[georgemcbay]

To clarify a bit...

I meant I understand it in the sense that to get that wealthy in the first place you have to have a special kind of self-interested sociopathy, so in that regard I understand their desire. Not that I agree with it.

[freedomben]

Every human is self-interested. Fortunately there are a lot of good people out there who try to temper that instinct, but remembering that everybody by default has a "what's in it for me" line of thinking (even if consciously attempting to subjugate it) is important for understanding as much as we can about how the world works. I don't think a sleasy real estate agent is behaving any differently (by jacking up fees, putting people in properties that may not be in their best interest, strong-arming FSBOs into listing with them) than the billionaire is, it's just the scale of their blast radius that is different. That's not to equate the two, because obviously scale matters, but the underlying motiviation is largely the same.

[randlet]

Gotcha. I should have realized you meant that from the rest of your post.