By just being known as rich or occupying a prominent position, you will always attract people who want a piece, and will try to figure out what it is that you need in a friend or subcontractor and attempt to provide it, often extremely successfully. I mean, as Eliezer has said (paraphrasing, hopefully faithfully), the kinds of people you find at ‘high status’ conventions are just a better class of people than the hoi polloi.
With a degree of anonymity, it becomes somewhat straightforward to search for things like the farmer’s cowpox cure, because professional purveyors of things to the wealthy do not waste their time crafting pitches for nobodies.
But then, you also have the separate problem as a nobody that ‘somebodies’ do not return your calls.
Anonymity helps.
By just being known as rich or occupying a prominent position, you will always attract people who want a piece, and will try to figure out what it is that you need in a friend or subcontractor and attempt to provide it, often extremely successfully. I mean, as Eliezer has said (paraphrasing, hopefully faithfully), the kinds of people you find at ‘high status’ conventions are just a better class of people than the hoi polloi.
With a degree of anonymity, it becomes somewhat straightforward to search for things like the farmer’s cowpox cure, because professional purveyors of things to the wealthy do not waste their time crafting pitches for nobodies.
But then, you also have the separate problem as a nobody that ‘somebodies’ do not return your calls.