alt Hacker News So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars [...] that it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad — without cheating in some way.
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doctorpangloss • today at 2:48 PM
Well there are plenty of massively successful companies that Paul famously said no to investing in, for stylistic and opinionated and not greedy reasons, like Palantir. I'm sure in Paul's opinion they are doing something bad. Maybe not in Gary Tan's opinion. That is to say, not only is this stuff subjective, but it's complicated. Palantir and Flock, their main customer is the government, which complicates the story even further.
AnimalMuppet • today at 12:41 PM
Conversely, I suspect the politician is defining that "all things that earn a billion dollars" are in the "bad" category.
LeBron James has, between playing basketball and endorsing things, earned a billion dollars. What bad thing did he do, other than losing the finals a few times?
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> What counts as 'doing something bad' and 'cheating' clearly is subjective. I suspect Graham's opinion on the behavior of a Zuckerberg or a Musk would be a little more flattering than mine.
Graham's admiration of scammer Austen Allred is evidence for this.[1]
[1] https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/2019770359830949961