Comment on Starting to think affluenza might be a real thing.
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoRespectfully, I must disagree. Even those two you mentioned could have not got to being a billionaire in the first place without exploiting people via capitalism, and certainly could not have retained the money (rather than spending it on good causes and compensating workers fairly) while still being a good person. It is a filter for the most selfish kind of person.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
I don’t think it’s as simple as there being “good people” and “bad people”, and that only the worst people are capable of extreme wealth. I think wealth just happens to some people. Some people are born into it, some stumble into it, a lot of people seek it out and a few of those people “succeed”, though I’d argue even then it’s mostly chance. Of the people who get substantial wealth, some give it away, some retire into a wealth cocoon and are never heard from again, some lose it, and some actively grow it because they love the feeling of gaining wealth.
I don’t know if it’s addictive in the same way that some chemicals are addictive, but I bet it’s addictive in the same way that gambling is addictive, and wealthy people get hooked on the feeling of “winning” more wealth. I also think that it’s not strictly wealth addiction, but power addiction, which is why some super wealthy people tend to extravagantly flaunt their power: building megaprojects, influencing or simply taking over governments, violating laws with impunity, forcing the working class to work in extreme conditions if not outright enslaving them, etc. The use of power is their drug and they won’t stop themselves because they can’t. Does that make them bad people? It makes them harmful people who need intervention, the same way an alcoholic needs intervention before they get behind a wheel. I feel bad for kids born into wealth, who never had the chance to just be a human without the veil of power being drawn between them and the rest of humanity. The Don Jr.’s of the world. That doesn’t excuse their actions, nor does it mean that they don’t need to be stopped. But I think it hurts us to think of them as fundamentally “bad” in the same way I think it’s unhelpful to categorize alcoholics as “bad”. The real horror is that the monsters are just like us, and treating wealth hoarders and power addicts like they’re a different, less human kind of human is the same thing that they do to rationalize their own abuses.