Preface: I'm saying this as a first world prole, so I understand I'm not immune to this as well. I might spend $40 on an old book i want, which that $40 could be someone's monthly wage somewhere else. However, I do want to talk about this to someone who'll understand.
I like my streamers. Well, I like watching their YouTube videos anyway, and I was Watching DougDoug's charity event he held last year for the monterrey bay aquarium. There was one bit where another streamer (ludwig) gets into a bidding war with a viewer over essentially a backstage pass to the actual process of taking care of some of the sea creatures there. He spent $20000+ on it.
It wasn't necessarily just an absent minded purchase, he did make a big deal of it, but it wasn't something he was genuinely freaking out about. He essentially spent $20000 on a bit. [He was also donating to charity, but in comparison, I wouldnt spend probably over $2000 on charity over a year, if I was doing financially well].
So after this I Sat there and was just...jealous. Not of his lifestyle or his success or his business or whatever. But simply of his carefree nature about it. That spending $20000 on basically a joke was a "haha funni" moment and not a "What the fuck am I going to eat and where am I going to live" moment.
I also recently went on a Dr.Mike binge because I was sick (which honestly I feel like shit about because I already don't like him), and there was one video where he casually mentioned he has a bunch if super cars? Like what? I know those cars suck in terms of actual utility for normal people, but if I had one of those I wouldn't shut up to anyone. Those are the things I oggle at when I see them drive by, even if they're obviously rental cars.
Then I was Watching a yt shorts (I know I need to get off of those, but hey it's better than smoking so ill pick my battles) guy, who is a lawyer. And he was talking about this embarrassing bit where his elevator broke, and he needed the fire department had to come help, and when they entered all they found was a cigar dispenser [a "humidor." I didn't even know that was a thing]
I was obviously very confused. Isn't smoking outlawed in commercial buildings? How does he even regulate that who uses that? Wouldn't it be more convenient to have it in your office, if you're allowed to smoke for some reason?
Annndddd then it hit me. He has an elevator inside of his home. Like...what? I hadn't even considered the idea. Even the largest of mansions I had pictured didn't have elevators in them. And he just...has that?
None of this inspires me to want to be like these people. Ludwig I just generally don't like, and didn't really do well in trying to do anything besides streaming (as he admits, and i don't even know how much of that is just luck), Dr.Mike definitely doesn't have supercars because he's a doctor, and the last guy is a Bourgeois civil lawyer (I feel like I don't have to explain this one). All of these people got lucky in some way or another. So all I'm left with is a profound sense of jealousy.
I'm just sitting there imagining what $20000 would do for me, or how much less stressed I would be if I had the same money as all of these people. I don't need in house elevators or super cars or whatever, I just want a decent home, a lot of books, and a good computer. And these people just talk about it like they didn't hit the lottery of life, that they get to love comfortably, way more comfortably than 99% of people. And I know this is kinda moralizing, I know, I try to stay away from it. But it just builds up inside of me and overwhelms me.
Capitalist is a fucked up world order, is all I can say. I would probably be a much happier and healthier person without chronic financial fears and how they tie into access to basic needs. I'm lucky(? I guess) that I've never been in poverty, but I've never been anything resembling "rich" either. I've always resided in that weird between place where the possibility of things unraveling is very real, but they haven't yet. I was just protected from the knowledge of that possibility in childhood. Most of my adult life has been spent not having a lot to spend, but nevertheless being okay on the most essential basics. It's a suffocating existence in a way because so much of capitalist life revolves around being able to blow disposable income on various things to "participate" in society. But it also could be a lot worse and knowing it could be and that there's no real safety net makes it hard to even enjoy what I do have.
The idea of living a "rich lifestyle" is foreign to me. Even if I logistically could, I don't know if I could bring myself to do it. I was raised Catholic and I went full atheist in my late teens and haven't budged on it since, but I think some of the basic spirit of it stuck with me, the parts that are more about being humane and humble. I don't know, it's a way I make sense of it I guess. That the idea of living in great excess while others are starving is so weird to me. I would take loving community over a mansion any day. A mansion lifestyle sounds very lonely anyway. What do you even do with that kind of space? There is a certain hollowness to excess and I don't know if some rich people just don't see it that way, or they do see it but they do it anyway because they think that's what they're supposed to do with money. I guess what I'm getting at is, if I had the money to do so, living a stereotypical rich lifestyle honestly sounds more depressing than living frugally. I just want the barriers to standard needs out of the way. Excess doesn't fill those holes.