What does this quote mean? BY SHAW

Question

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

compared with the number and voracity of man's parasites, man considers himself rich?

Answer 1

Oerkelens nails it.

This is one of a long series of Maxims for Revolutionists, a work presented as an appendix to Shaw's play Man and Superman. The work is supposedly written by the play's hero, Jack Tanner, and consists of serious of barbed observations about contemporary society.

This particular aphorism appears in a section entitled "Servants"

SERVANTS

 When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth while to keep them.
 The relation of master and servant is advantageous only to masters who do not scruple to abuse their authority, and to servants who do not scruple to abuse their trust.
 The perfect servant, when his master makes humane advances to him, feels that his existence is threatened, and hastens to change his place.
 Masters and servants are both tyrannical; but the masters are the more dependent of the two.
 A man enjoys what he uses, not what his servants use.
 Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
 Ladies and gentlemen are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.
 Domestic servants, by making spoiled children of their masters, are forced to intimidate them in order to be able to live with them.
 In a slave state, the slaves rule: in Mayfair, the tradesman rules.

The sense, then, is that rich people believe that the number of domestic servants they employ, and the size of their wages, is a sign of their wealth, despite the fact that servants are merely parasites whose “work” has no social value and does not even contribute significantly to their employers’ well-being.