Yea, it seems like a stupid topic but it’s been on my mind a lot lately.
It’s pretty obvious what money does for hoi polloi. If you have enough, you can live a fairly normal modest middle class life: feed a family, raise some kids, indulge in the occasional vacation.
A little bit more and you get to upgrade: a nice house, a nicer car more frequently, a drug habit for the kids.
But eventually, there comes a point when, maybe you have more than enough. More than you need, but not more than you want and you make a few investments and some luxury items, a time share or second home, a second car, a drug habit for you and the spousal unit.
So imagine what happens when you obtain astronomical amounts of money. Goodness knows, I imagine that all the time and never really have a happy ending, but I can observe what happens to people in the news, which seems to be a bigger and bigger percentage of the news cycle.
And my observations come to one inescapable conclusion: Rich people try to buy love. And fail.
Money buys sex, to be sure. Money buys admiration. Money buys status.
But it can’t buy love.
And we have millennia of evidence to support that conclusion.
Think about it: Caesars built gladiator arenas, and held chariot races, and raised statues and fed the masses. Part of that was to hold onto power, sure, the masses are revolting enough.
But part of it was to be “beloved” by the people, the best way to keep the people behind you.
And we see it today. We see it in Donald Trump’s need to put his name and brand on everything from buildings to steaks to cycling races and football and golf leagues. We see it in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and even, yes, in his purchase of Twitter.
His moves to restrict Twitter’s audience to people who nod their heads and genuflect to him is a clear attempt to insulate himself in the “love” of his tech bros.
The model of this behavior in entertainment is probably the titular character of Citizen Kane: Charles Foster Kane, himself modeled upon another opulent millionaire in William Randolph Hearst.
Kane finds himself wildly successful in business, wildly poor in personal relationships as personalized by his second marriage to Susan Alexander. Kane believes his money can buy him her love by pushing her career beyond her level of competence. He fails pretty miserably.
And we see at the end, the object lesson of the movie: the word “Rosebud” slips past his lips as his dying word.
Many have interpreted this as Kane’s desire to return to innocence, but I feel differently. Rosebud is the last relic of the only true love he knew in his life, his family. Shortly after gold is discovered under a lease that Kane’s mother held, he’s ripped from his family and sent to boarding school.
He loses love. To money.
I heartily agree!
Although, in Kane's case, his mother was Agnes Moorehead, so ... it's a close call. :)