featured
Why You Should Hate the Rich Even More // Chris Hedges
Why You Should Hate the Rich Even More: Inside the Psychology of Our Billionaire Overlords
They don’t just have more money. They live in a different reality. A distorted, isolated, meticulously curated fantasy world where every human interaction is transactional, every mistake is erased by lawyers or PR firms, and empathy withers under the warm light of private jets and wine cellars.
In a brutally honest conversation between journalist Chris Hedges and economist Rob Larson, the pair dissect what makes the ultra-wealthy so fundamentally corrosive to society—and why our rage at them is not only justified but morally necessary.
Let’s start with the math.
The richest 1% of Americans own about 35% of all U.S. wealth. The bottom half of the population? Just 1.5%—and often less, after factoring in debt. That imbalance alone is grotesque. But it’s what the rich do with that power that really makes your blood boil.
According to Larson, the billionaire class has evolved into a transnational oligarchy. They collect passports like stock options, bouncing between luxury real estate in Belgrave Square or Midtown Manhattan, homes that often sit dark because they’re simply too busy “summersing” elsewhere. Want EU citizenship? Just buy a few properties in Portugal. There’s a price tag for everything—except conscience.
Meanwhile, their interactions with the rest of us are strictly hierarchical. Most of the working-class people they meet are hired help—nannies, chauffeurs, and estate staff—whose job description includes “never criticize the principal” (yes, that’s what they’re called now). If the principal wants a jet flown across the world to retrieve a rare bottle of wine? Do it with a smile.
This isolation creates a kind of social rot. Surrounded by yes-men and sycophants, the rich become insulated from consequence. Take Michael Bloomberg, who looked like he saw a UFO when Elizabeth Warren criticized him publicly. Or Elon Musk, drowning in a sea of bootlickers cosplaying as tech evangelists. These men aren’t used to being told “no.” And that’s the problem.
Because with great wealth doesn’t become great responsibility—it becomes paranoia.
They know the people around them don’t love them. They know their relationships are transactional. They suspect, rightly, that everyone wants a piece. So they retreat further into their bubbles of surveillance, gated compounds, and elite prep schools. As Hedges notes, he saw this firsthand as a scholarship kid in a boarding school full of absentee billionaire parents. “Their family life was a horror show,” he recalls. “They were already traumatized before they were rich.”
That’s what makes them dangerous.
Not only do the ultra-wealthy run the country—they do it without empathy, without accountability, and without any meaningful connection to the consequences of their policies. Their deregulation obsession isn’t just economic philosophy—it’s psychopathy dressed in a blazer. Private equity firms now operate like financial death squads, gutting hospitals, defunding education, and setting up tollbooths for basic human services. And yes, these sociopaths are politically active—split between corporatists (Biden’s crew) and chaos-embracing oligarchs (Trump’s camp), both serving the billionaire class in different flavors.
Even worse, the culture teaches us to admire them.
Pop media sells the lie that with enough grit, we too can make it to Richistan. But it’s all a scam. As Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and others have pointed out for centuries, there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. Their interests are not our interests. They exploit, they manipulate, they control the flow of ideas. And when things collapse—as they inevitably do—they have the vaults, passports, and escape plans already lined up.
And what do we get?
Debt. Precarity. A 30-year mortgage and a GoFundMe if we get cancer.
Larson points out that most rich people aren’t newly minted entrepreneurs. They inherit their wealth. And they raise their kids in such detached, love-deprived environments that their emotional development often mirrors the bonsai tree: carefully pruned, deeply stunted, and totally unnatural.
So, no—you don’t need to feel bad for them. You need to organize against them.
The billionaire class isn’t just hoarding wealth. They’re hoarding our future. They have the power to reshape society and are using it to extract every last dime from the working and middle classes while selling us empty promises about meritocracy. It’s not just inequality. It’s predatory parasitism disguised as capitalism.
As Larson and Hedges conclude, the only real antidote is democratic socialism—or any system that stops venerating obscene wealth and starts redistributing power. Because left unchecked, this grotesque aristocracy of inherited trauma, wealth, and psychosis will leave nothing behind but empty skyscrapers, scorched earth, and branded luxury bunkers.
//
