The baffling thing is why, they have no time to enjoy the money. Money is a means to an end. “I want my kids to have a better life”, “I want to retire early” etc etc may be worth working yourself to the bone for, but in reality these are the same people that never see their kids and plan to work until they die.
i’m pretty convinced that there rich fuckheads just have some fundamental psychological unwellness, either inherent or brought upon them by their childhood.
Take elon musk as the extreme example: clearly just not capable of being truly happy, he’s constantly seeking validation and no amount is ever actually enough to make him feel confident, richest person in the world buys twitter to remove the ability to express dislike towards him.
And as a counterexample of what a mentally healthy rich person does: there’s a guy from my region who seems to have genuinely made his own wealth and he basically just lives like any other middle aged dude, normal house in a normal town and he goes to the grocery store every now and then, because that’s a pretty fucking sweet life when you don’t have to worry about money. Just sit on the porch eating cinnamon buns for the rest of your life, and spend some of that wealth and use your connections to get a frozen meal company to add pancakes to their product line.
Now to be clear he’s not some shining beacon of morality, he’s just normal, and it’s wild how much of a contrast that makes to your average billionaire psychopath.
I think it’s what the Buddhists call suffering. There’s no end to wanting, especially not if you’re convinced that it can soothe your existential unease. I think that Elon and a bunch of the other billionaires are almost like gamblers or alcoholics, only they’re constantly trying to soothe that unease by chasing just one more zero or a little bit more power or control. Of course, the relief never comes, so they just keep digging, convinced that if they just get enough zeroes or control, they’ll finally feel some relief.
Imo, this is distinct from the local millionaires. I’ve met some successful mid-size business owners who were pretty chill people. One I’m thinking of in particular mostly uses his money to help fill unmet needs in his community (I.E. local shithead ambulance companies refused to adequately cover the community because there wasn’t (enough) money in it for them, so he started his own, with blackjack and hookers, and everyone’s happy. The company just barely breaks even each year, the crews are well taken care of, and the community is very happy with the service provided). If you ran into the dude on the street, which has happened, you probably wouldn’t guess he was a millionaire. Meanwhile, you’d probably never run into the likes of Elon in the wild, because of his very valid concern of getting reincarnated.
The baffling thing is why, they have no time to enjoy the money. Money is a means to an end. “I want my kids to have a better life”, “I want to retire early” etc etc may be worth working yourself to the bone for, but in reality these are the same people that never see their kids and plan to work until they die.
i’m pretty convinced that there rich fuckheads just have some fundamental psychological unwellness, either inherent or brought upon them by their childhood.
Take elon musk as the extreme example: clearly just not capable of being truly happy, he’s constantly seeking validation and no amount is ever actually enough to make him feel confident, richest person in the world buys twitter to remove the ability to express dislike towards him.
And as a counterexample of what a mentally healthy rich person does: there’s a guy from my region who seems to have genuinely made his own wealth and he basically just lives like any other middle aged dude, normal house in a normal town and he goes to the grocery store every now and then, because that’s a pretty fucking sweet life when you don’t have to worry about money. Just sit on the porch eating cinnamon buns for the rest of your life, and spend some of that wealth and use your connections to get a frozen meal company to add pancakes to their product line.
Now to be clear he’s not some shining beacon of morality, he’s just normal, and it’s wild how much of a contrast that makes to your average billionaire psychopath.
I think it’s what the Buddhists call suffering. There’s no end to wanting, especially not if you’re convinced that it can soothe your existential unease. I think that Elon and a bunch of the other billionaires are almost like gamblers or alcoholics, only they’re constantly trying to soothe that unease by chasing just one more zero or a little bit more power or control. Of course, the relief never comes, so they just keep digging, convinced that if they just get enough zeroes or control, they’ll finally feel some relief.
Imo, this is distinct from the local millionaires. I’ve met some successful mid-size business owners who were pretty chill people. One I’m thinking of in particular mostly uses his money to help fill unmet needs in his community (I.E. local shithead ambulance companies refused to adequately cover the community because there wasn’t (enough) money in it for them, so he started his own, with blackjack and hookers, and everyone’s happy. The company just barely breaks even each year, the crews are well taken care of, and the community is very happy with the service provided). If you ran into the dude on the street, which has happened, you probably wouldn’t guess he was a millionaire. Meanwhile, you’d probably never run into the likes of Elon in the wild, because of his very valid concern of getting reincarnated.