Comment by cyber_kinetist
5 hours ago
I really do not understand how people talk about "Being rich / being a billionaire will make you fundamentally unhappy". Damn if I had all the money I have so many good-willed projects I want to throw money at!
5 hours ago
I really do not understand how people talk about "Being rich / being a billionaire will make you fundamentally unhappy". Damn if I had all the money I have so many good-willed projects I want to throw money at!
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy less unhappiness. There's diminishing returns, of course, but I'd hazard it looks a bit like ln(n), in that the returns are quite significant in the beginning.
Money can very much buy happiness. Most of the things that make you unhappy can be remedied with money. How much money you need to accomplish that depends though.
Unhappiness and happiness are surprisingly orthogonal. Removing unhappiness does not make you happy, it makes you not unhappy[1]. Being not unhappy is a requirement for happiness, but it's not sufficient.
1: not unhappy is weird phrasing. Substitute not sad or not angry or not hungry or whatever for your particular state of unhappiness.
The person you are replying to agrees that money can get rid of things that cause unhappiness. The point is that removing unhappiness is only part of what creates happiness, and money can’t buy the other part.
> Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy less unhappiness
> Money can very much buy happiness. Most of the things that make you unhappy can be remedied with money
Was it too hard to read beyond the first comma?
> Most of the things that make you unhappy can be remedied with money
Nonsense. Most of the things that can be remedied with money are not the truly painful things of life either.
Will money save you from heartache? From the pain of losing a loved one? From being lonely? From having no respect from your peers? From losing your health to incurable cancer?
At that point, all money can do for one is make them even more pathetic.
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The terms I've learned to use is rather: Happiness, and Stressors.
If you need your car to earn money, and you don't have the money or other resources to repair it if it breaks - that's a huge uncertainty and a huge source of stress and worry. Liquid funds can remove that source of stress. More drastic examples would include rent or food.
That's why liquid funds can remove impediments and distractions from your life, but once all of those are gone, then what?
And the remaining unhappinesses can end up in starker relief, as you continuously try to remove all unhappinesses from your life to nearly impossible and sometimes distorted degrees.
The problem isn’t that money doesn’t buy happiness, it’s that it can remove your ability to endure the necessary amounts of unhappiness in life.
It will not make you unhappy. It will just not make you happy. Big difference. The saying "money can't buy happiness" is in fact true no matter how much people want to rationalize the opposite.
What that always leaves out, however, is that no/little money can very much cause a lot of unhappiness.
The amount of money to get over that hump is small. Many people in poverty are happy. If you are at the very bottom with not enough to eat and such money can buy happiness, but you can be below the poverty line and still be about as happy as everyone.
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> The saying "money can't buy happiness" is in fact true no matter how much people want to rationalize the opposite.
I'm willing to test this theory out, send me some money.
People conflate the ideas of happiness, and comfort. Money buys access to increasing levels of comfort, but comfort becomes normalized very quickly. Once you've become accustomed to a certain level of comfort, the luxury of it wears off and it becomes a new norm. You also have an expectation to, at a minimum, maintain wealth so that you don't lose access to your current level of comfort.
When people with 1X see people with 10X or 100X and go hey! Why aren't you doing more? That gives me hope. When these people succeed, they are exactly the type of people who will give back and derive happiness from it. The right person who acquires wealth can do a lot of good in the world.
A recent example: https://vinay.sh/i-am-rich-and-have-no-idea-what-to-do-with-...
> Everything feels like a side quest, but not in an inspiring way. I don’t have the same base desires driving me to make money or gain status. I have infinite freedom, yet I don’t know what to do with it
What a hyper-capitalist statement. You are living a sad life if money and status is all that is driving you.
This person is free to do what they like. Family, friends, hobbies, philanthropy, … But apparently they have been stuck in a hamster wheel, chasing money and status their whole life, without ever stopping to think what they actually want or like, what is important to them.
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I mean, the answer is so obviously in front of our faces right now... :-)
Use the free time to learn some Zig! And start a life of happily giving back powerful and useful GPL software to put your own 2 cents on the mountain of society building blocks that allowed you to thrive in such a way to begin with.
Being rich doesn’t make you unhappy.
But spending your life pursuing an unsatisfiable goal (because the goal is “more”) probably isn’t good for your happiness.
Not to mention, there are very satisfying ways to contribute to things you think are important that don’t necessarily involve a lot of money.
Damn if I had all the money I have so many good-willed projects I want to throw money at!
I think this is quite defeatist thinking. A thousand people who donate $400 is also $400k and is well within the realm of most people here. A lot of non-profits also want the thousand people that donate $400, because $400 yearly from thousand people is much more robust long-term funding.
Recently a well-known Dutch journalist, who started an organization to critically follow big tag (and take them to court when necessary), raised 1.3 million Euro. Most of it is from people like you and me, who can chip in 10 Euro monthly. It's reliable, because most people just have a recurring donation set up.
Not to detract from mitchellh's pledge, because ideally you get both types of donations.
I think the point that above commentor was making is that mitchellh is likely more than a 1000 times as rich as most commentors here and that being able to out-influence over a 1000 people can be quite personally satisfying.
Yeah I feel the same about people who say they wouldn't know what to do when they retire. I have so many projects! I guess we are just different...
The kinds of people that become billionaires are not those who are happy, the hole in their sole is why they are billionaires in the first place. Yes there are exceptions, just like with everything.
You should probably have a billion dollars, you would do great things. But you probably shouldn't become a billionaire to get there. Being rich doesn't make one unhappy, but getting there does.
That relentless grind changes a person, much like the ring.
I echo the sentiment in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48630565
Because the most vocal rich people in this age seem to have an unusual lack of empathy and just being able to enjoy themselves.
Yeah, I think people have the correlation backward. I suspect that driven people are more likely to get rich and less likely to be happy, so there seem to be a lot of angry rich dudes.
Meanwhile, people who get rich by accident often seem able to improve their own lives and those of others with their money. The recent article about the founder of Craigslist comes to mind.
People who get rich by accident (e.g. lottery winners) typically spend it all and end up back where they started. Money is hard to hold on to for people who are unsophisticated about money. Predators and grifters come out of the woodwork to take a lot of it, and the rest gets frittered away on trinkets.
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I wonder what is better, for people, for society, having many rich angry people or having many poor angry people?
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Nailed it.
Yet most wealthy people don't act like that.
The wealthiest man on the planet looks to be quite miserable, insecure and bitter most of the time.
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