Earlier quoted context omitted.
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What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
61–70 of 829 posts
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We have very few items for the rich to buy Goods, yes. Services, fuck no. Look at the Four Seasons and Amangani yacht and jet programmes for a <$10mm example of the sorts of experiences wealth opens up.
These are mostly positional items. The four seasons isn't materially better than the hilton next door. The rooms are basically the same, the fixtures at the four seasons are fancier, the bedding is prettier, some random furniture may be sourced from a different supplier. The four seasons will be in a location which has somewhat better views. The four seasons has prettier and more attentive staff, and there are less "…
> four seasons isn't materially better than the hilton next door
I’m not comparing the hotels, I’m comparing their yacht and jet programmes.
Status signalling is mostly an upper middle class game—the truly wealthy tend to use their wealth to buy power or privacy.
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#63So, no wealthy person is buying a physics lecture or investing in experiments to better understand the nature of this universe we live in? /s btw does anyone know if places like Fermi lab, CERN receive donations from the super-wealthy?
I don't think directly, but wealthy people occasionally "buy a building" at a university, or fund an endowed professorship.
Occasionally? It's very common. I guess for an individual wealthy person it might be occasional or a one-time thing.
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are mostly positional items. The four seasons isn't materially better than the hilton next door. The rooms are basically the same, the fixtures at the four seasons are fancier, the bedding is prettier, some random furniture may be sourced from a different supplier. The four seasons will be in a location which has somewhat better views. The four seasons has prettier and more attentive staff, and there are less "…
I stayed at the 4 seasons a few years ago just to give it a try. Not even remotely worth it. The only real difference I noticed was the obsequiousness of the staff. If you want hotel employees to kiss your ass and pretend to respect you, then this is the place for you. But the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed. I will give you a good example of something that most upper middle…
> the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed
I broadly agree with you on their hotels. But I’d note that Four Seasons doesn’t compete on room quality, but service. If you planned your stay perfectly they shouldn’t outperform. But if you forgot something, or need help with something weird, they have a habit of being halfway legendary. (Colleague left his suit at home. They had one made overnight. Concierge apparently knew a suit maker’s cell.)
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say it really depends on the mentality of the very rich person The very wealthy are going to fly private. Upper middle class could swing this on a case-to-case basis, but not regularly and especially if not if they frequently travel Other than that, the main difference is the very wealthy having a mentality of getting people to "take care of problems" to a much larger extent. For example, routine tasks like clean…
> The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. At the higher levels, there's a "family office" which takes care of such things. All bills go there, and anything that needs to be done, they take care of. The first big one was the Rockefellers', which was in Rockefeller Center in New York. (That turned into a business. Now it offers Being Rich as a Service.)
Family offices manage investments. Personal staff are typically separate.
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact they depend on the upper middle class in order to have those things. I'm thinking about cell phones. Nobody can have a cell phone unless enough people can afford them to create an incentive to build and improve the infrastructure.
Without people to buy from, money is worthless.
Sometimes it's fun to realize that if we all just decided dollars were worthless, they would be. There'd be nothing the government could do about it.
Crypto ain't it, though. Even the better-scaling blockchains still don't scale very well. I've heard of a few different mesh-network currency projects, and I wonder if any of them could scale by essentially giving each user their own blockchain. However, in a mesh-network currency, you still have to find a conversion path with enough capacity, and pay a fee at each step, so maybe that's not it either.
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I were rich, I would have a personal data center, an aeronautics lab, a tropical farm, mediaeval fort, things like that. Not this yatches and crap.
And I would sell tickets (at a loss, ). Because whats something cool if nobody witnesses it.
Why sell tickets then? :)
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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tbf, I thought it was a brilliant demonstration of something missing from the list of things that wealthy people can buy: the adulation of the easily impressed...
Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
#69I really like this post since it shows how very little there is for the wealthy to buy other than status goods. The life of the rich, other than status, is very much like the life of upper middle class. The same phones, the same digital entertainment, the same appliances in their homes. We have very few items for the rich to buy. Honestly, it is a problem it breaks incentives and it drives the rich more towards statu…
> which help no one since they are zero sum
Signalling Status plays a big role in group formation/group maintenance/social cohesion etc.
The larger groups grow, the more complex the group dynamics get, keeping groups of people together and preventing them from disintegrating is one of the most complex problem we face, given all the differences in culture, religion, language, class, personalities, ambitions, values, needs, intelligence, skill, education level, interests etc etc
A short cut frequently used (cause its easy) is using Leisure and Luxury (see Theory of the Leisure Class).
"So you like what I wear, where I stay, what I eat, who my friends are, what toys I have and want to be like me or hang out with me then do what I say". This works pretty well. In fact Veblen's prediction in Theory of the Leisure Class was that since Tech has a tendency to eliminate waste, tech would eventually eliminate the need for a Leisure/Status signalling Class that keeps large groups from unraveling.
But social cohesion of large groups is such a complex problem, society even today requires all kinds of Status Signalling to keep the groups together.
If you find ways to keep groups together without status signalling you are onto something special.