August 31, 2025 • 28 mins
Billionaire Hoarding: A Psychological Exploration
In this episode of PsyberSpace, host Leslie Poston explores the provocative idea that billionaire behavior may resemble a form of hoarding disorder, typically seen in people unable to part with physical objects. The discussion gets into the clinical understanding of hoarding, its evolutionary basis, and how similar psychological patterns might drive compulsive accumulation of wealth, power, and resources at a global scale. The episode critically examines society's celebration and protection of billionaire behaviors as opposed to recognizing their potentially pathological impact, drawing parallels between individual and systemic hoarding while proposing cultural and policy interventions. It challenges listeners to rethink how extreme wealth concentration affects democracy and social stability.
00:00 Introduction: Billionaires and Hoarding
02:39 Understanding Hoarding Disorder
05:06 Evolutionary Roots of Hoarding
06:30 Financial Hoarding: Billionaires and Beyond
09:21 Personality Traits and Hoarding
12:13 Cultural and Systemic Implications
16:56 Interventions and Solutions
25:19 Conclusion: The Path Forward
Research
Bouissac, P. (2006). Hoarding behavior: A better evolutionary account of money psychology? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 181 - 182.
Canale, A., & Klontz, B. (2013). Hoarding Disorder: It’s More Than Just an Obsession - Implications for Financial Therapists and Planners. Journal of Financial Therapy, 4 (2) 4.
Coupé, T., & Monteiro, P. (2015). The charity of the extremely wealthy. Economic IInquiry, 54(2)
Damecour, C., & Charron, M. (1998). Hoarding: a symptom, not a syndrome. The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 59 5, 267-72; quiz 273 .
Davidson, E.J., Dozier, M.E., Pittman, J.O.E. et al. Recent Advances in Research on Hoarding. Curr Psychiatry Rep 21, 91 (2019)
Dozier, M.E., & DeShong, H.L. (2022). The association between personality traits and hoarding behaviors. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 35, 53 - 58.
Frost, R. O., & Steketee, G. (2010). Stuff: Compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Frost, R. O., Steketee, G., & Williams, L. (2000). Hoarding: A community health problem. Health & Social Care in the Community, 8(4), 229–234.
Frost, R. O., Tolin, D. F., & Maltby, N. (2010). Insight-related challenges in the treatment of hoarding disorder. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 17(4), 404-413.
Geddes, B., Wright, J., & Frantz, E. (2018). How dictatorships work: Power, personalization, and collapse. Cambridge University Press.
Haugerud, A. (2013). No Billionaire Left Behind: Satirical Activism in America. Stanford University Press.
LaSalle-Ricci, V. H., Arnkoff, D. B., Glass, C. R., Crawley, S. A., Ronquillo, J. G., & Murphy, D. L. (2006). The hoarding dimension of OCD: Psychological comorbidity and the five-factor personality model. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(10), 1503–1512.
Mataix-Cols, D., Frost, R. O., Pertusa, A., Clark, L. A., Saxena, S., Leckman, J. F., Stein, D. J., Matsunaga, H., & Wilhelm, S. (2010). Hoarding disorder: A new diagnosis for DSM-5? Depression and Anxiety, 27(6), 556–572.
Mataix-Cols, D., Pertusa, A. , & Snowdon, J. (2011). Neuropsychological and neural correlates of hoarding: a practice-friendly review. Journal of Clinical Psychology, (5), 467-76.
Mataix-Cols, D., & de la Cruz, L. F. (2018). Hoarding disorder has finally arrived, but many challenges lie ahead. World Psychiatry. 17(2):224-225
Peebles, G. (2020). Hoarding and saving. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Press.
Raines, A. M., Boffa, J. W., Allan, N. P., Short, N. A., & Schmidt, N. B. (2015). Hoarding and eating pathology: The mediating role of emotion regulation. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 57, 29-35.
Rose, P. (2007). Mediators of the association between narcissism and compulsive buying: The roles of materialism and impulse control. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 21(4), 576–581.
Steketee, G., & Frost, R. O. (2003). Compulsive hoarding: Current status of the research. Clinical Psychology Review, 23(7), 905–927.
Svolik, M. W. (2008). Authoritarian reversals and democratic consolidation. American Political Science Review, 102(2), 153–168.
Timpano, K. R., & Schmidt, N. B. (2013). The relationship between self-control deficits and hoarding: A multimethod investigation across three studies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 122(1), 13–25.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Leslie Poston (00:12):
Welcome back to PsyberSpace I'm your host,
Leslie Poston. Today, we'rediving into a question that's
going to make some peopleuncomfortable. What if
billionaires aren't just greedybut disordered? When most people
hear hoarding, they picturehouses so stuffed with
newspapers, broken appliances,and random junk that you
(00:35):
literally can't walk through thefront door.
Maybe you've seen those realityshows where professional
organizers in hazmat suitsshovel through decades of
accumulated debris while familymembers sob in the driveway.
It's dramatic television, butit's also a real psychiatric
condition that affects millionsof people. What gets interesting
(00:58):
from a psychological perspectiveis that hoarding isn't really
about the stuff. It's about theinability to let go, the
emotional attachment topossessions, and the deep
psychological distress thatcomes from trying to discard
anything. And when you startthinking about it that way as a
(01:19):
pattern of compulsiveaccumulation and pathological
resistance to release, suddenlybillionaires, oligarchs, and
tech moguls start looking lesslike successful entrepreneurs
and more like a sociallysanctioned subset of hoarders.
They don't pile up newspapers intheir living rooms. They pile up
billions of dollars, politicalinfluence, data, patents,
(01:41):
housing, and sometimes entirecountries. And society not only
tolerates this behavior, itcelebrates it, rewards it, and
builds entire economic systemsaround protecting billionaires'
right to keep accumulatingindefinitely. So today, we're
going to explore what hoardingactually is from a clinical
(02:02):
perspective, why it developed asan adaptive human behavior, and
what happens when those samepsychological patterns scale up
from cluttered apartments toglobal power structures. We'll
look at the personality traitsthat drive compulsive
accumulation, examine how ourculture enables and rewards
pathological hoarding when ithappens at the billionaire
(02:25):
level, and ask the uncomfortablequestion, if we intervene when
someone's hoarding makes theirhouse unlivable, what should we
do when billionaire hoardingmakes entire societies unstable?
