Advice for you (elite class)

Update (2025-06-10)

Specific projects I would recommend:
- Invest $1B in solar R&D to reduce cost of energy.
- Donate $1B to a non-profit team of cyberhackers that attacks highest value targets on earth (typically govt or big tech) and posts all their unredacted databases to public internet.
  - Atleast $1M long-term vested per employee (performance-based incentives), less than 1000 employees for secrecy reasons. Many security researchers today are underpaid relative to the market or military value of their work, so you can exploit that.
  - LLMs are rapidly changing many parts of security research, prefer hiring people who can adapt to that.

2025-04-18

Summary

If you want an amazing life and not a mediocre one, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is blindly copy-pasting values and beliefs of your family and friends, because you want their approval. If you want an amazing life, be more deliberate who you are learning from, whose decisions you are copying and why you are doing this.
Because of principal-agent problem, you can't trust other people to do your work for you, no matter how much money you are willing to pay them. You can't pay someone to actually care about a goal, you can only pay them to pretend to care. Someone who cares about achieving a goal will generally strongly outcompete someone who does not care.
Therefore, you have to become knowledgible yourself.
- Study physics and engineering. Most power in society is built through technology.
- Study politics.
You can probably have more impact than you think, if you want to have it. One elite can single-handedly alter the trajectory of human history. Don't let your family and friends tell you otherwise. People like me are counting you to make good decisions.

If you have above $1M net worth and want influence over society

Proof: I don't have personal experience with this, I just read a lot.

Consider studying politics. Many rich people (even billionaires) don't understand politics and this limits how much influence they can have. Money does not directly translate to political power, the relationship between the two is more complicated. If you only focus on making money, you might be disappointed at the end.

Consider studying maths and physics, if you don't know it. Since the Enlightenment, most power in society is built via technology. No amount of hired experts will substitute for the fact that you don't understand calculus. You won't know how to hire the right people or verify the truth of what they're saying. If you understand technology, you will have much better options available to you in life.

Consider sharing more about your life experience and opinions in the public domain. Your money buys you a degree of safety most people don't have, and many people can benefit from someone who can safely talk about controversial topics. If people verbally attack you it's fine, you are still safe.

If you have above $100M net worth or could get atleast 10M votes in a hypothetical election

My pitch on raising your ambition

A handful of actions taken by you can literally mean the difference between human extinction and world peace and prosperity beyond our current imagination. The fate of 10,000 years of human history and 1,000s more in the future sits on your individual shoulders. If you play your cards right, you could found a nation state. You could bridge differences between leaders of existing nations, and help form a world government. You could figure out sane policies and institutions for technological progress, and also teach other elites to have sane well-informed decision-making on it. You could even start a new religion that lasts centuries after you die, and provide people with safety and meaning.

Please don't limit your own imagination, and go for a small goal like "I will buy a seat in XYZ political party and that's it, the sum total of my legacy".

You don't need to wait for the support of a lot of other elites, you can just start making moves by yourself and wait for others to follow.

You may be able to derive a lot of personal meaning and happiness from this. If you do, you might come to the conclusion that one person's suffering or risk of humilitation is a price worth paying, when considering the stakes. (Or you might not, I am not claiming I'm good at predicting what gives people in your situation meaning or happiness.)

A lot of people including me are counting on you to take good decisions. You might or might not have a healthy way of handling this burden psychologically, but it is a true fact about reality IMO and I think you should know. I'm generally not a fan of psychological strategies that involve hiding yourself from the truth.

Other things you can try

Maybe try explaining your moral code and your general life situation to people outside your socioeconomic class, without dumbing it down or pretending to be a common person. I would like to understand your perspective better here. I think this could help increase empathy and understanding across the class difference. (No, many people will still not get it, but a handful of people might, if you explain it well enough.)
- Examples of this: people who do podcasts, people who post on twitter
- "Born Rich" by Jamie Johnson (owner of Johnson and Johnson) seems like one example, although it mostly covers (relatively) unambitious elite, not the ambitious ones. Also I think there's way to shoot that exact same documentary in a more positive light.
- Naval Ravikant's writings also are a good example for people not of the elite class to learn more about elite class norms
Consider purchasing a bunker for yourself that is resistant to bioweapon attacks.