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If:

(a) you have FU money

(b) you'll get to keep having FU money (perhaps drastically less, but still FU money) whatever you try

Then you don't have "skin in the game" anymore like a normal person does.

If Bezos fortune goes from 100 billion to 5 billion due to bad bets, he still hasn't suffered anything more significant than some damage to his ego (meanwhile Amazon employees could see their lives and finances ruined).



I’m sure he would feel like he’d just gone from $1000 to $50 though.

It’s a fairly significant difference.


$1000 in the bank is enough to feel like you can cover rent, bills, and meals. $50 is not. Do you think he would feel like he wouldn't know whether he'd have a roof over his head next month, or whether he should start skipping meals entirely?


Would he, though? Really?

Functionally what is the difference in quality of life and power between the two?

The only thing I can think of is he'd no longer be astronomically one of the richest ten humans alive.


I'll bet it's really nice to have major cities beg you to move there.


That's a function of him being the CEO of Amazon, though, yeah?


I'm sure state income taxes on dividends off $100B don't hurt either. (If AMZN paid dividends, or Bezos diversified his stock portfolio.)


Yeah but he would have no skin in the game. Or much less than ordinary person. You need to be in a position where if your bet goes awry you’ll end up in some sort of worse state (not having few less zeros in the bank account but your actual lifestyle and quality of life affected in a meaningful way).


Ego difference. No lifestyle difference. And no life and death difference.


No, he wouldn't. Either way he has more money than he can realistically spend. Money has drastically less value the more of it you have.


My comment was not about WeWork's CEO, but rather in reference to the Galt's Gulch (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand)comment. They made a comment that the heroes in Atlas Shrugged used their own names as the monikers of their companies. I was simply stating that the comparison didn't carry over to Tesla = Musk. That was all. It seems to have triggered some to respond to their own interpretation. Skin in the game was putting your name on your company, not a more ambiguous one to hide behind. I would argue that unless you can change your name, you are putting skin into the game by naming your company after yourself.

I also refrain from the concept of FU money, all that it connotates, and that someone else can determine how much I can have.




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