Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche

by John Higgs

Concentrations of wealth are not automatically bad things. They are necessary for humanity to create its greatest achievements, such as the construction of cathedrals like Notre-Dame, landing a man on the moon, or the great medical breakthroughs achieved in treating a disease like AIDS. Great wealth can fund orchestras and support the artists whose work now hangs in the Louvre, just as it can build the Louvre itself. Often, however, great wealth is held by people who lack the imagination or empathy to know how to use it. Some of these people are so uninspired that all they can think to do, when they possess more money than they could ever use, is to try and make more. Typically, it does not occur to them to be embarrassed by this. Then there are the situations in which concentrations of wealth are actively harmful to a country. When a system designed to protect concentrations of wealth actively prevents talented, hard-working and creative people across the land from working for the good of the country, and places privileged but clearly mediocre people in important positions instead, the result is a dysfunctional dark comedy.