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A racial slur
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this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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It's what I don't understand about the ultra rich .... a billionaire has enough money to live comfortably for one lifetime, and they would only use a fraction of their wealth to do it ... yet they want to acquire even more wealth, as much as possible and it any wealth they do achieve is only accelerated because it means they can gain more faster.
It's like finding a mountain of sugar, you eat it and it makes you feel great and you can eat as much of it as you like, you'll never be able to eat all of it, even if you tried ... but no matter what anyone says, you still want more sugar.
When you describe this scenario with money, its a normal conversation ... if you said anyone wants a billion of something .. like a billion collector cards, a billion cats, a billion motorcycles, a billion sandwiches, you're considered nuts ... but if you want a billion dollars, that's perfectly normal
Addiction
Literal money addiction.
Ever known anyone with a proper hard drug addiction? Them fuckers will do anything to get their fix. So will the rich. But their addiction just gives them more and more power to practice their addiction.
I do know a lot about addictions and addict ... I'm a recovered alcoholic myself ... over 30 years sobriety now.
And I have heard of these people described as addicts suffering from an addiction. One of the first signs of addiction is in how your addiction negatively affects your life ... the other signs include how your addiction negatively affects the lives of others around you.
So why don't we treat excessive, unnecessary and wasteful wealth and power as an addiction that severely affects society. We treat alcoholism and drug addiction with great shame ... but if we collect, consume and horde endless wealth while it negatively affects our lives and the lives of millions of people -> that is perfectly normal and acceptable.
Because the money addicts also happen to have all the power.
D'you know what the first thing a drunk says when you call him a drunk? "I'm not a drunk", while getting visibly upset and often violent.
The money addicts have all the money and all the power. And they all support each other in their delusions. And it's not just some random delusion, it's a global paradigm. So it's kinda hard to point out their delusions when theyre shared by billions of wannabe rich people.
Even when we're literally destroying the only planet known to support life.
I suppose it's like the saying in treatment and recovery ....
"usually the last person to find out a person is an alcoholic .... is the alcoholic"
But in this case, the alcoholic's alcoholism is being evaluated by other drunks.
"Wha...? A fifth to s-s-start your day ish chompletely... hick nhormal."
"Aghreed."
They're not interested in money, that's just a convenient tool, they're interested in power, and money buys both hard and soft power. Hard power might involve sponsoring a ballroom, or paying for an inaugeration to get the ear of a politician, soft power is more about being known for having inexhaustable wealth and having "useful" people seek you out to do deals with.
Sorry, no. Sponsoring a ballroom or paying for an inauguration are examples of soft power. Hard power is when you use coercive means to achieve your goals, in a geopolitical sense (where the terms come from) hard power is military action or the threat thereof, or economic sanctions. Funding things, building things and paying for things are examples of soft power. A billionaires version of hard power would be blackmail or a hostile takeover.
Or just war. Billionaires control the government, they control the military.
They have influence over it, they don't control it. Elon can't threaten Sam Altman with a hellfire missile strike over their ongoing lawsuit.
Yet. Private militaries have been a thing in the past, and I see no reason to believe they won't be again if state collapse continues.
And sadly still currently are in much of it.
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As much as he may want, and thankfully.
Geopolitically, yes, you're correct, but as you say in another comment, they influence the military rather than control it. That influence comes from economic control of the nominal controller. From an economic angle, that level of control is hard power, as removing it, or worse, putting behind an opponent, can be as damaging, and coersive, to the target as military means would be. Perhaps it's a different scale to sending in the army, but economic warfare, even a billionaire against a politician, has damaging and coersive effects.
No, sorry.
That's just objectively untrue. It only becomes hard power when they lean on that influence coercively. The implication that it could be taken away is the literal definition of soft power. A direct threat to take it away as leverage would be hard power.
