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.
I don’t think the premise that you can “make it” is wrong, and being somewhat wealthy is definitely motivation for many great things. If you’re running a tech start-up you’re probably putting in 60-80 hours a week and have to cope with a great level of stress. Of course being passionate about your product is a very important factor but without the allure of living very well afterwards I think it’d deter a lot of innovation, sports talents, musicians and whatnot.
I don’t blame this dude for still wanting to live his life while being quite ethical; hate the game, not the player (in this case at least). This is about how fiscally conservative I can be. Billionaires shouldn’t exist - and especially these insanely wealthy individuals taking over the world with tech, but I don’t think you can take it away completely. In an ideal world there wouldn’t even be millionaires but people are gonna be people and sociopaths and narcissists are always gonna exist and trying to rig the system.
Right. The goal isn’t to make it so no one has more than anyone else, it’s to ensure that everyone has enough and no one has so much more than anyone else that they can mess up society on a whim, and that people aren’t being exploited.
You want there to be a reward for hard work, creativity, innovation and all that. Just actually proportional to the value being added as opposed to what they can get away with.
I don’t begrudge a person who has worked hard and had something they started become successful a more-than-comfortable and early retirement. It’s when they just had money and used it to make more money, or showed up did little and got fired with millions of compensation that I’m really bothered.
I don’t think the premise that you can “make it” is wrong, and being somewhat wealthy is definitely motivation for many great things. If you’re running a tech start-up you’re probably putting in 60-80 hours a week and have to cope with a great level of stress. Of course being passionate about your product is a very important factor but without the allure of living very well afterwards I think it’d deter a lot of innovation, sports talents, musicians and whatnot.
I don’t blame this dude for still wanting to live his life while being quite ethical; hate the game, not the player (in this case at least). This is about how fiscally conservative I can be. Billionaires shouldn’t exist - and especially these insanely wealthy individuals taking over the world with tech, but I don’t think you can take it away completely. In an ideal world there wouldn’t even be millionaires but people are gonna be people and sociopaths and narcissists are always gonna exist and trying to rig the system.
Right. The goal isn’t to make it so no one has more than anyone else, it’s to ensure that everyone has enough and no one has so much more than anyone else that they can mess up society on a whim, and that people aren’t being exploited.
You want there to be a reward for hard work, creativity, innovation and all that. Just actually proportional to the value being added as opposed to what they can get away with.
I don’t begrudge a person who has worked hard and had something they started become successful a more-than-comfortable and early retirement. It’s when they just had money and used it to make more money, or showed up did little and got fired with millions of compensation that I’m really bothered.