Billionaires Should Not Exist
And the evangelicals would call me a communist for saying so
The title could probably be the whole post, but I’ll expand just a little bit.
We live in a society where the idea of billionaires not only existing but basically owning everything is, somehow, a normal thing. But if you really think about it… it’s completely absurd. And only made possible by our incredibly segmented, atomized, internet-ized society. Technology and a massive society has brought many advances… and enabled very, very bad behavior.
Last year I listened to the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger (2016)1, and he made the really good point that in a prior era, in a closer-knit, tribal society, we would have been able to hold wrongdoers to account more — because we would be closer to them but also because we would have cared more (being more closely impacted). Here are some extended quotes from him:
It’s revealing, then, to look at modern society through the prism of more than a million years of human cooperation and resource sharing. Subsistence-level hunters are necessarily more moral than other people; they just can’t get away with selfish behavior because they live in small groups where almost everything is open to scrutiny. Modern society, on the other hand, is a sprawling and anonymous mess where people can get away with incredible levels of dishonesty without getting caught. What tribal people would consider a profound betrayal of the group, modern society simply dismisses as fraud.
And another:
Dishonest bankers and welfare or insurance cheats are the modern equivalent of tribe members who quietly steal more than their fair share of meat or other resources. That is very different from alpha males who bully others and openly steal resources. Among hunter-gatherers, bullying males are often faced down by coalitions of other senior males, but that rarely happens in modern society.
We are so de-tribalized and there is so little accountability, little to nothing happens to the perpetrators of these financial crimes (they get bailouts and financial rewards instead!).
Back to the point I am wanting to make: the very notion of billionaires, while others in our society are making $10-$12 / hour ($20k / year if you worked full-time), is PREPOSTEROUS. A billion dollars is ONE THOUSAND millions. I think we are so accustomed to our out-of-wack society that we have forgotten, on an instinctual level, how absolutely insane it is that the top 1% of the world controls 95% of wealth (as of 2024). Meanwhile, countless people are starving, and many folks here in our “rich” nation can’t afford groceries plus rent at the same time. The rich get richer; the poor get poorer2.
If we lived in a society where we were actually accountable to each other — where we knew each other, where we saw each other’s pain, and where there were others in the group to put the bullies and thieves in their place if they tried bad behaviors — none of this would be remotely possible.
So no. Billionaires should not exist. Or, if you insist, I’ll allow you one billion dollars and the rest is taxed (or shall we say, returned to its rightful owners, as these resources are truly a collective right… because again, no one should be starving while others have more wealth than they could possibly ever use). NORMALIZE WEALTH DISTRIBUTION. As Christians would say, “it’s not mine; it’s God’s!” Right? Right? They truly did used to say that…I can easily argue that my childhood faith helped radicalize me.
And to address the subtitle of today’s post… evangelicals, the Religious Right, and other conservatives would call me a communist for suggesting that billionaires should not exist. When your ideology ties you in such knots that you would defend the “right” of a person to own multiple billions (I would even go into the millions but they’re full-throatedly defending billionaires too) over offering public health insurance for the poor and elderly, and food aid to countries where people are literally starving to death…
then YOU ARE the antichrist.
I think we should just start referring to evangelicalism / Christian Nationalism / Christian fascism as the antichrist, as heresy, as evil, as demonic.
If they want to use religious language and “justifications” for abhorrent behavior, then I will use their religious language right back at them. You support demonic policies?? And do it in the name of Christ and your religion?
YOU ARE THE ANTICHRIST.
And I don’t know that I believe in divine retribution (but maybe karma?!), and I don’t believe in hell or a heaven (as traditionally conceived), but god I hope something’s coming for them…
I long — truly, truly long — for some kind of justice to be served in these situations that are literally killing and destroying people, and for no reason other than greed and malice. My neurodivergent justice-sensitivities are being driven bonkers, and my heart broken, by the level of injustice and unfairness happening. To borrow religious language again, I hope this is a holy anger, and I hope in that it being a holy, righteous anger, something good can come out of it. Without burning out in the process and maybe in trying to help create a small movement toward justice. My one little voice here, howling into the void, but perhaps finding a chorus of other voices howling with me. I have to believe that together, we can somehow make some kind of difference.
Mostly I just want to say how proud I am that I was able to recall where in the world I heard this very interesting tidbit of information, and had to really scrape through my brain until I could find the visual memory of where I was when I was listening to the book, and then recalled what it was it. 😂 And secondarily, it is a very interesting book, but the part about how war and battles bring societies together (within, not between, obviously) was pretty sad/tragic. Also, it was published in 2016 and I would imagine the numbers have only worsened since then!
For more stats that will boggle your brain and stoke your rage, check out this Oxfam link: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years
Absolutely.
One perspective shift for people would be to think about the language we use around these issues. When you talk about “redistribution of wealth” people will clutch their pearls and call you a commie. But redistribution of wealth is happening NOW - it’s just happening from the very poor to the very wealthy. When companies make huge profits off the goods and services made by WORKERS, but all of the money goes to the CEO, that is a transfer of wealth. It used to be less overt, but the transfer of wealth from workers to bosses has grown exponentially over past decades.
I also think it would be proper to think and speak of billionaires as hoarders of wealth. Together they are holding trillions of dollars hostage, keeping it out of circulation where society could use it. They are sociopathic hoarders.
Thanks for this!
I hate it SO MUCH. On a happier note, I had an unexpected in-person chat with my conservative Christian parents about toxic theology and Trump and billionaires and Christian nationalism yesterday.