Chuck Feeney was the exception,1) and in more than one way at that. The actual goal was to give it all2) away for real, not avoiding taxes. Any net positive effects went back into project, not personal gain. He also didn’t make the usual “look what a huge philanthropist I am” production number out of it. Few people even knew that he was giving away lots of money, let alone that the idea was to give it all away.
And sometimes billionaires just self destruct:
1) And he gets credit for it in the video.
2) Except for a comparatively tiny sum calculated to last until his natural death, leading a modest middle class lifestyle. Which is perfectly alright per se and laudable considering.
This is a plot point in the 2003 remake (reimagining, really) of The Italian Job.
The heist team all ask each other what they’re going to buy with their share and Edward Norton’s character doesn’t really know. He later betrays them and ends up with the entire score, leaving them for dead. When they inevitably track him down for revenge, it turns out that he has bought all the dream possessions of the others and is entirely bored and unsatisfied.
It’s very much played as a moral weakness. I’m not sure it would be if the film was made today.
People think I’m biased against Jeff Bezos, but here’s Sartoria F. Caraceni, widely considered one of the best bespoke tailoring houses in the world, commenting on Bezos’s wedding suit.
“The most terrible, frightening, horrible tuxedo ever seen in my life. I’m really suffering”
Heck, there is the much simpler matter of his own employees. Bezos is tremendously cruel and exploitative of them in hopes of crushing out a little extra profit. To make the world a better place literally all he would have to do is stop. And yet even with more money than he knows how to spend, he still won’t.
Except with Temu the photo would be cropped to leave out everything above her neck and below her thighs. (I had to use a browser with web ads on for a while and there were a lot of these.)
