A social media post about billionaire Jeff Bezos' summer aboard an unfathomably luxurious yacht stirred convictions to "eat the rich."
The post was made last year in r/antiwork, "a subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles."
Commenters brought their hot takes, of course, and compared the levels of bad of various ultrarich guys, including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
One of the wealthiest people in the world, Bezos, who founded Amazon, is widely loathed for the contrast between his lifestyle and the working conditions of the conglomerate's employees, who have suffered severe injuries and urinated in plastic bottles on the job. One person died in a New Jersey warehouse during a heat wave.
The dialogue amped up after the coronavirus pandemic, when the most well-off 1% increased their holdings while others buckled under the weights of high costs of living, out-of-reach housing markets, and student loan debts, as Fortune reported.
Adding to the disparity, Bezos' completed yacht was too tall to leave its berth and reach the sea without the dismantling of a historic bridge in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The boat, half the length of the Titanic at 417 feet, is the biggest sailing yacht in the world.
According to The New York Times, area residents organized an event via Facebook encouraging citizens to throw eggs at the boat. "Dismantling De Hef for Jeff Bezos's latest toy? Come throw eggs … !" the event's description said.
What makes that especially problematic, though, is not just the size, spending, and sheer excess. It's that large yachts, especially superyachts, cost massively high gallons of fuel per day to stay maintained. A Russian oligarch's seized yacht made headlines in 2023 for costing the Antigua government $2,000 worth of gasoline per day to maintain from running reportedly necessary air conditioning alone.
As TCD covered at the time, "to maintain its hardwood floors and leather interiors, the air conditioning has to run 24/7 — meaning its diesel generators also have to run constantly." Whether that were truly necessary for Antigua to spend to maintain in preparation for a sale is debatable, but the point remains that when these yachts are in use or even merely docked by billionaires, $2,000 of gasoline to run air conditioning alone suggests at least many hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of fuel for one such yacht per year.
It's not clear what Bezos' yacht requires for air conditioning, but it does at least feature multiple masts and sails to power its travel, which certainly helps to cut down on fuel. That said, SuperYacht Times lists the model as operating on diesel for electricity, and even a more sustainably powered design would require a lot of energy to keep running inside, even when not directly in use.
The profligacy it represents highlights both the super-rich's as well as humanity's overconsumption, which is hurting us and our Earth. While many citizens buy secondhand, ride bicycles, and invest in community solar to try to slow the overheating of the planet, Bezos and his ilk fritter away chances to make groundbreaking changes.
"But I thought billionaires don't get time off and work 24/7," one Redditor wrote of Bezos' lazing about. "How then could he be vacationing all summer?? Moreover why would a billionaire need a 500 million dollar yacht they'll never be able to use anyway since they're working so much?
"You know I'm starting to think I've been misled about how much the wealthy work because this isn't adding up."
"Make no mistake," someone else said. "... He doesn't care about his workers or you or me or anyone! He can pay people fairly, but he chooses not to. This is an immoral man. He should not have what he has. He has more wealth than what all his workers would make over 10 lifetimes! That is WRONG and it should be corrected."
Another person asked: "What would a Federal Government that doesn't betray its middle and lower classes look like? Does anyone know?"
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