Obviously there are people who can't do this (Zuckerburg, and plenty of much smaller examples too) but I don't see why, if you have the choice, you'd let people know how rich you are. Of course, unless you live the life of someone much poorer people can always guess ("hey, nice house you've got there..."), but people who talk about how rich they are, or show off with the money... just seems stupid to me.
He didn't realize it would be a problem in the beginning. After that I think he was just afraid to move away from the people he knew.
I've thought a lot about what I would do in that position, and came to the same conclusion you did. The right thing to do probably would have been to move far away, live simply, and take up a hobby so he could meet people on an equal footing.
Of course, it's easy to decide how other people can fix their lives :)
That's a possibility too. I was thinking it would be more difficult, since he might have run into the whole new rich/old rich thing. He would have been perfectly happy living in a suburban tract home, and that's the type of person he grew up with, so I was thinking that would be the easiest.
Besides, you have fewer choices if your pool of potential friends is rich people.
But they don't all have to be real friends. The interesting thing about Dunbar's number is that it also suggests that people strive to make these 150 relationships even when there are not enough people around (i.e. that's why some people care for celebrities and forge online relationships when real life friends are not enough)
Dunbar's number isn't that simple. It's more like you have an upper limit of 150 person-sized points. You can allocate 50 to one person and only have 100 leftover for more casual acquaintances, for instance.
Dunbar's number refers to group sizes, not friend counts.
From zero to one is a quantum leap - you go from "alone, no one to talk to" to "can talk honestly and frankly with someone". That's the biggest step. Beyond that, of course it enriches your life, but the first friend is the most important.
"The right thing to do probably would have been to move far away, live simply, and take up a hobby so he could meet people on an equal footing."
The fact that the above sentence says "live simply" and "take up a hobby" seems to contradict the notion that he should try to take up with people who are equal in wealth which was the issue being discussed.
I said
"live among people"
which is not the same as
"move far away"
and
"live simply"
is not the same as
"make friends with people in the same income bracket or assets or higher"
It's the taking up that's being done on an equal footing (i.e. the friendships are free from the wealth-disparity baggage); it's not that the people have the same amount of wealth.
Not that I've ever had much money, but let me provide some thinking of why this is the case.
When you have a lot of money, you are used to getting anything you want, since everything has a price. Want a hotel room overlooking Times Square for NYE? Sure, maybe it'll cost you $25K, but you can probably get it (I'm just guessing here). Want Madonna to come sing at your barbecue? Sure, that'll be a million bucks (plus incidentals).
So when a rich guy is without friends, his first reaction is "how much will it cost?". The moment he flashes his money, all sorts of "friends" come out of the woodwork, happy to be his chum. So, in the short term it looks like it's working. But these aren't friendships; these are hired companions. Just because you can hire a hooker to have sex with you doesn't make her your girlfriend.
One only has to look at the myriad NBA/NFL players out there who, despite having earned 100s of millions of dollars over their lifetimes, end up broke shortly after retiring (and this does not include child support). It's mainly because their wealth attracted the leeches who sucked them dry.
