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According to the story, Thales didn't pursue wealth and riches, being a philosopher and all who was only interested in knowledge. People challenged him saying that he only did this because he couldn't become rich, as that was what all men really wanted. To prove them wrong and show that a philosopher could easily become rich if they wanted, he used his intelligence in business to become wealthy in the next year. He did this by buying up all the olive presses in the off season, creating a sort of monopoly situation, and charging higher prices when harvest came in (which was particularly good, something he was also possibly able to predict due to his knowledge of weather). Sort of a funny story in a lot of ways, for one, you have to already be pretty rich to be able to buy up every single olive press to create a monopoly. And two, it seems unlikely that only a great wise philosopher is smart enough to think up the idea of "if I have a monopoly on something that everyone needs I can become rich by ripping them off and charging too much", and three if he was really interesting in philosophy he probably should have just spent the year working on philosophy, rather than proving how smart he was by coming up with olive schemes. But maybe that's just me.

According to the story, Thales didn't pursue wealth and riches, being a philosopher and all who was only interested in knowledge. People challenged him saying that he only did this because he couldn't become rich, as that was what all men really wanted. To prove them wrong and show that a philosopher could easily become rich if they wanted, he used his intelligence in business to become wealthy in the next year. He did this by buying up all the olive presses in the off season, creating a sort of monopoly situation, and charging higher prices when harvest came in (which was particularly good, something he was also possibly able to predict due to his knowledge of weather). Sort of a funny story in a lot of ways, for one, you have to already be pretty rich to be able to buy up every single olive press to create a monopoly. And two, it seems unlikely that only a great wise philosopher is smart enough to think up the idea of "if I have a monopoly on something that everyone needs I can become rich by ripping them off and charging too much", and three if he was really interesting in philosophy he probably should have just spent the year working on philosophy, rather than proving how smart he was by coming up with olive schemes. But maybe that's just me.