Let's start with what hoardingactually is. For decades,
researchers classified hoardingas a subset of obsessive
(02:47):
compulsive disorder. That madeintuitive sense. People with OCD
have intrusive thoughts andcompulsive behaviors, and
hoarding certainly lookscompulsive. But as scientists
dug deeper into the psychology,they realized hoarding has its
own distinct patterns.
The current clinicalunderstanding recognizes
(03:08):
hoarding as a separate disorderwith unique neurological
signatures and treatmentchallenges. People who hoard
aren't just messy or lazy orunable to throw things away.
They have fundamentaldifferences in how their brains
process attachment, decisionmaking, and emotional
regulation. Think of it thisway. When a typical person looks
(03:30):
at an old sweater that theyhaven't worn in five years, they
see fabric that's taking upcloset space.
When someone with hoardingdisorder looks at the same
sweater, they see distinctmemories and identity, security,
and potential. Discarding itdoesn't feel like cleaning up.
It feels like losing a piece ofthemselves, abandoning future
(03:52):
possibilities, or violating somedeep sense of responsibility to
the object. This isn't aboutbeing sentimental or nostalgic.
It's about profound cognitiveand emotional differences in how
possessions are perceived andvalued.
Research shows that people withhoarding disorder have
difficulty with informationprocessing, distorted beliefs
(04:16):
about the meaning and importanceof their possessions, and and
intense distress when faced withdiscarding decisions. What makes
hoarding so stubborn as apsychological condition is that
it often begins in adolescence,and it tends to run-in families.
There are clear genetic anddevelopmental components. People
(04:36):
with hoarding disorderfrequently struggle with self
control, emotional regulation,and attachment patterns that
develop early in life.Traditional OCD medications
don't work well for treatinghoarding, and even cognitive
behavioral therapy shows mixedresults because many people with
the condition have poor insightinto how their behavior is
(04:58):
affecting their lives.
The important part that connectsto our broader discussion is
that hoarded isn't purelypathological. There are
evolutionary reasons why humanbrains developed these
attachment and accumulationpatterns. From an evolutionary
perspective, hoarding wasincredibly adaptive behavior. If
(05:21):
you lived in an environmentwhere resources were scarce and
unpredictable, stockpilingeverything you could find might
literally be the differencebetween surviving the winter or
dying of starvation. Imagineyou're an early human.
Food spoils, tools break,weather changes, and predators
attack. The emotional drive tohold on to resources and to feel
(05:43):
genuine distress at the idea ofthrowing away something that
might be useful later wasn'tirrational. It was survival
programming. The people whocouldn't bear to waste anything
were the ones whose descendantslived to pass on those genes.
The psychological attachment topossessions that we now call
pathological may have once beenprotective.
(06:04):
That anxiety that you feel whensomeone suggests throwing away
your collection of potentiallyuseful containers, that's your
ancient brain trying to keep youalive in a world of scarcity.
The problem is that those sameneural pathways are now
operating in a world ofunprecedented abundance. The
survival instinct to never throwaway anything useful becomes
(06:25):
maladapted when you can replacealmost any object quickly and
cheaply. This gets reallyinteresting when the thing being
hoarded isn't mammoth meat orfirewood, but abstract resources
like money, data, or politicalpower. Those ancient hoarding
instincts didn't just disappear.
They scaled up. And when theyscale up to the level of
(06:47):
billionaires and global elites,the consequences shift from
cluttered living rooms todestabilized societies. The
psychological patterns thatdrive someone to fill their
house with newspapers areremarkably similar to the
patterns that drive someone toaccumulate billions of dollars
that they can never possiblyspend. Both involve emotional
(07:10):
attachment to resources,difficulty with discarding or
redistributing, and deep anxietyabout future scarcity despite
current abundance. Recentanthropological research has
started exploring theconnections between traditional
hoarding and financial hoarding.
The same people who struggle tothrow away physical objects
(07:31):
often show different patiencepatterns for money versus
consumables. They are morewilling to wait for monetary
rewards to grow, to let wealthaccumulate indefinitely, but
they feel urgency aboutacquiring and keeping physical
items. This distinction iscrucial for understanding
billionaire psychology. Physicalhoarding has natural limits
(07:54):
because objects take up space,decay over time, and create
obvious problems when theyaccumulate beyond reasonable
levels. But money is abstract,frictionless, and infinitely
accumulative.
It doesn't rot. It doesn'tcreate health hazards, and it
doesn't force you out of yourhome. For someone with hoarding
(08:14):
tendencies, money is the perfectobject of attachment. It never
forces the painful discardingdecisions that physical
possessions eventually demand.You can accumulate billions of
dollars without your neighborscalling adult protective
services or your family stagingan intervention.
And the kicker is that societyrewards financial hoarding. The
(08:36):
same behaviors that we recognizeas pathological when they
involve physical objects arecelebrated as genius, ambition,
and success when they involvewealth accumulation. We don't
see Jeff Bezos' net worth as amanifestation of compulsive
hoarding. We see it as evidenceof business acumen. But looking
(08:58):
from a psychologicalperspective, the patterns are
strikingly similar.
The difficulty with letting go,the emotional attachment to
accumulation, the resistance toredistribution, the anxiety
about future scarcity despitemassive current abundance, These
are all textbook hoardingbehaviors scaled up to a global
(09:18):
level. So what kind of persondevelops these extreme hoarding
patterns? The research onhoarding disorder reveals some
consistent personality profilesthat become very interesting
when you start thinking aboutbillionaires and oligarchs.
People with hoarding disordertend to score higher on
(09:40):
neuroticism. They experiencemore anxiety, emotional
instability, and stress, andthey score lower on
conscientiousness.
