I have to say I’m not sure what they were hoping for, the discourse hasn’t felt overly mean by internet standards, but maybe that’s just my bubble. I’m sorry they died, but now that we know all the details it’s a bit like the guy that decided to hike up a lava field last year.
Also,
People’s fascination with the wealthy is fuelled by both curiosity and envy. And when rich people find themselves in trouble, it makes the rest of us feel better, Pamela Rutledge, director of the California-based Media Psychology Research Center, wrote in a piece about social media and the submersible for Psychology Today.
I feel like “outrage” should be in there somewhere. It makes me mad that people can be that dumb with a quarter of a million dollars while I’m just glad to have a safe roof over my head, and other people (like the mentioned boat migrants) aren’t even that lucky.
Alright, back off my soap box.
Part of the problem is that this has really laid bare the fact that we don’t tax these people enough.
We see price increases on daily essentials and home ownership–hell, even home security, in the “I’ll have a roof over my head” sense–is increasingly a pipe dream, and here we have multimillionaires and billionaires who can afford these dalliances but, curiously, fight tooth and nail against tax increases and social services meant to lift all boats. And we’re told that we need to tax them less so that they can be “job creators” or somesuch nonsense…
…and then once again we end up bailing them out, this time literally as well as fiscally.
I think we’re all very tired of handouts to the rich, especially since we’ve had so many examples of how they’re not really that much smarter, despite what we’re told. They’re not Galtian supermen, they’re by and large either lucky to be born into wealth and/or sociopathic to become rich on the labour of others. And despite the media’s attempt to recast this little escapade, that PR is no longer working.