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I went to school with an American kid whose family was old money, somewhere in the mid 9 figures back in the 90s. They had an advance team of designers and chefs who would deploy to their summer/winter/Alps/etc. home before the family arrived, and furnish the house and wardrobes. Everything from the swim trunks to the tennis whites (in case they felt like playing tennis at all) was new. The pantry was of course stocked with more fresh food than they and their visitors could eat. When the holiday was over, it would all stay at the house and be distributed among the staff or simply binned.
For one of their friends’ birthdays, the parents took the friend group to the Caribbean, and hired a company to design and implement a week-long pirate adventure trip for the kids (muppet treasure island had come out recently). The children’s adventure cost $50,000 and involved actors, trained parrots, sailboats, period correct bespoke costumes for the kids, muskets firing blanks…
Worth considering that musk and bezos have an additional 000 to their name. The consumption of the ultra-wealthy is truly beyond what most people can imagine.
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Muc-ed-off
Oliver Schick
the problem may not be population numbers per se, but the "use of machines" and related industrial "progress" is what has allowed the population to expand in the way that it has. i'm not sure that the two things can be decoupled.
yes, the privileged few consume the most and do the most damage by a massive margin, albeit that "few" is now circa 1bn people.