One of the things that isn't really mentioned here is that extreme wealth and power lets you bring your special interests to life even when they wouldn't be par

One of the things that isn't really mentioned here is that extreme wealth and power lets you bring your special interests to life even when they wouldn't be particularly practical or economically viable. For example: did you know there was a large community of animators in North Korea because it was a special interest of Kim Jong-Il [0]? Another example is how inheritors of the Walton fortune helped build tons of biking infrastructure in an Arkansas City [1]. I wish more ultrarich people would compete on building thriving communities, instead of maximizing their own personal luxuries and walling themselves off from the world. Silicon Valley is a bit of a deranged version of this, where different companies create their own little kingdoms of community for employees, while the broader community ends up being rather dull and uninviting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_animation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_animation [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/us/how-an-arkansas-city-became-an-epicenter-of-the-biking-world.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/us/how-an-arkansas-city-b...