Why Money Turns People Into Monsters

Of all classes, the rich are the most noticed and the least studied. — John Kenneth Galbraith.

I try to keep my opinions as unbiased as humanly possible. But man, is it ever difficult to find excuses for the raging entitlement and downright shitty attitude of people with money.

Here’s what happened: I had these rich snooty people as tenants in an apartment I rent. I had to evict them, they threatened me, bullied me, blackmailed me, and when they eventually got out they left the apartment a pigsty. My beautiful apartment. My precious.

This had happened before, in the same apartment, with another rich guy, this time a local politician.

Why are they all like that?

Why do they all think the world revolves around them? Why do they constantly have those expensive cars parked on the sidewalk and the “I’ll do whatever I want and there’s nothing you can do to stop me” attitude? Because money, that’s why.

It goes something like this: humans are naturally selfish, greed is what makes the world go round, and the people at the top are there because they deserve to be.

It’s such a familiar story that most of us don’t even notice we’re inside it until it slaps us across the face and turns our property into a pigsty. We just assume it’s reality.

But what if it isn’t? What if that story is actually software — code that gets installed in our heads and starts running our behavior without us realizing it?