• IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    It’s what I don’t understand about the ultra rich … a billionaire has enough money to live comfortably for one lifetime, and they would only use a fraction of their wealth to do it … yet they want to acquire even more wealth, as much as possible and it any wealth they do achieve is only accelerated because it means they can gain more faster.

    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.

    When you describe this scenario with money, its a normal conversation … if you said anyone wants a billion of something … like a billion collector cards, a billion cats, a billion motorcycles, a billion sandwiches, you’re considered nuts … but if you want a billion dollars, that’s perfectly normal

    • notabot@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      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.

      • zeejoo@thelemmy.club
        2·
        5 months ago

        Sorry, no. Sponsoring a ballroom or paying for an inauguration are examples of soft power. Hard power is when you use coercive means to achieve your goals, in a geopolitical sense (where the terms come from) hard power is military action or the threat thereof, or economic sanctions. Funding things, building things and paying for things are examples of soft power. A billionaires version of hard power would be blackmail or a hostile takeover.

        • notabot@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          Geopolitically, yes, you’re correct, but as you say in another comment, they influence the military rather than control it. That influence comes from economic control of the nominal controller. From an economic angle, that level of control is hard power, as removing it, or worse, putting behind an opponent, can be as damaging, and coersive, to the target as military means would be. Perhaps it’s a different scale to sending in the army, but economic warfare, even a billionaire against a politician, has damaging and coersive effects.

          • zeejoo@thelemmy.club
            1·
            5 months ago

            No, sorry.

            From an economic angle, that level of control is hard power, as removing it, or worse, putting behind an opponent, can be as damaging, and coersive

            That’s just objectively untrue. It only becomes hard power when they lean on that influence coercively. The implication that it could be taken away is the literal definition of soft power. A direct threat to take it away as leverage would be hard power.

            When China builds a port in Djibouti, the implication is that if Djibouti doesn’t conform largely to China’s geopolitical goals in the region the port could be shut down or funding pulled. That’s soft power, even though it carries conditions, because of the ambiguous and uncertain nature of the consequences. China in this example wouldn’t be exercising “hard power” unless they actively threatened to pull all Chinese shipping to and from the port or change the parameters of the loan structure to get the country to fall in line.

    • GardenGeek@europe.pub
      1·
      5 months ago

      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.

    • Lojcs@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      I’m not incredibly privy to billionaires but to me they seem to come in 2 varieties, greedy and indifferent. Some of them think their wealth is proof that they were meant to leave their mark on the world, so they try to get even more money to leave an even bigger mark. Others might not have a personal reason to have more money, but if they’ve a banker or whatever in charge of their assets the easiest answer to any question is “pick what’s most profitable”. Even the (not really) neutral position of just maintaining wealth means lobbying against taxation. Anyone who would tell their banker not to lobby against taxation would not be a billionaire in the first place

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 months ago

    That’s part if it, but the wealthy are also overly concerned with their standing in their niche community, and whether investors will give them money. They’re fully invested in their endless growth model, and have all done horrible things… So their standing is no longer effected by what horrible things they’ve done by our standards. It’s just a question of whether they’re “growing” the money.

    Infinite growth personified = a cancer on humanity.