Many of the world’s largest investment firms have launched new funds over the past couple of years aimed at acquiring or building single-family homes to use as rentals. This comes as no surprise considering that the increased cost of buying a home has forced many Americans into being tenants instead of homeowners. Arrived, a young real estate company backed by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, has just announced its entry into the single-family rental fund space. Arrived currently operates a f
When understanding the mindset of the (I would argue) the vast majority of the 0.01%, remember:
Nah dude. It’s not as complicated as that.
It’s the same mentality that your neighbor has… I don’t have enough because someone else has slightly more than me. Tony across the street got the new car… so I should get a newer and better one than him!
The .01% only hang out with each other, and they compete with each other. And they get jealous when their buddy has a cooler nuclear bunker than them, so they need that extra 10 million this year to ugprade their bunker.
They are not evil, they are just people. And you’d behave exactly the same way in their situation. It’s how we are wired, to be stupid selfish jealous monkeys. You don’t exist to them, they are not thinking about you, only about themselves.
Same thing when you go to your town meeting and your elderly neighbors are screaming bloody murder at their taxes going up $50 this year because they think children should go to school in unheated buildings.
I agree that it’s more complicated than “It’s how we are wired, to be stupid selfish jealous monkeys.”
As I said, “it’s never enough”.
No, I’m willing to bet everything I have that I would not behave the same way.
What I’m asserting is that cruelty is an inherent trait to the sociopathic avarice required to hoard that level of wealth. The addiction isn’t about wealth or material possession anymore, it’s power over other people.
Most neuro-normative higher primates work together and are very socially conscious (see: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haight and The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley). They work together the most synchronously and with the most ardent fervor when deposing a perceived unjust tyrant in their group, coincidentally to our discussion.
Plutocrats may not even be consciously aware of it, and they wouldn’t admit it even if they were, but it’s always about control. Cruelty is the point because it’s a vehicle (i.e., modus operandi) by which they maintain control, and get their high; as Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Sociopathic bullies get a huge dopamine hit off of successful manipulation, don’t feel remorse, and in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, they would kill to ensure they’re in charge of an empire of scrap.