<DrumBeat: July 25, 2006 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: July 26, 2006>

216 comments on Vinod Khosla Debunked: Ethanol is NOT the Answer

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Nate Hagens on July 25, 2006 - 5:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
He is already rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and to me it seems unlikely that further self-enrichment is his main motive.

On this I have some experience, and must disagree. Most very wealthy people I know (I used to be a high net worth broker) don't ever consider the fact that they have enough money for them and their families forever. Not only do they continue to invest, but the bar gets higher and higher. Its not about the money, its about the feelings one gets by the process of making the money, whether its $5 mil to $10 mil or $1 bil to $2 bil. There are execptions, but they are just that. Maybe Mr Khosla is immune to our societal signals of fitness, but that would be rare.

Its like driving backwards in an Avis rental car lot - you can go forwards but if you go backwards your tires burst.

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Don Sailorman on July 26, 2006 - 11:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
With all due respect and weight given to your experience with wealthy people, I have known some of the hyper-ultra rich since the age of thirteen, when I went to a private school. Also, with all due respect to both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, they got it 100% wrong about the "very" rich.

I'm not talking millionaires or multimillionaires or even families with a paltry few billions. Take a look at the Bill Gates family or that of Warren Buffett--those are the magnitudes I'm talking about. Based on the limited sample of those I'm on a first name basis with (and of course this is a biased sample) not a single one gives a flying fig about money or the accumulation of greater wealth. After first five billion, most people just stop counting. The Buffett children are some of the nicest people in the world, and talk about naive: Until they went away to college, none of them knew that Dad was one of the richest people in the world; it had never ocurred to him to tell them, and none of them (Dad included) is interested in accumulating wealth for the sake of wealth.

Thus I think it is highly highly questionable to assert that VK is motivated (or primarily motivated) by the desire to accumulate more wealth.

Herewith is my WAG: I think he sees himself as a prophet and a "savior," and that is his primary motivation.

But I am still puzzled by his failure to do his homework--UNLESS (and here comes another WAG) he thinks he can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This last conjecture makes sense, and I always like my conjectures to at least sound reasonable.

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Mike Hearn on July 26, 2006 - 12:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The other alternative is that there's more to this story than meets the eye of course ...
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Nate Hagens on July 26, 2006 - 1:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I never said anything about VK. I said wealthy people in general and there are exceptions. Also, its the feelings one gets that are pursued - usually wealthy people cant get the dopamine and other feel good reactions by doing other things they can by making $50 million by lunch. Some, perhaps as you mention Bill Gates, and your other friends, can. But the social fitness meter can VERY rarely be turned off. Perhaps Vinod would like to be viewed as a savior, I dont know. And its not just my experience, much neuroscience is pointing to these same conclusions - read the link I posted above or "American Mania" by Peter Whybrow.

My personal view is that we all have dopamine (which led to resource acquisition and fitness in the past) amplitude meters -say from a scale of 1-10. Those that never really experience too much higher than a 3 are completely content to live in a small rural house and plant potatoes. Those that through, money, drugs, sex, wild experiences, travel, consumption, etc that have their amplitude turned up to a 7 or 8 will still be seeking 'more'. Its the wanting thats hurting society. I have nothing against Vinod Khosla (other than him being wrong and misleading people he looks like a sincere, caring fellow), but rich successful people CAN'T just turn this mental machinery off when they quit/retire/switch careers -and the thing that has been proven to produce dopamine in the past (your friends notwithstanding) is making money.

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R W Reactionairy on July 26, 2006 - 8:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Don, both Gates and Buffet are strange birds, but if they were not interested in more money based on whatever motivation they would not be where they are.

If Microsoft had "worked and played well with others" it would not be the company that it is.

If Buffet had played money games only to satisfy his own needs, he would have been out of day to day stuff at Berkshire Hathaway at least twenty years ago [he probably could have quit at the bottom of the great bear market in 1974 ... and never needed to look back. Incidentally, his father [a conservative] was IIRC a congressmen, so Warren was hardly under priveledged as a chils.

It very much irritates me that while both of these men are putting their money into trusts [which keeps them from being subject to death taxes] they advocate imposing death taxes on the estates of if not eh "little people" at least the "littler people." What gives with that bit of nonsense?

Maybe you are correct in asserting that there are more than a few of the very wealthy who see their role as being the saviors of the masses. No thanks, I'll take religion as religion and megolamania as a fact of life.

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216 comments on Vinod Khosla Debunked: Ethanol is NOT the Answer

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