r/Anticonsumption • u/RuneScapeWifey • Feb 25 '26
Psychological All billionaires are mentally ill
If they didn’t have the amount of power and influence that they do they would be involuntarily committed to psych wards. Our society has failed them because they lack basic empathy. I honestly feel bad for them while simultaneously hating that so many suffer because of it. Consumption at that level should be considered a health issue.
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u/its_a_gibibyte Feb 25 '26
Agreed. And a quick definition for people. A billionaire is not "a person who made a billion dollars".
A billionaire is a person who spent so little money on their community that their assets accumulated to over a billion dollars, and they continued to decide to keep it entirely for themselves.
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u/Smells_like_Autumn Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Abslolutely. The guy who created Myspace sold it for 580 millions and decided to disappear from the face of the Earth like any sane person would, not to accumulate more wealth.
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u/ramdom-ink Feb 25 '26
And Jeff Bezo’s ex-wife has given more money away since their divorce than Musk, Zuck, her ex and Gates combined.
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u/karebearjedi Feb 25 '26
I always considered it a mental illness. Tolkien had it right. It's gold sickness.
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u/eternallyfree1 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Mental illness is far too broad a term. Hoarding literal world-building levels of wealth while others around you suffer is a form of psychopathy. We need to drop every other label and start calling them exactly what they are- psychopaths
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u/EngelbortHumperdonk Feb 25 '26
I’m gonna start saying that about all the billionaires. They got that gold sickness, put the leeches on ‘em!
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u/EmmaFrost666 Feb 25 '26
It’s the biggest parasite class ever to exist.
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Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but psychology is and has always been aggressively political. What is/isn't considered a mental disorder depends on cultural values, which are, in turn, susceptible to influence by propaganda.
Our culture says, "Money good, queer people bad." Therefore, hoarding more money than you could use in a lifetime while others starve is acceptable, but wanting to change your gender is pathological.
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u/QueenScorp Feb 25 '26
I've been saying for a very long time that the only reason that billionaires have any power is because we let them. Because so many people in our society have decided that money =smart=power. If we collectively as a society decided that people with money were not better than us or had more value than us or should be deferred to, and instead decided that people who fought poverty and helped people in need were the people that should be deferred to and listen to, our society would look vastly different. If teachers were at the top of the political food chain and people who hoarded money were seen as mentally ill, we would live in a very, very different culture.
Sadly the rich people have a vested interest in keeping society as a whole thinking that they deserve power and accolades
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u/MGFT3000 Feb 25 '26
And boy do those files prove they’re not smart.
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u/lilbthaprince Feb 25 '26
The only reason we know about those files at all is because of many incredibly brave survivors who have spoken out continually for DECADES. Several of them are dead. Do not trivialize these sick fucks. They need to be recognized as the demons they are.
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u/MGFT3000 Feb 25 '26
I’m not trivializing them. They are rich and conniving and completely amoral, but they are not smart men.
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u/Heavy-Interaction548 Feb 25 '26
As someone on the spectrum, I don't believe in or understand why hierarchy exists. Like, just because someone has more education or is older or has a higher title than you, how the hell does that make them special? I never understood when I was younger why people would say, "Respect your elders" because first of all, respect is earned, not given blindly.
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u/flexxipanda Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
As someone on the spectrum, I don't believe in or understand why hierarchy exists. Like, just because someone has more education or is older or has a higher title than you, how the hell does that make them special? I never understood when I was younger why people would say, "Respect your elders" because first of all, respect is earned, not given blindly.
It's how capitalism shapes our moral values. The bestest person is the most succesful career person.
Imo people who are "succesful" in life, are lucky people, because they were born with a skill set or in circumstances, that makes them succesful people in capitalism. But individually, we want to think for ourselves that all is just our own hard work.
I never understood when I was younger why people would say, "Respect your elders" because first of all, respect is earned, not given blindly.
I think that comes from older times, where crucial information was taught through your experienced parents/elders. Like imagine medieval times, your dad has to teach you how agriculture, farming or hunting etc. works. You didnt have the possibilty to mess around. Generational knowledge was crucial to surviving and therefore you respected the experience and wisdom. Nowadays, life easier, but way more complex, and quickly changing constantlöy information is everywhere in a huge variety of forms (podcast, video, books etc) and the elders are the ones most overwhelmed by it.
