You tend to see this type of behavior from heirs to the family fortune and not from the people who actually earned the money themselves.
My Mom knew the guy that originally built South Coast Plaza. He was a bean farmer named Segerstrom, and she knew them in the '30's and '40's.
He had the idea to develop his bean farm into a mall, and now it's a real success.
I haven't been back to Newport Beach in over a decade, I imagine it's changed, some!
Ed