The rich can’t buy their way out of death, but they can certainly postpone it for a while. All of the pure food and expensive healthcare and personal trainers that money can buy do indeed keep the wealthy breathing longer, on average, than the rest of us. Yet it is not death itself that is the great equalizer; it is the fear of death. That is the thing that the highest piles of money cannot safeguard against.
The futility of all of those meticulous attempts to maximize lifespan is revealed by death’s approach. Much of the behavior of the world’s wealthiest people can be understood as a pitiful attempt to stave off something that is unstoppable, like a person throwing their hands up to stop an oncoming freight train. For all of us languishing in the masses of regular-folkdom, this is our consolation: we cannot match the world’s greatest fortunes, but we can take solace in the knowledge that they are being wasted on mankind’s oldest folly.
