this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Its important to remember that rich assholes buying expensive things is not a reason to hate them: that's envy. Rich assholes spending their money on expensive luxuries fund the luxury economy, which finds its way to the regular economy. That's how economies work, the money moves. The spending isn't the issue. It's the hoarding. You can't spend a trillion dollars. You can't spend a billion dollars. But you can keep it out of the economy. That's what keeps everyone else down.
It's like if the top 70% of the ocean was just fucking cement.
When their expensive luxuries are actively harming the planet, I think their indulgences offer us plenty of justification to hate. Private jets emit the same amount of CO2 in two hours that an average car does in a year. This frivolous waste poisons our air and warms our fragile seas. Iโm not envious of private jets or yachts; it would be unethical for me to use them no matter how much wealth I had.
The word you are looking for is investment, while what you've described here is consumption. Investment is far, far better than consumption. One is adding to the market, and the other is removing things from the market that could otherwise have been put to much better uses.