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I've been thinking recently that powerful people treating the real world like a game is possibly one of the most destructive forces in society.

• DiabloD3 11y ago
  It depends entirely what their end goal is. To make money with no regards to anything else? Yes, they are dangerous to the human race and should be treated as the absolute worst terrorists possible. However, if their end goal is to actually leave the world a better place than when it was when they were born, and it just happens it takes being one of the richest people ever to do that? More power to them, and I hope they succeed. Not all rich and powerful people are assholes, some just want to make the world less shitty, and some actually succeed at it.
  • everyone 11y ago
    By "treat like a game" I mean, play to win, with winning defined as beating the other guy. I arrived at this line of though when I started wondering why would the head decision makers of (for example) trafigura decide to horribly pollute the Ivory coast just so they can squeeze out a bit of extra profit, when they are all already super-rich. You can only enjoy so many yachts and so on. I arrived at the conclusion that their motivation is not to get more money per se, its to beat the other guys.
    • everyone 11y ago
      ps. Above is just the product of my idle musings. One thing that is very interesting and related and certainly worth mentioning is one of the elements of Jared Diamonds framework for societal collapse: Decision makers being insulated from the negative consequences of their decisions.
      • windowsworkstoo 11y ago
        duh power > money
• x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
  It's not the game that's the problem, it's their objectives: to gain as much power as possible.