and James's views are both serious
overgeneralizations.
Like James, I have known a fair number of really rich people.
Some are as James describes: people who enjoy doing a lot of things,
creating a lot of value, and generally being a key part of making the modern
world...
But some are more like Gary describes. Especially among investment bankers
and finance-industry sales types I've known, it's not that common to find
people driven by the desire to create value. There is a lot of pure and
simple greed, and a lot of fraud and dishonesty and backstabbing too. Of
course there are also some wonderful and honest people -- one can't
generalize too strongly about any walk of life...
Others, particularly the wealthy who've *inherited* money, are just hapless
fools trying to prove something to themselves or their families, and
frittering their wealth away on dumb schemes and investments rather than
creating real business value OR doing philanthropy. While it takes a lot of
ability to get rich [except in rare cases of luck], a lot of rich folks seem
to have dumb and immoral kids, and an awful lot of the money in the world is
commanded by these inheritors of wealth rather than by wealth-creators. Of
course, some wealth-inheritors are fabulously intelligent and creative but
this seems to be a minority case...
-- Ben G
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