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.

Two things that come to my mind:

1. In our current society money equals power over others. If you're not the richest your not the most powerful and if you are you need to fight to proetct your power from other who are getting richer. It's not about money but about determining the fate of others and rulership over society.
2. You don't become obsecely rich by being a good person. Once you reach a billion dollars you most paobably already aquired a mindeset that leaves you no other choice than to look for another billion. Much like a hamster in a wheel which spins to fast to let it go off.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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!

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.

Gabe Newell fans

They dont want to be vilified they just need to stop acting evil.

Like taxing homes a second time? Or taxing second homes?

He's a broken person on the inside. He's like homelander in the boys. All this power, but he's still a sad little boy no one likes.

Unlike Homelander, Musk is not impervious to conventional hazards.

You do realize how much Doge was able to dismantle specifically the parts of government that tax the rich, right?

But aside from that, people tend to conflate appearance for substance. He feels controlling the government makes him powerful because he appears powerful.