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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, December 7-13, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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That's not a good comparison. There are many more people who inherited as much money and who haven't increased their wealth.
But apart from pure numbers, if I observe Trump style of interaction with journalists who interview his looks to me a lot like Carl Icahn's style. In both cases there an extreme amount of frame control that comes across as pretty rude.
That's the kind of stuff that get's Scotts Adams write gushing articles about Trump. I think that Scott Adams predictions are widely overconfident but I see what Scott Adams means when he speaks about Trumps language usage. Then I have had hypnosis training just as Scott Adams, so it can be that the patterns are otherwise hard to spot.
It suggests that Trump has been less successful, in terms of turning money into more money, than the average business in one of those index funds. The fact that individual investors often do even worse than that by investing badly is neither here nor there.
Most businesses do worse than the average business in one of those index funds. Individuals don't maxmize for wealth. Trump has brought a big yacht. He doesn't live the frugal life. Comparing apples to oranges makes no sense. You would have to compare Trump to similar people.
This is true, and a good point. But your original point was:
Based on this discussion, it looks like Trump is not a billionaire because he is a good at dealmaking. He had multiple ways to become a billionaire (investing in index funds, investing in gold, dealmaking, inventing Facebook).
And as you now point out, he completely failed in utilizing the money; Trump is a billionaire because he was inefficient in finding good ways of exchanging his money for utility. Another area in which I would have outperformed him :-)
Given the way he has chosen he wouldn't be a billionaire if he was bad at dealmaking. It's a relevant skill for winning political fights.
If you think that Trump just blabbers around what's on his mind, you are massively misreading the situation.