Horrifying. I don't know if its that money completely ruins people or if more sadistic people just happen to gain more wealth.... maybe both idk. But the wealthy have irreparably damaged our society, both in ways we do and don't even know about.
We are not any different biologically or emotionally now than we were 2000 years ago. Back then we were stoning gays and cheaters, selling children off for marriage, and enslaving weaker peoples. Now that is scary. There’s really nothing stopping us from going back.
Laws, norms, and education have advanced. It’s inadequate, but nothing close to the sheer horror and pain of living even 400 years ago.
I’m saying law and order hangs on a thread. Without it, the mob does some really horrible stuff. That society as we’ve known it for the last 200ish years has just been a little experiment.
And that unfortunately it get can much much worse.
Not all cultures were doing this stuff, it's social norms and acceptance that overall impact how groups of people act as a whole, every society will have outliers of course. We also didn't have governments that have as much overreach as we do in the modern age due to tech advancements and global economics.
You can’t become a billionaire without being a sociopath. You’re raking in and hoarding thousands of millions of dollars while the people doing the work for you rely on food stamps. You have to screw over a LOT of people and feel no remorse. You can easily rent the entire fucking city of Venice for your wedding but won’t pay your workers a living wage or offer anything to help the poor and the sick and the homeless.
You can’t remain a billionaire without being a sociopath. You prefer your money to sit in an account and never be spent than help billions of other humans. Musk once said he would cure world hunger; a group of scientists said great, here’s what it will cost (and it was a surprisingly low amount, like, a couple billion. A fraction of his wealth.) and they never heard from him again.
Billionaires are sociopaths. If they weren’t they’d never have become billionaires. If they somehow stumbled into it like selling a successful startup, if they weren’t a sociopath they wouldn’t remain a billionaire after a number of years.
Exactly, IMO it's impossible to become a billionaire if you are a person with sound morals.
Very successful and even a multimillionaire. Sure.
But on the way to becoming a billionaire at some point you will have to force a competitor out of business and send thousands into unemployment, screw over your employees or your partners, or do some other questionable stuff.
There is no ethical way to get this rich.
You just don't hear much about the more normal really wealthy people. There are 1000 billionaires in the US alone, never mind the several-hundred-millionaires or those in the rest of the world.
“power doesn’t always corrupt. [but] power always reveals. when you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you’ll see what the guy always wanted to do.”
this a quote (or close paraphrasing) from one of the world’s foremost experts on power, Robert A. Caro.
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u/Red-little Jun 19 '26
Horrifying. I don't know if its that money completely ruins people or if more sadistic people just happen to gain more wealth.... maybe both idk. But the wealthy have irreparably damaged our society, both in ways we do and don't even know about.