• slaacaa@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    68
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    Being a billionaire (aka wealth hoarder) is a mental illness.

    If they were hoarding anything else to this extent, going way beyond their rational needs, e.g. billions of tables, pokemon cards or toilet papers, everybody would know they are insane. But as it’s money, somehow they are supposed to be the smartest people in the world, and we should worship them.

    • slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      1 day ago

      If there are 10 monkeys in a zoo and they give them 10 oranges a day as a treat and one of the monkeys would hoard 6 oranges every day and left them to rot. Do you think that the zookeepers would keep an eye on it because it’s clearly mentally ill or an asshole, or would they point at it and go: damn, that’s one cool and smart monkey.

      • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        18 hours ago

        If the monkey traded the oranges to other monkeys for other treats, or for something intangible like status or privacy, the zookeepers would think it was a cool and smart monkey, but they would think the other monkeys who took the extra oranges in trade and let them rot were less intelligent.

      • slaacaa@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 day ago

        Great example, makes the contrast even more obvious. Insane people are controlling the world, and we are wondering why it’s going to shit

      • bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 day ago

        It’s a bad example, because we are not monkeys, we lack zookeepers and money normally rots only at a much, much slower rate than oranges and increases itself over a certain threshold

      • Piemanding@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        1 day ago

        That’s just what monkeys do and if you give the weakest monkey an orange the strongest will go and kill them.

        • Honytawk@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          Only if they are in captivity.

          In the wilderness they share their resources. The strongest would defend the weakest, especially if they had an orange.

    • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      1 day ago

      This. It’s literally no different, and the fact that so many people idolise this kind of hoarding shows how powerful the processes of hegemony are.

    • ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      You can’t really do anything useful with a billion Pokémon cards, there’s always something you can do with a billion dollars

      • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        18 hours ago

        But you could do lots of useful things with a billion pokemon cards - either bartering them for goods and services or converting them to money first, effectively “spending” the cards on useful things.

        But practicality isn’t the issue when people see someone hoarding incredible amounts of something - it’s the abnormality of devoting yourself to accumulating vastly more than what we interpret as anywhere near normal. We treat hobby objects that way but not money.

    • rah@hilariouschaos.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      Being a billionaire (aka wealth hoarder) is a mental illness.

      No it isn’t.

      e.g. billions of tables, pokemon cards or toilet papers

      These aren’t directly related to sex appeal whereas money is.

      Edit: I mean I assume. Perhaps there are some people out there who see pokemon cards as a good measure of offspring-raising potential, I dunno. In which case, accumulating pokemon cards wouldn’t be considered a sign of mental illness either.

      they are supposed to be the smartest people in the world, and we should worship them

      Who told you that?