Chantelle sucks (story involves sex with dogs and stuff, kinda)......

[DesertCat]

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also, i want to say that your orginal definition of hustler well suits gates and walton. no one, and i do mean no one, achieves that kind of power and wealth through perfect ethical practices and is the sole doer of good deeds. i am not saying they are/were not great men, but they both are/were hustlers, cut throat and at times very unethical despite being genius in their doings.


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This is true because there is no such thing as perfect ethical practices. But otherwise it's completely false if you have any reasonable definition of what ethical practices are. My definition is treat others as you would want them to treat yourself.

Warren Buffett is one great counter example of an ethical guy becoming a billionaire solely through his own sweat and treating everyone along the way admirably. And I'm not sure that Gates and Walton aren't great examples also.

Gates gets a ton of bad press from his competition because his company has been a great competitor, but his actions on the whole have been great for consumers. Netscape painted Microsoft as unethical when gave consumers a free browser so that Netscape could no longer charge for theirs. This was of course after Netscape gave away their browser during a lengthy beta period to put 20+ other browser companies out of business. Netscape thought they had a monopoly and were prepared to cash in but Gates ruined it and Netscape was forced to sell out for only $10B (sob).

Walton brought retail competition to small town america and consumers benefited big time. The small mom and pops that didn't have economies of scale or competition had been essentially profiteering off their friends and neighbors.

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It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you'll do things differently.

Warren Buffett


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