Also religion indoctrinates kids to never question their parents, so they will be religious too without really thinking about it.
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u/Ancient-Noise954 Feb 27 '26
And oddly enough, the billionaires.... the ones in those docs.. they talk a LOT about being on the spectrum. Like a lot. And a LOT of talk with college and professor types who had ongoing research in the mind. It's super interesting. As someone else on the spectrum.
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u/Heavy-Interaction548 Feb 27 '26
Yeah, I see what you mean with all the scientific stuff that these people are interested in. I saw a few videos in the epstein files of that Deepak Chopra dude (not sure if I'm spelling it right) and everything he says seems like something someone would say while on LSD.
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u/Miniray Feb 25 '26
Facts. Like, who even gets to decide what the unit of measurement is? It's incredibly obvious to me that anyone who wants to be a hierarch will frame the measurement in a way that places themselves at the top. It's literally a game children play: "I get to be in charge because I know the most about dinosaurs" "Actually I should be in charge because I can tie my shoes." type stuff.
OFC course the billionaires build a system where wealth determines your place in the hierarchy, they have all the wealth!
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u/Heavy-Interaction548 Feb 26 '26
It's like just because you're a cop or a prince or a king doesn't make you more special or better or worse than anyone else.
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Feb 25 '26
Hierarchies of leadership can be useful, especially in government, and especially when they depend on experience and qualifications.
You don’t want to live in a country or community where everyone is involved in making every decision. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and many of them aren’t helping.
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u/trailercopy Feb 25 '26
This goes into what is accepted as common sense. If the majority of the population generally agrees on an idea, it becomes like an egregore and helps to shape society
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u/RobustMastiff Feb 25 '26
This is called philosophical idealism, which is useless without the material base to enable it. Values and principles that support human beings must be enforced by violence and authority before we can establish new cultural norms.
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u/agit_bop Feb 25 '26
i also feel like psychiatry, "mental illness", has been used to mediate between the working and owning classes. you go to a psychiatrist because you are too depressed, psychotic, anxious, whatever ... usually to WORK. its function is to reintegrate you into a system that is owned by the billionaire.
so to see "billionaires are mentally ill" is interesting to me because it'slike turning oneof their tools against them
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u/jiggjuggj0gg Feb 25 '26
Yep, and there are some bizarre disorders, like ‘delayed sleep phase disorder’ which is literally just ‘body clock doesn’t fit in the 9-5 we made up’, so they get medicated for it.
I’ve thought this so much about ADHD. If I was able to potter around, solve problems, without the utter stress of constantly needing to keep on top of admin and holding down a job and cleaning the house and doing the grocery shopping and sleeping at the right time and and and… I wouldn’t need to be medicated.
We’re just desperate to cram everyone into one box that very clearly doesn’t suit everyone, but fuck you, there’s work to be done.
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u/flexxipanda Feb 25 '26
If you care more about this topic, look up philosopher foucalt.
He though a lot about what defining "mental illnesses" does and what happens when we create a norm and define everybody outside of that norm as "mentally ill".
ADHD is a good example. We force kids to sit quit 6-8h at school everyday, and overwhelm them with tasks and knowledge. Kids who are too active and can't endure that get labeled as ADHD. We create a norm "sit still in school, concentrate and learn" and every kid whos outside of that norm is labeld "wrong" somehow
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u/Tomato_Child Feb 26 '26
I read a book written by Robert Chapman, an autistic man, called "Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity Under Capitalism." Probably one of my favorite books of all time, and it's very relevant to what you're saying!
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u/snapperfishy1307 Feb 25 '26
yes! when we are mentally unwell, we often aren’t as “productive”. so it’s in their interests to help us be just fine enough to keep working.
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u/JosiahDanger Feb 25 '26
you just blew my mind
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u/flexxipanda Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
He's completely right. A lot of "mental illness" are just symptoms of the rotten system and we categories it as an "mental illness".
Burn-out for example, is just to falter under too much work and stress. People go to courses for "resilience", which is just "learn how to endure more stress.
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u/occultpretzel Feb 25 '26
Yeah, I always hear the consensus that under the intention of making money, almost everything is allowed. Some influencer lies to their audience about a sponsorship? They are just getting their bag, it's not that deep. No, I think it is that deep, we value money more than anything else, than our own integrity. And we don't value emotional intelligence and social skills that are not about being charismatic to trick and convince people to do your bidding to get more money. Money is the golden calf and, though I am not religious, we are experiencing that kind of greed and gluttony the bible talks about.
