my armchair psychological diagnosis is that the drive to accumulate as much wealth as possible eats away at the drive for self-improvement or the internal desire to cultivate any skills or tastes. these people build huge mounds of treasure and then essentially just sit around looking at it, empty.
Reposted from
Charlie Warzel
find it genuinely delighting that people with enough money to never work again (and do literally anything they want anywhere in the world at any time) seemingly have nothing going on in their lives and are so miserable they are just spending the holidays frantically posting
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these are fucking liches
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Thom Hartmann's theory is that it's a hoarding disorder.
You: I really doubt that.
Vendor: It's only €10M.
You: …box it up.
Sorry, in a mood.
https://www.davidrumsey.com/
I have memories of playing touch football in the yard of someone's old two-story Victorian farmhouse--
And I wish I thought something was as cool as spending 20 hrs straight on that bullshit today
I presume rich guy had TRUE JOY from it.
I would also likely have several endowed chairs in the arts, classics, and poetry
I just checked, and there are three of them now. Sweet.
Even if they were taxed like they should be they could do all kinds of good stuff and still live ridiculously well, far beyond what normal people ever would.
I would definitely try to build a left version of the right wing media.
and their private indulgences, however disgusting, were
generally entertaining
and often employed artists
Thus, they build the torment nexus.
If I had enough money, I would also raze and replace Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House. We can do better.
When people are willing to fight for what's theirs those used to taking it seem to be more willing to give some of it back
Remember anything about Mother Jones and the coal wars?
Look it up. It's interesting reading.
Too soon to say what sort of legacy today's billionaires will leave.
but with today’s billionaire’s, kind of? i mean, amazon warehouses and walmart box stores aren’t much of a legacy. but i suppose we still have 50+ years for them to build something fun.
I think Huntington's wife had a lot to do w/ the art collection. Doesn't give me much hope for Elon.
Fred Spira's son, Greg, was a very good friend of mine. I don't know if it was the most comprehensive collection, but it was definitely up there. He told me a lot of stories of him as a kid at some auction in Vienna with his dad.
I mean, why is there *so* much right wing aggression to any degree of philanthropy ?
Philanthropic person to have ever lived.
He could have endowed museums to internet meme culture or obscure cult movies for relative pocket change.
How can we miss him if he won’t go away?
Today most people don't remember the bad shit Carnegie did, but they know his music hall, and every episode of Sesame Street that ends with "...a grant from the Carnegie Corporation."
+ spend lots of energy protecting these mounds & hating everyone else due to the paranoid hoarding of their stuff.
- Ross Perot
(except for me)
I always want to ask the obscenely rich, was it worth it? Was it worth ruining other people, to squeeze more money into your bank account? Was it worth it to have no one truly love you? Was it worth it, to die alone, having never been truly loved by anyone?
The result is as programmed.
Homo sapiens is a Violent and Greedy species...with big brains, tho, that still somehow don't fully grasp our place in the ecosystem.
Take it from a really old, old person. Money does not buy happiness. Never did, never could, never will, and never would.
When you really understand that, you’re like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. You truly are the richest man in town.
If you know you have a safety net - public health, education, housing, union protection, unemployment benefits & job guarantee to fall back on - you are free to follow your dreams.
once you have enough money for 20 life times, that no longer operates.
But otherwise - let them. It's their funeral.
Among other things, this prevents the private sector from getting away with poverty-level wages.
We know what you do with dragons.
A quote from an old Perry Mason show:
Perry: How much money do you need?
Wealthy man: How much is there?
I would like to start my experiment at a paltry $20,000 a month and go from there.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/
additionally, i suspect that the knowledge that you could be saving others from lives of struggle but *aren't* eats at your soul in ways that most of us can't understand
Yet he chooses more greed and more chaos - prove me wrong?
Everybody loves tulips, so I'm going to amass the most tulips!
*I’m people
https://t.co/6KdQwWNbzA
But, you can’t spend even 1$billion in a lifetime.
And no one needs more than that. Accumulating anything over that is not rational. A waste of one’s precious time here on earth.
He worked for it, chased £ over fulfilment. He got there just in time to retire early.
He then basically went miserable as he realised he had nothing else to do. No hobbies. No personal friends.
Stevie Cohen is making Mets fans very happy, and pissing off every Yankee fan.
Good for him. MLB needs more owners like him.
But he wants MORE. More wealth-points. More status.
Now it strikes me as an insight into human behaviour.
The most blatant message of the Ring Cycle is that greed - for gold, for power, or for a person - is inherently self-destructive, and will also ruin everything you care about.
Hoarding hurts those around you, not just you.
These people need therapy, lucky for them they can find it, now they just need the will to be better.
Same sad. Same old sad
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
and think "nah, MY wealth would remain b/c I'm different"