In the meanwhile, we can all publicly see how the the billionaires and trillionaires, behave and settle their priorities exactly, in the cartoonish way you are dismissing.
- The incredible insecurity and constant need for personal validation.
- The absurd and obsessive pursue of further wealth when it would be temporally impossible to even spend 1% of their current capital.
- The extreme level of cowardice, where an auto plant worker, can call out the powers to be, the pedophile protectors that they are. At the same time, only Jensen Huang did not submit itself, to the humiliation of standing behind face and front at the presidential inauguration...
The expectation of a need for decorum against all evidence almost seems like a quaint remnant of the aristocracy at this point. There's no advantage to being a nice or sensible person if you're a billionaire. People talk about "business" like it's still the 1800s and billionaires are the factory owners. The real economy (i.e. anything involving any pretense of being an exchange of goods and services in any shape or form) is now a minute fraction of the global economy. Everything else is finance. And if the nature of the finance "industry" wasn't obvious enough the US has given up all pretense to the point that members of the US government now intentionally manipulate online betting "markets" directly.
You may have needed some table manners to be able to run a tincan factory. You can let your entire ass hang out on TV 24/7 and still be a billionaire today. And people will still cheer you on like you're the inventor of sliced bread.
The big factor that works against military victory anywhere is that the military is left to visibly identify themselves as a means of projecting influence, whereas militants can seamlessly blend in with the population. And trying to punish the population at large to weed out the militants mostly just tends to backfire and create even more militants.
There is even modern precedent for this like the Algerian War where the people of Algeria managed to kick out the French even with the French engaging in widescale massacres, torture, and all other sorts of fun stuff that explains how anti-Western powers are so comfortably gaining influence in Africa today.
If one doesn't believe there was a conspiracy, then the assassination attempt on Trump would exemplify this - one guy with a rifle nearly single-handedly killed one of the most guarded men alive. Your average military logistics support doesn't have anything remotely like a team of secret service and police covering every single angle of attack in one well secured location.
Sure, but that being a failure mode is a design choice. Look at Iran: we've seen how many decapitation strikes now? At this point there shouldn't even anyone be left that was in the original chain of command but clearly they're chugging along quite nicely because they decentralized military operations exactly for a scenario like this, knowing anyone appearing on the US' or Israel's radar too prominently was one bad day away from needing replacement.
> This is how Afghanistan, with basic weapons and religious extremists running around in sandals, managed to defeat not only the US but also the USSR.
Not quite. The US managed to "defeat" Afghanistan. The problem was just that nation building was never really on the menu. The US was extremely hands-off during the occupation because their priority was making sure more US soldiers don't come home toes-first when the war had officially been declared won than to build any kind of legacy. This also led to massive subversion of the supposedly US-backed government. There were very few incentives in supporting the US more than necessary not to get shot at, especially after it became clear the US government had no interest in rewarding the loyalty of most of the people who had risked their lives as translators and negotiators, let alone supporting the people who volunteered to join the new army or police. That's why when the US left the supposed new Afghan state just dropped its weapons and ran away and why the Taliban could pretty much just take over without much resistance.
A good counter-example is Iraq where not only did the US have to do much less work to do (because Iraq already had the concept of a powerful central government rather than effectively being a coalition of often loosely connected tribal communities), they also engaged in a lot more active nation building and had reasons to maintain a long-term presence.
If you want to see how bottle rockets vs modern hardware can also play out, look at whatever the IDF is doing at the moment. Granted, the US military being deployed against US citizens would probably show a lot more hesitance and restraint, but again that's a design choice, not an inherent property.
> And trying to punish the population at large to weed out the militants mostly just tends to backfire and create even more militants.
That assumes militants are a problem, not a calculated risk. Long-term social instability is manageable if you don't rely on popular approval as long as it doesn't disrupt supply chains enough to directly threaten the military's ability to operate. Israel for example arguably flourished for decades while having to continuously deal with militants and responding with large scale violence.
As for Afghanistan I think people don't realize how much fighting was still going on over there. The Taliban forces weren't just camping out in the mountains and defending, they were actively striking all US forces and US proxy forces. In total hundreds of thousands were killed. The Taliban killed thousands of US soldiers, wounded tens of thousands, had a significant minority of land under their undisputed control, were actively contesting control of much more of the country, and rapidly took control of the country once the US left. And yeah nation building was 100% on the menu. There was a friggin George Floyd mural in Kabul lol. But the US was never able to get the country under control, and things were trending worse more than better.
