Money

Every Billionaire Is Mentally Ill

My diagnosis? Pathological Money Hoarding Syndrome

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a delightful read.

I’m not joking.

My daughter is a therapist, and when she was finishing her degree, I purchased her first copy as a Christmas present. When I visit her, I love to thumb through the latest edition.

“Hmmm, this sounds like someone I know,” I think to myself as I read the criteria for various disorders. I have secretly diagnosed almost everyone I know (including myself) with something.

It’s like perusing Dr. Google and diagnosing yourself with pretty much every dread disease.

But the DSM requires a new addition: Pathological Money Hoarding Syndrome.

PMHS has many high-profile sufferers.

While it’s possible for a person of any income level to suffer from a pathological need to hoard resources, the more severe sufferers are billionaires.

It’s possible to make millions in this world without having PMHS, but nobody becomes a billionaire without succumbing to it.

Let’s think about normal human behavior, if such a thing actually exists.

Let’s imagine you’re on an island and some disaster has meant there’s no drinking water available. Everyone on the island is desperately thirsty. One man has a whole warehouse full of bottled water. There’s plenty to save everyone on the island, but the man who owns it refuses to give up a single bottle of water.

You’d consider him some combination of evil and crazy, right?

Why is it bad to hoard things like food, water and medicine but not money?

We don’t admire people who hoard other resources.

The men who stockpiled hand sanitizer during the early days of the pandemic were not congratulated as savvy Übermenschen. They were vilified, and rightly so.

It’s odd that society admires the greed and decadence of those with PMHS. These are people who have enough money to meet all their own needs as well as the needs of their great-great-grandchildren and many generations beyond, but continue to amass wealth.

Many of them continue to ruthlessly squeeze resources from others.

They will never be satisfied by their growing wealth. No dollar amount will be “enough.”

It’s more likely that an alcoholic will decide that the last beer they drank has quenched their thirst for all time than for a PMHS sufferer to decide to stop doing everything possible to amass more money.

Most of us have dreams of what we’d do if a fortune fell into our laps.

I sure do. Like most of us, I’d want to provide some security for my family — but there would be no mansions or fabulous vacation homes.

Instead, the bulk of the money would go toward a foundation I’ve always had in mind. I’ve written about this before, but my organization would provide a leg up for poor single moms.

Chasing pleasure is one of the quickest paths to misery. You get more joy and happiness out of accomplishing good things.

Could you enjoy cramming a sumptuous feast into your mouth while wide-eyed hungry children watched?

Of course not. You’d feed them, unless you’re a vile human.

You shouldn’t have to actually be looking at hungry children to care about them. It’s enough to know they’re out there.

I’m not impressed by billionaires who hand out showy grants that gain them lots of publicity. It’s not that giving money is bad; it’s not. It’s that there’s something really wrong with anybody accumulating that much money in the first place.

Billions are extracted, not earned.

It’s hard to imagine that kind of money being made in an ethical manner. You can become quite wealthy earning money, but nobody “earns” billions.

I have never understood why the accumulation of more money than one can ever spend is any more morally acceptable than accumulating more food than one can eat or more medicine than you need … especially when your hoarding means others go without.

It’s not only accepted, it’s celebrated! Isn’t that odd? There are those who truly admire billionaires.

Some billionaires have done some good things.

I’m not saying otherwise. But they don’t deserve to be viewed as superior human beings on the basis of their truly disgusting hoarded money.

For the most part, billionaires benefit from being in the right place at the right time. Most of them were born into families with some level of wealth that gave them a good launching pad in terms of money and connections. They had skills and a mindset that fit into the zeitgeist.

Had they been born in a different time or place, they’d be ordinary laborers. I doubt they’d have distinguished themselves if they’d been born to a poor family, grew up in the developing world or lived 100 years ago.

Their hoarding harms others.

When I hear about someone who is struggling in some way, I think, “Gosh, I wish I could do something.” I bet you do, too. Sometimes you can find a way to help, but often the person has needs far beyond your ability to make a difference. If they’re trying to raise money for medical care, maybe you could make a contribution but you probably couldn’t bankroll the whole thing.

How does it feel, I wonder, to understand that one has enough money to solve the real problems of millions of deserving people yet choose to do things like putz around in space instead?

And it goes beyond the issue of charity.

Once your empire gets to a certain size, it’s easy to squeeze competitors in all sorts of ways. A small company trying to offer an alternative good or service at a better price for consumers will be bullied out. So the negativity doesn’t just involve refusing to share one’s wealth; it’s also actively suppressing others’ ability to earn their own.

These people have no shame, but that’s not surprising, as they’re treated like celebrities, not the hoarders they are.

The DSM does change over time as we better understand mental health. It removed homosexuality from the list of disorders in 1974.

Let’s add in PMHS.

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I’m a writer in central Illinois. Find me on Substack, Mastodon, Twitter or LinkedIn.