this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five

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Why or how do people become sex traffikers like Epstein? Did he and his wife wake up one day after work and say hey lets traffik teens? Or was he or she forced into it? or something else? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 days ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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I cannot fathom doing that to another human being let alone teenagers. Not really asking for a how to guide but more like do people like that have a disease or something?

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[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago

Money does weird things to your brain.

Nobody wants to believe they're the "bad guy". And some people end up with excessive wealth, more than a person could reasonably spend in a lifetime (think billionaire). And these people have to make a choice: do they keep it all for themselves, or give most of it away?

Those who hoard their wealth have to justify internally why they have so much and others are starving. To do this, they either deify themselves, or demonize the poor, or both. They truly believe the poor are morally inferior to them, and the rich are morally superior.

In addition, when you have this type of wealth, nothing is off-limits anymore. And humans seem to have a deep-seated need to strive for something that is out of reach. If you want to see this for yourself, turn on a favorite video game and enable cheats like infinite money or "god mode". Chances are, it'll be fun for a bit, but it'll soon lose your attention. Because whether we realize it or not, our brains want some things to be difficult to obtain.

Being a billionaire is an IRL infinite money hack. There's pretty much nothing you can't do with that kind of money. Except... illegal stuff. Like drugs, and raping minors. These activities bring a spark of excitement to people who are decresingly finding that feeling in anything else in life.

When you consider both of these things together, stuff like sex trafficking starts to make morbid sense. They see trafficking people much the same as trafficking animals. And it's one of the very few things that scratches that human itch of wanting something we can't have.

Excessive concentrated wealth is bad for everyone, including the wealthy.