They struggle with organization,follow through, and impulse
control. That's already avolatile psychological
combination, high anxiety pairedwith poor self regulation. Now
(10:00):
layer narcissism onto thatfoundation. Research shows clear
connections between narcissisticpersonality traits and
compulsive acquisitionbehaviors. We dug deeper into
this on a previous episode aboutbillionaire brains, but let's
talk a little about it now.
Narcissism involves distortedself concepts, grandiose
(10:23):
thinking, and difficulty withempathy, all traits that can
amplify hoarding tendencies.When you believe you're
fundamentally superior to otherpeople, it becomes easier to
justify keeping resources thatothers might need. Narcissistic
hoarders don't just accumulateobjects for money or security.
(10:44):
They accumulate them asextensions of their identity,
proof of their specialness, andas tools for maintaining their
sense of superiority. Thepossessions become part of a
grandiose self image, and theycan't tolerate reduction or
redistribution.
Think about the tech moguls andbillionaire entrepreneurs who
(11:04):
dominate our cultural landscape.The personality traits that help
them succeed in competitiveindustries, grandiosity,
ruthless focus, detachment fromordinary human concerns, overlap
uncomfortably with the traits wesee in hoarding disorder. When
someone like Elon Musk talksabout needing to colonize Mars
(11:26):
or acquires Twitter to, quote,save free speech, when Jeff
Bezos insists on stockpiling,not just wealth, but data,
logistics networks, and globalinfrastructures, the line
between vision and compulsionstarts to blur. Are they driven
by genuine innovation and socialbenefit or by the same
(11:48):
psychological inability to letgo that makes a hoarder keep
forty years of NationalGeographic magazines. From the
outside, it's often impossibleto tell the difference.
But the behavioral patterns, theendless accumulation, the
resistance to redistribution,the anxiety about losing control
over resources, they're allremarkably consistent. The
(12:14):
hoarding psychology doesn't stopat money. It extends to power,
influence, information, and evengovernance itself. Political
scientists have documented howauthoritarian leaders exhibit
classic hoarding patterns intheir approach to power
consolidation. Dictators andoligarchs stockpile authority at
(12:35):
the expense of democraticinstitutions, creating the same
kind of systemic dysfunctionthat physical hoarders create in
their homes.
They can't bear to delegate realpower, so they resist any
reduction in their control, andthey experience genuine distress
when faced with the possibilityof losing influence. The
(12:56):
psychological attachment topower becomes so strong that
they're willing to destabilizeentire countries rather than
allow for normal transitions ofauthority. We see this pattern
playing out in real time withtech elites that hoard data,
intellectual property, andinnovation itself. Companies buy
competitors not to expand orimprove services, but to
(13:19):
eliminate threats to theirmarket dominance. They acquire
patents to prevent others fromdeveloping alternative
technologies.
They collect user data farbeyond what they could ever
analyze or monetize simplybecause having it seems safer
than not having it. This is ahoarding at the level of human
(13:39):
progress. Instead of allowinginnovation to flow freely
through markets and communities,a small number of individuals
and corporations accumulate thetools of technological
advancement and keep them lockedaway from potential competitors.
The same psychological inabilityto let go that makes someone
(14:00):
keep broken electronics just incase scales up to keeping
breakthrough technologies offthe market to protect existing
profit streams. And just likeindividual hoarding, this
systemic hoarding createsserious problems for everyone
else.
When too much wealth, power, andinnovation gets concentrated in
(14:20):
too few hands, the entire systembecomes unstable and
dysfunctional. We talked a bitearlier about the psychology
being really twisted that whenan individual hoarder fills
their house with junk, werecognize it as a pathology and
intervene. But when billionairesexhibit the same patterns, we
(14:41):
celebrate them. Creatingmagazine covers featuring their
latest acquisitions or buildingbusiness schools around studying
their strategies or invitingthem to give TED talks about
innovation and entrepreneurship.Part of this cultural blindness
comes from philanthropy, whichfunctions as a kind of
reputation laundering system forextreme wealth hoarding.
(15:04):
Billionaires give away smallfractions of their accumulated
resources, often with stringsattached that maintain their
control, and society treats thisas evidence of their benevolence
rather than their pathology.It's like praising a hoarder for
donating a few boxes to goodwillwhile ignoring the fact that
their house is stilluninhabitable. Another part
(15:26):
comes from our culturalnarratives about success and
ambition. The American dreamteaches us that accumulation
equals achievement, that more isalways better, and that the
ability to acquire resourcesdemonstrates personal worth. We
tell rags to riches stories inThe United States that frame
compulsive wealth accumulationas heroic rather than
(15:49):
concerning.
Media coverage reinforces thesedistortions by treating
billionaire behavior asinherently newsworthy and
admirable. Every rocket launch,art purchase, and social media
acquisition gets covered as ifthese individuals are public
benefactors rather than peopleexhibiting concerning patterns
(16:09):
of compulsive accumulation andcontrol. Meanwhile, the actual
psychology driving thesebehaviors remains invisible. We
don't see the anxiety,compulsion, the inability to
find satisfaction through normalredistribution and share. We
don't recognize the pathologicalattachment patterns or the
distorted thinking that makessomeone believe they need more
(16:32):
resources than entire nationsconsume.
This cultural enabling isdangerous because it creates
social permission forpathological behavior. When
society celebrates and rewardsextreme hoarding, it removes the
natural feedback mechanisms thatmight otherwise encourage more
balanced relationships withresources and power. If we took
(16:58):
billionaire hoarding seriouslyas a psychological and social
problem, what would interventionlook like? When we treat
individual hoarders, we usecognitive behavioral therapy to
help them develop healthierthinking patterns around
possessions. We createstructured plans for gradual
reduction of accumulated items,and we build support systems
(17:20):
that encourage sustainablechanges in behavior.
At the societal level, wealready have most of the tools
we need for similarinterventions. Progressive
taxation functions like assisteddecision making for people who
can't voluntarily redistributetheir accumulated wealth. Wealth
caps would provide clearboundaries for healthy
(17:40):
accumulation levels, similar tohow we set limits for hoarders
about how much stuff they canreasonably keep. Campaign
finance reform would break thecycle of using accumulated
resources to acquire morepolitical power, addressing the
compulsive aspect of thehoarding pattern. Antitrust
enforcement would function likethe organized clean out
(18:01):
interventions that familiessometimes stage for severe
hoarders.
