What a billionaire is like

Devin Foley ruminates on Trump's spat with Steve Bannon:
I don’t know what it is, but there is something about the guys who are billionaires that is very different from everyone else. To you and me, having $500 million is practically the same as being a billionaire. Even having $50 million or just $5 million is a lot of money to me and far more than anything I have. But here’s the thing, the guy with $500 million is just like the guy with $5 million and just like you and me, he will go to his grave scared that he’ll end up destitute in some filthy poorhouse at the mercy of a nurse-maid who hates life.
But not the billionaires. Yes, they care about their wealth, but they’re after something different at the point they have nine zeroes in the bank account. They’re oddly beyond money.
Of the ones I have met, they have been good men and shockingly frugal. They’re very interested in the interplay between ideas, people, and institutions. They’re looking for trends and rely on their gut instinct quite a bit. They have a small group they trust because they know that the vast majority of people around them, no matter all the nice things said, just want some of their money. They must be detached and insulated from the world, while still able to touch and feel it, they need to have their fingers in things just enough to get a sense of the trends and currents.
The most important thing you can be for a billionaire is honest. Flattery and awards work for other men, but the billionaire doesn’t need any of it. The rare gem for him is honesty.
I'm trying to remember if I've ever met a billionaire. Perhaps not. Many extremely wealthy businessmen, but no one truly over the top in wealth in the way Foley is describing, what I think of as "Bill Gates money."  I have at least worked with a number of wealthy guys who valued honesty more than flattery, and therefore were willing to put up with my egregious tactlessness, something I'd have done well to learn to control much earlier in life.  I shudder to think of the number of enemies I made for no good reason and without even being entirely aware of it at the time.

On the other hand, a lot of people probably benefited from my honesty.  I'm interested to see now whether it will play with local voters, who will have to be deeply concerned about opacity in local government in order to find it attractive in a candidate.

9 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

In the movies, they don't like your honesty (and bluntness) at first, but then you get them through some crisis and they love you. I'm sure that's how it works in real life, too.

Texan99 said...

:-) Or one is forever a prophet without honor in his own land, a tragic and fascinating figure. Certainly not someone who simply needs to learn better interpersonal skills, not to mention charity.

Grim said...

Honesty to one's self is intensely valuable. To others, it's usually better to be tactful. It would be interesting to discover that, at some level of liberation from worldly concerns, it became intensely valuable again.

E Hines said...

Tact and honesty aren't mutually exclusive. It just takes more skill than folks like me, and like T99 used to be, to do both in the same sentence or two.

On the other hand, folks who disliked your integrity at first and then love you after your saving them from some crisis still dislike your integrity; they're just hoping for more favors.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

Someone should write a book that encourages speaking the truth in love...but it's already been done.

Humans tend to get one, but not both.

Texan99 said...

Sadly, I am only a tiny bit more tactful now than I used to be. I'm trying to be more aware of other people and less like a textbook case of Asperger's.

Anonymous said...

Asperger's - I resemble that remark. So does my son.
Dealing with him gave me a better understanding of what my parents went through :)

Grim said...

Someone said, "To help a man, tell him the truth; but to help yourself, flatter."

Not that there is much flattery to be found in this crowd!

E Hines said...

But there is: we flatter by honoring with the truth.

Eric Hines