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SimianSci • yesterday at 9:06 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

- Own a monopoly - Inherit your fortune - Run a criminal enterprise

Using just these three filters alone, you encompass more than 99% of all billionaires in existence. The amount of billionaires who do not fit into these categories can barely occupy a family sized vehicle.

The criteria here suggesting that there is a specific sociopathic personality requirement to being a billionaire as each category can be argued as harmful to societies.

Replies

nostrademons • yesterday at 9:47 PM

I've been thinking that you can divide businesses on two axes,

                            Scalable - Many customers
                                     |
    Short-term/       Ponzi Scheme   |    Monopoly         Long-term/
    Transactional  --------------------------------------   Relational
                       Contracting / |   Consulting /
                       Retail etc    |   Therapy etc
                                     |
                        Non-scalable - Few customers
And mathematically, only businesses at the top of the graph are capable of generating a billion dollars. Hence, if you are looking to be a billionaire, the path lies either through a Ponzi scheme or through a monopoly. Both of them, in their most pure form, are illegal, and the challenge in the business model is to execute on them while staying just barely on the right side of the law.