I wrote a few weeks ago about that ultra luxury condo in Miami with the car elevator. I'm disappointed with thongs like that because they're so unnecessary. I don't have a problem with rich people buying luxuries;I don't expect them to live in squalor and give everything to the poor. But you can only really spend a few million dollars on yourself. Beyond that, you're just spending money for the sake of spending money, buying things like this Bugatti belt buckle.
I'd like to think that if I were super duper rich, then I'd use my fortune to do positive things for humanity, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Or maybe investing in technologies that are too risky for others, like Elon Musk has.
But if I wasn't that charitable, a reasonable second best use of wealth might be going on in Azerbaijan. Business tycoon Ibrahim Ibrahimov is building a new city on the artificial Khazar islands in the Caspian Sea down the coast from the capital Baku.
If that sounds like something Dubai and the United Arab Emirates would do, there are some similarities. Like the U.A.E., Azerbaijan was a poor, not particularly advanced country off the beaten track, with no reason for the rest of the world to take notice. And then they found oil. And money. And an ego.
Building a city isn't the most altruistic thing you could do with your fortune. But at least it's something that could end up benefiting others. Even if it is just encouraging everyone to learn to spell Azerbaijan (remember, the "i" goes before the "j".) I've always been intrigued by planned cities, but the fact is they often don't work that well. Still, it's an interesting idea, and our timid world perhaps needs people to just try something adventurous.
So I think it would be nice if more of the super-rich did stuff like this. But given the number of super-rich in the world, vs. the number of crazy-audacious construction projects, it looks like there are way more Porsche elevators than island cities. So how do such boring people make so much money?
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