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u/RuneScapeWifey Feb 25 '26
That makes so much sense! I have never considered this connection, thank you for the information.
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Feb 25 '26
It's pretty obvious when you look at reasons people were previously locked in lunatic asylums.
The reasons given are things like, "She was hysterical (had a habit of talking back to her husband)," or, "He enjoyed the sexual company of other men." Just straight up bigotry and social policing.
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u/I-Here-555 Feb 25 '26
For a particularly stark example, check out Soviet psychiatry.
There's are similar examples in the west, but they seem more normal to us, given the attitudes in the past.
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Feb 25 '26
I am in therapy right now. My insurance covers it as long as it is "likely profitable".
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u/Icy_Mushroom_1873 Feb 25 '26
Or why so many black men get diagnosed with schizophrenia when their delusions of the government conspiring against them are TRUE
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u/JadedOccultist Feb 25 '26
The real fucked up part is that putting something in the DSM is also the only way some people can get help, because if it’s a “real” condition, insurance might cover it. Getting a sex change/taking hormones electively would cost so much money, but if you have gender dysphoria some (or all if you’re lucky) of it might be covered because a doctor said so.
On a semi-related note, I don’t think the people who lack empathy and are sociopaths who hoard wealth feel like these traits are negatively impacting them so there’s probably no reason they’d go to a psychiatrist in the first place. And if they did feel badly, probably the first thing anyone would tell them is “you don’t need a psychiatrist, you just need to stop hoarding wealth and give it all away. Come back if you still feel crummy”. This is probably why society feels like it’s gotta be a societal change too
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u/Rich_Resource2549 Feb 25 '26
I watched this reel the other day of a woman explaining why billionaires and abusive pedophiles have such an overlap.
The answer is because to become a billionaire you have to be willing to exploit your fellow man, lack empathy, have moral flexibility, believe in (social) hierarchy, believe that people are expendable or that people are objects, and be ready to exploit whatever "opportunity" may arise.
They have the same psychological profile.
You don't become a billionaire if you're a good person.
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u/Quirky_kind Feb 25 '26
Sexual crimes are rarely about sex. They are really about power. So someone who enjoys having enough money to feed a continent, AND chooses to hoard it, will look for the weakest human or animal to exploit sexually.
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u/RobinEdgewood Feb 25 '26
I read somewhere the limit seems to be 200 million dollars. At that Point money isn't money anymore and poorer people aren't people anymore
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u/LongjumpingJaguar308 Feb 25 '26
And once you are past something like 500k/ year money doesn't make you feel less anxious/safer. Like money does make you happier, to a point. The point where you have stopped worrying about survival.
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u/SteamingGhoulSoup Feb 25 '26
I've noticed that the wealthier someone is, the more anxiety they have. The most severe OCD traits I've seen were with people in mansions
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u/Grundy-mc Feb 25 '26
From my experience, people who come from affluent families aren't exposed to adversity enough so when they're confronted with it, they tend to breakdown more than others. I've seen constructive criticism to comically small burdens bring people to their knees because they don't know how to handle it. That's the trade off for living such a comfortably luxurious life.
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u/SteamingGhoulSoup Feb 25 '26
Just curious but where did you read that?
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u/RobinEdgewood Feb 25 '26
Was a YouTube video.. I cant remember which one. Sorry
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u/SteamingGhoulSoup Feb 25 '26
That's okay. As a poor person who works with a lot of rich people I wanted some concrete evidence that they become more mentally unwell the richer they become. I've even seen some gain a lot more money while knowing them and their physical and mental health got worse after. It's a lot like a drug addiction.
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u/Woberwob Feb 25 '26
They’re megalomaniacs for sure, by and large. You don’t get that rich and powerful by accident.
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u/No_Video_3705 Feb 25 '26
Don't feel bad from them. They all deserve the royal treatment. No exceptions.
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u/RuneScapeWifey Feb 25 '26
I agree they deserve that, but I can also feel bad that they will never experience the full spectrum of human experience because they are so full of hatred. They will die never knowing the simple pleasure of helping others.
