Attitudes of the uber-rich

[Ski220]

I don't have a problem with people making lot of money. But sometimes they still piss me off.

This is an excerpt from an article titled "Why so many billionaires are fleeing to Teton county"

The obscene wealth on display at the Yellowstone Club isn’t what draws Sharon and Tom. It’s the sense of normalcy this place brings them.

“Other members simply aren’t impressed by what you’ve accomplished outside the club,” Tom explained to Farrell. “People don’t need to put on airs.”

He recounted seeing a nationally famous club member tying his own kid’s shoe. “There he was, bent over on one knee,” he told Farrell. “Not his nanny nearby, but himself. It was unbelievable to see

Yea. Unbelievable to see the normalcy of a parent tying his own kid's shoe.

[BmillsSkier]

I saw that article and loved the line about the billionaire being just as much a liftie as the liftie at the bar next to him.

[Timberridge]

I don't have a problem with people making lot of money. But sometimes they still piss me off.

This reminds me of when people start a sentence with, "I don't have a problem with insert ethnic group, but...

[ill-advised strategy]

I worked at a club for the super wealthy when I was a teenager.
They were awful people.

I think it boils down to this: cloistered self indulgence is the opposite of character and empathy. If you value character and empathy, the class of people who use wealth to isolate themselves are anathema to those
values.

[old goat]

Billionaires move to Teton County for the same reason my stoner college friends did. It's beautiful and a great place to play, not so they can watch a rich guy tie his kid's shoes.

[BmillsSkier]

Yeah but can they actually bump a chair?

[m2711c]

Who’s getting rich off of uber? Seems like a hard way to make a buck.... not to mention all that extra car maintenance, who’s gonna pay for all that?

[SKIP IN7RO]

The couple I knew had a weird obsession with 23andme. It seemed like they wanted it to show some diversity to their whiteness but not too much.

[old goat]

Two big preoccupations of the wealthy--buying old missile silos to hide in from the apocalypse and funding research on how to live forever.

[rideit]

Wife is currently reading that whole book.
But she is a CPA here in town, so it’s not telling her anything at all that she didn’t already know.
Might be eye opening for someone who hasn’t been here, though.

[old goat]

BTW was that article in the Onion?

[Benny Profane]

Poor people of color think that the TGR demographic is pretty awful, too. We all cluster with our "type".

[Long duc dong]

This reminds me of when people start a sentence with, "I don't have a problem with insert ethnic group, but...

I would agree.

When I lived in Tahoe most of us hated all of the 'rich' tourists from the Silicon Valley. When you work in the service industry it is natural, one encounters some less than admirable behavior.

Most of the people I taught to ski, fit boots for, or waited on were actually nice. The ones who were assholes were few and far between. The assholes tend to color the perception of the rest of the people though, you remember the assholes.

I remember a guy waiting to get fitted for a pair of boots during the Dec 26 to Dec 31 period. He got agitated agitated and started popping off, "I make a ton of money and I want some service now!" The owner of the shop happened to be there. He explained to this fellow that he was buying boots just like everyone else, and that he would have to wait in line, the same way the other people did. He also explained that he could make an appointment to get his boots fit if he so desired. What is of course funny about this is that the guy was not going to pay any more for his boots than someone else would. When you fly first class or book a high end suite in Vegas you are paying for convenience, and to be treated differently. This guy seemed to think he should be treated differently because he was wealthy, yet he was not actually PAYING the business anything additional. Obviously one tends to remember those types. I also had people who were incredibly nice and respectful, unfortunately they don't tend to make as much of an impression.

The nature of working in a ski resort, or somewhere similar, is that one is going to dislike the patrons eventually.

I don't think there is anything all that strange about a billionaire tying his son's shoes. My guess is that people who do feel that way because their is an implicit assumption that people like that have servants for everything. That is not always the case. The underlying assumption is that these people don't have normal human traits. The irony is that I actually would not expect a Yellowstone member to be surprised by that. The members KNOW that they are human, just wealthier than most. I would expect visitors who don't have that kind of wealth to be surprised to see a famous person tying his kid's shoes, a Yellowstone member should be well aware that wealthy people tie shoes, because they do so themselves.

