Hacker News Reader

Comment by idreyn | Hacker News Reader

Is there any billionaire out there whose gains prove not to be ill-gotten if we look close enough?

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." — Balzac

No. A billionaire will fundamentally employ thousands of people. At least one of those thousands will be a crook. It is statistically impossible to find a large enough organization without some crime occurring. Perfect controls and checks-and-balances are impossible (and not necessarily even desirable).

Even if, hypothetically, no crime were to occur, with enough customers and employees, at least a few will be disgruntled, and willing to lie, exaggerate, delude themselves, or misunderstand what's happening.

The result is that expose hit pieces are easy enough to craft against anyone powerful enough. The key question is always about how common improper behavior is, who knows about it, under what cultural standards it is considered improper, etc.

I'm not trying to undermine the underlying point: Most people who got very rich engaged in at least some corruption to do it. But a key word there is 'most.' Virtually all are possible to publicly discredit, and it's important to read such pieces carefully.

While that's true, the criminals in the billionaire's organization are working to help themselves more than the billionaire. If their activities benefit the billionaire, that's just a side effect. In contrast, some crooks rob their employers outright.

Both happen quite a bit, in large organizations. In most cases, the person at the top sets KPIs (e.g. a salesperson should sell at least $10 million of goods), and incentives around those KPIs. Helping oneself means achieving those KPIs by any means -- bribes, kickbacks, fudging numbers, hiring prostitutes, etc.

Some of those are illegal, and some merely unethical. In some cases, that aligns with corporate interests (more sales!). In some cases, it undermines corporate interests (bad reputation). In some cases, the person on the top quietly supports bad behavior, and in some cases, they have just a hard time stopping it.

It's often quite hard to tell all of those apart. But we haven't really found a way to avoid at least some of those happening in any organization above, say, a few hundred people. Even at a hundred people, it's tough.

One of the underemphasized advantages startups can have over big companies is pretty good alignment and protection against this sort of stuff. Everyone knows each other, and works as a genuine team.

The more billions you have, the more likely that one or more of those dollars were acquired in a method that some folks might find distasteful, I imagine.

Probably not, but there's also probably not any non-billionaire investors out there whose gains are squeaky-clean.

> Is there any billionaire out there whose gains prove not to be ill-gotten if we look close enough?

Have any children inherited that level of wealth?

Plenty. There are, for example, three Waltons with personal valuations above 40 billion dollars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_family

I am far (very, very far) from being a millionaire, much less a billionaire. Nevertheless I have a pension and other investments in stocks and shares trackers. I'm certain one of my holdings via those trackers has committed an offense, or done something 'immoral'. So I suppose my gains are ill gotten, as are probably everyone else's.

> Is there any billionaire out there whose gains prove not to be ill-gotten if we look close enough?

This arbitrary and dangerous thinking.

But if you really feel like it by all means start looking closely at as many billionaires as you can identify and prove that each of their gains were ill-gotten.

Just please avoid the generalization.

I think the question "Is there any billionaire out there whose gains prove not to be ill-gotten" is a good question to ask.

There are over 2000 billionaires in the world, and rich people often pay extra for privacy. Learning about all of them isn't a small feat. It's good and proper to have public discussion about such questions before entering research.

I would contribute towards crowdfunding for investigative journalism to dive into the finances of billionaires, with the caveat that I'd expect any whistleblower or other awards for finding wrongdoing would be invested back into the enterprise.

its arbitrary and dangerous to evaluate economic stagnation and profligacy at the hands of a criminal class of sociopaths?

every billionaire is a criminal sociopath?

that is the basic question being asked at the root of this thread, is it not?

It is not. It is possible for a fundamentally empathetic person to go against his or her conscience (or to not look too carefully at what they're really doing), and it is useful to distinguish this behavior from that of people who simply have no empathy.

I just wanted to confirm such an extreme view.

What if someone wins the lottery (after many roll overs)?

At what point do they become criminal sociopaths? When they cross the billion threshold? USD or local currency?

Billionaires don't need your help, why choose to lend your efforts to it.

Satoshi?

Satoshi is for all practical purposes not a billionaire. The assets have not and perhaps will not ever be liquidated.

This is speculation. He could theoretically have borrowed money with his bitcoin wallet as collateral in a private transaction.

How do we know that he didn't sell the private keys?

I think purchasing private keys is an unlikely transaction because it would be impossible for the purchaser to know how many copies of the keys existed before the transaction occurred. It could theoretically happen.

You could buy an obligation of him to transfer you the bitcoin on request, like other regular contracts. Kind of like a swap agreement. Of course, some level of trust is required.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com