Why billionaires don’t give a damn

It takes more than imagination to understand how big a billion is A million is within the average mindrsquos grasp itrsquos 10 lakh A one followed by six zeroes Add three more noughts and you get a billion These three zeroes more may seem like three nothings more but if a million is an ant then a billion is a gigantosaurusI always thought that a billion was a little more than a million and that millionaires and billionaires were more or less interchangeable Theyrsquore not If you saved Rs 100 a day it would take you about 27397 years to reach a billion rupeesYoursquore wondering why Irsquom going on so much about billions Honest truth the word has been cropping up far too often for my liking in recent times buzzing around my ears like a mosquito after sunsetFirst we all heard that Jeff Bezos Amazonrsquos boss blew 55 billion to spend 11 minutes in outer spaceI read recently that MarkZuckerberg the man whorsquos made his wealth selling your private details to others lost 20 billion in just one year of his virtual reality platform Meta He had invested 10 billion in it and plans to invest tens of billions moreThe clincher was last week We all heard that the worldrsquos current wealthiest man Elon Musk threw in 44 billion to buy the worldrsquos most influential social media platformmdashTwitter To put that in perspective NASA is sending human beings to the moon in its Artemis programme for 668 billionIn the name of preserving free speech Musk has already sacked half of Twitterrsquos employees is doing away with nearly all factchecking and moderation teams and plans to reward any customer who pays 8 a month with a bluetick certifying their credibility Advertisers are fleeing and politicians are in panic with conspiracy theories hate speech and election lines suddenly burgeoning unchecked on TwitterBut to Elon Musk 44 billion is a sideshow He now has a shiny toy Hersquos having funI use a party game to demonstrate the value of money Imagine yoursquore about to buy a Rolex watchmdashroughly 5000 Just as yoursquore reaching for your wallet I tap your shoulder and whisper that the same watch is available for 350 less at another shop one block away Would you go for the bargain I doubt yoursquod say itrsquos too much of a walkNow imagine you were buying an Aston Martin Vulcan costing 23 million I tap you again same shoulder to tell you that itrsquos going for 350 less a block away Irsquom guessing this time yoursquod tell me to leave your shoulder aloneThe reason why 350 feels less significant when itrsquos part of a few millions rather than a few thousands is that human beings assign a value to a thing based on how much of it is available Itrsquos that simple The more money you have the less it mattersTo an unskilled Maharashtrian worker earning Rs 46642 56 a day and with five mouths to feed Rs 100 has the value of Rs 10000 To Mukesh Ambani earning R90 crore an hour that sum would be an invisible mote of dust in the evening sunlightThe billionaires named here share several traits None of them knows what it feels like to be deprived and struggling to survive Three of them were born brats albeit devilishly clever and inventive But herersquos the thing that binds them allmdashalong the way to their billions they all lost empathy the ability to see other human beings and feel their pain No matter how many hospitals they fund and scholarships they hand out in a nod towards corporate social responsibility billionaires are inevitably blinded by their moneyIn 2012 psychologists from the University of California in Berkeley showed college students two videosmdashone of a man explaining how to build a patio and another about the difficult lives of children with cancer Wealthier participants they found were less likely to report feeling compassion for the children and their families in the second videoAn earlier study led by a University of California San Francisco psychologist found that wealthier people are less able to read other peoplersquos emotions than poorer peoplePsychologist Daniel Goleman argues that if the wealthy who hold more power do not lsquoseersquo those who have less therersquos an empathy gap Without addressing that first you canrsquot do much about the wealth gapElon Musk doesnrsquot care about lies truth and hate speech Bezos could have eradicated world hunger with the money he casually blew on 11 minutes in space And Zuckerberg whose first move towards Facebook was an app to help frat boys rate girls based on their breasts and bottoms is blowing billions on Meta because hersquos expecting trillions backIf therersquos a lesson in all this it might be in the words of my favourite revolutionary mystic Steve Jobs ldquoStay hungry Stay foolishrdquoIrsquod addmdashldquoStay poorrdquoYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper