http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Bu ... 5apr05.htm
"While you're considering the purchase of your own private island with the great wealth you've accumulated, most of the rest of the world languishes in poverty. As if you can live isolated from the rest of the world, these the islands are purchased with the money you've hoarded at the expense of 99% of the planet. It's no mystery that you didn't get this rich by being nice. But is your biggest challenge making sure you get listed on Forbes magazine list of the world's wealthiest people?
Oh, all your friends think you're really swell. The mayor loves you. You're on the board of any number of charitable organizations. But you're not really a member of planet Earth. And if you go outside of your circle of influence, you're a nobody. In fact, you're at a level significantly lower than the lowest because your wealth has come to you by siphoning it off of everyone else. While you're making millions each year, a significant number of people are lucky to be earning $1 per day.
These people who did the work for you are not limited to those in your own community who live at or below the poverty level, but also to those who have no face, no voice and no possible method of dealing with you deceit and trickery. Through the policies of the many free trade agreements, you've prospered at the expense of subsistence farmers in India and the Indigenous Peoples in the highlands of Oaxaca. How do you think your Wal-Mart stock made you so much money? The examples are all in front of your face but you are in complete denial.
Many like you get their money through inheritance, but few of them have anything close to a conscience and are off living on the coast of France, while at the same time owning a house in Berkeley, another in Tahoe and a condo in Florida, each valued well over US$1 million. They are such wonderful people and give lots to charities. But they've forgotten that no matter where they live, they're still on planet Earth and subject to all the same environmental elements that the lowest paid individual is subject to.
One great element to point out here is that the climate is warming and the sea level along with it. In other words, their island is going to do a disappearing act. They don't worry about their children's inheritance because they are wealthy already. The incredibly selfish thing about this is that their children very well may not be able to have their own children because of the pollution created by the corporation by which they got wealthy. But that's the nature of wealth, those who have it are blinded from the truth in an effort to avoid thinking the reality of how they are making all that money.
While you're tallying up the costs of island life, you should consider security. In the U.S., Cadillacs are being armor-plated in droves. At an auto show in Los Angeles, David Ransom, Cadillac manager of professional vehicles said, "If you are going to go global you need to address armoring." (source: AP article 8jan02) Of course on a tiny island one doesn't need a car. But having a spare one on the mainland is a good idea. You'll need secure storage for that car don't forget, as well as a way to get to it ? a boat ? that has some heavy armor as well.
The way the U.S. is producing depleted uranium (DU), it'll be no time at all before DU shells, which are used to penetrate tank armor in Iraq, are on the open market. As far as we know, they are most likely there already. The list of security and protection required by the mega-wealthy has no end ? no end whatsoever. Perhaps all you need is a vacation at a 5-billion-star hotel. Go ahead, you deserve it, right?
Whatever your answer might be, the bottom line is that it's going to be quite lonely on your island. And remember, there'll be no oil left. Even if you can grow your own crops, the lack of oil nixes your desalinization plant too, old boy. Find a solution for that and there'll be an infinite number of subsequent problems that will come at you so fast that your head will spin.
Eventually you might even come to the difficult conclusion that your own corporate mentality has been the root cause of your problems in the first place. You just can't deal with reality so you continually created your own. Oh well. . . "