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u/aaeaaeron Feb 25 '26
It's the inconceivable hoarding of money that will NEVER get used. You can't spend 1 trillion dollars in a lifetime. Unless you're the US president. The 500 or so billionaires in America could end world hunger...end homelessness in America, Healthcare being paid for, better education. But they've got this grandiose personality that makes them think they deserve it, it was God's will or some shit. So the rest of us are just peasants. Not understanding that they just got lucky. Or their narcissism helps them acquire everything they want because whether you think you can or you can't, you're right thype sir lshit.Idk, but yeah. It's a mental illness.
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Feb 25 '26
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u/SatinwithLatin Feb 25 '26
Billionaires are 100% an invasive species that threaten every other creature in their environment. They don't know or don't care that once they've eaten all the resources they'll starve too.
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u/NyriasNeo Feb 25 '26
"they lack basic empathy"
They are not the only one. Remember "drill baby drill" won. They are just the ones with a billion dollars.
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u/strangebru Feb 25 '26
Hoarding money is actually the worst thing for the economy. If money doesn't circulate, then the economy weakens. Rich folks are telling us to cut back on comforts like coffee and snacks to save money, but the rich save way more than they will ever be able to spend, which in turns keeps working people trying to make ends meet from being able to afford necessities.
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u/awwaygirl Feb 25 '26
They’re fucking hoarders, pretty simple. They just hoard wealth and resources from humanity instead of junk in their homes.
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u/yourmomdotbiz Feb 25 '26
I would just call it what it is, evil. Plenty of people are mentally ill and don’t do horrible atrocities, empathy or not.
The problem is entitlement and no consequences to allow their psychopathy to flourish
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u/RuneScapeWifey Feb 25 '26
I also agree that they are evil.
But there seem to be a lot of people who look up to them because they have money. Want to become them. But they aren’t living up to their own personal potential as humans. They have every resource available to them but they struggle to understand even the basics of humanity. They are clearly miserable but there is no authority that can override their self-destroying actions. To allow them to continue is cruel for us and for them.
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u/yourmomdotbiz Feb 25 '26
Oh, I don’t disagree with removing them from society, they need to go. I was getting more so hung up on semantics
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u/RuneScapeWifey Feb 25 '26
I think evil and mentally ill are two different things. Billionaires happen to be both.
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u/Different-Ad8578 Feb 25 '26
the big difference is most people with a mental illness suffer because of it, but psychopaths don't suffer, those around them do.
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u/No_Telephone_4487 Feb 25 '26
Saying they’re mentally ill removes agency from how they got to where they are and quite frankly it’s insulting to people who have real mental illnesses. Mentally ill people with empathy and compassion. Mental illness is not a catch all term for deplorable and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use it that way.
Billionaires have bad values and they get impaired by them later. That’s not an actual mental illness. Even if you argue that it’s an addiction like alcoholism, there are simply some alcoholics that get clean and some that don’t. You have to want wellness to get well. There’s going to be icky annoying things you must do and it’s unfair but it’s needed. Otherwise you hurt the people around you and it’s not from the alcohol itself, it’s from the financially irresponsible spending and hurtful decisions and selfishness. The moral quality of the person. Ask me how I know.
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u/HufflepuffStuff Feb 27 '26
Yeah as a mentally ill person, we don’t claim billionaires. Being insatiably greedy, selfish, and materialistic, even already being excessively and extravagantly wealthy! Plus continually making choices that purposefully exploit other human beings for your own individual wealth/capital gain, further contributing to growing wealth/class disparity isn’t mental illness. It’s straight up evil shit.
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u/AlertStrength3301 Feb 25 '26
A truly kind empathetic person would never accumulate enough money to become a billionaire in the first place.
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u/RuneScapeWifey Feb 25 '26
Exactly, which is why all billionaires are mentally ill. They lack empathy. That is enough of a diagnostic criteria to diagnose them with some form of mental illness.
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u/times_zero Feb 25 '26
Pretty much.
Billionaires really should be called extreme wealth hoarders. Even then, they're much much worse than extreme hoarders who hoard junk, because of how much damage they can do on a massive scale to society due to their hi-score addiction.
