Financial obesity is neurotoxic.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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The problem with "affluenza" is that it is used to deflect responsibility from these capitalist monsters for their atrocities. Like it's not an illness like influenza, you don't just "catch" it and suffer the consequences through no fault of your own.
So what if it is?
It doesn't change the fact that they need to be involuntarily committed for rehabilitation and have their assets seized. For their health.
Affluenza is a capitalist framing. We don't need to capitulate to capitalist framings (not even the tiniest amount) to say that the capitalists need to have their assets seized and be involuntarily committed for rehabilitation 🙂.
The "monster" framing precludes the idea that they even can be rehabilitated. Monsters don't get healing, they just need to be put away or executed. That's still an improvement over letting them run rampant, but it's a waste.
The "monster" framing precludes the idea that they even can be rehabilitated.
Maybe this makes me a bad anarchist, but it truly feels like capitalists are monsters that can't be rehabilitated. Like I really want to believe that everyone can be rehabilitated with enough help, but can we really rehabilitate the few thousand people who are like Epstein in finite time?
I mean I think you make a good critique here.
Even if we can't, should we not try? It's only, as you say, a few thousand. We can spare the resources to keep them locked up/under house arrest/whatever for the rest of their natural lives if we must.
If we must execute people to heal the wounds inflicted by their sheer callousness, then so be it. But I don't really accept the argument that anyone is "irredeemable" without even trying.
Even if we can't, should we not try?
Of course we should try, that why I said it feels like capitalists can't be rehabilitated, not that they definitely cannot be rehabilitated and we shouldn't even try.
Yes I'm definitely biased to predict that almost all of the capitalists wouldn't succeed in even attempting to rehabilitate themselves, but I'm absolutely not willing to close the door for rehabilitation either.
Ah ok. That's not how I understood your comment initially, but that's reasonable.
There are degrees of sickness, right? An asshole business owner who feels entitled to run red lights and speed because they're white and have a nice car and know the police chief's son probably doesn't need life imprisonment or execution.
I mean, I wouldn't really be too upset if they were, but it just seems wasteful.
On the other end, people in the Epstein files might need to be hospitalized for more than a single human lifetime.
There are degrees of sickness, right?
Absolutely, 1000%. And the example you gave, 1000% with you on the possibility of rehabilitation there. Frankly, I think that 99.9999% of people can be rehabilitated in finite time. The other 0.0001% are literally the billionaires and their cronies. (And I believe that this is numerically in the ballpark, since the billionaires number about 3000 and there are about 8.2 billion humans on this planet, and the figure I gave is an overestimate to include their non-billionaire cronies [e.g., Jeffrey Epstein; I believe that he was, numerically, strictly not a billionaire when he died].)
On the other end, people in the Epstein files might need to be hospitalized for more than a single human lifetime.
Yeah that's really who I'm talking about when I have my doubts about rehabilitation for a very small subset of people, and I believe that worldwide communism would make this subset asymptotically vanish ("asymptotically" to account for the presence of serial killers).
Maybe they can't be rehabilitated. Maybe they can. Idk. I'm not here to make that call. All I'm saying is that they make for very interesting case-study.
I don't think you can get to any level of extreme wealth without some amount of personality disorders. Is this what happened when those personality disorders are left untreated, or worse, enabled?
Think less illness and more...idk...corruption of the mind?
Like we all know power corrupts people. But absolute power, extreme wealth? There's gotta be an underlying spiral of mental health that allows these people to continue to function, and left unchecked leads to...well, extreme, unimaginable corruption.
I find it hard to believe a bunch of pedophiles became the richest and most powerful people in the world. I find it much easier to believe a bunch of the richest and most powerful people in the world became pedophiles.
Like, when all the other forbidden fruit are easy to get (and were all fucking awesome), and you don't see others as people at all...there's the most forbidden fruit.
