It’s only money

So, Bill Gates wishes he wasn’t the richest man in the world.

That’s an easy thing to fix, Bill, but somehow I doubt anybody’s gonna to be watching the mailbox for a check.

This segues nicely into a conversation I was having with a friend the other day. We were speculating as to when, for a rich person, enough is enough. Gates and others like him have always been something of an enigma to me. When you’ve got that much money, where’s the motivation come from to continue working? To continue competing? To continue to acquire wealth?

Greed is just too simple an answer. The best we could come up with is that the phenomenon is akin to animal instinct. Just as animals are compelled by instinct to eat, mate, and defend themselves; humans, as more complex creatures, must be compelled to more complex behaviors. Humans are of course compelled to those simple behaviors as well, but you get what I mean.

We never arrived at a very satisfactory conclusion, so that end of the conversation sort of derailed, but we did come up with a good theory for the opposite end of the spectrum. In other words, why do you never hear about rich people who have, in fact, earned enough, and now spend their lives in leisure, or charity, or pursuing their hobbies?

And then we realized we’d answered our own question. The reason you never hear about a rich person who’s had enough is because of exactly that. They’ve had enough. They are done. They aren’t considered newsworthy, and they rarely seek the limelight, so you never hear of them. The best example I can think of would be Steve Wozniak, who’s only ever mentioned in the media because he’s virtually deified for his role as co-founder of Apple Computer. Wozniak has spent most of the last two decades more or less just having a good time, and I’m sure there must be more like him.

You just never hear about ‘em.

It was uplifting, in a way, to arrive at that realization, because it provides evidence that maybe not every rich guy is an asshole, and maybe being an asshole isn’t a prerequisite for being rich.

Anyway, I think I’ll go check the mail now. Just in case.