Extreme wealth has a deadening effect on the super-rich – and that threatens us all
Extreme wealth has a deadening effect on the super-rich – and that threatens us all | George Monbiot
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 think this is more of a correlation != causation issue. I think it’s more likely that the kinds of people who have the traits to seek obscene wealth also tend to be people with a higher probability for mental health issues.
IMO to be driven to collect as much power and money as possible is harmful to both one’s self and those around you.
So true. My boss makes about a million a year and gets whiny whenever we deal with clients that make more than him. He has plenty of money but that will never buy the parental love that he didn't get as a child.
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
pretty much, yep, except for the general disdain/disgust for the have-nots
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.
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.
You know we could really help these ultra-rich motherfuckers with this problem, all it takes is to tax them as they should be taxed.
NOOOOOOO!!
MY PRECIOUSSSS! FILTHY COMMUNISTES!
As an anarchist, I wouldnt think this is a remediation. To move grip from one holder to another would still cause concentration of power. Id suggest that we instead shape our languages to limit grip as much as possible. Degrip is remediation.
So let Elon keep all his ill-gotten gains but we talk in a contrived and awkward way so that in six generations they might be so used to it that they're no longer able to describe the inequity in which they live?
Do you have a practical example of words we can switch out rather than taxing the billionaires?
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.
noblesse oblige
If the rich only understood this. We keep having to bash their heads in with rocks every few centuries because they keep forgetting.
Here I am thinking I'll hire my buddy as an ornamental hermit if I gain massive amounts of wealth.
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.
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 💔
Easy. Falcor, the Luckdragon.
The dragon in one of the Witcher short stories comes instantly to mind. He was pretty great
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?
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.
Dudley The Dragon would like a word
If money is such a problem, they got so many problems. I think we can solve them.
Good reference, Charlotte
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.
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.
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.
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.
