Every rich person in a fiat economy is obsessed with money. Not inventions, not art, not new frontier exploration, but money.

These are the people that in a sound money economy would be funding inventors, artists and explorers to create and conquer. They don't because they are forced to run on a monetary treadmill.

These are the people that used to devote their leisure not to hedonism, but to the finer things that build civilization. They knew something about inventing, art and exploring because that's what interested them. And they knew at some level that they didn't have the talent to go that far. But they could recognize talent in those areas and funded the people that had the potential to make inventions, create art and explore further than they could. So they would put their money where their heart was.

This is the real model of patronage, of funding real progress. Instead, we have rich people giving money to charitable causes that are better at throwing parties than at helping people. Fiat money has ruined the engine that has built civilization.