skinny
Nigh
- Joined
- May 30, 2010
- Messages
- 8,795
I only had to read the first sentence to give a like to this post. What a beauty.There's an old saying, which is not an absolute rule, but makes sense to me: "In order to be clever enough to make all that money, you have to be stupid enough to want to."
Point is that people who build enormous personal fortunes achieve this because they prioritise it over everything else. Most of us are not like that.
Above a certain level, the money becomes no more than a system of points to show who's winning. A Ferrari or a Rolls Royce is still only a car. A mega-yacht with a liveried crew probably affords less genuine pleasure to the owner than having a 20 footer and the leisure to use it and develop your sailing skills. (At least Richard Branson spent some of his money on ballooning adventures rather than mere ostentation, so respect for that.)
Those of us who like to think that if we won Euromillions, we'd settle our friends' mortgages, see that our kids and grandkids were well provided for, and maybe set up a charitable fund or donate an area of woodland to our community, will never amass a fortune because we don't care enough about being rich.
In a way, I feel sorry for the world's 11th richest person. He or she has unimaginable wealth, but they are not in the top 10, and that surely rankles with them. Similarly, I feel slightly sorry for number 2, because he is the "nearly man", and also for number 1 because he has nowhere to go from there but down. All that money, power, and privilege, but to what end? What an empty way of living.
Nope, enough is sufficient for me.
That said, control of, say, £10 billion, would be a dangerous amount. It would be a drop in the ocean in terms of achieving world peace, solving climate change, or bringing an end to world hunger.
For comparison, £10,000,000,000 is about £143 each for everyone in the UK: a new suit of reasonably smart clothes, or a cheap bicycle each. And the UK has only about the 21st biggest population. It's about £1.40 per person in the world. You just about buy everyone a cup of coffee with it.
On the other hand, £10 billion would be enough to cause a huge amount of damage, whether deliberately, or misguidedly.
[Edited to eliminate error. UK has 21st biggest population (according to Wikipedia). I carefully looked it up then typed "economy" instead of "population" by mistake.]
Thanks, mike. You're right on the money, mate.