Iraq was much easier for one simple reason - it's a heavily divided country which Saddam (who was himself part of a minority Sunni population) was able to stabilize only with an iron fist. This made much of the country hate him. He was also extremely paranoid, probably in part because of this, and didn't trust his own armed forces which led to direct efforts to limit their power/capabilities, installing commanders based on loyalty over competence, and so on. So it was pretty much an ideal target for a decapitation strike. But even in that ideal scenario we were left waving a victory from flag within tiny little heavily fortified green zones, because stepping outside of them was highly dangerous.
And I don't think Israel is showing anything productive at all. Hamas has comparable numbers today as when the war started, Israel's leader has a warrant for his arrest for genocide, and the future of Israel is probably more uncertain than it's ever been in its entire existence because they've isolated themselves from basically everybody except Trump who will be gone in a couple of years.
Maybe UC Berkeley is good enough for you?
"Upper Class More Likely to Be Scofflaws Due to Greed, Study Finds" - https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/upper-class-more-likely...
"Does money make you mean?" - https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk?t=311
"Wealth and the inflated self: class, entitlement, and narcissism" - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23963971/
"Multiple studies show that drivers of expensive, luxury cars are significantly less likely to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks and more prone to committing traffic violations compared to drivers of budget-friendly vehicles" - https://www.ralphaschwartzpc.com/blog/study-luxury-car-drive...
"Polish millionaire apologizes after snatching signed hat from child at US Open" - https://abc7ny.com/post/video-goes-viral-polish-millionaire-...
Who is naive here?
Btw, I opened the very first "scientific proof" you offered, and it happens to be a story with no links or data about one cool student's deep studies where people who believe stealing isn't so bad steal more often, and that's why upper class is bad-bad. So how do I know you didn't even try to read it before posting?
“The increased unethical tendencies of upper-class individuals are driven, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed,” said Paul Piff, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper published today (Monday, Feb. 27) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences..."
"The rich are different: Unravelling the perceived and self-reported personality profiles of high-net-worth individuals" - https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop....
"Tax Evasion and Inequality"- https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.20172043
"...Drawing on a unique dataset of leaked customer lists from offshore financial institutions matched to administrative wealth records in Scandinavia, we show that offshore tax evasion is highly concentrated among the rich. The skewed distribution of offshore wealth implies high rates of tax evasion at the top: we find that the 0.01 percent richest households evade about 25 percent of their taxes. By contrast, tax evasion detected in stratified random tax audits is less than 5 percent throughout the distribution..."
"The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires" - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01099-3
Traits they exhibit plenty more, than the general population: "The “Why” and “How” of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit" - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6970445/
https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk?t=310
https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk?t=371
Bankman-Fried — FTX -> misuse of billions in customer money for investments, influence, political contributions and personal interests despite enormous wealth.
Bill Hwang — Archegos -> extreme risk-taking, market manipulation and deception that ultimately imposed billions in losses on banks.
Alex Mashinsky — Celsius -> personal profit from token sales while customers were misled and ultimately left unable to access billions in assets.
Bernie Madoff -> massive Ponzi fraud sustained for years despite already having wealth, status and an elite financial reputation.
R. Allen Stanford — Stanford Financial -> diverted billions from investors to finance his businesses and lifestyle despite extraordinary existing wealth.
Leona Helmsley — Helmsley Hotels -> billionaire convicted of tax evasion and fraud involving personal luxury expenses. The sentencing judge explicitly described the conduct as motivated by "naked greed" and an arrogant belief that she was above the law.
Elizabeth Holmes — Theranos -> maintained sweeping false claims to investors while building a company valued in the billions, resulting in hundreds of millions invested on false premises.
Trevor Milton — Nikola -> repeatedly exaggerated his company's technology and achievements to stimulate investor demand and support its stock price.
Karl Sebastian Greenwood — OneCoin -> helped sell a fictitious cryptocurrency to millions of victims who invested more than $4 billion while he personally received hundreds of millions.
