• Maeve@kbin.earth
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    4 months ago

    I thought these paragraphs addressed that:

    To own and run a 35ft boat of that kind, you need to be extremely rich. It retails at about £300,000, on top of which are the extraordinary costs of mooring, winter storage, maintenance and fuel. Isn’t money of that kind supposed to buy you pleasure? If not, what’s the point?

    Extreme wealth can severely hamper enjoyment. As Michael Mechanic documents in his book, Jackpot, there are two groups of people who have to think about money all the time: the very poor and the very rich. Immense wealth possesses you just as much as you possess it: managing it becomes a full-time job. You don’t know whom to trust; you can start to imagine your friends aren’t friends at all; it can dominate and poison your family relationships. It can hollow you out, socially, intellectually and morally.

    But I think there might be a further corroding aspect of wealth that hasn’t been widely discussed. Great wealth flattens the world. If you can go anywhere and do anything, everything is over the horizon. You speed past the local and the particular, towards an endlessly escalating ideal of luxury: the better marina, the bigger yacht, the private jet, the super-home. The satisfaction horizon can retreat before you. Place has no meaning, other than as a setting that might impress the friends you no longer trust. But anyone who is impressed by money is not worth impressing.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
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        4 months ago

        So the unwanting soul sees what’s hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants.

        Tao te Ching, Le Guin

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
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        4 months ago

        Wecan fix that attitude by making them “commoners.” Tax them harder.

        Edited because looking at large swaths of voting poor, nevermind.

    • Infynis
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      4 months ago

      If managing your wealth is a full-time job, just hire another person. If getting whatever you want doesn’t make you happy, it’s not the money’s fault, you just don’t know what you want. Do some self-actualizing and try again on Monday