Thread by @JuliusGoat

Again I ask:

What value does a society derive from having billionaires? What do they bring to the table we wouldn't have without them?

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by @denbizjournal view original on Twitter

Restated:

Is a net worth of $1000 million enough to motivate the brightest among us to innovate and create?

If it isn't, what does that say about the brightest and best among us? ARE they the brightest and best among us? Or are they just the brightest and best graspers?

Is it *possible* there are even brighter and better people who have been crushed by the greediest and least scrupulous, because our system actually doesn't optimize for innovation and creation (though it can produce those good things), but rather for amoral greed?

Or put it another way: What if we stopped thinking of personal wealth as interchangeable with personal virtue?

Because we do, you know.

"We" in the broadest sense of cultural value.

We do.

So, the question:

What good thing does having billionaires give a society that we wouldn't have without billionaires?

And, if the answer is 'nothing' ... why have billionaires?

I don't suggest we do anything with them.

But having billionaires is a choice. It's a choice that derives from our shared cultural values.

I'm suggesting we consider developing new values.

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Suppose we determine billionaires add no value to counterbalance the obvious destabilization they create.

I'm sure that making a world where billionaires can't happen would pose a great many challenges.

The primary challenge right now is this: we don't want to.

To clarify: when I say "having billionaires is a choice," I am speaking of aggregate choices, not individual choices. Humans structure societies in certain ways based on their principles and values.

In this sense "we" decided, long ago, to have billionaires.

"We" can stop.

Slavery *was* a choice.

Kanye was wrong because he thought the enslaved—the only people not responsible—made that choice.

American society made that choice. Global society made that choice. Slavery was a choice that the empowered "we" made, out of a twisted value system.

Our values said that people were not as important as money. That free labor was very good. And that humanity was a function of skin color.

"We" decided to work to end it, in large part because the enslaved insisted, with immense courage, on being included in the "we."

The work is still ongoing. It certainly isn't over. It has taken centuries, and it seems some days it will take centuries more.

Slavery is still with us.

In many ways "our" values still say people are less important than money and that humanity was a function of skin color.

But "we" decided to take on the hard work, because "we" —slowly, haltingly, torturously—have changed our values.

We think differently now than we did 500, 400, 300, 200, 100 years ago.

We can keep changing our minds.

And what *do* billionaires do for us, anyway?

It's interesting to think that this thread is vilifying Bezos, or even billionaires in general.

I'm not vilifying him. I'm critiquing our general values, which creates phenomenons like Bezos.

Let me ask this: Is having billionaires even good for BILLIONAIRES?

Bezos recently and rather infamously said he's investing in space craft literally because he can't think of anything else to do with his money.

This is allegedly one of the most visionary and innovative humans on the planet. Can't think of a thing to do with all his money.

Never mind the effect that his outsized influence can now exert upon society: on what it is to have a job, or what it is to host a company in your city, or what a book is, or what creator rights are.

What effect does being able to literally buy Denver have on Jeff Bezos?

What being a billionaire means is being your own country. It's being unaccountable to anybody but yourself. It means being able to point to the world and say "mine."

And hey, more power to him. That's the dream, right?

Listen:

I think it's a bad dream.

I think there is evidence that this sort of power and unaccountability can have a massively corrosive effect on all the finest qualities, even those that might have gotten someone to that place.

Why can't the world's most innovative man think of things to do with his money?

How is it good for us to have individuals with the economic power of a small country operating within our country, unaccountable to us?

How is it good for those individuals to do so?

We can change this, if we want to.

But first we have to change what we want.

I suspect we have a world where people can arise totally unaccountable to others because "we" all want, on some level, to be unaccountable to one another.

Sometimes I do.

Don't you?

I think it's a bad dream.

I think we all belong to one other.

Now, obviously there is entrenched power, and bad actors working hard to ensure things stay bad in ways that benefit them.

I'm not saying those of us who suffer the most corrosive effects of capitalism are to blame for their suffering.

I'm just suggesting a new story to tell.

There's a famous quote about the moral arc of the universe, and how it bends. But it doesn't just bend itself. People bend it.

And there is an immoral arc of the universe, too, with its own bend. And people work to bend that arc.

It's important to discern which is which.

I think we need to tell a story about ourselves, in which we all belong to each other, rather than one in which most belong to a few, who earn that right through the value they bring.

A story in which life is not earned by economic contribution, but is simply a human birthright.

A story in which money is not interchangeable with moral virtue.

A story in which violence does not redeem violence.

I just am not sure billionaires exist in a world like that. is all I'm saying. I'm not sure people would want to be billionaires in a world like that.

If the amount were capped at say $1b personal wealth, would that affect the desire to create good things? If so, what does that suggest?

*Is* the net end effect good? There are some good effects I agree. But I am unready to draw such a conclusion.

Here's my theory: None of this is true. Some of the greatest innovations and achievements have been generated by governments. Some of the most monumental innovations were not driven primarily by the profit motive, or at least not by a desire for $1b+ in personal wealth.

1) I don’t envy billionaires.

2) profits and money for social programs do not require billionaires to attain—and they needn’t be subject to one person’s discretion and conditions.

3) there is a middle ground, I think, between “billionaires” and “everything shared communism.”

4) we are already witnessing the most extravagant corruption in perhaps a century.

OK. But this point is usually presented as a reason to accept the imperfect system.

My point is, the key to finding something better is 1) wanting to find something better, 2) looking for, and 3) deliberately working to achieve it.

And I didn’t say innovation requires greed.

I suggest we change our values as a society by telling truer stories, so that we want a better world.

Curiosity is a commendable quality, so remain curious—particularly about your own assumptions.

1) Picture a person who can’t be bothered to start work b/c they know their personal wealth cannot grow past $999 million, who sees feeding the society that nurtured them as theft.

They seem an unhappy person to me, and not one upon whom I would bestow immense power or influence

2) Our own history suggests it can and has worked. Meanwhile the results of supply-side economics and deregulated capitalism—which is our present system—lay all around us; it rebukes itself.

Think for a moment of all the things that were once ridiculous and unattainable in the real world.

We are in control of much of what is “real.”

Would we not be able to have those things without billionaires to create them?

Would great people not do great things without the lure of billionaire-ism?

This rings false to me.