[ben_w]

> The billionaires somehow think their current wealth protects them from a hungry mob. I really don't understand tbe reasoning.

Motivated reasoning makes it difficult for most of us to realise why someone else may call us a mortal enemy (unless we ourselves are severely depressed), and the super-rich are no better.

Outside-the-box thinking is also always difficult. Empires fall when the ruling classes begin to assume the empire's power is the natural order of the world and begin fighting each other to extract wealth from the empire rather than to grow it.

Even to the extent there is historical precident specifically of a threat to business leaders: talk of personal threats to those winning at capitalism has been around continuously since the Communist Manifesto, yet with the fall of the USSR many may think such talk is just talk, that Brian Thompson was a fluke rather than an indicator, etc.