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

> 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.

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 cleaning. An upper MC person might have a weekly cleaner at best. But they still have to load/unload dishwasher, do their own laundry, etc. A very rich person has a full-time housekeeper.

The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. Like having "a lawyer" who they go to for and have known for years. There seems to be much more of a sense of personal relationships / loyalty. Almost like the old feudal oaths.

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

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.

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 less good, but keep a lower profile, get much less hate.

A common meme on the internet is "if your intent was truly charitable, you wouldn't care whether anyone said thank you".

But this is a false dichotomy. Many people find the idea of charity appealing to some degree, but most of us aren't die-hard saints either. When we see the good deeds of others get devalued or even punished, that makes us less enthusiastic about doing good ourselves.

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." Punishing do-gooders is one of the most anti-social things you can do. On the other hand, praising do-gooders is a very cheap way to incentivize people to do more good in the world.

I believe that once you get to a certain level of wealth, you start caring more about your personal reputation than your material goods. Sadly, there is so much reflexive skepticism towards billionaire philanthropy at this point that it's not even clear to me whether doing philanthropy is reputationally net-positive.

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.

I clicked through hoping for something interesting and different, and got the same impression.

So... More plus influence.

I think the only thing listed that people with less money don't really "know about" is how much perspective changes with staff. You know people have people, but not necessarily how it changes things.

I'm on the very low end of that - I run a small DevOps consultancy and can, now employ a few people in low cost countries, and though I've managed large teams before, having unilateral ability to set people to work on things because I want them is a game changer, and it's hard to get used to asking for things instead of doing them.

The rest feels like things everyone knows, if not directly then from TV and movies.

> 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.

Automation is for poorer people - so the company can server more users.

When you are rich, you get a real person who speaks your language well.

There is certainly a wide spectrum in how people behave, and an important factor is also how they would like to be perceived by others. Rundowns on how wealthy people live will tend to overindex on the behavior of people who want others to know they’re wealthy.

As an example, there’s a culture among what people refer to as "old money" families in the US northeast (with generational wealth from long ago), wherein they tend to avoid seeming outwardly wealthy or really talking about money at all…generally aiming to project an unpretentious vibe, eschewing designer clothes and driving 20 year old Volvos, but still spending vacations at long-owned family getaways worth tens of millions, flying first or charter, and send their kids to specific, expensive schools to socialize with others of similar backgrounds.

What wealth buys you is the freedom and opportunity to make that choice. It’s not that you have to use your influence; it’s that if your local billionaire whose name nobody knew decided to make a phone call or two, people would still pick up his call.

That isn’t true for your local plumber.

The local billionaires here own a large family business. The founders (parents) were great people. They lived life poor for the first 50 years of their lives. They were super down to earth.

The next generation are mostly good people. They're involved in politics at the state level and have some philanthropic organizations that really do good work with zero strings attached.

The grandkids, who all have known nothing but having immense wealth are garbage humans. They're entitled, awful, mean spirited assholes. Every. Last. One. They frequent local businesses, and the number of times I've heard, "don't you know who I am" is astounding.

The business mostly runs itself at this point, but I genuinely fear for the future in this area. There's already undercurrents of the family using its connections to bail out one of the grandkids when he was drunk driving. I believe the first murder will happen within the next decade.

The grandparents would be absolutely horrified if they saw what their family was turning into.

>The one thing you'd think it gives them is freedom, but they all pretty much end up working til they die so I don't know.

From "Requiem" by Robert Heinlein, 1940 <https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v24n05_1940-01_dtsg03...>:

>"What? You are old D. D.? But, hell's bells, you own a big slice of the company yourself; you ought to be able to do anything you like, rules or no rules."

>"That is not an unusual opinion, son, but it is incorrect. Rich men aren't more free than other men; they are less free—a good deal less free. I tried to do what you suggest, but the other directors would not permit me. They are afraid of losing their franchise. It costs them a good deal in—uh—political contact expenses to retain it, as it is."

>"Well, I'll be a— Can you tie that, Mac? A guy with lots of dough, and he can't spend it the way he wants to."

Given what we know about how he goes about making children, I don't really think love is the objective with Elon.

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They never, ever walk away.

Shatner has always been a jerk, the joy you're seeing is manufactured PR for a man who is worried about his "legacy" like any of the other older rich.