When companies accumulate toomuch market power or control
over innovation, breaking themup creates space for healthier
economic ecosystems to develop.The essential reframe here is
that these policies aren'tpunishment. They're harm
reduction. Just as therapy forindividual hoarders isn't about
(18:24):
cruelty or taking away someone'sbelongings out of spite,
systemic interventions forwealth hoarding would be about
creating more livable socialenvironments for everyone. We
already have extensive researchshowing that extreme wealth
concentration underminespolitical equality, distorts
democratic institutions, andcreates economic instability at
(18:46):
scale.
These aren't abstract problems.They're evidence that
accumulating resources beyondcertain levels becomes actively
harmful to social functioning,just like accumulated
possessions beyond certainlevels becomes harmful to
individual functioning. Thechallenge is that just as
individual hoarders often havepoor insight into how their
(19:07):
behavior affects themselves andothers, billionaire hoarders
seem genuinely unable torecognize the systemic damage
their accumulation patternscause. They experience policy
proposals for wealthredistribution as threats to
their identity and security,triggering the same
psychological distress thathoarders feel when asked to
throw away their possessions.Fortunately, people aren't
(19:34):
waiting for policy changes toaddress these problems.
Cultural resistance is alreadyemerging that reframes
billionaire behavior in morepsychologically accurate ways.
Satirical activism has proveneffective at this reframing
work. Groups like the oldBillionaires for Bush, Street
Theater Troupe used parodies andperformance to highlight the
(19:56):
absurdity of extreme wealthaccumulation. Current social
media culture, especially amongyounger generations, regularly
mocks tech moguls and oligarchsfor their compulsive acquisition
of rockets, yachts, social mediaplatforms, and political
influence. This satiricalapproach does exactly what
clinical psychology does.
(20:17):
It takes behaviors that havebeen normalized or celebrated
and relabel them as concerning,problematic, or pathological.
Memes about billionaire spaceraces aren't just jokes. They're
a cultural diagnosis,recognizing compulsive behavior
patterns and calling them out assuch. However, revisit our past
(20:37):
episode on the memeification offascism to learn some guardrails
about how to do this.Generational attitudes toward
wealth hoarding are shiftingsignificantly.
Younger people are much morelikely to view extreme wealth
accumulation as evidence ofmoral failure or psychological
dysfunction rather than successor achievement. They're less
(20:59):
impressed by displays ofaccumulated resources and more
concerned about the systemiceffects of wealth concentration.
These cultural changes arecreating the social condition
necessary for more systematicintervention. When enough people
recognize pathological behavioras pathological rather than
admirable, it becomespolitically possible to
(21:23):
implement the kinds of policiesthat could actually address
wealth hoarding at scale. One ofthe core challenges to treating
any hoarding disorder is helpingpeople develop alternative
sources of security and identitythat don't depend on
accumulation.
For individual hoarders, thismight mean building social
(21:44):
connections, developing newhobbies, or finding ways to feel
valuable that don't requirekeeping every potentially useful
object. For billionairehoarders, the parallel
intervention might involvecultural changes that redefine
success, achievement, andsecurity in ways that don't
require endless accumulation ofresources. Instead of
(22:07):
celebrating people for how muchwealth they can accumulate, we
could celebrate them for howmuch value they create for
others, how effectively theysolve important problems, or how
well they contribute to socialflourishing. And this isn't just
feel good rhetoric. It'spractical psychology.
People with hoarding tendenciesneed alternative ways to meet
(22:28):
their underlying emotionalneeds. If we want billionaires
to develop healthierrelationships with wealth and
power, we need to offer themother paths to the security,
identity, and social recognitionthey're seeking through
accumulation. Some entrepreneursand business leaders have
already started moving in thisdirection, focusing on
sustainable business practices,employee ownership models, and
(22:51):
wealth redistribution as part oftheir core identity rather than
as an afterthought. Theseexamples suggest that it's
possible for people withsignificant resources to find
satisfaction and purpose throughsharing rather than hoarding.
But we can see, especially inThe United States, that some of
the other oligarchs and techbros and billionaires and
(23:12):
political people in power arepushing back against this trend
as hard as they can, fightingagainst DEI initiatives and
other sharing initiatives atcompanies.
These individual examples alsoaren't enough to address the
systemic problems created bywealth concentration. We need
cultural and policy changes thatmake healthier patterns of
(23:34):
resource distribution thedefault rather than the
exception, and we need culturaland policy changes that make the
pushback against redistributionon a systemic level
unacceptable. Ultimately, thequestion of whether billionaire
hoarding is a form of pathologyisn't just academic. It has real
(23:56):
consequences for how democraticsocieties function. When too
much wealth and power getsconcentrated in too few hands,
it undermines the basic premiseof democratic equality that
every person's voice andinterests matter equally in
shaping social decisions.
Research on wealth concentrationconsistently shows that extreme
inequality distorts politicalprocesses, reduces social
(24:19):
mobility, and createsinstability that affects
everyone, even the billionaires.These aren't abstract problems.
They're evidence that certainlevels of resource accumulation
become actively harmful tosocial functioning. If we can
recognize that individualhoarding becomes pathological
when it makes homes unlivable,we should be able to recognize
(24:40):
that wealth hoarding becomespathological when it makes
society unlivable. These sameprinciples that guide
intervention for individualhoarders protecting health,
safety, and functioning shouldapply to systemic interventions
for wealth hoarding.
This doesn't mean that allwealth accumulation is
pathological or that successfulentrepreneurs are automatically
(25:02):
disordered. It means that thereare levels of accumulation that
cross the line from healthyachievement into compulsive
hoarding and that societies havelegitimate interest in
preventing those pathologicalpatterns from destabilizing
democratic institutions. Wheredoes all this leave us? Hoarding
(25:22):
disorder teaches us thatadaptive instincts can become
destructive when they spiralbeyond healthy limits. At the
individual level, this createscluttered homes that become
unsafe to live in.
