[AZLiberty]

Philip Greenspun is an interesting case. He hung around MIT for a while and then set up a company call ArsTechnica. He figured out how to develop Web sites using relational databases as back-ends. He wrote a cool book about it, said he didn't want to do business the usual way (i.e., taking venture capital), sold out to Red Hat at the peak of the dot-com bubble, totally pissed off Red Hat, and retired with millions, leaving all his programmers trying to find jobs in "Dot-Com Winter".

He also has a cool Web site, an interesting travelogue Travels with Samantha, an online version of his book Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, and an interesting lawsuit.

[Age of Reason]

and retired with millions, leaving all his programmers trying to find jobs in "Dot-Com Winter".

You know, it occurs to me that such success stories must always be a minority of the population.

Because were everyone to be a billionaire--they would all be competing for the same goods, so the price of those goods would rise until no one is rich, even though they're each worth billions.

Now were one to argue that everyone could be be worth billions and still be rich if we lived in a world where the cost of producing goods was so low, that everything is made by self-replicating solar-powered robots for free.

But then, most people would not be able to have more than the next guy, which would make them not "feel" superior.

And so that would be a nightmare world for the majority of the wealthy who seek to accumulate money as means to assuage their feelings of inferiority.

So it would appear that no matter how much we try, money will never really make us happy--only less miserable at best.

[Question_Assumptions]

Greenspun's book definitely contained some good advice (especially considering when it was written) but his attitude and focus on only one best way to do things didn't help. As I explained to a young genius I once worked with, smart people may know more than other people but if they show contempt for those who aren't as smart as they are, those less smart people won't want to deal with them.

[Diverdogz]

A lot of what I've learned about Photography is due to Greenspun's website. Interesting fellow.