Super-rich people are already post-human. They experience the human condition on an entirely separate level than most everyone else.
Not to suggest that it’s not seriously advantageous to have eliminated the frustrations/anxieties that you can purchase your way out of.
My daily anxieties are "I need to find time to make dinner/shop.", "I need to fit in a run into this crazy day.", "Do I have enough money for retirement?", "My co-workers are stressing me out.", "Can I get this project done on time?"
I literally can't think of a common daily anxiety or frustration that would not just evaporate if I was a retired multi-billionaire.
But they’re not. They’re hiding from a pandemic in Fiji and buying their way into quarantined nations that aren’t even letting their own citizens in.
Let me know the next time Page or Schmidt has to worry whether they’ll ever be destitute due to an injury or accident out of their control.
My own anxieties have largely to do with my children, and while some can probably be bought away (is my kid getting an OK education at this public school?), there isn't an amount of money to instantly solve "my kid is sick".
I agree on the whole with the sentiment that the situations of the super rich are not comparable to ours, but there are some things that money won't solve, and likely some problems that you and I cannot conceive of that money creates.
This is the comment I was responding to. Sick children are not a daily frustration and, even then, Page can pay for the best health care available anywhere in the world for his child, many others have to decide between keeping their house to medical treatment.
Have you ever been poor? I have. I’ve also made fairly exorbitant amounts of money in a year later in my career. Money does not fix problems, but it absolutely removes a great deal of inconvenience, trouble, and stress from life.
The working poor who are otherwise trapped in a web of debt and crushing hours with low pay are much closer to the average worker - tech or otherwise - making several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, than that worker is to someone like Page.
But folks often don’t realize this. The fickle trappings of the “middle-class” create a false rug of comfort that can be readily yanked out from underneath someone given an injury or illness.
This is not a worry billionaires have. Nor most millionaires. But many Americans do have it.
Money doesn’t break you out of the human condition, but it absolutely changes life radically.
Which is fine, I’m happy to let the rich do what they will. As soon as we no longer have citizens bankrupted by medical or educational debt, or have their retirements wiped out by an injury or illness. Once citizens can rest easier, then they can have their absurd displays of wealth. Until then, they are begging awfully hard for violent revolution.
And this is all coming from someone who is deeply satisfied with life and essentially always has been! That’s the trouble with the human condition.
Is this a defense of allowing uncapped accumulation of wealth? No. Is it a defense of the ultrarich being able to do whatever they want? No. It’s the simple observation that while money buys solutions to many conditions, “the human condition” is not one of them.
Other people who have come upon sudden riches have expressed the same sentiment. There was a great post on reddit years ago from a guy in wealth management who talked about the severe lack of "human experience" when you achieve maximum wealth.
> The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.
This quote from Einstein always comes to mind when I hear of people that get a lot of "success" with money but then feel empty as a result. I feel like it has to be, at least in part, a knowledge that they aren't giving back what they know they should be for the amount they are taking, but you can't really blame them too much because it's what everyone is "supposed" to do :/
If he chose not to, and he feels empty, thats on him. He probably is empty.
William Gibson, Count Zero (1986)
The super-rich aren't gods, they just have something people want. However rich Bezos was, his junk is still on the internet for anyone to go see, so money really can't solve everything.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-...
Once you get a decent salary utity of money decreases badly.