When China builds a port in Djibouti, the implication is that if Djibouti doesn't conform largely to China's geopolitical goals in the region the port could be shut down or funding pulled. That's soft power, even though it carries conditions, because of the ambiguous and uncertain nature of the consequences. China in this example wouldn't be exercising "hard power" unless they actively threatened to pull all Chinese shipping to and from the port or change the parameters of the loan structure to get the country to fall in line.
Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. It was late when I posted before, and maybe I didn't explain what I was saying clearly, but money, and the control of money, is absolutely used coersively. Whether it be "do as I say, or I stop funding you and fund your opponent instead", or supporting vanity projects (where the funding is likely syphoned off to the politician, or used by them to buy favour with others) on the condition that the politician behaves in a specific way, the control is coersive and has clear detrimental consequences for the politician should they not do as they are told.
I very much doubt that there is any ambiguity in the threats, much like you're illustration with China actively threatening to remove their shipping, as you would not want any risk of misunderstanding when those levels of money and power are on the table.
Also, a lot of them like to rape children, and that shit can get pretty expensive.
Ooh so close.
What's even stupider is any billionaire doesn't even have a billion in liquid capital, the vast majority of their networth is in shares from the companies they own and it's in their interest to not dump a bunch of stock.
Yup and they get money not on dividends but loans with the expectation the loans appreciate, then pay it off gradually with their liquid capital they earn through dividends then. So being that wealthy is precipitated upon infinite growth essentially.
Two things that come to my mind:
In the eyes of average humans (which I believe to be decent people, at least 80 % of the total population) this is insane... however the 10 - 20 % egoists are the ones we chose as our rulers.
We don't choose egoistic people as ruler, egoistic people (and psychopaths) try to become rulers, regardless of the price or morality.
Yet we chose candidates.. even though the pre-selection is biased towards egoists.
Looking at the current rise of populism ''we" actually seem to deliberately chose the most egoistic ones available.
But nonetheless: Imho representation automatically leads to corruption by egoists so we should get rid of representatives all together (or at least try to rein them in by making it possible to remove them from office at any time )
That's the other half of the problem I always see .... it's not just the insanity of a person or individual who is constantly chasing after even more astronomical amounts of money and wealth and power ... it's the 80% of everyone else including me and you who all just stand by and allow it all to happen and contribute to it and maintain it all
It's like the whole Trump thing in America .. sure Trump is an idiot ... but there is an entire nation that either supports its, ignores it, maintains it or works for it, and all of them just accept it as normal
America was founded on greed and ignorance
Nothing changed.
We can't discount the classic dick-measuring contest that's bound to happen when rich people compare their net worths to each other. I'd be shocked if some people weren't at least partly motivated by having a bigger "number" than their friends do.
I had a boss who had a net worth around $10 million (I knew because he had hired me to trade S&P500 futures for him and he gave me access to his brokerage accounts as part of this). He owned a house, nice cars, and a temp agency that gave him an income around $25,000 per month, in a southern city where the cost of living was very low. By any normal standard he was living in the lap of luxury, but his best friends were all west coast vulture capitalists who were worth hundreds of millions and my boss' jealousy of them just absolutely ate him up inside (this was the whole reason he was getting into futures trading in the first place).
We didn’t choose them, they or their ancestors were just more ruthless and bloodthirsty than the rest of us, and they coerced us at the end of a spear to go along with it or die.
I don't think so.
In my opinion, egoists represent a clear minority and would not be able to suppress everyone else by force. The series of revolutions and democratizations that have occurred throughout history is, in my view, proof of this.
The majority holds the power, and the rule of egoists is only possible as long as the vast majority accepts it (because the disadvantages of being ruled by egoists are offset by sufficiently large benefits of cooperation).
To some extent, therefore, we must also take a good look at ourselves for accepting the status quo as it is and not wanting to change it because it would be too inconvenient.
When you've never needed to think about money as a resource required to live, it stops being one. Among those who have never had to worry about money for survival, it's no longer a resource, it's a status symbol. It doesn't matter how much money you need, it only matters how much money you can collect, and that number can always be bigger.
