That insight came from entrepreneur and business guru Harvey Mackay back in the 1990s (I browed his books when I worked at Waldenbooks). I think there’s a definite truth to it. For a lot of rich people “enough” doesn’t exist.
Take Robert Murdoch. He’s a centibillionaire so even if he wasn’t an old man, his money is never going to run out; his kids, grandkids, great-grandkids will never have to do a day’s work if he gives them the option. But when he discovered Fox — following the standard science regarding covid and vaccines — was losing ground to Newsmax, he immediately ordered an anti-vax stance, while requiring all employees get vaccinated.
Or consider the medbed, a non-existent miracle technology that supposedly cures as well as Wolverine’s healing factor. Unsurprisingly some tech companies have tried to milk the myth while maintaining plausible deniability: “Tesla BioHealing sells a “MedBed Generator,” which is a metal canister that patients place under their actual bed, for $11,000. Speaking to The Daily Beast in 2022, Tesla BioHealing CEO James Liu insisted that the company did not want to be associated with the medbed hoax, but promised its products would deliver “life force energy” to sick people.” This is, of course, a form of fraud that’s been around forever, but that’s no excuse.
College sports are hooked on the money too. I wrote in a previous post (but I can’t find it) about how colleges are partnering with online betting rings to encourage students to bet on games. Bad for students’ bottom lines, great for the college. Because even when the college has a multi-million dollar endowment, they hoard it like Smaug.
Or consider the endless string of sports events and now a comedy festival willing to set up in Saudi Arabia. Comedian David Cross on the festival and the comics who signed up: “I don’t understand how being rich can make someone such a whore. Poor people desperate to improve their (or their families lives), sure. Still not acceptable but I can understand the desperation to put food on the table. But this? I mean, it’s not like this is some commercial for a wireless service or a betting app. This is truly the definition of “blood money”. You might as well do commercials for Lockheed Martin or Zyklon B.”
At least some of the participants, such as Louis CK, are millionaires. It puts me in mind of Rod Serling’s observation in Requiem for a Heavyweight: first you get a thousand a week (we’re talking 1950s money — today that’s over ten grand a week) and it’s unbelievable! Nobody can spend that much! A year later, you’re spending that much. A year after that, you need it to live. Or feel like you do.
Paul Campos: “One thing I’ve watched pretty much totally collapse over the past generation, and the past decade in particular, has been what could be called the I’ll do a lot of things but I won’t do that ethos. The notion that you shouldn’t sell certain things no matter what you’re offered because that would be wrong is becoming almost literally incomprehensible, in a frank plutocracy in which money is essentially God.”
