Wealth: Why Certain Professionals Are Obsessed With It And Why Wealth Alone Will Never Improve Society

What do International Property Investments Advisors and Mortgage Advisors to Finance Professionals have in common? Well over on LinkedIn this weekend they outed themselves for what I already knew.

Allow me to explain.

Elon Musk, Trillionaire. (c) BBC

This post about Elon Musk caught my attention. So, I left a comment saying that children were still starving. Cue a few spikey exchanges with one particular individual, who I can most politely describe as being lost up his own confirmation bias. He was being supported by those I've mentioned above.

There’s a strange shift happening in professional culture. More and more people, notably those in finance and investments behave as though wealth is the only meaningful measure of success. Not competence. Not contribution. Not integrity. Not the quality of their work or the impact they have on their community. Just wealth.

It’s become a kind of secular religion.

And like most religions, it has its zealots.

But the obsession isn’t random. It’s the product of a system that rewards fixation, punishes moderation, and convinces people that their value is tied to the size of their bank balance.

The Professional Wealth Fixation: A Symptom of Something Deeper

Professionals today are living through an identity crisis. It seems that wealth has become the main source of:

- validation

- structure

- purpose

- social belonging

- self‑worth

When your job becomes your identity, and your industry measures success in financial terms, it’s no surprise that wealth becomes the scoreboard. It’s not that people are naturally greedy. It’s that the certain professions train them to be.

And the more competitive the field, the more intense the obsession.

Law, tech, finance, consultancy - these sectors breed a culture where “enough” doesn’t exist. There’s always someone earning more, investing better, climbing faster.

Wealth becomes a moving target.

And chasing it becomes a lifestyle.

The Myth That Wealth Equals Safety

Many professionals justify their fixation with a simple line:

“You need financial security.”

But security is psychological, not financial.

And the research is clear viz, Maslow: once basic needs and a modest comfort level are met, more money doesn’t reduce anxiety. In fact, it often increases it.

People adapt quickly to higher income.

But they don’t adapt to the fear of losing it.

That’s why even people earning six figures often describe themselves as “not rich”. They’re not lying. They’re trapped in a cycle where wealth is supposed to create safety but ends up creating dependency.

Why Wealth Doesn’t Eradicate Poverty

Now we come to the exchange that I had over on LinkedIn and this is the uncomfortable truth:

Wealth accumulation and poverty reduction are not the same project.

In fact, they often work against each other.

1. Wealth concentrates, it doesn’t spread

Modern economic systems funnel wealth upward. Capital grows faster than wages. Assets appreciate while labour stagnates. Poverty isn’t an accident. It’s a structural outcome.

2. “Trickle‑down” economics has never worked

Decades of evidence show that wealth doesn’t naturally redistribute itself. It pools. It compounds. It entrenches inequality.

3. Billionaire wealth isn’t liquid

A billionaire’s net worth isn’t a pile of cash waiting to be spent on social good. It’s tied up in shares, assets, and speculative value. None of that automatically improves society.

4. Wealth can distort public priorities

When the richest individuals have disproportionate influence, public needs become secondary to private interests. That’s not philanthropy. That’s power.

Poverty is solved through policy, not personal fortunes.

The policy that I have always said will solve every single problem in life - Education.

You don't even need a classroom.

Why Wealth Doesn’t Improve Society

My LinkedIn nemesis's argument was that wealth improves society (he ignored my pointing out that proceeds of crime can make you wealthy but that it doesn't exactly improve society).

Wealth can fund innovation, philanthropy, and infrastructure - but only when intentionally directected. Left alone, wealth tends to:

- protect itself

- influence policy

- reduce competition

- extract value rather than create it

Society improves through strong institutions, fair taxation, public investment, and accessible services. These are collective mechanisms, not the by‑products of individual fortunes.

The Trillionaire Problem: Why It Feels Abhorrent

The idea of any individual becoming a trillionaire, whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else, raises serious ethical questions.

1. No one creates a trillion dollars of value alone

A trillionaire is not a symbol of genius. It’s a symbol of extreme concentration of wealth created by the labour of thousands, the infrastructure of millions, and the public investment of entire nations.

2. A trillionaire exists only in a world where inequality is extreme

You cannot have a trillionaire without having millions of people who cannot afford housing, healthcare, or basic stability. The two conditions are linked.

3. It represents a failure of policy, not a triumph of innovation

A system that allows one person to accumulate that level of wealth is a system that has abandoned balance, fairness, and social responsibility.

4. It normalises the idea that private individuals should hold more power than governments

That’s not progress.

That’s feudalism with better branding.

Conclusion - What Professionals Really Need

The obsession with wealth is a symptom of a deeper problem:

a society that has replaced meaning with metrics.

Professionals don’t need more money.

They need:

- purpose

- community

- stability

- dignity

- work that matters

- systems that value contribution over accumulation

Wealth can buy comfort.

But it cannot buy a better society.

Only collective action, fair policy, and shared responsibility can do that.

And until we stop treating wealth as the ultimate measure of human worth, we’ll keep mistaking accumulation for progress - and mistaking billionaires for saviours.

Thoughts?