A million seconds is about eleven and a half days. A billion seconds is almost thirty-two years. Sit with that for a second, because our brains aren't built to feel the difference between a million and a billion, and the whole debate depends on not feeling it. Nobody needs a billion dollars. Not for security, not for comfort, not for their grandkids. Past a certain point it stops being money and becomes a scoreboard, and the game being played on that scoreboard is power over other people: over elections, over media, over what gets built and what doesn't. I don't hate rich people. I just think a society that lets one person accumulate the spending power of a small country has made a choice, and we're allowed to unmake it.
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