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Comment by ozim | Hacker News Reader

It is not "will" it always is money.

There was an article some days ago where someone was claiming "with AI only you decide how many bugs you have" — well no the same forces apply because tokens are not free and business wants to do stuff that directly earns money.

Well we have to make cases and measure where the bug costs money and how. Lots of bugs are irrelevant and not blocking people from using the software. If bug doesn't drop database but is "dropdown doesn't exactly align" or "given precodnitions A,B and C something bad will happen" while A, B and C have very small possibility of occuring.

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  > It is not "will" it always is money.

Bullshit. There are so many ways to make money. And let's be honest, are the levels of wealth these people have money is entirely meaningless. There is nothing Elon can obtain, through money, that Alex Karp can't. That is despite more than an order of magnitude difference in wealth.

So it isn't money. You can argue that it is power, that the money is the proxy, but this still wouldn't answer the question.

The reason I'm pushing back hard here is these simplistic answers are just thought terminating cliches. They dismiss the problem, calling it inevitable and unsolvable. It only helps to preserve the status quo. It only helps empower those who seek to take our own. So I call bullshit

Your answer makes sense for me only if your boss is Elon.

For all the other companies fixing a bug has opportunity cost, they pick what to spend their resources on. Some 5 minute bug feels insignificant but if all devs start picking 5 minute bugs they fancy in a system company won't do what is needed to keep running I guess.

  > Your answer makes sense for me only if your boss is Elon.

What about for everyone that works for a big tech company. The same still applies.

I know I picked very big numbers, but let's be honest, a more "modest" $50m and you have everything you could ask for. Put that in a safe 5% earning account and you're making $2.5m/yr, sitting on your ass doing nothing. Good luck spending all that in a year, consistently. There's nearly nothing out of reach.

There's far more people whose bosses are richer than that. But I think the problem is people don't understand what these levels of wealth actually mean. Money works differently at that level as it becomes harder to spend it faster than you earn it. Even those get in big tech jobs aren't living at those levels.

Clearly these people are addicted to something other than money. No billionaire actually cares about money. The money is a proxy

At some point money stops being about what you can buy and turns to a competition. You become addicted to the feeling of getting ahead of your rivals on the Forbes list, watching your companies stock price tick up after a good quarter, coming up with megalomaniac plans and then feeling happy when you can finally afford them even if you never actually wanted to pull them off.

Being a billionaire is a conscious decision. You can always choose to give away your shares to employees or sell them and donate the profit like Warren Buffett. If you decide you want to keep all of it for yourself that means you are a selfish person and probably a psychopath. And for these types making money is a goal by itself.

I buy that but it still leaves many questions. The goal is ultimately arbitrary, is it not?

Why not seek fame instead? Philanthropy? World records? Knowledge? Innovation? Adventure? Or many other things? Money makes all these things easier to achieve. These are less hated by the public. Using capital to seek these pursuits does not risk them losing their heads as the populous revolts. Power can still be had through many of these pursuits. To do the things they claim their companies do...

I don't think you're wrong, but it is far from a complete answer and that's why I ask

Some do. They aren't the ones with the most money.

Yet our society praises the money people more.

So I'm not just going to accept selection bias as the answer because while that explains why some people have an addition it doesn't explain why society is fixated on those chasing the arbitrary high score.

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