EXCLUSIVE: Brian O’Kelley says he’s capped his wealth to $100 million. The tech founder tells Fortune, billionaires are wasteful, out of touch, and “othered” from real life.
O’Kelley’s [sic] says billionaires represent “such an incredibly ludicrous waste of money in a world where there’s so many people who don’t have that,” but he says actually being one is also “othering”—separating you from the limits and consequences that define normal life. “There’s something about keeping connected to normalcy that is really, really important,” the entrepreneur explains. “I don’t want a yacht and I don’t ever want to be able to be without consequences. I think that’s the biggest risk, is, how can we be accountable when we have so much money we can buy anything?”
He gets it. Past a certain point, wealth erodes your humanity. I think I’d have picked $100M too - at a safe 4% return that’s $4M per year, plenty for anybody to live on but not megayacht money.
Sure, but choosing to live on $160k/yr would be a bit much when you’re starting with $1.6B. I can’t fault him for still wanting to enjoy being wealthy instead of upper-middle-class and definitely don’t think it’s reasonable to complain that giving away 95% of his wealth is somehow not enough.
Even if it still feels a bit wrong, I can somehow reason with there being wealthy people and the motivation of potential lavish life, since some seem to really need it to make any effort in society. It’s somewhat understandable at least. Talking about tens of millions, with a bit of stretch hundreds - okay, I can stomach it even if it still seems extremely excess.
But billions… that’s already ten times more than that. How anyone can stomach that, I don’t get.
While my heart disagrees, my brain can get, with some effort, behind what this guy says. It kind of makes sense at least. Retaining your humanity and giving up such an inconceivable amount of money for that, really sounds pretty good in this world we’ve been living in lately. Sounds fucking weird to feel good about someone still having such excess in comparison to all the people struggling with next to nothing, but at least there’s some amount of backbone and clear thought involved.
Not sure what to think still. Like someone else commented, better reserve outright okaying this until we know how the money was given away.
But if it turns out to be sensible and humane, I can honestly say I’m fine with the kind of millionaire this one is. It’s not ideal, but it’s tolerable and in some niche sense, justifiable. If it’s all good, I even wish all the millionaires were like this… if we have to have them, as a compromise with the part of people who need all that, the “dream” to strive for, for whatever reason, at least let them be sensible and moral in some way, such as this…
He gets it. Past a certain point, wealth erodes your humanity. I think I’d have picked $100M too - at a safe 4% return that’s $4M per year, plenty for anybody to live on but not megayacht money.
Motherfucking $4MM total is enough to live on with a return like that.
Sure, but choosing to live on $160k/yr would be a bit much when you’re starting with $1.6B. I can’t fault him for still wanting to enjoy being wealthy instead of upper-middle-class and definitely don’t think it’s reasonable to complain that giving away 95% of his wealth is somehow not enough.
Even if it still feels a bit wrong, I can somehow reason with there being wealthy people and the motivation of potential lavish life, since some seem to really need it to make any effort in society. It’s somewhat understandable at least. Talking about tens of millions, with a bit of stretch hundreds - okay, I can stomach it even if it still seems extremely excess.
But billions… that’s already ten times more than that. How anyone can stomach that, I don’t get.
While my heart disagrees, my brain can get, with some effort, behind what this guy says. It kind of makes sense at least. Retaining your humanity and giving up such an inconceivable amount of money for that, really sounds pretty good in this world we’ve been living in lately. Sounds fucking weird to feel good about someone still having such excess in comparison to all the people struggling with next to nothing, but at least there’s some amount of backbone and clear thought involved.
Not sure what to think still. Like someone else commented, better reserve outright okaying this until we know how the money was given away.
But if it turns out to be sensible and humane, I can honestly say I’m fine with the kind of millionaire this one is. It’s not ideal, but it’s tolerable and in some niche sense, justifiable. If it’s all good, I even wish all the millionaires were like this… if we have to have them, as a compromise with the part of people who need all that, the “dream” to strive for, for whatever reason, at least let them be sensible and moral in some way, such as this…