I absolutely get the “I’d be a good billionaire” fantasy, it’s something I’ve indulged in every now and then- but for me, it’s really more a personal agency fantasy, just one of many ways I like to imagine having the power to single-handedly make the world better. But… in the end, they ARE fantasies, are just cathartic games for me to play when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed by the world’s bullshit. (And they usually involve giving the money away, hah.) No one should actually have that much individual power. Definitely not me, lol.

It’s the people who defend the exploitative systems that make billionaires possible, for the sake of that fantasy, who really irk me. They’ve genuinely convinced themselves, on some level, that it’s possible to, as you said, keep the billions without being a leech on society. That there’s somehow a chance they could really be that billionaire personally, or even that they’re actually temporarily embarrassed billionaires.