@Timjer #213922
Once you get past a certain point—certainly past the ten millions place in terms of dollars—scoundrelhood becomes a requisite for holding or acquiring so much money. A couple of years ago, Bezos’s wealth was found to be genuinely undepleteable no matter what you paid off. Past the point I mentioned, money is unable to serve anything but egotistical glory.
And it ultimately is just flat glory. Makhno’s expropriations in Huilalipole (spelling?) had an interesting result—the originally-richer peasant families (who, by the way, willingly went along with this) did not report any decline in their standard of living after they ceased to be so rich. Note also that the once-poorer peasant families did have markedly better standards of living. Seems that on the graph where X = wealth and Y = comfort, the curve is logarithmic, not exponential.