He, and all the rest of them, could easily do a u-turn, be class-conscious and fair to the workers and all the hate would go away. They’d still be nowhere close to poor or struggling, just less rich. They just don’t want to.
It’s like Zuck building a bunker in Hawaii that would, at best, buy him 2 or 3 years of relative comfort in the event of a societal collapse. All because he doesn’t want to moderate his society-corroding websites.
I reckon there’s some tipping point of wealth/power/privilege that totally transforms a person, any person, into something fundamentally different at heart.
Like, they won’t part with hundreds of lifetimes worth of cash because that would feel like self destruction. To them, they are their wealth. Nothing else remains. The accumulation isn’t pointing at anything other than accumulation.
…. And that’s not a new idea. Fucking st. Basil raged about this in the 300’s.
Most of us would stop doing whatever we were doing well before we amassed a billion dollars. That sort of wealth is enough to retire on, live a life of luxury and make sure your progeny won’t even need to work either.
These guys just don’t know how to stop, they have a hole they just can’t fill. And I guess when you reach “richest man in the world” status, you look around and you notice you’re still not happy, that probably doesn’t make things better for you mentally. And yeah, you stop seeing normal people in your life. You’re just surrounded by either other billionaires or people that are on your payroll. You don’t have any clue about the struggles of the other 99.9%.
I think that extremes exist and go to both directions. I have known people who lost their mind when their wages tripled after they started working abroad (e.g. my father started having mistresses when his salary went from 800 euros to 2200 in today’s money). But I have also known millionaires who live very middle class lives, except they travel more and drive better cars.
He, and all the rest of them, could easily do a u-turn, be class-conscious and fair to the workers and all the hate would go away. They’d still be nowhere close to poor or struggling, just less rich. They just don’t want to.
It’s like Zuck building a bunker in Hawaii that would, at best, buy him 2 or 3 years of relative comfort in the event of a societal collapse. All because he doesn’t want to moderate his society-corroding websites.
I reckon there’s some tipping point of wealth/power/privilege that totally transforms a person, any person, into something fundamentally different at heart.
Like, they won’t part with hundreds of lifetimes worth of cash because that would feel like self destruction. To them, they are their wealth. Nothing else remains. The accumulation isn’t pointing at anything other than accumulation.
…. And that’s not a new idea. Fucking st. Basil raged about this in the 300’s.
Most of us would stop doing whatever we were doing well before we amassed a billion dollars. That sort of wealth is enough to retire on, live a life of luxury and make sure your progeny won’t even need to work either.
These guys just don’t know how to stop, they have a hole they just can’t fill. And I guess when you reach “richest man in the world” status, you look around and you notice you’re still not happy, that probably doesn’t make things better for you mentally. And yeah, you stop seeing normal people in your life. You’re just surrounded by either other billionaires or people that are on your payroll. You don’t have any clue about the struggles of the other 99.9%.
Yea, power corrupts. That’s what most of the Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion was about.
A tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme…
I think that extremes exist and go to both directions. I have known people who lost their mind when their wages tripled after they started working abroad (e.g. my father started having mistresses when his salary went from 800 euros to 2200 in today’s money). But I have also known millionaires who live very middle class lives, except they travel more and drive better cars.