At the billionaire level, itcreates cluttered political and
economic systems that becomeunsafe for everyone. The
parallel is not perfect, butit's illuminating. Both
(25:43):
individual hoarders andbillionaire hoarders exhibit
similar psychological patterns.Difficulty with letting go,
emotional attachment toaccumulated resources, anxiety
about future scarcity despitepresent abundance, and
resistance to outsideintervention. Both create
problems that extend far beyondtheir immediate environment, and
(26:04):
both require intervention thataddresses underlying
psychological patterns whilealso managing the practical
consequences of accumulateddysfunction.
The difference is that wealready have established
frameworks for recognizing andtreating individual hoarding,
but we're still learning how toaddress hoarding that happens at
the scale of nations and globalsystems. We know what healthy
(26:27):
relationships with possessionslook like for individuals, but
we're still figuring out whathealthy relationships with
wealth and power could look likefor societies. What we do know
is that the current patternsaren't sustainable. When a small
number of people accumulateresources far beyond what they
could ever personally use whilemillions of others struggle to
(26:48):
meet basic needs, something isfundamentally broken in how we
organize social life. Whether wecall it hoarding, inequality,
oligarchy, or plutocracy, theresult is the same.
Systems that work well for a fewpeople with compulsive
accumulation patterns and poorlyfor everyone else. If hoarding
(27:09):
in a house makes it unsafe tolive in, what happens when
hoarding reaches the scale ofnations? We're all finding out
in real time. And just as we'velearned to intervene when
individual hoarding threatenshealth and safety, we must learn
to intervene when systemichoarding threatens democracy and
social stability. The good newsis that we already have most of
(27:30):
the tools we need.
The question is whether we'lldevelop the collective will to
use them or whether we'llcontinue celebrating
pathological accumulationpatterns until they make our
shared social home as unlivableas any cluttered house on a
reality TV show. Thanks forjoining me for this week's
episode of PsyberSpace. I'm yourhost, Leslie Poston, signing off
(27:51):
and telling you stay curious andpay attention to what's
happening with people who arehoarding and accumulating things
around you to the detriment ofothers. And don't forget to
subscribe so you never miss aweek and send this to a friend
if you think they'd enjoy it.
Welcome back to PsyberSpace I'm your host,
Leslie Poston. Today, we'rediving into a question that's
going to make some peopleuncomfortable. What if
billionaires aren't just greedybut disordered? When most people
hear hoarding, they picturehouses so stuffed with
newspapers, broken appliances,and random junk that you
(00:35):
literally can't walk through thefront door.
Maybe you've seen those realityshows where professional
organizers in hazmat suitsshovel through decades of
accumulated debris while familymembers sob in the driveway.
It's dramatic television, butit's also a real psychiatric
condition that affects millionsof people. What gets interesting
(00:58):
from a psychological perspectiveis that hoarding isn't really
about the stuff. It's about theinability to let go, the
emotional attachment topossessions, and the deep
psychological distress thatcomes from trying to discard
anything. And when you startthinking about it that way as a
(01:19):
pattern of compulsiveaccumulation and pathological
resistance to release, suddenlybillionaires, oligarchs, and
tech moguls start looking lesslike successful entrepreneurs
and more like a sociallysanctioned subset of hoarders.
They don't pile up newspapers intheir living rooms. They pile up
billions of dollars, politicalinfluence, data, patents,
(01:41):
housing, and sometimes entirecountries. And society not only
tolerates this behavior, itcelebrates it, rewards it, and
builds entire economic systemsaround protecting billionaires'
right to keep accumulatingindefinitely. So today, we're
going to explore what hoardingactually is from a clinical
(02:02):
perspective, why it developed asan adaptive human behavior, and
what happens when those samepsychological patterns scale up
from cluttered apartments toglobal power structures. We'll
look at the personality traitsthat drive compulsive
accumulation, examine how ourculture enables and rewards
pathological hoarding when ithappens at the billionaire
(02:25):
level, and ask the uncomfortablequestion, if we intervene when
someone's hoarding makes theirhouse unlivable, what should we
do when billionaire hoardingmakes entire societies unstable?
Let's start with what hoardingactually is. For decades,
researchers classified hoardingas a subset of obsessive
(02:47):
compulsive disorder. That madeintuitive sense. People with OCD
have intrusive thoughts andcompulsive behaviors, and
hoarding certainly lookscompulsive. But as scientists
dug deeper into the psychology,they realized hoarding has its
own distinct patterns.
The current clinicalunderstanding recognizes
(03:08):
hoarding as a separate disorderwith unique neurological
signatures and treatmentchallenges. People who hoard
aren't just messy or lazy orunable to throw things away.
They have fundamentaldifferences in how their brains
process attachment, decisionmaking, and emotional
regulation. Think of it thisway. When a typical person looks
(03:30):
at an old sweater that theyhaven't worn in five years, they
see fabric that's taking upcloset space.
When someone with hoardingdisorder looks at the same
sweater, they see distinctmemories and identity, security,
and potential. Discarding itdoesn't feel like cleaning up.
It feels like losing a piece ofthemselves, abandoning future
(03:52):
possibilities, or violating somedeep sense of responsibility to
the object. This isn't aboutbeing sentimental or nostalgic.
It's about profound cognitiveand emotional differences in how
possessions are perceived andvalued.
Research shows that people withhoarding disorder have
difficulty with informationprocessing, distorted beliefs
(04:16):
about the meaning and importanceof their possessions, and and
intense distress when faced withdiscarding decisions. What makes
hoarding so stubborn as apsychological condition is that
it often begins in adolescence,and it tends to run-in families.
There are clear genetic anddevelopmental components. People
(04:36):
with hoarding disorderfrequently struggle with self
control, emotional regulation,and attachment patterns that
develop early in life.Traditional OCD medications
don't work well for treatinghoarding, and even cognitive
behavioral therapy shows mixedresults because many people with
the condition have poor insightinto how their behavior is
(04:58):
affecting their lives.
