The Real Way the Rich Are Different

The need to control the world around us is an instinct deeply embedded in the human soul. And a good thing it is, too; else we would all be naked and living in caves. If something is irritating us, we change it. Even if something is okay, but could be better, we change it. Wealthy families are no different from anyone else in this regard, with the singular distinction that it is far easier for the rich to buy control of their lives than it is for anyone else. And there lies the rub.

Most attempts to buy control of our world are harmless enough. A working-class family, rather than swelter through a hot, humid summer, will put a window air-conditioning unit in the parents' bedroom. A middle-class family will air condition most of the rooms that adults spend time in. An upper-middle-class family will install whole-house air-conditioning. But a wealthy family, having just purchased that charming old mansion put up in the nineteenth century, will install enough HVAC to keep all 22 rooms at a perfect 70 degrees all year round—and hang the (ridiculous) cost.

So what? The trouble comes when the habit of buying our way out of the normal irritations of life extends to buying our way out of irritations that are inextricably entwined with our happiness. Consider the three arenas of life that will largely determine whether or not we will be happy: raising children, preserving a happy marriage, and engaging in a productive work life. All three activities are fraught with a large variety of day-to-day irritations. Infants can be colicky, making our lives a living hell until they grow out of it. Toddlers learning the joys of independence make the phrase “the terrible twos” a colossal understatement. Preadolescents become involved in so many activities that we have to put our lives on hold just to drive them from place to place and attend their many (and often crushingly boring) events. Teenagers—well, no need to dwell on that subject. Then, suddenly, our children are grown and out of the house forever, and we spend the rest of our lives missing them.

As for marriage, never was a more bizarre arrangement invented. The idea that two adult human beings can share the same space, eat at the same table, supervise the same children, sleep in the same bed, every day of their lives, is preposterous. This is a good working definition of hell, if nothing else. And yet most of us not only get married, we often get married more than once (the triumph, as the saying goes, of hope over experience). The day-to-day irritations imposed on us by the institution of marriage are so numerous and so troublesome that long books are written about how to manage and minimize them. Nonetheless, like democracy, marriage is the worst of all possible outcomes—except for all the others.

Or consider work. No one who has ever held a job can possibly harbor any romantic illusions about the “joy of work.” On a day-to-day basis, working is a pain in the neck. We have to get up earlier than we want to. We have to put on uncomfortable clothes. We have to commute through maddening traffic. We have to work with some colleagues we don't like and would never spend time with if we had any choice in the matter. Our bosses are invariably hopeless jerks. And, in the end, we are infuriatingly underappreciated and underpaid. When we meet some idiot who claims to “love his work,” who “would do it for free if necessary,” we know we have encountered a dangerous lunatic. Yet, virtually all of us do in fact work, including most of us who have no financial need to do so.

For most human beings, the irritations associated with raising children, staying happily married, and working productively are assumed to be nothing less than a part of the human condition. Unless we don't wish to pass our genes along, unless we wish to be alone and lonely, unless we're happy to starve to death in a gutter, we put up with these irritations and get on with our lives. And the ultimate result is happiness.

But suppose we didn't have to put up with them? Suppose we could, in fact, buy our way out of all or most of them? Wouldn't we be tempted to do it? Of course we would. And there lies the danger for the wealthy. In an attempt to control obvious irritations, we manage to buy our way out of happiness.