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Comment by rqtwteye | Hacker News Reader

“The thing that often baffles me is why these people still work. You can do almost anything you want with that kind of money.”

Simple. They love the work. That’s what they want to do. To become a billionaire you usually have to put in an enormous effort. Not many people are willing to do that.

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Fair, I don't think I explained this well. Because even I would "work" (see [2]). But it is a completely different kind of work, not being bound. They can definitely run companies big or small with no concern of investors.

No doubt billionaires work hard to get there. And no doubt it is a hard task.

I guess part of it is why care about how much money you make anymore? If you care about "score" it seems odd to compare your assets when you can compare your companies' value. Because you can't actually do anything with that money in your bank, and the company's value is a more meaningful metric as to your "value." I think Jensen's rise says a lot more about his value than the $80B in assets or him being in the top 20 richest. (golden handcuffs aside) In that respect Jensen is doing much better than Musk or Bezos. Of course there's tons of metrics to consider but just using this to help ground a talking point.

“ I guess part of it is why care about how much money you make anymore?”

They are good at making money so it’s fun for them.

On an aside I think Jensen is very good at looking folksy but in the end he is another super driven high achiever. He just expresses himself differently. You don’t get to that level if you aren’t a hard nosed business guy.

I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Money in the pocket means nothing. Not even a good value for fictitious scoring. Arguably putting it in your pocket becomes shortsighted because you can make more money by putting it back into the company. Because really, it's doing nothing when you have it because you can't spend it. But if it is in the company then it can be spent. Reducing price of products increases number of sales. You can put it back into employees to make them work harder and be happier (more efficient workers). And so on. But you literally can't spend it if it is in your bank account. We're talking about divested fully liquidated dollars. That's the part I don't get.

It’s a competition or a hobby. Most hobbies are ultimately meaningless. I used to do boxing. Getting punched in the face and punching others is ultimately useless. But for some reason I enjoyed it and put an enormous effort into it. Others play golf and enjoy it. And billionaires like to make money.

I don't think you get it. I responded here[0] which motivated a simulation where you hire a $400k employee every weekday. You're hugely profitable if you're a multi-billionaire (>$1bn worth). You effectively cannot spend that money faster than you make it. These are amounts where you have to consider compounding interest because if you don't, you're missing daily profits that are on the scale of what we'd consider the net worth of a very wealthy individual.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39856271

Keeping score is still the primary driver.

Wealth and power, it's all relative. And the competition only becomes fiercer as those measures increase (the top performers being the most competitive).

The person with $5B is not thinking in terms of "enough." Their sights are set on surpassing the $6B guy.

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