Economics

The Inevitable Cult of Wealth

by

A lot of wealthy people seem to be in cults, and I’m not just talking your standard Right Wing Christian Crap. As I write this in October 2026 we’re getting reporting on strange cults of Artificial Intelligence, rationalism, Antichrist obsessives, and more. People are looking at billionaires and going “what the hell did they say” and “what drugs are they on” (Ketamine of course, but also my guess is plenty of psychedelics). There’s surprise at this cultic behavior, and honestly there really shouldn’t be.

Imagine you’re wealthy for whatever reason. You can shape your entire experience to be whatever you want. People will do whatever you want because you have money (and possibly fame and power). You can exist the exact way you want with little to no pushback.

Oh you may think you’re not living an illusion, but unless you’re very careful, you will. If you can change the world with a transaction, people will like to you, suck up to you, or worse assume you’re right as you have money. Even if you’re careful, you’ll have to work hard not to delude yourself because others will help you do just that.

Being rich and powerful leads to an echo chamber and eventually a kind of cognitive impairment. Ever seen a Really Rich person just freak out at a random social media post? Someone living in a self-imposed bubble will loose their shit over something posted by some anonymous person with a handle like BannanaCannon420.

Now such environments will lead to cultic behavior – even if it’s a cult of one. You’re in your own self-created bubble. You’re creating a feedback loop. You’ve got people willing to tell you what you want to hear (often for money). That’s a cult.

But also think of these echo chambers these people live in. If a cultic behavior or set of ideas are introduced there’s a good chance it won’t leave and will be amplified. It just takes one doofus with the right (or wrong) idea, one self-published manifesto, to get into the sphere of some rich person and then the bad idea stays and grows. They may even share it with their friends, who are also wealthy and honestly probably kind of bonkers.

So yes, some of the uber-wealthy act like they’re in cults – they are. They exist in self-created echo chambers. Bad ideas don’t get flushed out. They talk to other people like them. And that’s not counting important questions like “is the economy structured so utter assholes easily take control.”

Honestly, once you add the asshole factor it gets worse. I’m being kind.

So maybe in our current state we need to consider the rich and powerful to be in some kind of cult by default until proven otherwise. And it’s another reminder of why consolidation of power of any kind is a problem – because culty behavior follows almost inevitably, even with the most charitable viewpoint.

–Xenofact

Nobody Knows What Things Are For

by

A while ago someone on Mastodon posted a comment about how people “Don’t know what things are for” when it comes to our so-called leaders. I mean yeah some people know how to make money, but don’t know why things are. They try to get money out of things but don’t care or know.

That kept sitting in my head. People “not knowing what something is for.”

I used to enjoy the show “Dirty Jobs” because it gave me a view into how things worked – what they were for. After watching some poor roadwork in the city I lived in, I took an interest in urban planning and learned more about what things are for. As a Project Manager, I am about getting things done, about what things are for.

And that’s me. I’m sure you have had plenty of experience knowing “what things are for” on the job, in your hobbies, in your life. Some of us grow up in places where it’s part of the fabric of life, from farms to ports to plain historic cities. A lot of us know what things are for.

And, when you know what things are for, you also realize that yes, that person I mentioned was right. A lot of people don’t know what things are for and are making at best bad decisions – at worse just destroying things for greed. Usually seems to be the latter.

Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee it. Communities with people and history fearing data centers will drain their power and water, making them not a place just a host. Farms vanishing into giant agribusinesses. The stock market is even more gambling than it ever ones, and real gambling via online apps seems to turn the world into a casino and not a world. Things are stopping being what they are and are just about money or fame or clicks.

It’s a socio-cultural-economic gray goo. It’s turning things into nothing by people who don’t know what things are for.

But when things stop being what they are, then people stop being anything. Who are you in a world where your job is to train a so-called AI to replace you? Where’s a community when it’s just Influencers selling to each other? Who are you in a world where people don’t know what anything is for?

When no one knows what things are for, then people cease being people.

It’s a peculiarly meaningless world some of our so-called leaders have and want. No wonder so many of them seem so empty and angry – their lives are meaningless. No wonder so many of them fall into conspiratorial politics and grandiose racisms, trying to look for some meaning as well as explaining away people hating them. These people who don’t know what anything are for want to be something, something more than nepo babies or knob twiddlers who got lucky.

Those that build a world not knowing what anything is for aren’t anyone.

–Xenofact

The Tao Isn’t The Market

by

In my Taoist readings, “the Tao” is always a subject of discussion. This is ironic because as the beloved Tao Te Ching notes, when you speak of the Tao you’re not speaking of the real Tao. A great deal of Taoist writing is talking about how ineffable the Tao is then writing a huge amount about it. There’s a reason I compare writers like Chuang-Tzu to people like Dave Barry – you need that mix of humor and sarcasm to handle such irony.

Of course that’s kind of the point. You have a word for the ineffable (Tao) that’s behind all things, and that word represents everything and how you can’t really define it. The Tao is everywhere, it’s why everything is, it’s the smallest and the largest, the near and the far. Taoism takes a word that lets you refer to the great connected isness of absolutely everything that words can’t otherwise encompass.

It’s kind of a linguistic hack.

That, I find, is also the power of good Taoist writing. Using a single word and poetic writing, it reminds you that the universe is great and connected. Leading you around by words and sentences, you start intuitively getting to understanding the power behind everything. In turn, that lets you live in the world, living in harmony with things, knowing it’s all vast and everywhere and connected – Tao.

If you get it you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. If you want to fake it, you probably can for awhile. But a lot of Taoism is words leading you to the wordless, that there’s a force behind everything.

What’s funny is I realized lately that the Tao reminds me of how Capitalists think of the Almighty Market.

What is is. The Market speaks. The great and powerful force that reconciles everything is perfect and everywhere and if you don’t get rich then The Market has decided. The market is unquestionable and good and perfect and the foundation of all things. The market is like the Tao in that it’s ineffable, AND like a personal god in that it makes decisions about things, granting everything a moral quality. The Market cannot be questioned, it’s that awesome! Yet also it makes decisions.

What’s funny is the market being a human construct, being about profit and gain and exploitation, is something Taoists warned about for aeons. As a construct that warps human feelings, it’s to be regarded with suspicion. As something about gain, it risks the traps of greed and acquisitiveness, which corrupt society. As something surrounded by flummery and endless long-winded justifications, it’s as suspicious as pretentious intellectuals and politicians and would-be sages.

The way people treat The Market as some divine force darkly echoes the words of the Taoists with a touch of theology, and realizing that I understand Market Fanatics passion much better. It’s beyond greed, into religion and even a kind of perverse mysticism.

And thanks to the Taoists, who would have laughed at the Market Fanatics and their pretentious, helped me understand that better. And laugh, of course.

I appreciate the irony. Which Chuang-Tzu and Dave Barry would probably both appreciate.

– Xenofact