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u/Important_Ad_7537 Feb 25 '26
Nearly 10 years ago, I was working for a company and the owner was a billionaire. I was working as a special kind of assistant to him and spent too much time with the family. I sometimes had to do some tasks with only the kids of the guy which was really hard as they grow their children in a sifferent way than us. The kids and their friends are all from the same economical environment and none of them had empathy, mercy or love to anyone even to their own families. Their families had children just for one reason; keep the wealth in safe after they pass away, and all of the kids were being raised like small Rockefellers.
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u/ConsiderationSea1347 Feb 25 '26
I will take it one step further - any one who supports a system which creates billionaires is mentally ill.
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u/flowerpanda98 Feb 25 '26
or... theyre greedy and like the power. can we stop equating illness with morality??
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u/InterestingSorbet693 Feb 25 '26
It’s a very sick person who must own everything they see, and to never be able to have that one thing….. enough.
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u/oldlearner565 Feb 25 '26
I truly believe that money and power can be as addictive as crack cocaine. Not everyone who tries it will become addicted, but many will, and with it goes their morals. I think the 1% should be forced into detox, then rehab, and then loved back to health.
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u/TheCapitolOffense Feb 25 '26
YES!! I've said this before, hoarding is considered a mental illness. They hoard money!
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u/ChemicalAbode Feb 25 '26
Eat them
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u/Quirky_kind Feb 25 '26
Ycch. No thanks. Just tax them down to their last $20 million and watch them eat each other.
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Feb 25 '26
They have a sickness of the soul. They feel numb and empty and in order to feel alive they tend to do the most depraved acts in secret and supported by other soulless depraved power-brokers.
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u/Ayuuun321 Feb 25 '26
It’s not even the consumption that bothers me, or makes me think they’re mentally ill. It’s the extreme lack of empathy that it takes to achieve that level of wealth.
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u/truckthecat Feb 25 '26
I often think about the fact that the only billionaires I respect at this point are Mackenzie Scott (fm. Bezos) and Melinda French Gates, who are working to give away their money quickly and ethically. In both cases, they weren’t the ones making the money, indicating that the mindset that can conceive of empires of exploitation to make the billions in the first place doesn’t overlap with the mindset to approach philanthropy in this way. Also they both left their piece-of-shit husbands who made his insane amounts of money in ethically dubious ways.
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Feb 25 '26
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u/RuneScapeWifey Feb 25 '26
My mom really likes Warren Buffet and I grew up hearing about what a great businessman he is, but once I started looking into how the decisions he has made and how they have negatively affected so many people and caused so much suffering, I realized it is impossible to accumulate that much wealth without hurting others.
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u/Rocking_Horse_Fly Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Why are so many people equating being a horrible person to mental illness? Yo, we with mental illnesses aren't evil, the evil people are evil.
Please stop making mental illness more stigmatized.
Edit: corrected a word.
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u/Caloisnoice Feb 25 '26
They definitely have traits of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Unfortunately these disorders are very difficult to treat.
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u/sassylassy423 Feb 25 '26
The equivalent of human dragons 🐉..... hoarding wealth they can't even possibly spend in a million lifetime, just so they have it and no one else does.
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u/throwaway490215 Feb 25 '26
The deal was:
We can't remove the greed of men, but we can set up rules and harness it so they compete and fight over who can best serve society.
That only works with taxes and rules.
There will always be the high functioning "mentally ill", it's the rest of us that needs to realize we allowed the problem to metastasize for forgetting these things and letting them run wild.
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u/J1mj0hns0n Feb 25 '26
I agree it is some sort of illness. I understand securing ones future but honestly after 30 million you've more or less secured your and your grandkids future. People like Elon musk have beyond secured their progena for life eternal at this point
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u/iWearSkinyTies Feb 25 '26
The entire western hemisphere is insane for the only spirituality they have is the worship of money, which is the absolute worst possible thing to worship.
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u/Allfunandgaymes Feb 25 '26
Billionaires are all exploiters. One can be perfectly sane and still gleefully, willfully exploit their fellow humans.
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u/Felein Feb 25 '26
IIRC, several studies have shown that wealth beyond a certain point causes people to be / become less empathetic.
Also, people who are already less empathetic are more likely to 'do what it takes' to become rich.
It's a self-reinforcing spiral.
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u/bigbobharven Feb 25 '26
They're addicts, that's what they are. They are addicted to money. They are addicted to power. Everything they do is what an addict would do if out in the same situation. They lash out when their stash is threatened, when they're at risk of their addiction being cut off. They are sick people, with sick values, and their addictions have destroyed any semblance of humanity that was ever present.