The important part that connectsto our broader discussion is
that hoarded isn't purelypathological. There are
evolutionary reasons why humanbrains developed these
attachment and accumulationpatterns. From an evolutionary
perspective, hoarding wasincredibly adaptive behavior. If
(05:21):
you lived in an environmentwhere resources were scarce and
unpredictable, stockpilingeverything you could find might
literally be the differencebetween surviving the winter or
dying of starvation. Imagineyou're an early human.
Food spoils, tools break,weather changes, and predators
attack. The emotional drive tohold on to resources and to feel
(05:43):
genuine distress at the idea ofthrowing away something that
might be useful later wasn'tirrational. It was survival
programming. The people whocouldn't bear to waste anything
were the ones whose descendantslived to pass on those genes.
The psychological attachment topossessions that we now call
pathological may have once beenprotective.
(06:04):
That anxiety that you feel whensomeone suggests throwing away
your collection of potentiallyuseful containers, that's your
ancient brain trying to keep youalive in a world of scarcity.
The problem is that those sameneural pathways are now
operating in a world ofunprecedented abundance. The
survival instinct to never throwaway anything useful becomes
(06:25):
maladapted when you can replacealmost any object quickly and
cheaply. This gets reallyinteresting when the thing being
hoarded isn't mammoth meat orfirewood, but abstract resources
like money, data, or politicalpower. Those ancient hoarding
instincts didn't just disappear.
They scaled up. And when theyscale up to the level of
(06:47):
billionaires and global elites,the consequences shift from
cluttered living rooms todestabilized societies. The
psychological patterns thatdrive someone to fill their
house with newspapers areremarkably similar to the
patterns that drive someone toaccumulate billions of dollars
that they can never possiblyspend. Both involve emotional
(07:10):
attachment to resources,difficulty with discarding or
redistributing, and deep anxietyabout future scarcity despite
current abundance. Recentanthropological research has
started exploring theconnections between traditional
hoarding and financial hoarding.
The same people who struggle tothrow away physical objects
(07:31):
often show different patiencepatterns for money versus
consumables. They are morewilling to wait for monetary
rewards to grow, to let wealthaccumulate indefinitely, but
they feel urgency aboutacquiring and keeping physical
items. This distinction iscrucial for understanding
billionaire psychology. Physicalhoarding has natural limits
(07:54):
because objects take up space,decay over time, and create
obvious problems when theyaccumulate beyond reasonable
levels. But money is abstract,frictionless, and infinitely
accumulative.
It doesn't rot. It doesn'tcreate health hazards, and it
doesn't force you out of yourhome. For someone with hoarding
(08:14):
tendencies, money is the perfectobject of attachment. It never
forces the painful discardingdecisions that physical
possessions eventually demand.You can accumulate billions of
dollars without your neighborscalling adult protective
services or your family stagingan intervention.
And the kicker is that societyrewards financial hoarding. The
(08:36):
same behaviors that we recognizeas pathological when they
involve physical objects arecelebrated as genius, ambition,
and success when they involvewealth accumulation. We don't
see Jeff Bezos' net worth as amanifestation of compulsive
hoarding. We see it as evidenceof business acumen. But looking
(08:58):
from a psychologicalperspective, the patterns are
strikingly similar.
The difficulty with letting go,the emotional attachment to
accumulation, the resistance toredistribution, the anxiety
about future scarcity despitemassive current abundance, These
are all textbook hoardingbehaviors scaled up to a global
(09:18):
level. So what kind of persondevelops these extreme hoarding
patterns? The research onhoarding disorder reveals some
consistent personality profilesthat become very interesting
when you start thinking aboutbillionaires and oligarchs.
People with hoarding disordertend to score higher on
(09:40):
neuroticism. They experiencemore anxiety, emotional
instability, and stress, andthey score lower on
conscientiousness.
They struggle with organization,follow through, and impulse
control. That's already avolatile psychological
combination, high anxiety pairedwith poor self regulation. Now
(10:00):
layer narcissism onto thatfoundation. Research shows clear
connections between narcissisticpersonality traits and
compulsive acquisitionbehaviors. We dug deeper into
this on a previous episode aboutbillionaire brains, but let's
talk a little about it now.
Narcissism involves distortedself concepts, grandiose
(10:23):
thinking, and difficulty withempathy, all traits that can
amplify hoarding tendencies.When you believe you're
fundamentally superior to otherpeople, it becomes easier to
justify keeping resources thatothers might need. Narcissistic
hoarders don't just accumulateobjects for money or security.
(10:44):
They accumulate them asextensions of their identity,
proof of their specialness, andas tools for maintaining their
sense of superiority. Thepossessions become part of a
grandiose self image, and theycan't tolerate reduction or
redistribution.
Think about the tech moguls andbillionaire entrepreneurs who
(11:04):
dominate our cultural landscape.The personality traits that help
them succeed in competitiveindustries, grandiosity,
ruthless focus, detachment fromordinary human concerns, overlap
uncomfortably with the traits wesee in hoarding disorder. When
someone like Elon Musk talksabout needing to colonize Mars
(11:26):
or acquires Twitter to, quote,save free speech, when Jeff
Bezos insists on stockpiling,not just wealth, but data,
logistics networks, and globalinfrastructures, the line
between vision and compulsionstarts to blur. Are they driven
by genuine innovation and socialbenefit or by the same
(11:48):
psychological inability to letgo that makes a hoarder keep
forty years of NationalGeographic magazines. From the
outside, it's often impossibleto tell the difference.
But the behavioral patterns, theendless accumulation, the
resistance to redistribution,the anxiety about losing control
over resources, they're allremarkably consistent. The
(12:14):
hoarding psychology doesn't stopat money. It extends to power,
influence, information, and evengovernance itself. Political
scientists have documented howauthoritarian leaders exhibit
classic hoarding patterns intheir approach to power
consolidation. Dictators andoligarchs stockpile authority at
(12:35):
the expense of democraticinstitutions, creating the same
kind of systemic dysfunctionthat physical hoarders create in
their homes.
