6 Reasons Why I Think the Bond Villains… errr… I mean Billionaires are Completely Miserable

Money can’t buy you anything of real substance

Which James Bond movie is it where the crazy villain wants to blot out the sun? Wait wait no, that was Mister Burns from the Simpsons that wanted to blot out the sun so that he could do his part to contribute to greater levels of human misery. Hang on though, hold the phone… Bill Gates actually wants to blot out the sun. I’m not making this up, I was just looking at an article published by Forbes magazine on his hopes and plans to do so. Hopefully, Bill takes a minute to read it because the article, fortunately, does the right thing and explains why this is a bad idea but then again, he probably doesn’t care if it’s a bad idea or not.

And what about Jeff Bezos blasting himself off into outer space instead of paying his workers better? (Yes, I know the rocket looks like a big dick, ha ha, so funny, move on.) These billionaires have literally turned themselves into villains from James Bond movies. It’s only a matter of time before they have secret hangers in volcano craters and bases on the moon.

They’ve turned themselves into their own parody. Honestly though, I kind of feel sad for them. Not too much though, don’t worry. Don’t write me a letter. While I’m sure the vast majority of us would gladly trade a severed limb to trade places with any one of them I’m pretty sure that many, if not all of them are profoundly miserable, they have to be, I honestly don’t how they couldn’t be. Money doesn’t make you happy, it really doesn’t, let it go. Human beings need to move on from this idea that rich people can’t possibly be unhappy. Money doesn’t buy happiness, it buys you pleasure, there’s a difference. So here’s why I think they’re profoundly miserable people.

“I should put a car into orbit and then invent an electronic brain implant.”