Miles Guo — GTV / investment schemes -> former billionaire convicted of using lies and misrepresentations to extract more than $1 billion from followers
Do Kwon — Terraform Labs -> deception surrounding a huge crypto ecosystem that culminated in roughly $40 billion in losses
Joseph Lewis — Tavistock Group -> billionaire who admitted abusing confidential corporate information by tipping friends, employees and romantic partners, while his company separately admitted securities fraud involving concealed share ownership.
Elon Musk — X -> Changed the platform algorithm after Biden posts outperformed his, massively increasing exposure of Musk own posts.
Jeff Bezos — Venice -> turned his 2025 wedding into a three-day billionaire spectacle that prompted protests over the privatization and commodification of the city.
Mark Zuckerberg — Meta -> commissioned and publicly displayed a giant Roman-style statue of his wife while simultaneously building one of America most extraordinary private compounds.
Bryan Johnson — Blueprint -> turned his own body into a multimillion dollar anti-aging project, including receiving plasma from his teenage son in an unsuccessful rejuvenation experiment.
Larry Ellison — Oracle -> built a personal real-estate empire including ownership of 99% of a Hawaiian island
Then you have the Narcissistic in Chief: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
I can think of loads of things I’d do with hundreds of millions of dollars of disposable income. Make large buildings that look like how I think buildings should look, fund scientific research in areas I’m personally interested in but have little aptitude for, find artists that align with my tastes and give them the ability to realise their visions, contribute to political organisations and charities that align with my values, et cetera. Those all are basically infinite money sinks.
In the past, the ultra-wealthy did do all of these things, funding loss-making research and expeditions, monumental architecture, philanthropic organisation and artistic works. The problem might be that you think billionaires shouldn’t do some or all of these things, but that is a very different position than that they can’t do any of these things.
I don’t think the GP meant that it’s impossible to dispose of a large amount of money. But it is effectively impossible to spend down a certain level of accumulated wealth by purchasing goods and services that any human being or their family could require to maintain even lavish standards of living.
The examples you gave are conversions of wealth to power, using money to reshape the world. Which, I think, is kind of the crux of the issue. Perhaps you were alluding to this at the end of your comment.
Skirt taxes to give a billion dollars to prospective college kids through your own organization? Nice gesture, but still a greedy fuck who refuses to give up control.
Pay a billion in taxes that ends up mostly going to heavy administrative bloat? Give that guy sainthood.
That shows profound lack of imagination. Mark Shuttleworth's founding of Canonical was a choice to expend his wealth to try to popularize Linux. So was Gabe Newell's long running efforts with the Steam Machine (dating back to the original one in 2015) and Proton that only started bearing fruit in recent years. These were business decisions you say? At the level of wealth we're talking about, the two are intertwined.
gabe is not a philanthropy who want to see linux gaming happen no matter what. he's a reasonable man who saw a threat to his business when every operating system started making their own store and windows was directly trying to eat his lunch starting from window 7 and going at it the strongest in window 8 when they had their dedicated to game store directly pinned in the windows bar menu.
If you want philanthropy (or perhaps not), Gabe Newell has $1 billion worth of yachts and research ships.
Really, they're probably more displeased about the Valve near-monopoly as a marketplace for Windows games than displeased about MS.
The point is less that these people are surrounded by "yes-men" but more that wealth (especially when measured in billions) is power and with sufficient power it becomes easy to forego any question of consent, let alone of whether consent is coerced or not. Remember that power is ultimately about the ability to enact violence and violence can take many forms, most of which are perfectly legal (because the legal system itself exists to regulate how, by who and against whom violence can be used).
You tend to hear "no" a lot less when you always point a gun at the head of the persons you're asking. Note that "wealth" isn't the only way to get there but a certain level of it is usually necessary to get to the point where other options become available - and some of the ways are a lot riskier in the long term (cf. Epstein).
Side note: this is also why I hate the pseudo-intellectual counter argument against "billionaires" of "that doesn't mean they have billions of dollars sitting in a bank account" - it's like arguing that De Beers didn't benefit much from holding a quasi-monopoly on natural diamonds because the diamonds would be devalued if they flooded the market with the ones they had intentionally kept off the market to drive up value: beyond a certain amount money ceases to be about liquidity and starts being about leverage. Unless you happen to be dealing with lower level bureaucracy in Russia, the most efficient way to use wealth to your advantage isn't to just hand people stacks of dollar bills.