the article misses the mentality of the mega wealthy. the reason the guy with the 300K boat isn’t happy is because hes thinking about the guy with the 400K boat. that guy also isn’t happy because of the 500K boat guy, and so on. what matters to them is having the most shit to flaunt, and if you’re a poor, then you’re making a mistake if you think you even exist to them in any capacity other than as a potential tool to make them more money
I think the latest insights are showing that it is more than just that though.
Extreme wealth also leads to mental health issues. Paranoia (leading Zuckerberg to build a $260M bunker in Hawaii), god complexes (people like Trump and Bloomberg running for president) and just general anti-social tendencies, like Musk buying twitter and impregnating SpaceX employees.
Pedophilia also deserves a special mention. Look a level deeper at the Epstein situation. Note that they were mostly after post-pubescent young girls, so it wasn’t the “I am attracted to pre-pubescent kids” type of pedophilia, but the “I am so powerful, I’m going to eat the forbidden fruit” type of pedophilia.
There should definitely be a cap on wealth.
I thought these paragraphs addressed that:
To own and run a 35ft boat of that kind, you need to be extremely rich. It retails at about £300,000, on top of which are the extraordinary costs of mooring, winter storage, maintenance and fuel. Isn’t money of that kind supposed to buy you pleasure? If not, what’s the point?
Extreme wealth can severely hamper enjoyment. As Michael Mechanic documents in his book, Jackpot, there are two groups of people who have to think about money all the time: the very poor and the very rich. Immense wealth possesses you just as much as you possess it: managing it becomes a full-time job. You don’t know whom to trust; you can start to imagine your friends aren’t friends at all; it can dominate and poison your family relationships. It can hollow you out, socially, intellectually and morally.
But I think there might be a further corroding aspect of wealth that hasn’t been widely discussed. Great wealth flattens the world. If you can go anywhere and do anything, everything is over the horizon. You speed past the local and the particular, towards an endlessly escalating ideal of luxury: the better marina, the bigger yacht, the private jet, the super-home. The satisfaction horizon can retreat before you. Place has no meaning, other than as a setting that might impress the friends you no longer trust. But anyone who is impressed by money is not worth impressing.
Desire is suffering
So the unwanting soul sees what’s hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.
Tao te Ching, Le Guin
pretty much, yep, except for the general disdain/disgust for the have-nots
Wecan fix that attitude by making them “commoners.” Tax them harder.Edited because looking at large swaths of voting poor, nevermind.
If managing your wealth is a full-time job, just hire another person. If getting whatever you want doesn’t make you happy, it’s not the money’s fault, you just don’t know what you want. Do some self-actualizing and try again on Monday
Thats not the mentality of the mega wealthy, thats a childs mentality (it applies to the simplest/cheapest of things all the ssame, and you can recognise the same behaviour in adolescent animals as well) - however the rest of us are forced to grow up.
And it’s also why some people are able to stop working (and stop investing too) once they have enough for a normal life with reasonable comfort … which is often financial security & personal health (ie less or no stress) more than things like having 5 maids/a new boat/showing off money for the sake if it.
But what I just described I feel like should be the goal of humanity, a goal for us to collectively achieve for all humans. We have enough production power I’m sure, it’s our cultural stagnation that betrays us.
But what I just described I feel like should be the goal of humanity, a goal for us to collectively achieve for all humans. We have enough production power I’m sure, it’s our cultural stagnation that betrays us.
Key word: collectively. It seems it would take more stress and energy to hoard and guard, than simply work to the benefit of everyone. There will always be outliers, on either axis. I don’t really think that matters, in terms of achievement.
In the past, religion was somewhat of an outlet. If you were ridiculously wealthy you tended to get yourself a monastery of monks praying for your soul, or you might build a temple or a church so that the commoners bless you as a benefactor. Alternatively, the ancien régime also had the concept of noblesse oblige, that their privilege had some kind of reciprocating component, to take care of your lessers. But most of our ultra rich are basically untethered from reality. There are some notable exceptions, but nowhere near the rule.
Here I am thinking I’ll hire my buddy as an ornamental hermit if I gain massive amounts of wealth.
Billionaires are dragons. Like the bad kind, like Smaug.
There are so few good dragons in fiction that most people are likely not thinking of the good dragons first.
I am struggling to think of good dragons.
Edit: I should have thought harder. I forgot about Puff.
Paarthurnax 💔
The dragon in one of the Witcher short stories comes instantly to mind. He was pretty great
I haven’t finished the show yet, but John Hurt seems pretty chill in Merlin
Easy. Falcor, the Luckdragon.
What about Puff the Magic Dragon? Or The Soup Dragon?
How To Train Your Dragon is full of them.
And then there’s Luck Dragons. Or best of all, The Green Dragon in Bywater.D&D has the metallic dragons and Bahamut. There’s also Falkor from The Neverending Story, the How To Train Your Dragon movie series, the titular Dragon Prince, …
Ever seen Dragonheart?
Dudley The Dragon would like a word
Igon somewhere
“Curse you Bayle!”
I’ve heard things like this are the reason why Charlie Sheen went off the deep end. Highest paid television actor in history at the time and it wasn’t enough. Had to do crazy drugs, had to have wild promiscuous sex, had to do anything to feel alive.
I look back on the times when I was poor and I felt more actively engaged in life than now when I am not rich but not poor.
It almost makes me want to sell everything I have and throw it all away and go start over somewhere else just to see what life is like again.
It’s the struggle to rebuild, it gives you meaning and motivation to continue
I just want to play Minecraft for the first time again too.
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To have wealth is soulcrushing because it removes you from your peers and a sense of community. We loose our ability to nurture ourselves.
Loose your grip, and allow yourself to blossom with your peers.
Hoarding isn’t only bad for society, but also for oneself.
I’d love to have billionaire problems instead of poor person problems.
Me, I’d rather have poor problems which just affect me, instead of their problems which fuck up the whole world.
We should seek a wealth of community, of knowledge, of wonder, of life, of love: a wealth that does not impoverish others. We should seek not private luxury, but private sufficiency and public luxury.
We could do that.
Not that it matters at all, but if anyone else is also curious - the boat in the pic is a 20 year old Fairline 62 Fly, about 500k moneys today, depending on location & if overhauled.
