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.