1. You’d have to be completely miserable to harm and exploit people, especially children — Psychological studies on the effects of social media aren’t pretty. In fact, it’s probably just as bad for your mental health as sitting in jail. And to think, people spend time doing this on purpose?! You can’t make this up. Social media is bad for your mental health if you’re an adult but what if you’re a teenager or a child? It’s even worse. Like, insanely bad. I’ve worked with troubled and suicidal teenagers and if I can’t get them to back off of social media, they don’t have much of a chance of developing any kind of positive sense of self. The studies done on the effects of adolescent mental health wrought by Facebook and Twitter isn’t just ugly. It’s horrific. And see… they know this. Zuckerberg knows how bad it is for kids and he just doesn’t seem to care. Facebook ignores the data or doles out some bland statement about safety and then it’s full speed ahead. It wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t take some heavy legislation to restrict access from children sort of like what happened to cigarette companies. Expect warning labels in the future.
   My point is this… You wouldn’t do this horrible and soulless thing if you weren’t profoundly miserable as a human being. Miserable people spread misery and you can often tell that someone is miserably by the amount of misery they spread. Hurt people hurt people. It’s that simple. We know Zuckerberg and his ilk are hurting because they hurt people. In my opinion, Facebook spreads misery. It’s a factory that builds one thing. Crippling misery.
2. They live in the epitome of echo chambers — Think about it, would you want to be surrounded by people that just agree with you and tell you what you want to hear on a constant basis? Would you want the narcissism that develops from living in that kind of bubble? Would you want to be that guy that was like, “hey, we should build a giant magnifying glass so we can fry people like ants… we’ll just tell them it’s good for the environment” only to be met with nods and smiles? “Oh my God, such a good idea, you’re such a genius, you’re the only person smart enough to think of that.”
   Steve Jobs was notorious for firing anyone and everyone on the spot if they said something that he didn’t like. Can you imagine being like that? Everyone just telling you what you want to hear around the clock because you have a tantrum anytime they don’t? What happens when they go to a doctor or a psychotherapist. “Why yes mister Jobs, your feces is worth millions, I agree. Of course you should sell it for millions!”
   Seriously though, have you seen Elon Musk’s new “solution” to the traffic in Los Angeles. He said he was going to solve this problem right? He said he was going to solve the problem of traffic in LA and have you seen what he’s come up with? It’s a one-lane highway underground where people pile into a Tesla and get stuck waiting underground instead of up top where they might actually get some sunshine or see a tree.
   I wonder how many people at Tesla knew this was a terrible idea and said nothing, they just let him go through with it. Billionaires: Where no bad idea goes unchecked. Meanwhile, he just pats himself on the back. “Good job me!”
3. They probably don’t have any real friends — How would you feel if everyone pretended to like you around the clock? How would you feel if people pretended to hysterically laugh at your bad jokes? (Looking at you Bezos.) Speaking of doctor evil, have you seen his new girlfriend? I’m sure she loves him for his personality.
   The sad truth probably is that they haven’t had the need to develop any quality to their personality, I doubt that any of them are even that likable. They probably only know how to talk about themselves, they probably never listen. Zuckerberg? Dorsey? Gates? These guys are weird… and not in that delightful quirky way. Let’s be honest, they’re more than a little creepy. If you were hanging out with Bill Gates he would probably sniff the place you were sitting when you get up to go to the bathroom.
   Truth be told, I have to believe that most of these people realize that they don’t have any real friends and are aware that most people are just pretending to like them and since they also live in an echo chamber, I’m sure they’re told that everybody likes them for their personality when there’s almost no way that’s true. I sincerely doubt many of them don’t have any real friends. Not a single one. I wonder if any of them can even feel like they trust their mother at this point. “That’s not true baby, lots of people like you for who you are… now can I have another twenty million dollars?” Can you imagine? Your only friends are the robots that bring you coffee? Or your dog? Seriously, I’d cry myself to sleep on my one thousand dollar pillow.
   Human beings need connections with other humans. It’s one of our psychological needs, there aren’t enough golden toilets in the world that can fill that void. This human need is just one of those things that money can’t buy.
4. Their lives lack real substance — When you really think about it, these Bond villains really don’t have much of anything outside of money and stuff. Granted, they have a whole hell of a lot of money and stuff but they’ll lose every single thing they’ve ever worked for when they die. They’ll probably buy the most expensive boxes and suits to be buried in, they’ll probably hire the remaining members of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones to perform at their funeral, attended only by their fake friends mind you, but they’ll still be extremely and terribly dead. This wealth they’ve amassed will just be… what? Thrown in the ground with them? You know what they say, you’ll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer.
   Outside of money and stuff they honestly don’t have much of anything. Not even enough personal awareness to alter their course and make their lives really count for something. Now that’s really sad when you really think about it and you’d think and hope that they’d be motivated to alter their course a bit but I’m sure when you’ve amassed that much wealth you’d be so entrenched in greed that you wouldn’t be able to see anything outside of it. There’s only one thing for them to do now I guess, buy a cryofreezing facility to put their body in until science figures out how to reanimate an emotionally vapid corpse.
5. Nobody cares about their challenges or problems — I have no doubt that the bond villains experience crippling loneliness. You would have to when all your friends are fake people who pretend to like you because they just want your money and cool stuff. They could experience advanced cases of psychosis and not only would nobody care but nobody could or would do anything about it. Bill Gates could get it into his head that he wanted to feast on human flesh and honestly, there’s not a damn thing that anyone would do about it. He’d just get an island, pay off the right authorities and pazow, we’re having Emily for dinner.
   They undoubtedly do have problems, I’m sure they’re lonely and they probably have loads of depression. There are only so many times you can jet ski in your own swimming pool before you’re bored with it. They could be horribly depressed and filled with self-loathing and nobody or almost nobody would care. The fact is, we don’t have a lot of sympathy for them because they use their wealth to exploit people. If they were humanitarians, it might be a different story. I think we’d all be more sympathetic to their personal emotional issues if they acted like human beings from time to time.
   For crying out loud guys, put on a hat, sunglasses and a fake mustache, we all know you can afford the best possible disguise so that you can go to a hospital and read stories to kids with cancer. For good measure take your pet monkey, that’ll at least give these poor kids something to smile about. They can manage to rocket themselves into outer space but they can’t manage to act like a compassionate human being for five minutes? Of course they can’t! They’re miserable!
   Their lack of compassion is surely an indicator of how miserable they are and their refusal to act like caring humans just shows how miserable they are. I’m sure they have issues but when you’re one of the few people on this planet that truly has the power and means to make massive positive differences and instead you buy a 12th mansion instead while writing yet another program that’s designed to manipulate people’s minds more than the last one, no wonder it’s hard for the rest of us to feel sorry for them.
6. They’ve run out of fun things to do — Money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy you pleasure but here’s the problem with pleasure, it always has diminished returns which means that every time you do it, it gets a little less exciting and little less fun. There’s only so many times you can play pool on your gold pool table. The gold doesn’t improve the fun factor of the game, by the way. There’s only so many times you sit on the deck of your superyacht with your entourage of fake friends before you’re bored with it. There’s only so many times you can fly your personal jet to your favorite pizza place in Dubai before you’re bored with it and before you hate flying in your personal jet.
   I realized something about rich people years ago. They can burn out the pleasure centers in their brains and that becomes a dark place indeed. That dark place puts them in darker places and before they know it, they have to torture people or something like that if they want to feel excitement again. Cocaine and alcohol won’t do it anymore and when you’re only source of fake happiness is pleasure, at some point rich people have to do some pretty drastic things to get there again. I have to believe that for most of them, they fail to realize that pleasure only gets you so far and true happiness is the only solution.

Meanwhile at Jack Dorsey's house…

Bond villains, sorry, I mean billionaires are absolutely miserable. They have to be. Honestly, I don’t know how they could not be. That’s not a life that I would like to have, no thanks. There are so many things that money can’t buy like happiness, respect, loyalty, true friendship, meaning, purpose or deep human connection. You can’t buy human intimacy, the type of intimacy that requires people to just let go and the Bond villains undoubtedly overlook the fact that there are just certain things that money will never be able to buy and as it turns out… those are the most important things in life and the only things that make life worth living. These 21st-century billionaires are undoubtedly missing virtually everything that makes life worth living and that makes them extremely poor.