When the system rewards wealth, power, and narcissism — self-interest over community — then people automatically become greedy. At the vulnerable end, self-interest gets reinforced by economic imperatives like rent & food. If you don’t play the money game and play it well, then life kinda sucks. And in desperation people do things they would otherwise abhor. Money becomes the primary incentive and goal, and self-interest spreads like disease.
It’s a different story for the wealthy. Desire for status, power, and flattery motivate the narcissist with rewards of comfort, prestige, and paid “friends”. It’s a vicious circle.
Meanwhile, multi generational, inherited wealth has undermined the American Dream. Once family wealth is established, descendants feel entitled to it, terrified of losing what they’ve always known. Fear, anger, and ultimately desperation quickly result from a threatened birthright, like Knives Out. Upward mobility of the masses is one of many existential threats.
Thus, people like myself who inherited wealth feel entitled to status. And the impoverished, far from entitled and dependent upon public support, can barely navigate the basics. It’s increasingly harsh to be poor in America — being viewed as expendable and in the way, vermin even. What a nasty, dehumanizing, and elitist way for us to think, live, and act. False, fantastical, and dystopian. For a stellar reflection, see Abigail Disney’s brilliant speech at the Vatican in February, 2025.
Others among the ultra-rich, with their cronies and families can’t imagine not getting what they want when they want it. Entitled, acquisitive, and resentful, the behavior is hard to justify.
Until globalization accelerated in the 1990s, a thriving and contributing Western middle class provided social strength and resiliency. However, it’s not so easy to be upwardly mobile anymore: extreme wealth is now interchangable with political power and creating “barriers to entry”. That’s why billionaires often want still more — it’s about power and entitlement. Self-regard beyond all reason manifesting the clinical archetype of “narcissistic personality disorder.” A million people need to suffer so that some guy gets his dopamine hit, like an addiction or Yertle the Turtle.
Therefore, what high-wealth people do with their money is all important: do they manage and deploy it for ethical and philanthropic purposes, or to compund a billion dollar personal portfolios and their concomittant power?
Does a future, neo-progressive government redistribute wealth? The US hasn’t been able to make that happen under any administration, and is currently heading towards oligarchy.
Our world will descend into more social chaos for the next few years — what comes next? Is there reform? Is there a revolution? Do extremists keep starting wars on purpose? Or is anarchy our future, like Mad Max and the horrors that Haiti is experiencing. After death and despair, does a new, global renaissance arise from the ashes? A rebirth of ideas, culture, and public well-being? Or do neo-nazis and left wing fascists, seeking world dominance for some ungodly reason, ruin things for everyone else.
Now is the time to think about a new social contract: How could our future, globalized world cooperate freely and (relatively) peacefully? What kind of world do we want after the 2024 collapse of New Deal progressivism, intellectual elitism, and cold war detente? Extraction and further concentration of wealth? Or something that continues raising the quality of life: sitting socially outside at a public coffee shop on a warm spring day, knowing that things are likely to be fine when you get home.
The American Dream has gasped its last — we need new strategies and stories that working folks can follow to improve their lives, health, and circumstances. And then we need a non-violent route to economic fairness and opportunity so that incentives drive to contribute to their communities. People give the most effort when they care. Right now, a lot of people have given up.
What ethical incentives, other than altruism, could lead us to better outcomes? What could be changed to make people want to contribute and collaborate? How do we break the age-old problem of pampering the wealthy at the expense of the poor?