Good! Now GTFO Oz.
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Well, yeah. The people who would be happy with, say, a couple of million dollars don’t become hectomillionaires or billionaires: they stop pursuing money and focus on other stuff. It’s the people who enjoy making money, or competing with other megarich, who go on to build huge fortunes.
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I’m generally not concerned about the under- or un-employed when that person doesn’t actually need to earn a paycheck to keep living.
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Oh no, what will the world do without one more… [checks notes]… snake oil salesman!?
The amount of money he gets selling diet pills on national television must absolutely dwarf whatever he could make honestly, though - like it elevates him to a totally different plateau of wealth. One he clearly doesn’t want to leave.
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If his luck doesn’t turn around the poor bastard could be reduced to living in fewer than 10 houses.
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Being the capitalist’s advocate here: it’s possible your dinner companion is not greedy and he’s not necessarily shallow; he’s just found what he likes.
I think when we have enough* money any of us would ‘retire’ to just do what we like. In the case of this guy competition, strategy, maneuvering, is what he likes. Like a chess master, but with money.
For him, money isn’t money, it’s points, a way of quantifying excellence at his game; and he enjoys making it the same way other people like to rack up points in other games, or run longer races, or breed better guppies, or whatever.
Who are we to say that his pastime is worse, or less pure, than anyone else’s pursuit of a goal that, seen from the outside, is pointless? Every hobby is, because its only point is personal satisfaction.
In that way he’s not really different from anyone else who retires to spend the rest of their life going fishing; just that his form of fishing has money as a side effect.
ETA: Or, yeah, what @LurksNoMore said, but wordier.
*Assuming a person doesn’t have some kind of irrational anxiety about money which means there’s never enough – like some people who grew up during the Great Depression.
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Yeah, that was encapsulated pretty well when Skyler had that conversation with Walter over the giant pile of money.
And yes, I’ll take that bait and say that a having a pastime of accumulating great wealth (even when drug dealing isn’t involved) is morally worse than most hobbies due to the myriad of negative impacts on the political system and society at large.
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Oh, hell no. It’s perverted greed. What amounts to pocket change to someone like that can support a family for a year. Half of his wealth could house all the homeless in a major city.
The structure that allows him to accumulate vast wealth is the same system that starves others.
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It’s still wealth hoarding… and the whole concept of “getting ahead” and the “hunt” is STILL a key part of the general ideology of capitalism. The whole idea of “winning” for it’s own sake is part of that, not something separate outside of it. It’s still FED through the capitalist system. Same with this kind of individualism that prioritizes the pursuit of wealth as a game and that sense of being in competition with everyone else in society…
Except of course, collecting vinyl or gaming generally speaking does not cause wealth inequality and suffering of others. So, no, not all “hobbies” are harmless fun for the individual. If someone’s “hobby” is going around punching old ladies, and it created a sense of personal satisfaction in the individual, we would not write it off as “harmless”… Wealth hoarding is likewise harmful to society.
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I’m sort of surprised he wasn’t handed a daytime hour on that Fox Nation channel. Granted, it probably wouldn’t be as much money… I would assume they were desperate for original content.
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My money’s on Masked Singer.
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Well, I’m sure he would do fine with a tic Tok and a YouTube channel!
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Breeding fish is cool, but not if you take over the local waterways for it. Why can’t he do what he likes, and give the surplus to people who need it instead of making it inaccessible to everyone? Then he could have fun and be a hero instead of a villain.
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A big part of what drives Oz is a need to please and impress his implacable (and now dead) father. Nothing he did was ever good enough for the old man.
Netanyahu had the same kind of father, with similar outcomes.
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Your “let’s not assume the worst” point can be made; and you made it. And for what it’s worth made it fairly well. I’ll only add this: within this class of money collectors (and i’ve known a few) they certainly never hesitate in their goals to collect yet more money (more yachts, more mansions) to use their employees as bargaining chips. This very venture capitalist I detailed, went on to sell the, (biotech) company whose holiday party I was forced to attend, to a buyer he knew was immediately intent on breaking us up. All the chemistry lab folks within a month of that party lost their jobs to cheaper sourcing in India (where toxic waste disposal costs were… non-existent). That is: when money is the central goal, then people, and the environment, cannot be.
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But Walter White earned his money pile through hard work and bootstrap lifting. Unlike Oz, his product actually worked. ( /s… kinda)
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I just noticed this metaphor. Hate to say it, but it simply doesn’t hold up.
First off, if an angler is keeping fish, the state puts a limit on how many any licensed angler may take of each species. These guys just take and take and take and know no limits.
Second, if an angler is practicing catch-and-release, the fish that are caught are available for others. That’s clearly not what this guy is doing (not that there aren’t problems with the wealth version of catch-and-release; aka extreme philanthropy).
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Hectomillionaires is the name of my dude-bro, venture capitalist Huey Lewis and the News tribute band
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