When did you realize that rich people live in a world of their own?
May be an incident where they could not understand how much things they take for granted cost to the normies, a flagrant disregard for morals or ethics, a blatant show of arrogance or disconnectedness, or anything yould like to share.
I used to do security consultancy work and had to explain to a Chinese half a billionaire that if he wanted his daughter to go to university in Australia and have a regular student experience he couldnt buy her a penthouse apartment and an AMG Mercedes. “But she always has THE BEST!”
I had to explain to him that if he bought her a brand new Corolla, and rented her a “nice” apartment that she would still be considered as a “rich kid” and treated differently by all the other students.
Once I spelled it out to him that Miss insert really common Chinese surname here would be much safer in a kind of shitty flat with a used car and a reasonable monthly budget he still had trouble wrapping his head around it. I had to explain the concept of hiding in plain sight, we set her up with a chinese-australian bodyguard who was “An old family friend” she could take to parties and so on. Her “regular” appartment got better doors and beefed up locks, coached her on her “cover story” that dad sold all his investments so she could go to school in Australia.
There was this new kid at (public) middle school we kinda started feeling sorry for. He was always dressed nice. Had an excuse for PE. Had a special lunch from the cafeteria because of dietary needs. Turns out his parents were super specialized doctors or surgeons or something. After a couple of months he said he could have one of person over at a time after school. I went over first on my skateboard. He had one that he didn’t know how to ride, so he walked. We get to his house and they have this amazing view of the water and mountains. A fucking indoor pool and jacuzzi. Green house in the middle of the entryway with tropical plants. The mom greeted us and makes us leave our skateboards outside, take off our shoes, and told us the house rules. She asked me what my parents did and was just kind of deadeyes when I told her (boring, middle class work). We went to his room that had a goddamn computer in, most households didn’t have anything like that at the time. He had his own private phone line, cable tv, and tons of plastic model cars and planes. He had an RC Car. I was blown away and then he shows me their entertainment room with a giant projector tv, air hockey, a film projector and screen, and a bunch of other shit I can’t remember. I feel like I spent about an hour there before the mom found us and sent me home because they were having dinner? Gee thanks lady, I guess you don’t want the poors coming back for free food. Or your son to have any friends. My other friends went over there (one at a time!) with the same results. Looking back, I guess his parents were trying to research what other kid’s parents might be wealthy enough for their son to hang out with. or maybe for them to entertain/socialize. It was pretty gross.
Now that I think about it, I had a “friend” like that. He wasn’t super wealthy, but when most of us were broke ass people living in apartments with one TV in the house, he had this nice modern house with a pool, gated driveway, and a housekeeper who would pick him up from school and walk him home.
My mom was kinda friends with the housekeeper, since we’d walk the same route home as they were picking us up from school, and that’s how I became acquainted with him.
I remember going to his house once and we played his turbo grafx in his room for a bit… well more like he played and let me watch. He seemed pretty disinterested with it. I never got invited back or anything.
omg, the rich kid letting you watch…ugh, been there. that kid at my school had the nicest skate board you could buy and never once road it. Meanwhile we were mowing lawns to buy plywood for ramps, smoking weed, and chasing girls. I wouldn’t have traded his isolated life for mine, but I doubt he ended up going through the tough times me and my friends did. Tough times don’t build character, IMO, they just increase resentment towards the system.
the culture of the wealth gap (or intentional moat) has always been there, embedded in our everyday lives from birth to death. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires indeed.
I was in a developing country and the taxi driver I guess wanted to practice his English with me. Starts asking me questions about the city I live in. I start mentioning some tourist traps and other spots I like and it just clicks in my head “this guy earns about ten dollars a day there is no way he is ever getting a visa, a plane ticket, or the money to be a tourist in my city”.
I am in the +99% of humanity in terms of money. Sure in the West I am at most upper middle class but for the bulk of the world I am disgustingly wealthy.
There are exceptions. I’m in a semi developed SEA nation and I’ve heard of simple drivers who have German luxury cars at home because they’ve used the information they overheard from their bosses in the back to invest in stocks. Essentially third party insider trading. Apparently there’s loads of stock manipulation going on here.
This guy I knew came from a wealthy family and would squirt half a bottle of ketchup on to a separate plate for one helping of fries. He couldn’t understand why we had a problem with him wasting so much of it.
I think it was 4th grade social studies when we learned about the industrial revolution, oil tycoons and the Pinkertons. Later re-inforced by AP European History in highschool.
Rich people have historically always been pieces of shit.
