Extreme wealth has a deadening effect on the super-rich - and that threatens us all | G... - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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I’ve met quite a few very rich people. Some are lively, curious and engaged, but among others I’ve repeatedly noticed the same thing: a dullness of spirit. There’s a sense that nothing is sufficiently stimulating to hold their attention, that they have lost their capacity for wonder
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For the fantasy of transcendence, of escape from connection with other lives, we are torching our life-support systems. We consent to the Earth-eating, soul-sucking mode of exploitation we call capitalism because we believe, quite wrongly, that we are all temporarily embarrassed millionaires. One day we too might live the affectless life of the ultra-rich.
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Just as that boat owner scattered the dolphins, the very rich break up communities, deprive people of housing and threaten, ultimately, to drive us all out of the human climate niche – that is, the temperature range that enables us to flourish.
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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.
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Democracy, a fair distribution of resources, peace of mind and a habitable planet all depend on restraining the power of the very rich: their noise, their occupation of our common space, and their intrusion into all we hold dear.