Billionaires yearn for a life free of human contact – and they are imposing this on the rest of us | Emma Beddington

The ultra-wealthy want to limit their interactions as they glide through life. But the rest of us want the touch points' they would rather avoid: ticket sellers, bank branches, customer service assistants you can actually talk to ...

I got a new insight into the psyche of the super-rich recently, from an article about the planetary middle finger that is the private jet. A big selling point is the ability to minimise what are known as touch points': the individual microinteractions that take place as we move through the world, like saying hello to a gate agent or asking a fellow passenger to switch seats," New York magazine explained. When you fly commercial, there are more than 700 touch points," Alexandra Price, a brand communications manager at the jet-charter company VistaJet told the reporter. When you fly private, it's just 20."

It makes being ridiculously rich sound like having very high-end noise cancelling headphones, but for your whole life, so that you exist in a bubble of serenity insulated from the grubby taint of microinteracting" with the public. It's babyish - a sort of bought helplessness - and regal, gliding through life behind a protective cordon that prevents scrofulous peasants from reaching for the hem of your Loro Piana leisurewear.