kogunkogun:
When I see these things, I think of all the people employed to build it and the sizable crews hired to maintain it. It is just another big vessel built with money paid to a lot of regular people that are raising families and doing normal things. While it doesn’t have a great purpose like some piece of infrastructure, its cost, compared to many more economically important things, is a mere fraction of the money spent on more socially acceptable and useful things.
The cost of this yacht applied to a highway in my state would build a couple dozen miles of highway with a bridge, and a few interchanges. I have no great faith in humanities ability to wisely spend money whether it is concentrated in a government or concentrated among the wealthy. Either way, it is powerful people deciding to do things that turn out to be wise and foolish with money.
While I am sure this yacht has a substantial set of weapons for defending itself, it will not start a war; its armament does not compare to what a government will do to equip a ship with weapons. I am not loosing sleep on how stupid rich people spend their money. I do lose sleep on how governments spend theirs.
This oligarch spends his money subverting countries his buddies want to disrupt or subsume so that he can amass more wealth. His accumulation of wealth no doubt stole money from thousands of unfortunate individuals in his home country and elsewhere.
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