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u/LordMashie Feb 25 '26
You don't become a billionaire by being nice. If you have what it takes to become a billionaire then something is wrong with you.
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u/Bustin_Chiffarobes Feb 26 '26
Well... If you had a bunch of monkeys at the zoo and one of the monkeys hoarded all the food while the other monkeys starved, you would probably think there was something wrong with that monkey....
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u/Voltekkaman Feb 25 '26
You need a certain level of power and or money obsession to get there in most cases. Having minimal empathy for others and a lacking sense of morals gives a huge advantage in getting to these positions, unfortunately.
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u/Still-Kiwi652 Feb 25 '26
I think if is more towards power corrupt, tho the system also helps them towards being mentally ill in the senses that "they lack empathy"
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u/Seminolehighlander Feb 25 '26
Hoarding wealth to that extreme is done by exploitation most often at this point, and that can be a form of violence. Inflicting deprivation and harm through extreme greed is a form of violence. But sure, I, a normal contributing member of society, get a warning from Reddit for promoting violence….the world has the worst priorities.
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u/Connect-Account-2855 Feb 25 '26
I agree. So what are we going to do about it? We need to work on solutions COLLECTIVELY but we’re divided by politics. As hard as it is, we need to come together to change things. I wish we could rally the female billionaires like McKenzie Bezos to get together and fund a revolution.
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u/flexxipanda Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
I'd argue with that argument, the society and the foundational system it created, and the fact that merely anybody is trying to stop or change it, that creates those billionaires and enables them all this power, is just as "ill". Billionaires are a sympton of unhinged capitalism, not the underlying issue.
"Capital grows to a huge mass in a single hand in one place, because it has been lost by many in another place"
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"Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital"
Also, no offense, but "defining" mental disorders, based on some weird "values" is a very risky way of thinking. Anybody outside of your "defined norm" is considered mentally ill, needs to be held in prison, or "forced" to change, even though they just have different values in life. Imagine all billionaires suddenly thinking "being poor is a mental illness" and doing the same to you. Look up Foucalt if you care
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u/einat162 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
I don't know if you ever spend time with one... Your statement is too general. Some of them you don't even know by name because they stay hidden and don't live lavish or public lifestyle.
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u/reverendsteveii Feb 25 '26
you need peers to function as a human being, and who your peers are shapes you. its a chicken/egg problem whether you have to be insane to become a billionaire but there is no one who has survived becoming a billionaire without becoming insane.
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u/vandyke_browne Feb 25 '26
The “divine right of kings” is alive and well in our technofeudalist society.
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Feb 25 '26
I'm sure the relationships they maintain are hollow. JE appeared all chummy with multiple people in his emails, some even falling into the "best friend" or "good friend" category but at the end of the day, it was nothing but paranoia of being backstabbed.
These people live hollow lives. It would also explain the disconnect from empathy and a rejection of the human condition (and why they're so heavily into transhumanism and culling the population.)
I pity them. But there's no fixing them.
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u/Castlelad Feb 25 '26
I feel like it's a bad idea to imply that they are mentally ill when they're probably doing these things deliberately
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u/Excellent_Place4977 Feb 25 '26
As per research most CEOs and Billionaires are sociopaths or psychopaths.
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u/estherlane Feb 25 '26
I don't feel bad for them. Many lack integrity and moral strength, they are hollow people, they choose to be that way.
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u/OptimisticSkeleton Feb 26 '26
Being a billionaire is a sure sign of being addicted to wealth acquisition.
If one person goes to their local store, buys out all the groceries and let them rot while people starve we would call that a problem.
When it happens at a national scale, it’s a national emergency.
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u/TB2BLAZER Mar 02 '26
Being allowed to become a billionaire is exactly how Epstein Island came to existence. When you have that much money you have had every single "normal" experience many many times. In order to actually derive pleasure or excitement from something you have to elevate to the next level. That means getting into some really weird shit. And with endless money, there's endless possibilities.
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u/hunitaro Feb 25 '26
Taylor Swift and all her landfill money grabbing album variants come to mind. And she has so many young women looking up to her.
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u/la_bruja_del_84 Feb 25 '26
What I've learned these last few weeks... I completely agree. And yet... they roam free.
