When enough ppl visibly leave and have real concerns, they can be in touch in exile, and all break NDA in synchrony.
If the stakes are as high as some believe, I presume ppl don't actually care about getting sued when they believe they're helping humanity avert existential crisis.
There's also addiction to success. If you don't keep getting the success in magnitudes you did before, you will get bored and depressed, so you have to keep going and get it since your brain is wired to seek for that. Your brain and emotions are calibrated to what you got before, it's kind of like drugs.
If you don't have the 10M you won't understand, you would think that "oh my if only I had the 10M I would just chill", but it never works like that. Human appetite is infinite.
The more highs you get from success, the more you expect from the future achievements to get that same feeling, and if you don't get any you will feel terrible. That's it.
Speaking for myself, I'd keep working even if I had 100M. As long as I am healthy, I plan to continue on being productive towards something I find interesting.
What would you be working on though? I agree that I’d keep working if only since I like my work and not having that structure can make your life worse, not better; but if it’s “how I get to 1B” then that’s the kind of challenge that turns me off. I’m all for continually challenging yourself but I don’t want that kind of stress in my life, I’d rather find my challenges elsewhere.
$10M is never work again money literally anywhere in the world. Don't kid yourself. Buy a $3.5M house outright and then collect $250k per year risk free after taxes. You're doing whatever you want and still saving money.
The problem is if you are the type of person able to get to $10M, you'll probably want more, since the motivation that got you there in the first place will keep you unsatisfied with anything less. You'll constantly crave for more in terms of magnitudes.
NYC and SF both appear to have ~1% property tax rates
Utilities are an order of magnitude less than being taxed ~$35k/yr and hardly worth worrying about while discussing eight figures
Maintenance can vary, but all 3 costs you mentioned combined would be 2 orders of magnitude lower annually than that net worth, which seems easily sustainable?
The neat part is that for a 3.5M house in the Bay area, the only maintenance required is changing the rain fly every year and the ground pad every couple.
And who is going to fix your shower when it leaks, and install solar panels, or redo your kitchen because your parents are living with you now and can't bear to leave their traditional cooking behind?
A whole new shower is less than $200 at REI, and solar generators ship directly to your house.
(And on a serious note - if your parents are both still alive and moving in with you while they have hobbies and self-actualization, you're way ahead of the game)
Assuming they're 40, how far do you think $250k will go 20-30-40 years from now? It's not a stretch to think dollars could be devalued by 90%, possibly even worthless, within 30 years.
I love how the comment I'm responding to literally says "then collect $250k per year risk free after taxes," and then you all pile onto me with downvotes telling me that's he's not just going to invest in treasuries (which is exactly the implication of HIS comment and not mine).
