Conn. Home 20-Times Larger Than Average
1st September 2007
Read it. There appears to be quite a bit of envy in all this coverage of unusually large houses. You can almost hear the sneer.
But the Hartford-based businessman, who plans to vacate a comparatively tiny 8,900-square-foot home when he moves, doesn’t want too many people to know about it. He refused an interview and had a freelance photographer seeking permission to photograph the house for The Associated Press cited for trespassing.
I’d probably do the same. Guess “privacy rights” only belong to people wanting to kill their unborn babies.
But later in the article we find out what’s behind it:
Some question the morality of building a private home that large.
“Do you actually need to have that amount of space to live a good life?” said Susan A. Eisenhandler, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut. “There are homeless people. There are impoverished people. There are serious social concerns, and we’re not addressing that.”
In other words “Shame on you for not spending your money on what we think you ought to be spending it on rather than what you think you ought to be spending it on.” Does it surprise you that this is a sociology professor? How is it this guy’s fault that there are homeless people, and whence comes his obligation to spend money that he earned on such useless garbage? Last time I looked, sociology professors made pretty good money for not much in the way of useful work — how much of her paycheck (and book royalties) is she contributing to these homeless and impoverished people, if she’s so concerned? I daresay it isn’t very much. She’d rather spend other people’s money.