The Insulation Trap
When wealth and power shield one from consequences, it is not merely that one becomes corrupt—it becomes impossible to remain uncorrupted. The absence of meaningful feedback creates a sealed environment where even well-intentioned decisions deteriorate.
The ultra-wealthy do not hear "no." Their mistakes are absorbed by subordinates. Their failures are reframed as strategic pivots. Their tantrums are accommodated rather than confronted. Each layer of insulation adds distance between action and consequence, between intention and outcome.
This is not simply a moral failing of individuals but the inevitable product of systems that concentrate power without corresponding accountability. The problem is structural rather than personal. Even those who begin with aspirations to use their influence beneficially find their moral compass slowly magnetised by the metals of their own empire.
What appears as callousness or cruelty from outside is experienced from within as freedom—the liberty to act without constraint, to shape reality rather than conform to it. Yet this freedom is itself a prison, isolating its inhabitants from the very feedback necessary for wisdom.
The greatest victims of this insulation are not those who suffer its external consequences, but the insulated themselves—doomed to become caricatures of their former selves, surrounded by reflections rather than windows.