When I briefly dated a rich woman. She would drop hundreds of dollars on a whim and knew somebody at every club and restaurant to get us to the front of the line, the best seats, etc. It was like watching someone live in a dream world where they could get almost anything they wanted instantly. Sometimes I miss that feeling before remembering the full not so great reality of it, though
Nothing particularly interesting. She was just a very possessive person and I’m pretty independent. So I tried really hard to make it work because honestly I wanted a sugar mama to support me through college. But we just weren’t compatible :(
I don’t remember when I learned they were different, I didn’t give them much thought, but this podcast was incredibly eye opening. Not just learning that rich people were in a different world, but the scale of that difference:
The lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of us, it’s almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist.
But one story illustrated it amazingly. Basically she talks about going with some family to some island that was in another country, and the whole way they saw no customs agents whatsoever. They just drove onto the tarmac at an airport, got on a private plane, flew to another country and went about their day, and at no point did the subject of passports even come up. They just violated international borders and it was a regular tuesday to them.
And also just the existence of the general purpose assistants was amazing. These are people who are paid to do whatever it takes to make these rich people happy, and they routinely break the law on their behalf, and it’s never mentioned. The clients have total deniability as well as the ability to get just about anything they want.
The job could be, “help me figure out where my wallet went” (from overseas when it’s 3am for the assistant) or “help me show my friends a good time” (without mention of any laws). There’s a whole industry of enablers that are paid not to say no or tell them there’s anything they can’t have.
I have to admit, my exposure is limited to the ones who try to.influence the situation based on their position and title. Never met the likes of what you described. That was both fascinating and morbid at the same time.
Yeah, I’m getting ready to stop scrolling “All”. It’s becoming more depressing than Reddit or Facebook ever was. US Presidential Election year rage bait is back in full swing I guess and Lemmy isn’t immune. I might lean more back into my hobbies, personal projects, and games while keeping my news feeds on a weekly review.
I had a temporary relationship with a rich semi-celebrity and lent a thumbdrive and they took it assuming I was just giving it to them… in fact they assume a lot of what people do ,paid and not paid, is just in service to them and cannot accurately gauge what to do in interaction not involving servitude.
They also had a bowl of change they didn’t want assuming just giving it to someone such as myself was ‘more money than I’ve ever seen’. …like they don’t understand the difference between homelessness and regular working people on a wage. They just assume we all blur in together.
A very rich friend of mine decided that they wanted to “take time off” and travel the world. She called her travel agent (10 pm on a Saturday) and got them to build a world trip by Monday afternoon. That Friday she got on a plane and just left for 9 months of travel. There was never a sense of this being a big deal or extravagant but more of a quirky whim.
It was then that it occurred to me that while we live on the same planet we don’t live in the same world.
I was working in a restaurant and one day a regular invited us to his place for after work drinks. He opened the front door into a monumental hallway with beautiful winding stairs and a large mosaic monogram with his initials on the floor.
We went into the main living area with a professionally decked out open kitchen, a 20 person dining table and a seating area with 4 large Chesterfields. The whole room is filled with art and antiques.
He asked me if I wanted to pick a few bottles of wine because of my good taste ( I’m a trained sommelier). He then guided me to his library and opened a secret door that led into the wine cellar.
Every large winehouse in the world was represented and he insisted on picking whatever I wanted. The sheer amount of stacks of Mouton Rotschild premier Cru, Tenuta Dan Guido - Sassicaia… We opened 4 bottles that would’ve cost about 10.000 euros together. No sweat.
He told us that despite the nice kitchen he never cooks. He goes to restaurants every day and on the weekends he hires top chefs to cook for his guests.
Then he asked us if we would like to go and have lunch in Milan, the next day (I’m from Belgium). He chartered a heli and had extra space for 3 persons.
He’s a modest guy. Rides his bike everywhere and makes his money selling real estate. He only sells high value property like castles and works one day a week. He’s not extremely talented but admitted he’s just lucky.
I realized that to become rich, you need money. Whether it’s your own or someone else’s doesn’t matter, you just need a lot.
Perhaps for perspective, because ‘rich’ is relative and I am always surprised how hard it is to forget that every person/class lives in a world of their own.
When I was studying, I had to work to support myself, coming from a working class background. My whole time at the university was like visit mandatory courses, study, work and use weekends to study some more/do classwork. My parents could neither help me financially or with advice.
I meet a study friend from a normal ‘middle class’ background on the street. He would spent many weekends to do short trips, go sailing, visit family, … perfectly fine and I am happy he could afford to live like that. During our conversation he mentioned casually, that he was going on a multi week vacation, because ‘Sometimes you just need to get out and see something else.’. He didn’t mean it in bad faith, I just felt like shit because at that time I haven’t had vacation for multiple years.
Now, I am perfectly fine with my friend living a good life. What really gets to me, though, is that for example the middle class takes all their privileges for granted and nowadays you can suddenly read in newspapers discussions, if it is still worth to go work if you cannot even afford to buy your own flat/house. Where I live, working class couldn’t afford to buy a flat/house for decades now, but there was never a discussion whether it would still be worth for the working class to work. The discussion is more about how to force the working class to work more for less.
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