What's the point of wealth without world domination?

Rap videos and reality TV would have us believe being ultra wealthy is endless fun, liberally garnished with shiny things and "problems" that the poorer among us can only envy. We have a seemingly insatiable appetite for lists about people whose wealth is recorded in numbers we cannot even wrap our minds around.

The kind of people who could buy Jay Z and Beyoncé many times over and still have change left over for the world's most opulent amphibious Learjet.

One imagines that we think having infinite wealth would allow us the freedom to live our best lives. I am not so sure.

Wealth is all well and good but if the lotto winners, debt-ridden aristocrats and the Illuminati have taught us anything, it's that in most people's hands, wealth breathes life into the gaudy buffoon lying dormant within us.

We begin to think that we are being subtle because the R300 shot of Japanese whisky we bought doesn't call attention to itself the same way a Johnnie Walker Blue does, and that not pronouncing the "T" at the end of Moët is a capital offence, punishable by the most severe of admonitions, a tut of disapproval made beneath one's breath.

If you would like these to be your life problems and cannot afford to crack open a Fabergé in search of a plastic toy then chances are that you like to play the "if I were rich" game. As the name suggests, it's fantasising about having Carlos Slim's bank account. Knowledge of self tells me that I would be dead or in jail within a year of receiving that fateful SMS from my bank.

The problem is that traditional wealthy-folk things would lose appeal very quickly. One expensive handbag is just as adept as another when it comes to carrying a cellphone and there are only so many platinum Lamborghinis with diamond rims one can buy before the whole exercise feels like grocery shopping.

Villainy is the one true refuge for people with a desire to see just how inexhaustible their wealth is, thus my first major purchase would be a subterranean lair, preferably somewhere volcanically active, so that my team of young, nameless scientists can harness the thermal energy from the magma for my nefarious plans.

A large amount of money would be spent on transportation systems that would aid me in the pursuit of world domination, such as luxury submarines, motorbikes that double as jet skis and rocket ships to ferry me to and from my space station.

I would probably be most often spotted cradling a diamond-studded Pangolin and surveying my surroundings with a bionic eye built in my lava-fuelled lab, and my favourite pastime would be cooking up magnificently convoluted ways to bring world governments under my control.

If all of this sounds very James Bond that's because it is. Few people in the worlds of fact or fiction have spent their money as creatively as Bond villains. What is the point of obscene money if all you are going to buy is a fleet of yachts and a Ferrari in every imaginable colour?

Sure they may have sought to be global dictators but the technological nous needed to set up Hugo Drax's space lair or turn a satellite into a giant solar death-ray has applications beyond those uses that humanity could probably benefit from.

Money is a tool. For most people it is a survival tool, an implement to hammer out one's existence, but a tiny sliver of the human population has the chance to use this tool to push the boundaries of human ingenuity without having to worry about re-election. Elon Musk comes to mind but there are far too few of him.

Imagine if the Qataris and Abramovichs of the world spent as much time and money on creating batteries that never needed charging or systems that could upload 12 years' worth of education into a human brain in a matter of hours as they spent on footballers.

Perhaps I don't roll in the right circles and these things do actually happen but the reality-TV stars, rappers and Russian oligarchs have me wondering if, for the most part, acquiring great wealth requires selling your imagination.