They can't bear to delegate realpower, so they resist any
reduction in their control, andthey experience genuine distress
when faced with the possibilityof losing influence. The
(12:56):
psychological attachment topower becomes so strong that
they're willing to destabilizeentire countries rather than
allow for normal transitions ofauthority. We see this pattern
playing out in real time withtech elites that hoard data,
intellectual property, andinnovation itself. Companies buy
competitors not to expand orimprove services, but to
(13:19):
eliminate threats to theirmarket dominance. They acquire
patents to prevent others fromdeveloping alternative
technologies.
They collect user data farbeyond what they could ever
analyze or monetize simplybecause having it seems safer
than not having it. This is ahoarding at the level of human
(13:39):
progress. Instead of allowinginnovation to flow freely
through markets and communities,a small number of individuals
and corporations accumulate thetools of technological
advancement and keep them lockedaway from potential competitors.
The same psychological inabilityto let go that makes someone
(14:00):
keep broken electronics just incase scales up to keeping
breakthrough technologies offthe market to protect existing
profit streams. And just likeindividual hoarding, this
systemic hoarding createsserious problems for everyone
else.
When too much wealth, power, andinnovation gets concentrated in
(14:20):
too few hands, the entire systembecomes unstable and
dysfunctional. We talked a bitearlier about the psychology
being really twisted that whenan individual hoarder fills
their house with junk, werecognize it as a pathology and
intervene. But when billionairesexhibit the same patterns, we
(14:41):
celebrate them. Creatingmagazine covers featuring their
latest acquisitions or buildingbusiness schools around studying
their strategies or invitingthem to give TED talks about
innovation and entrepreneurship.Part of this cultural blindness
comes from philanthropy, whichfunctions as a kind of
reputation laundering system forextreme wealth hoarding.
(15:04):
Billionaires give away smallfractions of their accumulated
resources, often with stringsattached that maintain their
control, and society treats thisas evidence of their benevolence
rather than their pathology.It's like praising a hoarder for
donating a few boxes to goodwillwhile ignoring the fact that
their house is stilluninhabitable. Another part
(15:26):
comes from our culturalnarratives about success and
ambition. The American dreamteaches us that accumulation
equals achievement, that more isalways better, and that the
ability to acquire resourcesdemonstrates personal worth. We
tell rags to riches stories inThe United States that frame
compulsive wealth accumulationas heroic rather than
(15:49):
concerning.
Media coverage reinforces thesedistortions by treating
billionaire behavior asinherently newsworthy and
admirable. Every rocket launch,art purchase, and social media
acquisition gets covered as ifthese individuals are public
benefactors rather than peopleexhibiting concerning patterns
(16:09):
of compulsive accumulation andcontrol. Meanwhile, the actual
psychology driving thesebehaviors remains invisible. We
don't see the anxiety,compulsion, the inability to
find satisfaction through normalredistribution and share. We
don't recognize the pathologicalattachment patterns or the
distorted thinking that makessomeone believe they need more
(16:32):
resources than entire nationsconsume.
This cultural enabling isdangerous because it creates
social permission forpathological behavior. When
society celebrates and rewardsextreme hoarding, it removes the
natural feedback mechanisms thatmight otherwise encourage more
balanced relationships withresources and power. If we took
(16:58):
billionaire hoarding seriouslyas a psychological and social
problem, what would interventionlook like? When we treat
individual hoarders, we usecognitive behavioral therapy to
help them develop healthierthinking patterns around
possessions. We createstructured plans for gradual
reduction of accumulated items,and we build support systems
(17:20):
that encourage sustainablechanges in behavior.
At the societal level, wealready have most of the tools
we need for similarinterventions. Progressive
taxation functions like assisteddecision making for people who
can't voluntarily redistributetheir accumulated wealth. Wealth
caps would provide clearboundaries for healthy
(17:40):
accumulation levels, similar tohow we set limits for hoarders
about how much stuff they canreasonably keep. Campaign
finance reform would break thecycle of using accumulated
resources to acquire morepolitical power, addressing the
compulsive aspect of thehoarding pattern. Antitrust
enforcement would function likethe organized clean out
(18:01):
interventions that familiessometimes stage for severe
hoarders.
When companies accumulate toomuch market power or control
over innovation, breaking themup creates space for healthier
economic ecosystems to develop.The essential reframe here is
that these policies aren'tpunishment. They're harm
reduction. Just as therapy forindividual hoarders isn't about
(18:24):
cruelty or taking away someone'sbelongings out of spite,
systemic interventions forwealth hoarding would be about
creating more livable socialenvironments for everyone. We
already have extensive researchshowing that extreme wealth
concentration underminespolitical equality, distorts
democratic institutions, andcreates economic instability at
(18:46):
scale.
These aren't abstract problems.They're evidence that
accumulating resources beyondcertain levels becomes actively
harmful to social functioning,just like accumulated
possessions beyond certainlevels becomes harmful to
individual functioning. Thechallenge is that just as
individual hoarders often havepoor insight into how their
(19:07):
behavior affects themselves andothers, billionaire hoarders
seem genuinely unable torecognize the systemic damage
their accumulation patternscause. They experience policy
proposals for wealthredistribution as threats to
their identity and security,triggering the same
psychological distress thathoarders feel when asked to
throw away their possessions.Fortunately, people aren't
(19:34):
waiting for policy changes toaddress these problems.
Cultural resistance is alreadyemerging that reframes
billionaire behavior in morepsychologically accurate ways.
Satirical activism has proveneffective at this reframing
work. Groups like the oldBillionaires for Bush, Street
Theater Troupe used parodies andperformance to highlight the
(19:56):
absurdity of extreme wealthaccumulation. Current social
media culture, especially amongyounger generations, regularly
mocks tech moguls and oligarchsfor their compulsive acquisition
of rockets, yachts, social mediaplatforms, and political
influence. This satiricalapproach does exactly what
clinical psychology does.
(20:17):
It takes behaviors that havebeen normalized or celebrated
and relabel them as concerning,problematic, or pathological.
Memes about billionaire spaceraces aren't just jokes. They're
a cultural diagnosis,recognizing compulsive behavior
patterns and calling them out assuch. However, revisit our past
(20:37):
episode on the memeification offascism to learn some guardrails
about how to do this.Generational attitudes toward
wealth hoarding are shiftingsignificantly.
