Asklemmy

Rich people don't buy those things, like jets and infrastructure. They own companies that buy those things.

I think that for an individual rich person, their personal purchases are still within the million dollar range. Luxury doesn't come from a single purchase. It's the cost of upkeep that really separates rich from poor.

One thing that shocked me is the price of getting an elevator in a house. It easily costs as much as a small house, but it's the maintenance that is gross. It can cost about the same as a full time employee just to own one. It makes sense in a tall apartment building where the elevator is in constant use by many people, but for rich people who are never home and only use it maybe once a day, it's ridiculously expensive to pay that much just to not walk a stair.

A social network: $44 billion

Roads.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/23cpr/appendixa.cfm

Roads have an unbelievable cost when you really start to put the numbers together. A lane mile of a new interstate on rolling terrain costs 6.2 million in 2025 $. Keep in mind that is only a lane mile, so for 2 lanes in each direction, it's $25 million per mile. Multiply that by the 49k miles of interstate, and you have a (super rough) estimate cost of 1.2 trillion to construct it today. Even resurfacing those roads is ~1/10 the cost, which is still a lot of money.

Ignoring interstates and looking at really run of the mill arterial is still staggering.

Picking a random square farming county, McPherson county, KS is an easy example. It is 30 miles by 30 miles, with a paved arterial every mile (ignoring towns). Thats 3600 lane miles. At $3.6 million per lane mile, that's ~$13 billion to costruct the roads in a county with a population of 30,000, or $432,000 per person.

The telling thing about these kind of questions isn't so much how much does a mega yacht cost or something but its that those are the things people are picking out because they are visible.

The invisible stuff or the things that go along with these huge purchases are often times not that far off in price from the initial purchase.

The stone slabs in these mega house kitchens cost as much as some houses, the earrings bought and worn once at an event could pay for your whole family to go to college, the custom shoes they wear have their own rooms and cost as much as a car.

What do you think the electric bill for a 20,000 sqft house is? Do you think the owner cares what that impact is monetarily or on the climate? If they do solar, how much do you think that setup cost? Do you think the morality of these purchases ever crosses their minds?

I grew up wanting a fast car and lots of powersports toys, now that I am in a position to afford some (small amount) of that, I find myself thinking more that its not right to spend on those kind of activities now due to the impact on the environment. I am leaning more and more towards becoming a vegetarian because of how the food industry impacts the lives of the people and animals it uses. Do the mega wealthy or even the top 30% think about that when they spend their money? Completely ignoring the aspect of how they got their money which is a whole other thing in and of itself.

On topic I think - sometimes I am looking at clothing or furniture and something wildly expensive will come across my screen, like this:

https://www.dwr.com/living-sofas/crystal-lounge-sofa-three-seater/2589749-2.html?lang=en_US

And I can't figure out who the market is for that. If I had 30 grand budget for a couch, I would have something custom made. Same with the clothes. Who is buying the hyper- expensive ready to wear? I would have things made.

Private jet aircraft. They are very expensive to buy (say from US$ 5 to 70 million), but also shockingly expensive to operate. It's hard to put an exact number to operation costs since it's a mix of fixed and variable costs, but a fancy jet like a G650 is likely gonna be a few million a year in op costs (fuel, maintenance, management, crew salaries. training, hangar fees, facility fees, and so on. Also, few people actually buy aircraft directly. Rather they pay a management company to set up an ownership entity that owns and manages the aircraft for you.

It's tempting to think of a jet as a vehicle, but really it's more like paying people to do all the work and waiting for you so that the time you spend waiting is as minimal as possible. When most people fly, you buy a ticket, you book a ride to the airport, you go through security, customs, immigration, ticketing, baggage handling, and so on. Then you wait to board, wait for everyone else to board, wait for other planes to take off, maybe fly to a hub location enroute to your destination, and so on. If you're in a plane like a G650, you pay other people to do all of this for you so that you can show up to a plane that's fueled and ready to go, with the cabin AC at the temp you like, and your cocktail already poured sitting at the table by your seat. You get in, they start the roll.

It's lavish, opulent, and wasteful in the extreme, but still a damn nice way to travel.

Buying an island:

https://www.privateislandsonline.com/ lists many islands. They're between about $100,000 and $75,000,000 (some lower-end ones are undeveloped and just trees), most seem to sit in the millions range. There are also renting options but prices aren't public.

This advertisement blog post shows similar prices: https://www.jamesedition.com/stories/real-estate/how-much-does-a-private-island-cost/

Infrastructure is generally very expensive. Buildings, tunnels, or look the Tokyo Resilience Project that’s going to cost +100 billion.

Yachts. They go for 600 million dollars and maybe more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azzam_(2013_yacht)

For shits and giggles I would build out custom helicopters at sites like this;

https://www.hillhelicopters.com/configurator/0

typically they end cost would be 1.5 million.

Data centers cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Now imagine building a data center for some stupid fad tech, then when you’re done and ready to bring it up, everyone has moved on from the fad.

Oh and that figure doesn’t include the actual servers themselves. Considering my two production quality rack mount servers were about $5,000 each, if you put 20,000 of those in your data center (a very small amount, but the kind of servers in the same data center vary wildly, so I’m thinking a fleet of these would be only part of the data center), that’d be another $100,000,000.

Honestly at these days a nice new car is around 40k. Buying any car new is a huge luxury.
But if yo want to go the hypercar market can be really insane. Here is an article with cars and prices.

I know someone who genuinely considered buying a submarine

Mega-yachts.

Here is a yacht buying/selling website with a filter for mega-yachts: https://www.yachtworld.com/boats-for-sale/type-power/class-power-mega/

The most expensive ones listed there are in the lower hundreds of millions (US$). I didn't check if these were new or used. The smallest ones I would start to call mega-yachts were mid-to-upper hundred of thousands.

[image of the most expensive ones]

There's also this calculator site for the purchase annual operating expenses of superyachts: https://www.luxyachts.com/yacht-cost-calculator

DIY race car, street legal. ~$55k for the base car, $30k for engine and transmission. Then add all the rest for things like tires ($2k) and whatever further refinements you’d want as an owner. All told, probably $110k DIY minimum. Play with your choices here. Cheaper than any modern supercar, even the used ones.

The most expensive thing ever built and maintained is the International Space Station. At $160B over its lifetime, the ISS is a model for the excessively wealthy.

True, it is not primed for self-sustaining flight, and the quarters are very cramped, but a space-faring über-rich individual has to have a Plan B in case they're not on the same continent as one of their "end of days" bunkers. Those start at $1 million and can run upwards of $300 million.

About the same time as the first private space station comes into service, we will also find that the rocket and tandem-independent space shuttle will also be feasible. Necessity is the mother of invention.