How much money and wealth do people really need?

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Very little, of course, but it is a game...

and you could just as well ask how many golf courses we need, or football games, or pairs of shoes...

The thing is that we are a competitive species and at a certain point we either "must" have things we really don't need and we often must have more of them than someone else. Or everyone else.

Back in the old days of the robber barons, Vanderbilt built Motor Parkway simply because he was pissed off at the Long Island Rail Road. Rockefeller didn't give a shit about his net wealth, but was always in the game just to win something, anything, every day. It was a game to these guys-- every bit as much as it is a game for a foursome of dentists at the links. It's just that the money guys play for higher stakes and they don't care that the rest of us can be the real losers.

On our level, the old canard of "keeping up with the Joneses" is the same thing-- we compete at the neighborhood level for who had the best lawn, newest car, or whatever.