Opinion: The Wrong Kind of Club

Finito World

The Epstein files are horrifying for many reasons, but none more so than this: they reveal a world not simply of crime, but of aimlessness disguised as success.

It’s easy to fixate on the names. Clinton. Gates. Andrew. The media machine does so with gusto. But what’s more revealing is the type of life that Epstein himself cultivated: a kind of hollow glamour, built on proximity, secrecy, and bottomless wealth. His was a private jet morality, a lifestyle with no higher organising principle than access—access to people, power, and flesh.

This matters because Epstein wasn’t a lone predator. He was a mirror, however warped, of a wider cultural disorder. We have raised wealth—especially rapid, opaque, financialised wealth—to such an exalted position that we no longer ask what it’s for. We reward those who play the game best. And if the game is networking, luxury, and tax arbitrage, then we shouldn’t be surprised when those drawn to that world start behaving as though nothing else matters.

We talk endlessly about productivity and growth. But rarely about purpose.

That’s where the Epstein files become, perversely, a wake-up call. They show what happens when society forgets to teach the young what money is for—when success is defined only by digits, properties, and dinner invitations. When work is just a means to status, not a way to serve.

And this cuts across class. Whether it’s the private equity titan, the royal hanger-on, the ambitious intern, or the Yale dropout, what Epstein offered was a world where meaning had been outsourced to money. He became a hub, because he seemed to know the rules of a particular game. And far too many played along.

What we need now is a different idea of ambition—one rooted in the dignity of work, the quiet glory of craft, the honesty of relationships. One that reminds the next generation that how you succeed matters far more than whether you do.

At Finito World, we often speak about career guidance as a practical service. But it is also a moral one. A society that helps its young find not just jobs, but purpose, is a society inoculated against men like Jeffrey Epstein.

He built the wrong kind of club. Let’s build the right one.