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What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

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Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#121

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Animats wrote: post #120
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now there are family office concierge services These are between multi-family offices and scams targeting new money. (The intersection between the best hospitality folks you can privately hire and the best money managers is roughly zero. Consolidating those functions makes no sense unless someone cannot afford them.)

> These are between multi-family offices and scams targeting new money. That's a good way to look at it.

Just take the website you presented. There is a contact us page. Who do you think they’re targeting?

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#122

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

canucker2016 wrote: post #94
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentives for the ultra-rich are screwed up. I remember a few years ago Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was donating 99% to charity. The internet got very angry about it, based on flimsy reasoning: https://qz.com/564805/5-criticisms-of-billionaire-mega-phila... Bill Gates has saved millions of lives through his philanthropy, and the internet is full of malicious rumors about him. Other billionaires who do far…

In Bill Gates's post about changing his charitable giving goal to give most of it away in the next 20 years, he references Chuck Feeney as someone he admired. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Feeney Until he was 75, he traveled only in coach, and carried reading materials in a plastic bag." He did not own a car or a house and wore a $10 Casio F-91W watch He gave away most of his fortune and required recipient…

>He gave away most of his fortune and required recipients not to reveal the source of the donation.

I suppose that's one way to avoid the bad press :-P

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#123

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Gud wrote: post #86
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentives for the ultra-rich are screwed up. I remember a few years ago Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was donating 99% to charity. The internet got very angry about it, based on flimsy reasoning: https://qz.com/564805/5-criticisms-of-billionaire-mega-phila... Bill Gates has saved millions of lives through his philanthropy, and the internet is full of malicious rumors about him. Other billionaires who do far…

Bill Gates gets a lot of hate for good reason. His business practices killed off a lot of good products. BeOS, anyone?

For the sake of preventing perverse incentives, I would encourage you to just make this claim in discussions of BeOS or perhaps early Windows, and not when Bill's philanthropy comes up.

Otherwise other billionaires will think: "If I get into philanthropy, people will take it as an opportunity to publicize un-flattering facts about me."

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#124

Post by jmye »

chrismcb wrote: post #118
HardCodedBias wrote: post #5

I 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…

I'm not sure what you argument is here. But I world rather have inexpensive things that improve lives. There isn't a huge market for expensive things that improve lives. It are you trying to say you want rich people to spend their money trying to build things to improve lives? Some do. Why do you think we have star link, for example

I don’t think StarLink was built to improve lives. See: how it’s being used as a control and power mechanism.

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#125

Post by CobaltFire »

nunez wrote: post #111
amarcheschi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew a son of two entrepreneurs with a ~30m yacht, they own a (ex) monastery they use, either for parties, events, or as a residence They have Miele appliances, but having "same appliances" doesn't make justice to the fact that there are deeper differences. Yes, they're status goods, but I think one's life might greatly improve by being very wealthy - even if your life can still be shitty as a wealthy person

Miele makes really good stuff. I have their stackable W1/T1 washer/dryer. It's unbelievably good at washing or drying pretty much anything. They also supposedly last forever, even today. I'll let y'all know how true that is in 20 years LOL

Have the same set, as well as dishwasher and vacuum.

Nothing but good stuff to say in coming up on 10 years of use.

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#126

Post by CobaltFire »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28
HardCodedBias wrote: post #5

I 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…

> 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.

Can't say I've stayed at the Four Seasons, but we stayed in the St Regis in SF last year. We got upgraded to the Metropolitan Suite and that was quite the experience. Note that I paid exactly zero as I'm a long time Bonvoy Gold Member and was burning points on one of their regular rooms for a vacation, then they elected to upgrade us. I think it was due calling ahead asking for an accommodation for my autistic son (which they were amazing regarding).

I have nothing bad to say and everything good about how they handled our stay. Whether it was worth the price is (as this whole topic is about) relative to your means. I would say that it was more than we would have paid, but now that we've experienced it it's on my radar as a reasonable value. Their signature "Butler" service was beyond amazing; traveling with my son is difficult at the best of times and they handled everything.

They essentially allowed me to have an actual vacation vice allowing me to handle a series of challenges and let the rest of my family have a vacation (which is the normal way things go).

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#128

Post by JohnBooty »

drewcoo wrote: post #81
rglullis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A very rich person has a full-time housekeeper. So does any middle class family living in a developing country with high economic inequality.

And it would be heartless not to. Those housekeepers need jobs and incomes.

Yeah I think this is something that people in countries like the US don't instinctively understand, or at least I didn't.

My Filipino friend explained to me that back home, if you have more than a certain amount of money, it's seen as incredibly selfish not to employ people as housekeepers, etc.

I'd imagine that's true in a lot of places with income disparity and/or high unemployment numbers. It made a lot of sense to me.

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#129

Post by alwillis »

keeda wrote: post #110
Gud wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates gets a lot of hate for good reason. His business practices killed off a lot of good products. BeOS, anyone?

This article, and Google's and Bing's AI overviews for "how did microsoft kill off beos", disagree with that premise: https://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html (Edited to add, another more detailed article: https://macfolkloreradio.com/be/ ) People make this claim about a lot of software (Netscape being the poster child) but typically whenever I look into it, the nuanced answer turns out to be "Microsoft may have thr…

Except for education, you had to buy a browser. You could go to a CompUSA and buy a copy of Netscape Navigator.

Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer for free with Windows, essentially destroying Netscape’s business overnight.

Re: What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)

#130

Post by canucker2016 »

neilv wrote: post #7

> There is literally nothing you can't buy except. Love. Sorry to sound so trite, but it is nearly impossible to have a normal emotional relationship at this level. It is hard to sacrifice for another person when you are never asked to sacrifice ANYTHING. Money can solve all problems for someone, so you offer it, because there is so much else to do. Your time is SOOOO valuable that you ration it. And that makes you l…

zappos co-founder, Tony Hsieh. see https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/the-death-of-za...
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