It is irrational but the same sort of irrational everyone is. Monkey need to survive winter so monkey stocks up on food/resources. Monkies never needed a ceiling for this behavior as there was never enough food. Now you have apes with a billion winters worth of stockpile yet that voice in their heads is still as loud as ever.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

No, I think you’re mistaken. I don’t think they feel that way at all. I think billionaires keep going because they are competitive. They want to win! And they often lose unfathomable amounts of money in the process, which they don’t care about. Survival brain does not shrug off huge losses so casually.

The other reason they keep going is because they want power. They’re used to being in charge and they hate when others have power over them. They’re subject to all kinds of scrutiny and they’re afraid when political power is leveraged against them. So they do what comes natural to them: try to leverage what they have for more power (and more wealth, which brings more power with it).

[–] RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

Competitiveness was also part of the survival brain, it allowed monkey to perform better. Also male mating partners are usually selected that way (who has the most food, is the strongest etcetera), so the more competitive monkeys would have more likely started the next generation .

[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I think the idea that billionaires are created by any kind of motive is the wrong lens.

Their wealth doubles faster if they lack egalitarian values. So the millionaires who end up becoming billionaires are the ones who lack egalitarian values.

The values they do hold could be anything from, "everyone wants to win; I'm just winning harder" to "God told me to" and it won't matter as long as they keep reinvesting and growing their wealth faster than the economy or ecosystem can sustain.

What we're witnessing right now is not a set of ideas or beliefs, but an exponential growth equation -- with all of the overwhelming speed and transformative power such an equation carries.

Exponential growth is the reason for everything from the mammoths' extinction to rotten food and the lethality of cancer. It transforms entire systems, outgrowing (and often destroying) its own host.

If your society has currency but lacks any chemotherapy / surgery to remove concentrations of the aforementioned currency that start growing at a cancerous rate...

Then it won't matter what values are common or uncommon: your society is eventually doomed.

It could take a hundred years or a thousand, but eventually, a pile of wealth will emerge that multiplies until it consumes everything.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago

Dare I say it: you two are possibly both correct. Human behavior is complex and multifactorial. More than one or two drivers can influence behavior.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It's a mix of 'losing touch with value if you have lots' and validated 'more = feel good' and competitive behavior.

In short, irrational.