The richest french man, Bernard Arnault, is living la vida loca on his yacht. It got me interested, seeing as mortality has sky rocketed in France and our country is burning with every new year of global warming.
What's the point of having a yacht when you already own a house, I asked? It's just another house on water. So I looked up what was so special about this man's yacht. I'm sure he has good reasons to kill people for it.
I didn't quite get why a man would need a cinema on a boat, to be honest. I'd watch the sea or go diving, if I were him. Golfing also seemed an unusual activity to have on a boat. Maybe dolphins were catching the balls for him. And couldn’t he use a public cinema or watch movies at home on the couch or in bed like a rest of us? That was weird.
I took note of the olympic-sized swimming pool he was building, but thought it'd be weird to force athletes to go on a boat to swim in a pool.
Surely the swimming pool wasn't for him. He was 77 years old. What Olympic Game was he going for exactly?
The helipad seemed a bit wasteful as well, a yacht can move to the shore, can't it? Then I read that the city of Napoli, Italy, had refused its port to the yacht because it was too tall. So his solution, apparently, was not to stop his nonsense but to add an helipad.
It reminded me of another beautiful yacht story, the one where Jeff Bezos, the billionaire who owns Amazon, tried to build an even bigger yacht which, in the end, couldn't even leave the port because of a bridge it was too tall to pass.
Bezos suggested dismantling the bridge. As one does. But the stupid peasants disagreed and the bridge remained.
Is it a penis thing? The size obsession? I asked myself as I sipped through my recycled paper straw. Arnault's yacht was already the size of a football field. And it had a big penis shaped thingy at the very top.
So anyway, I looked up how much his lifestyle was costing the world. Was I exaggerating by saying that this guy, and all men like him, were killing people?
I was not, in fact, exaggerating.
Another fun fact reported in an article was that, during one trip on the Mediterranean sea, his yacht’s carbone footprint was the equivalent of 150 years of one french person’s life.
I like those numbers. It really puts things in perspective for peasants like me who think littering is the epitome of evil.
In one little trip, just on the sea bordering his own country, he had more of an impact on the world than a human’s entire life of driving a car, using electricity and water, getting deliveries or wasting food and material, etc.
So, yes, billionaires are killing people.
With that cleared, I went back to my initial interrogation: why live on a yacht when you have a house?
I don't have a house. My dream is to own a little house. I would be set for life if that was to happen.
So I wondered, what's the point of owning multiple villas when you already have one house? Then I asked myself, what's the point of buying several mansions or a ski resort when you're an old man who already have several houses? It's not like you need the room for your kids at that point.
Then I was puzzled: what kind of man buys an island? Sounded familiar, somehow.
That seemed like a lot for one man. And my electric bike would have a hard time competing with that, in this ecological race we seem to find ourselves into.
But I also thought, you know, with that much land I'd make a refuge for animals, a women's shelter, a facility for the disabled or something ecological. He clearly wasn't, so I wasn't sure what he was doing.
Something productive I'm sure.
However, at 77, he clearly wasn't working any longer, so how productive could he be really? He wasn't renting entire planes to go to the office everyday. But the money seemed to be coming in regardless. He was the only man on the top 10 richest men list who was not from the USA.
I thought well, maybe his work is beneficial to the world at least. What's he making? What's his big invention? After all, his business was destroying our national parks and burning animals alive for a reason, right? I was sure his employees were being paid a fortune as well, clearly he could afford it. But what was he selling?
He was selling overpriced clothes, make up, perfumes and watches, apparently. Clearly useful stuff that needed to exist for the world to function.
He'd also bought several news media, an interesting trend among billionaires you'll notice. It doesn't make much money, so I'm sure they do it out of a life long passion for journalism and educating people with facts and valuable informations.
And so, for this useless man selling useless things to buy useless things, money was piling up. And yet, he wanted more, scheming and hiding to pay as little taxes as possible.
Meanwhile, our government says they're sending emergency air conditioning units to hospitals as we speak, so they're on top of things, nothing to worry about. Of course, air conditioning is not sustainable, it accelerates global warming and relies on electricity which relies on nuclear plants which rely on cold water and there's no cold water anymore because of global warming so the nuclear plants stop working and so does electricity and therefore no air conditioning.
Oops, they hadn't thought of that. Who could blame them? They only had 20 years to prepare.
Also they think we should work more hours, stop complaining about heat strokes and recycle our garbage or something.
The one thing they’re certain they can't do, however, is tax the rich more. Not because they're friends with them, no, haha. But because if they do, then the rich will leave France (we'll miss them so very much) and invest in other countries. They might even buy islands in the bahamas and store their money offshore. Oh wait.
I was confused by one thing: those billionaires have children. Don't they care about the world they leave for them? And then I thought about that science fiction scenario I made up as a kid. I loved writing stories. Turns out it's a famous trope: the world goes to shit and the rich remain unaffected. They go on a spaceship and leave this burning planet, they hide in futuristic fortresses, they create bubbles of peace and plants (and air conditioning I'm sure), while the rest of us kill each others for water. It's getting more and more believable now.
A local news outlet just published an article: top 10 French cities to move to to survive the next heat waves.
I'm ending this post with a cool picture of somewhere in France where Bernard Arnault certainly doesn't live. Not as cool as owning an entire hotel, I'm sure, but pretty impressive. 200000 of his compatriotes had to be evacuated because he's having a pissing contest on an ugly boat.
La vie est belle. We used to behead men like him for much less.