I don't tend to read US Weekly or magazine of that ilk, but I remember looking at one once and taking note of one of the sections. It had to do with stars doing ordinary things, like yawning. The section had pictures of famous people in shi-shi parts of LA yawing, giving their dogs kisses, and other normal behavior. The underlying hypothesis seemed to be that stars were not like us at all, so when they behaved like us that was eye opening, it would be data which is counter-intuitive to the null so to speak, data which supports the alternative hypothesis. The point is that any reasonable person should be aware that the null is not entirely accurate, so seeing such behavior should not actually change any opinions. We don't have royalty in this country, so we have replaced it with those who are famous. Stars might be famous, but they are still human and should be expected to have traits which are consistent with other humans. That this comes as a surprise to some people speaks volumes.

I should add that while it is natural to be annoyed by lots of the tourists ones sees while working in a ski town, the locals who were the biggest assholes about it tended to be, well assholes. They were usually bitter about other things in their lives, and took it out (internally) on the people they waited on. My first season I was a boot fitter. I remember one Friday afternoon one of the older guys in the shop disregarded a note on a pair of boots that they were to be held until Saturday. The issue was that the note said 'hold until 2/15' or something like that, which was the next day's date. The guy thought that meant 215 on Friday afternoon, meaning that the boots could be sold. It was a mistake. The next day I was working when the guy who the boots were being held for came in. They had been sold the afternoon before. The guy was pretty mad, but he really was not all that much of a dick about it, he could have been a whole lot worse. He complained a bit and then said he was going to take his business elsewhere. The guy who sold the boots would not even talk to the guy, he sent me to do it. At the end of the day he was talking about what a dick the guy had been, when he really had not been all that much of an asshole at all. It struck me that the older boot fitter was basically blaming everything on the tourist and that it was axiomatic that if a tourist was expressing anger that they were in the wrong. I don't think I ever heard that older boot fitter say ANYTHING good about a customer in the shop, and we had lots of customers who were nice. I have not been to the Yellowstone Club. I have also not worked there. To my knowledge I have never met anyone who is a member. But my guess is that anyone who says they are all, without exception, assholes has serious personal issues that have nothing to do with the customers. The boot fitter in my story was the jerk here, not because he sold the boots, that was an honest mistake, but because he seemed to think the tourist did not have a right to be upset. My guess is that some of the people at the Yellowstone Club are jerks and some are not. Anyone who paints ALL of them as jerks probably has other, more serious, issues going on.

[stuckathuntermtn]

YC is in Teton County?

I've actually heard that before though. Mr Gates can just be Bill. *shrug*

[Ski220]

BTW was that article in the Onion?

No. N.Y.Post I think it was. Google fed it to me.
That 3rd paragraph hit me.
Was on TGR posting about Chinese Wuhan rat flu already. Didn't see a relevant thread.

Article was about billionaires "fitting in" with ordinary people

[capulin overdrive]

Gonna be a long summer!

At the start the season we trying to figure out how to become MacKenzie Bezos's boy toy, and we're hating.

[Cono Este]

Does YC have security, or plans for Armageddon? Would make sense if that’s where they retreat to.


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[iceman]

What a great setting for a book or movie. Maybe like Die Hard in the woods with billionaires hiding from the virus held hostage by an eco-terrorist group

copyright © 2020 iceman enterprises all rights reserved

[rideit]

With bears, wolves, and sharks.
With lasers.

[iceman]

dude they're billionaires. definitely all those

[rideit]

I say Pee Wee Herman should play Elon Musk

[Cono Este]

Who will play the gigolo who bangs their hard yo wives?


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[Bobby Stainless]

One of my clients is a billionaire.

He is a whole lot more enjoyable than the Thousandaires trying to finance a Maserati Ghibli.

The billionaire is thinking about giving me 375k for a nursery. Pretty generous of him.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Does YC have security, or plans for Armageddon? Would make sense if that’s where they retreat to.


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YC security? ​snicker..

[Whiteroom_Guardian]

Does YC have security, or plans for Armageddon? Would make sense if that’s where they retreat to.


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Depends on your definition of security. Do you have a computer printer and yellow printer paper?