They don't care that the trophies they're collecting just to feel superior would drastically improve someone else's wellbeing, because they don't care about the wellbeing of anyone else, period. In wealthy society, the only thing that matters is how you stand compared to other wealthy people, and being empathetic only serves to lower your standing.
To be fair I don't think people would comprehend how insane a billion of anything bigger than microscopic would be. For example 1 billion grams of sugar is enough to fill at least 3 3-bedroom apartments. 1 billion cats is probably more than there are household cats on the planet.
People are likely to underestimate how much a billion is so a billion of something that your life depends on probably doesn't seem like much, because you need it anyway and you can spend it. Except you can't. I imagine if the average person was given 1 billion dollars and they'd buy everything they could ever imagine most people would still have 950 million left. To spend 1 billion in 30 years you'd need to spend almost 100k daily. You'd have to spend more in a day than most people make in a year. It's been normalized because it's incomprehensible to begin with.
A million seconds is ~11.5 days. A billion seconds is ~31.5 years. The scaling is absurd.
"It's like finding a mountain of sugar, you eat it and it makes you feel great and you can eat as much of it as you like, you'll never be able to eat all of it, even if you tried ... but no matter what anyone says, you still want more sugar."
Holy shit, this is a damn good metaphor! Hats off to you, mate!
It's a simile :)
I was just commenting on the fly ... but my favourite comparison is in using bananas ... it would be like owning a mountain of bananas the size of Mount Everest, and telling everyone that they can't touch the mountain or eat any of it ... while the owner could never possibly ever be able to eat the whole mountain.
The chimp analogy, where they kill the hoarder.
in my mind these people are working with a mutually assured destruction model. they are all constantly fucking with each other financially, it's impossible not to with how much they own to not buy things from each other occasionally at the expense of another.
so I'm a billionaire imagining me practivslly giving my assets away in an auction. there are now a team of billionaires who can do literally whatever they want to me and there is literally no where on earth that can protect me. for a penance they could have me executed without consequences and I've given them each motive.
I don't remember who said it, but I'm pretty sure the wealthy admitted themselves that they are in competition with each other on how much their net worth is. It is purely just trying to one-up each other. I'm not saying I'm wealthy but I kinda get why they do it.
I really don't care if people want to compete with each other ... but when your activities start affecting the lives of millions of people, causing them death, early death, unstable lives, hunger, pain, misery, then it becomes a problem on insanity causing untold misery ... you can have your competition with others as long as it doesn't involve anyone else
Humans are still monkeys, specifically a member of the great apes family. Studies of our closest relatives the Chimpanzee have been quite... illuminating.
Like the one where given a cucumber they enjoy it, whereas when given a cucumber and then they see a chimp in a nearby cage be given a grape (relatively higher value gift, I guess sweeter), they throw the cucumber away in disgust.
Wealth != Wisdom.
Whenever I have these discussions with friends I always like to remind people that our species is also still relatively new ... evolutionarily speaking. Our earliest ancestors were 2 million years ago but our anatomical ancestors were about 100,000 years ago but our earliest ancestors that looked, talked, acted and thought like us was about 30,000 years ago. Out of all that 30,000 years, it has only been in the last 200 years that we achieved modern science and technological expertise and development. The vast measure of our species for the past 29,800 years, we acted like frightened cave people that believed in sky gods, spirits and witchcraft while organizing our lives around sex, eating, finding shelter and fighting everyone else for these resources because we always thought we would run out of these things and we shouldn't share anything.
For most of humanity, we were hunter gatherers .... it's only in the last 200 years that we became modern ... so in essence, we are still hunter gatherers, with the same fears who happen to have access to machine guns, nuclear weapons, cars and the internet.
Yup, although perhaps not for much longer, if e.g. we nuke everything into oblivion, or even if we do nothing at all and allow climate change to take its course uncorrected.
This is the weirdest analogy ever. Why sugar specifically? Why not just, you know... food?
Because food rewards you (brain) but also sates you. While sugar and money only rewards you.