Someone recently cited “tall poppy syndrome” as an illustration of a person who resents someone who has more wealth than they do. The implication being: we shouldn’t resent rich people, but instead celebrate their wealth.

This principle is a good idea! You should be happy when your friends get wealthier, or do better than you, or accomplish tasks that you could never hope to achieve!

…to a point.

Deceptively, “tall poppy syndrome” is used to justify the existence of billionaires, and the analogy breaks down. Being happy if your friends do twice as well as you do, or even ten times, is one thing; but being told to be happy when someone does a thousand times better than you is not reasonable.

A median poppy is around 3 ft (1 m) tall. Say the US median household has $1M in assets (a generous overestimate). A billionaire poppy is not only a little taller than the average, it is a thousand times taller. That’s one poppy in a field of millions that stands 0.6 miles (1 km) tall, all by itself. Jeff Bezos, with a $237B net worth, will be a poppy 711,000 ft tall, or 134 miles (237 km) tall, its flower sitting well inside the darkness of space.

“Tall poppy syndrome” is for feeling happy when your friend gets a promotion. It’s not for when someone exploits ten thousand of your friends to get a thousand times richer than anyone can reasonably hope to be.

• #opinion