Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Careless People

pluralistic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 575 posts

Re: Careless People

#191

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

>> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon?

There is a long history of wealthy elites wanting to always win, even at games, and who want to be the center of attention.

Kaiser Wilhelm II had many of the same characteristics seen in today's ultrawealthy elites. When he commanded forces in German military exercises his side was always the side that won because it was his side.

"Wilhelm II's reign marked a departure from the more restrained leadership of his predecessors, as he sought to assert direct influence over the German Empire's governance and military affairs. This shift toward a more "personalist" system, where loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its eventual strategic missteps."

Source: https://www.deadcarl.com/p/the-kaiser-and-his-men-civil-mili...

Lots of historical echos in the state of the world today.

Re: Careless People

#193

Post by dsr_ »

Jevon23 wrote: post #28
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time. It’s a constant compulsion. Even if they might intellectually understand the distinction between “just a game” and “actual serious time”, they don’t “feel” that distinction in their bones. They have no off switch.

It's not competition that they like. It's winning.

Competitive athletes expect to lose. They don't want to lose, but there's only one winner (or three podium spots) in any given contest. They turn "not wanting to lose" into their motivation for getting better, still knowing that they are fairly likely to lose. The competition is the point, and when they lose, they are still a little happy if they did better than they did last time.

The people who want to win regardless of the competition, regardless of the rules: we call those people bullies.

Re: Careless People

#194

Post by pixl97 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #50
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

I think it is part nature, part nurture. To get where they are, they need to be quite smart, competitive, and ruthless. As soon as they succeed, they become magnets to yes-men and people trying to ride their coat-tails. So you end up in a position where the majority will ask "how high?" when you tell them to jump, and who will never question you. Do that for a couple of decades, and something has to change - psycholo…

>I think it is part nature, part nurture.

Really rich people aren't any different from the rest of us. You quickly realize that what sets them apart is privilege. You see behaviors in the wealthy that if they were poor they'd be locked up for. "They just let you do it if you're rich" comes to mind.

Re: Careless People

#195

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Jensson wrote: post #160
immibis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is incompatible with free markets. Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions.

> Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital accumulate under free markets? The freer the market the more capital accumulates. In a freer market that today you would have to pay a massive toll every time you went to the grocery store, because the road owner has monopol…

In economics perfect markets mean that your company that raises spherical cows has no moat against others doing the same. If you do something to gain profits to become rich someone else joins the market to compete those profits down to zero. This reduces inefficiency and makes everyone rich.

Deregulation is sold as getting closer to this, in reality it means the money collects wherever the market breaks down, monopolies, network effects, externalities, concentrated special interests, middlemen, oligarchies, gangsters, landlords etc.

Re: Careless People

#196

Post by kreddor »

bondarchuk wrote: post #41
matthewdgreen wrote: post #4

I’m only part of the way through the book, so have nothing to spoil here. But it’s entertaining. And shocking. The author will relate a scene that’s so absurd that you think “ah, this can’t be true, this is made up for dramatic effect, nobody would act like that” and then you Google it and you realize the absurd thing is totally true and was fully documented at the time. All the author is adding is a perspective from…

What is the thing? (you can rot13 it for spoilers)

It's hardly just one single thing. The book is full of absurd scenes all the way through.

Re: Careless People

#197

Post by jollyllama »

Jevon23 wrote: post #28
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

In order to get into Zuckerberg’s position in the first place, you need to have a highly competitive personality type. And competitive people want to win at EVERYTHING, all the time. It’s a constant compulsion. Even if they might intellectually understand the distinction between “just a game” and “actual serious time”, they don’t “feel” that distinction in their bones. They have no off switch.

I can recall being this way as a small child. So had I not been disciplined as a child so that I would not be a sore loser, did this blunt something that would have led to my being more "successful"?

Re: Careless People

#198

Post by havaloc »

To be fair, Catan really brings out the worse in people, despite it being a friendly Euro game. It's worse than Monopoly in a lot of ways.

Re: Careless People

#199

Post by HexPhantom »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

I think it's less a new phenomenon and more a timeless one - we've just digitized the palace

Re: Careless People

#200

Post by imiric »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #133
imiric wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a ridiculous video that's reading way too much into a silly 5 second clip. Bill Gates may be competitive, but this specific event, and the whole idea that it somehow represents a shift, is completely unrelated to the current topic. People have different private and public personas, and even present different personas to different people. This is completely normal, and often the only way to cope with being a cele…

It's only 5 seconds edited down to match your attention span. Exceed it, I suppose, because the fact that personas exist is not the pertinent part, it's the glimpse past BillG's persona to see the compulsive competitive behavior: inventing a chair game, "cheating" at it, and instead of brushing it off as silly fun (which everyone would have accepted) getting increasingly flustered until he walked out of an interview.

Way to assume what my attention span is.

Speaking of which, if you watch the (nearly) full interview[1] instead of that 5 second clip, you'll realize that the chair jumping bit had nothing to do with the reason he walked out of that interview. I couldn't find the full version, but you can see that towards the end he gets annoyed at the constant prodding to get him to admit some wrongdoing. The entire segment is made to portray him as some out-of-touch rich guy and tyrant that abuses his employees and competitors. Just poor television all around, more interested in promoting sensationalism for engagement purposes, than showing an honest image of the person. The chair jumping bit is proof of this, given that it's the only thing the public remembers.

Extrapolating that bit to make some grand assumption about his personality is beyond ridiculous.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgwHIwEwGLQ

Post reply on HN