Younger people are much morelikely to view extreme wealth
accumulation as evidence ofmoral failure or psychological
dysfunction rather than successor achievement. They're less
(20:59):
impressed by displays ofaccumulated resources and more
concerned about the systemiceffects of wealth concentration.
These cultural changes arecreating the social condition
necessary for more systematicintervention. When enough people
recognize pathological behavioras pathological rather than
admirable, it becomespolitically possible to
(21:23):
implement the kinds of policiesthat could actually address
wealth hoarding at scale. One ofthe core challenges to treating
any hoarding disorder is helpingpeople develop alternative
sources of security and identitythat don't depend on
accumulation.
For individual hoarders, thismight mean building social
(21:44):
connections, developing newhobbies, or finding ways to feel
valuable that don't requirekeeping every potentially useful
object. For billionairehoarders, the parallel
intervention might involvecultural changes that redefine
success, achievement, andsecurity in ways that don't
require endless accumulation ofresources. Instead of
(22:07):
celebrating people for how muchwealth they can accumulate, we
could celebrate them for howmuch value they create for
others, how effectively theysolve important problems, or how
well they contribute to socialflourishing. And this isn't just
feel good rhetoric. It'spractical psychology.
People with hoarding tendenciesneed alternative ways to meet
(22:28):
their underlying emotionalneeds. If we want billionaires
to develop healthierrelationships with wealth and
power, we need to offer themother paths to the security,
identity, and social recognitionthey're seeking through
accumulation. Some entrepreneursand business leaders have
already started moving in thisdirection, focusing on
sustainable business practices,employee ownership models, and
(22:51):
wealth redistribution as part oftheir core identity rather than
as an afterthought. Theseexamples suggest that it's
possible for people withsignificant resources to find
satisfaction and purpose throughsharing rather than hoarding.
But we can see, especially inThe United States, that some of
the other oligarchs and techbros and billionaires and
(23:12):
political people in power arepushing back against this trend
as hard as they can, fightingagainst DEI initiatives and
other sharing initiatives atcompanies.
These individual examples alsoaren't enough to address the
systemic problems created bywealth concentration. We need
cultural and policy changes thatmake healthier patterns of
(23:34):
resource distribution thedefault rather than the
exception, and we need culturaland policy changes that make the
pushback against redistributionon a systemic level
unacceptable. Ultimately, thequestion of whether billionaire
hoarding is a form of pathologyisn't just academic. It has real
(23:56):
consequences for how democraticsocieties function. When too
much wealth and power getsconcentrated in too few hands,
it undermines the basic premiseof democratic equality that
every person's voice andinterests matter equally in
shaping social decisions.
Research on wealth concentrationconsistently shows that extreme
inequality distorts politicalprocesses, reduces social
(24:19):
mobility, and createsinstability that affects
everyone, even the billionaires.These aren't abstract problems.
They're evidence that certainlevels of resource accumulation
become actively harmful tosocial functioning. If we can
recognize that individualhoarding becomes pathological
when it makes homes unlivable,we should be able to recognize
(24:40):
that wealth hoarding becomespathological when it makes
society unlivable. These sameprinciples that guide
intervention for individualhoarders protecting health,
safety, and functioning shouldapply to systemic interventions
for wealth hoarding.
This doesn't mean that allwealth accumulation is
pathological or that successfulentrepreneurs are automatically
(25:02):
disordered. It means that thereare levels of accumulation that
cross the line from healthyachievement into compulsive
hoarding and that societies havelegitimate interest in
preventing those pathologicalpatterns from destabilizing
democratic institutions. Wheredoes all this leave us? Hoarding
(25:22):
disorder teaches us thatadaptive instincts can become
destructive when they spiralbeyond healthy limits. At the
individual level, this createscluttered homes that become
unsafe to live in.
At the billionaire level, itcreates cluttered political and
economic systems that becomeunsafe for everyone. The
parallel is not perfect, butit's illuminating. Both
(25:43):
individual hoarders andbillionaire hoarders exhibit
similar psychological patterns.Difficulty with letting go,
emotional attachment toaccumulated resources, anxiety
about future scarcity despitepresent abundance, and
resistance to outsideintervention. Both create
problems that extend far beyondtheir immediate environment, and
(26:04):
both require intervention thataddresses underlying
psychological patterns whilealso managing the practical
consequences of accumulateddysfunction.
The difference is that wealready have established
frameworks for recognizing andtreating individual hoarding,
but we're still learning how toaddress hoarding that happens at
the scale of nations and globalsystems. We know what healthy
(26:27):
relationships with possessionslook like for individuals, but
we're still figuring out whathealthy relationships with
wealth and power could look likefor societies. What we do know
is that the current patternsaren't sustainable. When a small
number of people accumulateresources far beyond what they
could ever personally use whilemillions of others struggle to
(26:48):
meet basic needs, something isfundamentally broken in how we
organize social life. Whether wecall it hoarding, inequality,
oligarchy, or plutocracy, theresult is the same.
Systems that work well for a fewpeople with compulsive
accumulation patterns and poorlyfor everyone else. If hoarding
(27:09):
in a house makes it unsafe tolive in, what happens when
hoarding reaches the scale ofnations? We're all finding out
in real time. And just as we'velearned to intervene when
individual hoarding threatenshealth and safety, we must learn
to intervene when systemichoarding threatens democracy and
social stability. The good newsis that we already have most of
(27:30):
the tools we need.
The question is whether we'lldevelop the collective will to
use them or whether we'llcontinue celebrating
pathological accumulationpatterns until they make our
shared social home as unlivableas any cluttered house on a
reality TV show. Thanks forjoining me for this week's
episode of PsyberSpace. I'm yourhost, Leslie Poston, signing off
(27:51):
and telling you stay curious andpay attention to what's
happening with people who arehoarding and accumulating things
around you to the detriment ofothers. And don't forget to
subscribe so you never miss aweek and send this to a friend
if you think they'd enjoy it.
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