I wish I knew 😉
But …
In 1989, I was visiting a friend who lived in Neuss.
Back then it wasn’t a one-horse-town so much as a village with an option on a future time-share horse.
Just before the bridge into Düsseldorf … quite literally on the bank of the Rhein … there was a tiny boutique.
In the window of said boutique there were various items of apparel, the most expensive of which was a pullover selling for DM 3,000 — approximately GBP 1000 at the time (GBP 2,203 in 2020).
On the other side of the bridge (pretty much, if not quite literally, opposite) was another tiny boutique, in the window of which the cheapest pullover cost DM 3,000!
Now, I don’t care if the thing was ‘knitted’ by a toothless, old, Inuit woman as the last thing she did before being put out onto the ice to die in the traditional manner (and it doesn’t matter whether the Inuit ever really engaged in that practice or not) … no pullover is worth two grand! Unless, of course, you are so wealthy that anything less than that doesn’t make a dent in your wherewithal … doesn’t make you notice that you actually spent any money (like you or I purchasing one for a penny) — in which case it is the only way for anything you purchase to be of any value to you and for you to feel that your life of vapid materialism is meaningful (because, for you, the measure of Life is the monetary value of your possessions, not any kind of ‘spiritual’ yardstick).
But its utility lies in its distracting you from the futility of your own existence; because, with very few (if any) exceptions, the lives of people with that much money are pretty meaningless: they need not strive, let alone struggle, for anything they desire … no whim (or none that does not involve the agency of another in a position to exercise their own free will) is beyond their reach … and, short of foolishly risking their wealth on ill-advised endeavours, there is nothing they can do in Life that will ever seriously challenge them ¹.
So, you find ways to spend all that money, so that you can have a sense of ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ a life well spent.
If you’re just a Cluster B arsehole, you might engage in the time-honoured practice of quickly converting £10million into £1million by getting involved in worthy causes like motor-racing … or whatever else lights your candle.
If you’re having difficulty with your conscience … well, let’s face it, if you had one of those, you wouldn’t be as rich as you are in the first place ² … but, like Bill Gates, you might donate money to philanthropic enterprises, establish educational and/or bee-in-your-bonnet foundations, or whatever helps you sleep at night other than a combination of cocaine and hookers — just so long as your investments keep returning far more than you can ever give away that is ³.
If you’re a histrionic/narcissistic type and/or have a facsimile of a conscience that makes you feel you ought … in some small way at least … to be doing something humble yet worthwhile (like singlehandedly saving the World, for instance), then you pump funds into humanitarian endeavours like companies that build rockets for shooting cars into space to create unavoidable debris, potentially bringing down satellites, the ISS and suchlike … flottillas of cheap-and-nasty satellites that make even deep-space telescopes useless … submarines that can’t do anything new and different (like traverse underwater cave systems, facilitating the rescue of children trapped in them) but can at least do things every other submarine of the same size can do (there’s always need for ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶g̶o̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶ competition) … stuff like that.
I dunno … but when you’ve got the kind of money that means even completely replacing a wardrobe full of £2,000 sweaters every three months can’t make a dent in your wealth, I don’t imagine there’s too much that can bring your mood down for long — nothing that can’t be fixed by a trip to Paedophile Island anyway ⁴.
—
¹ Yes, they might engage in personal challenges, the failure at which results in the existential pain that is no different for anyone failing to achieve a goal … but it’s only possible to feel existential discomfort about not being the best skier on the piste if you don’t have to worry whether you can afford a new pair of shoes for your next job interview … and, therefore, not really the same thing at all.
² You’d’ve founded some charitable organisation from the get-go instead of the more-money-per-second-than-even-the-Beatles-making enterprise you did.
³ If, God forbid, they ever stop doing that then you have to reconsider: as a multibillionaire, an £80,000 donation to ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶T̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶P̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ Children In Need over the course of ten years is not something to be undertaken lightly, on a whim — you want to sleep on the idea first … see if it still seems like such a good one in the morning (when the coke has worn off and the whores aren’t as pretty as they were).
