I woke suddenly, a deep rumbling shaking the house...
My tummy was GROWLING. This was no ordinary tummy growl, though. This was DYNAMITE tummy. I had eaten a salad the day before, but nothing else. I had been thinking about how much my carbon footprint was going to be from all those almond slivers on top of the salad, and just thinking about that made me sad. I stopped thinking about that and began rummaging through my refridgerator. That was when I'd come to the conclusion that silly silly salads were all I would eat for several days.
Then it was day two, and my tummy was shaking the house with its rumbling. I was afraid for the cat. I was afraid for the dog. I was afraid for all the people who had spent years reinforcing the concrete barrier between the insides of their bomb shelters and the outsides... I was afraid that the resonance of my growling tummy would shake everything apart and the world's infrastructure and the bones of the world's pets would crumble into dust.
His wealth was very great, and was derived chiefly from...
building tummy-growl-proof houses. There was a lot of insulation in each of them, but more importantly, there was a lot of love. It was love that built great houses. And it was great houses that built wealth. And it was wealth that built love. Everybody loved him for his money, and that made it easier for him to love them, because it is always easier to love when you are loved. It became a cycle that didn't interfere with his greed. People far away from him resented him, of course, and even more people had never heard of him, but were homeless because he was using all the home-building resources to build luxury accommodations that were out of their reach. He didn't know any of these people, and therefore their pain, suffering, and disgust with him had no influence on his joy and love.
One day, though, that all changed. The government of the country he lived in, that had been encouraging him to build for the rich and exploit the poor, found itself overthrown.
The horse whinnied. "You're all I have left" he said to the horse. The horse bit him. He didn't understand why he no longer had the love he was so used to. He thought financial security was forever and that being in charge of his life was what was keeping him financially secure. But now he was financially insecure and he found that he no longer felt in charge of his life, but that it went the other way. He couldn't just GET in control of his life without wealth. When he looked around at the other people who had exactly as much as he did, they didn't ACT like they were financially insecure, but he knew they were, all of them. ALL they had was food and shelter and clothing and education and healthcare and just enough spending money to go to cultural events OR buy luxury goods, not both, and certainly not enough money to hire other people to do the daily chores that he didn't want to do. And also not enough to go skydiving from a blimp unless he only did that once in a while, certainly not every day, which he'd never wanted to do, but now he COULDN'T and if that's not financial insecurity, he didn't know what was.
He was very sad.
I nominate the richest folks I know, like @berniesanders, @nextgencrypto, and @ngc
;)