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by freedomben 233 days ago
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.