Mayukh Saha

Every spring, nurseries fill their lots with the same reliable crowd-pleasers – fast growers, heavy bloomers, things that look great on the tag and get loaded into the car before anyone asks too many questions. A tree feels like an investment in the future of your yard. It’s supposed to be. But some trees are an investment in about three years of beauty followed by decades of damage, cleanup, structural headaches, and ecological fallout that no amount of weekend gardening will fix.

The gap between the very wealthy and everyone else has always existed. What’s changed is how visible – and how deliberate – the separation has become. It’s no longer just about what you can buy. It’s about which world you inhabit, which systems you use, and how rarely those worlds intersect with the one most of us move through every day. The ultra-rich are not simply living better versions of ordinary life. They are opting out of ordinary life altogether, piece by piece, institution by institution.