There’s an old saying that goes, ‘money talks but wealth whispers’.
It’s a nice turn of phrase, but if it was ever true – and it probably was, at least in terms of old school rich – wealth is talking much more loudly these days.
Many years ago I wrote a post about it and how I was how wealth was moving from expressions of success to acts of arrogance.
Since I wrote that post waaaaaaaaay back in 2006, we have seen this shift become more and more common, to the point where the characters in the brilliant Succession … are seen as aspirational rather than despicable.
But this situation is not new …
I remember reading an interview with Michael Douglas where he couldn’t work out why people liked his character in Wall Street, when he was supposed to represent everything wrong with the times.
However the reality is if you revisit his famous ‘Greed Is Good’ speech … it sounds very similar to the toxic, machismo, ego-bullshit Musk and Bezos – let alone the Roy family in Succession – spout on a disturbingly regular basis.
Have a look …
So when you consider this – and the hero status Jordan Belfort achieved with his ‘Wolf Of Wall Street’ persona – you start to realise that rather than learn from the mistakes of the past, we’re running right back at them.
Or said another way, it’s like the 80’s all over again.
Nothing reinforced this to me that this ad I recently saw on insta …
What the fuck?
For all the vulgar displays of wealth I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a lot having lived in China and America – I don’t know if anything beats the utter arrogance of travelling to one of the most environmentally fragile places on the planet simply so you can then piss on it by using mass carbon-emission producing boats, helicopters and submarines.
Fuck the environment.
Fuck the planet.
Fuck humanity.
All that matters is doing what you want and money lets you do whatever that is.
I honestly don’t know who I hate more … the company who put this on or the people who will happily pay to be a part of it.
That they have chosen to advertise this disgrace on instagram shows how much the company knows ‘alienating people’ is part of the appeal for the rich.
It’s sick.
As sick as all those companies who try to profit from the environmental crisis by making products that are ‘less bad’ rather than ‘more good’ and then try to place the burden of responsibility on the population rather than the corporation.
But then, as Joel Bakan wrote way back in 2005 with his book Corporation – companies, like the ultra wealthy – are fucking psychopaths.