rich people fighting

Got a news alert yesterday that the Canadian plutocrat Frank Stronach is lobbying the Ontario government to allow his latest mastermind billionaire invention on the road. Reading it took me back to the lengthy period in my life I spent reporting on the Stronach family trust dispute, first for Toronto Life Magazine then later for Air Mail, two long features that took up months of my life.

The Stronachs’ have been on my mind again after watching the ingenious final season of Succession last month.

God… piles of money really does drive people nuts, doesn’t it?

After reporting on the Stronachs and several other similar cases of warring genetically-connected of plutocrats, there is now zero doubt in my mind that colossal wealth has a distinctly warping effect on the human psyche. It’s not just entitlement (that one’s obvious) but the deep psychological bleakness that sets in if your life is circumscribed by the acquisition and/or inheritance of bottomless amounts of wealth.

Honestly, I don’t envy them. (Okay maybe I envy them $10 million bucks worth, but that’s it.)