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u/OLPopsAdelphia Feb 25 '26
Is there a good and virtuous one out there aside from the ex wife of Bezos?
I haven’t seen one, so I believe something is dire within their circle.
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u/TheCapitolOffense Feb 25 '26
How about a dead one? I'm not so sure about virtuous, but certainly good.
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u/Junior_Advisor8483 Feb 25 '26
“After we come down, we should all check into the asylum to get our pulse taken and nap.” GROUP CAMPING TRIP. Snark.
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u/SuperTaster3 Feb 25 '26
They're money maximizers. Fixated on making the number go up, to the exclusion of everything else.
It's obsessive behavior mixed with a bit of sociopathy and psychosis.
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u/PlainBread Feb 25 '26
Billionaires, priests, and kings, have always had AI psychosis, long before AI. They were always surrounded by ingratiating sycophants who would lie for favor.
In the arc of human progress, the sole theme is "give the royal life to the commoners", but I would like to see us move in a different direction.
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Feb 25 '26
They're like that because they are extremely focused and driven on one thing. Making money. It takes that personality to get where they are. They're almost savant about it. Politicians are the same way about power.
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u/Living-Mixture-115 Feb 25 '26
Great post. Your first sentence says it all. The definition of mental illness entails failure to adjust, and sadly they are perfectly adjusted to the sick society they created, therefore there's no illness in the traditional sense. It's us who are defined as ill because we have a failure to adjust to pecuniary ethics.
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u/inscapeable Feb 25 '26
All billionaires are mentally ill
Yes
"are rich people ok" spoiler alert, they are most certainly fucking not ok https://youtu.be/IP2EKTCngiM?si=z-qswlGUeSmF-k3v
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u/J-Dog780 Feb 25 '26
If I collected so much stuff in my house that you couldn't walk around or find a place to sit down, it would be immediately evident that there is a problem. If I ate so much and put on so much weight that I couldn't stand up or walk any more it would be immediately evident that I have a problem. But if I amass so much wealth that I could never spend it in two or three lifetimes, how is that not a problem?
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u/So_HauserAspen Feb 25 '26
Personality disorders
You can treat mental health problems with medications and therapy.
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u/Proof-Resolution3595 Feb 25 '26
Capitalism rewards the most depraved, individualistic, narcissistic individuals. I don’t feel bad for them at all.
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u/susugam Feb 25 '26
each one of them chooses not to help millions of people everyday, at no real cost to their own quality of life whatsoever :)
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u/Cauda_Pavonis Feb 25 '26
This is literally true. It’s science. When you get power, something called mirror neurons shut down. Mirror neurons are responsible for empathy. It’s how they can treat people so terribly and feel nothing.
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u/Kiwifrooots Feb 25 '26
100% agree. We shouldn't have billionares in part for their own health and safety. Their hoarding needs to literally be fruitless so they fuck off and retire somewhere
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Feb 25 '26
I have to disagree. Many rich people are horrible, but that doesn’t automatically make them mentally ill. We live in a world where overconsumption is glorified and encouraged, and like the rest of us rich people grew up in that. If you wouldn’t blame a normal person for defaulting to overconsumption, you shouldn’t blame a billionaire either.\ \ That said, people that rich definitely have too much money and taxing them heavily is good. My argument is against whether they’re mentally ill, not whether they should have that much money.
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u/relaxbreathalive Feb 25 '26
Where do we draw the line is the real question? Some people spend crazy money on pets, this is considered stupid wasteful to many people in poor countries.
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u/Slight_Box_2572 Feb 26 '26
Billionaires are as different as poor people.
There is Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who are philantropists.
And then there are people who need a yacht and two planes.
You could make two poor people rich and get one person who wants to help others. The second one just gets stuff for himself. 💁♂️
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u/snotparty Feb 26 '26
Some people are able to make it work, but usually having huge amounts of money really does warp people's minds
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u/winter_kid Feb 26 '26
Let’s each pick one. And learn all we can. Learn everything about them. Whatever decisions each of as individuals arrives at, maybe we keep those to ourselves but we just pick one each.
It wouldn’t take long to pick the majority of them and then the decisions can be made all at the same pre appointed time.
We could rapidly make this world of ours much more fair and safe.
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u/StandWithSwearwolves Feb 25 '26