Yep, it just was better regulated in the recent past. It wasnt always much better, the great depression era was arguably worse. It only took 20 years and a world war to pull us out.

[–] Elephant0991@lemmy.bleh.au 12 points 11 months ago

Yes! There is this Buddhist saying, supposedly some 2,500 years back, "Even if a whole mountain were made of gold, not double that would be enough to satisfy one person."

You can trace unsatisfied greed in American gazillionaires all the way back to Rockefeller. Before that, you can trace it to Kings, Queens, Emperors, Conquerors. Only external circumstances, societal structures/cultures/etc, keep the greed in check. As soon as we were out of subsistence living, we started collecting, often times just for the sake of collections, sometimes other people's great misery be damned.