I think it's become fashionable to appear more humble ever since the crash of 2008 and the occupy movement. I remember the news running stories about Bill Gates/Mark Zuckerberg/ect driving normal cars, wearing normal clothes, living in modest houses. The idea being that they're so rich that they don't care about status symbols. Back then this would be directly contrasted with the gold chains and fancy cars of famous rappers and athletes (in a racial kind of way: the white billionaires wanted to differentiate themselves from black millionares)
I was in high school in the early 2010s, it wasn't uncommon for teachers to imply the billionaires were rich because of their seemingly frugal spending habits, as if the difference between a 500k house and a 10 million dollar house was any more than a rounding error for them
That's probably not the only factors involved, but billionaires definitely seem to care about their reputation. All those space exploration stunts are pure vanity, but billionaires can pretend they're doing the world a favor by advancing science
i think this process has been going since at least the french revolution tho :)
this is how old money distances itself from new money. by pretending to be humble.
Definitely, they just try to keep their hedonism behind closed doors. Just ask the late Jeffrey Epstein
It predates the GFC. Warren Buffett only drinks Coca Cola and loves McDonald's. Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) was famous for his ball caps, and the book "The Millionaire Next Door", about how rich people are actually just boring Toyota drivers, came out in the 90s.
This is supposed to make us peons feel humble, but really it just made me go "what's the point?" Like the neighbor said in Office Space "shit man, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing" If someone is a ruthless shark like Warren Buffett and they want to own an island full of jewels and party 24/7, I get it. Why go to all that trouble just to eat a Big Mac tho?
I know right. When I was watching the Bond movies as a young un I always liked to imagine all the cool shit you could do with enough money.
Build some hotels inside volcanoes or massive restaurants under water or something, but no they'll just build another castle or some shit, god damn boring ass motherfuckers :sadness:
Yeah where's Rapture or an entire floating city? A dystopian arcology is right up:melon-musk: alley, at least that would be
coolinteresting and new.at least like build a giant monument to yourself or something. like buy a mountain and carve your face into it and be like "my face is bigger than mount rushmore"
It would be sick if they were building literal castles actually. Like stone fortresses in the countryside with moats. Way more interesting than yet another yacht
Building castles is something that even your bog-standard fascist adjacent petit bourgeois can accomplish with ease https://gizmodo.com/10-incredible-diy-castles-built-by-just-one-single-pers-1452608410
Now building a floating castle instead of a yacht that houses another yacth? That's actually interesting :thinking-about-it:
That's why Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are so interested in rockets and stuff. Rockets are cool. They are interesting. Doesn't matter the USSR did it first and did it better. They aren't doing it anymore.
That's why John McAfee was the least bad capitalist - he was amusing at least.
He was absolutely disgusting and insane and used his money to just become Kurtz including the murder. It's awful but damn was he sorta fun to behold.
That's kinda like every other billionaire, but less boring.
I keep trying to write out a longer post about this but it's not going, so I'm just going to drop "they're cheap and mediocre".
We just don't know about all the Little St. James's out there 👁️
A lot are banking on life extension/transhumanism, which is pretty supervillainy when they intend on letting everyone else and the planet die. It becomes crass af again tho because their transhumanism is definitely gonna be something as egotistical and stupid as copying their brain and uploading it to the metaverse
Nancy Pelosi eating various NFT ice-creams eternally in the metaverse.
"How do you think I got so rich, you silly pleb? By wasting my money on drinking and smoking? Videogames and movies? Music and fun? No, I have sex with children. Having sex with children is my thing." :epstein:
