Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by haunter 338 days ago
In my next life I might feel bad about rich people. Not now though.
1 comments

Nantucket Island is one of those funny precarious places at risk from climate change. All those rich CEOs and executives with their 2nd homes there, do they care? Do they connect the dots between the externalities of their companies and what they lobby the government for to the fate of that little island?
Look at the two estates that former President Obama bought on Martha's Vineyard and Oahu. Does it look like he thinks that global warming is going to be a factor in his life or the lives of his children?
They’d rather spend an extraordinary amount increasing the island’s elevation.
I think being a CEO means being intentionally blind to externalities.
Why would they care? If it floods they’ll just buy another one.
That’s the essence of financial independence—-having resilience to events that would be catastrophic for a person with less money.

But once people don’t have to care, they tend not to care much at all, and so it seems to reduce empathy as well.