All I'm really saying is, statistically, the odds of so many billionaires being pedophiles is very low...unless either closeted/repressed pedophilia is way more common than we think, or it can develop out of an array of personality disorders that can be amplified by extreme wealth/power.
Psychologically, this is very interesting.
Think less illness and more...idk...corruption of the mind?
Yeah I'm with you, but I really think it's crucial to make a distinction between framing it as an illness vs framing it as the logical conclusion of the capitalist mindset, for which we have thousands of pages of prior analysis to understand.
Por que no los dos?
I edited my parent to you to elaborate more on my train of thought.
I think it's less "power makes people unethical" and more "only unethical people get to be rich/powerful". Correlation != causation
I think an underlying personality disorder is a prerequisite, sure.
But does that mean that even somewhat self-made billionaires did not always start with good intentions?
I think the Steves...Jobs and Woz...are a good pair to look at for the kind of example in talking about. They had equal opportunities. In an alternate universe, Jobs could have ended up like Woz. Or Woz could have ended up like Jobs.
There's an underlying catalyst that gets triggered and fed and allowed to grow. It starts as an untreated personality disorder....you mix that with money/power and a circle of yes-men and that's a recipe for disaster.
Respectfully, I must disagree. Even those two you mentioned could have not got to being a billionaire in the first place without exploiting people via capitalism, and certainly could not have retained the money (rather than spending it on good causes and compensating workers fairly) while still being a good person. It is a filter for the most selfish kind of person.
I don't think it's as simple as there being "good people" and "bad people", and that only the worst people are capable of extreme wealth. I think wealth just happens to some people. Some people are born into it, some stumble into it, a lot of people seek it out and a few of those people "succeed", though I'd argue even then it's mostly chance. Of the people who get substantial wealth, some give it away, some retire into a wealth cocoon and are never heard from again, some lose it, and some actively grow it because they love the feeling of gaining wealth.
I don't know if it's addictive in the same way that some chemicals are addictive, but I bet it's addictive in the same way that gambling is addictive, and wealthy people can get hooked on the feeling of "winning" more wealth the same way people get addicted to slot machines. I also think that it's not strictly wealth addiction, but power addiction, which is why some super wealthy people tend to extravagantly flaunt their power: building megaprojects, influencing or simply taking over governments, violating laws with impunity, forcing the working class to work in extreme conditions if not outright enslaving them, etc. The use of power is their drug and they won't stop themselves because they can't. Does that make them bad people? It makes them harmful people who need intervention, the same way an alcoholic needs intervention before they get behind a wheel. I feel bad for kids born into wealth, who never had the chance to just be a human without the veil of power being drawn between them and the rest of humanity. The Don Jr.'s of the world. That doesn't excuse their actions, nor does it mean that they don't need to be stopped. But I think it hurts us to think of them as fundamentally "bad" in the same way I think it's unhelpful to categorize alcoholics as "bad". The real horror is that the monsters are just like us, and treating wealth hoarders and power addicts like they're a different, less human kind of human is the same thing that they do to rationalize their own abuses.
₽$¥€opathy?
Yeah, I know it’s a _E_uro, but it’s C-ish. And using a sub denomination didn’t make ¢ents in context.
I mean there are psychopaths out there who don't do heinous things like these people. Like it would literally be ableist IMO to tar all psychopaths with the same brush as Epstein and company.
That's a definite, yes and no. People who gather around successful malignant narcissists, and profit from it, gradually assume those tenancies.
I don't think OP was being 100% literal
Still, OP is giving into a capitalist framing. Affluenza was popularized during the trial of Ethan Couch, where the argument was 100% literal.
That's not an illness, that's just not being punished for one's actions
Luckily, this administration has a cure! They've come out with a product called Briberia, which completely cures all side effects of affluenza.
Side effects of Briberia include diarrhea, stomach pains, intense flatulence, and oily discharge. Consult your physician before starting Briberia.
Get on with your life today!