The argument goes like this: Billionaires deserve their billions, because the products
they have created have added trillions of dollars of value to the world. Their customers
have benefited ten-fold, or hundred-fold by purchasing the product or service. Consequently,
the billionaires reward is relatively tiny compared to the amount of value they have
added, and therefore, their reward is justified.
Take Microsoft founder, Billionaire Gates — sorry, Bill Gates. He made his billions
off designing and selling the Windows operating system. If you want to know about his philanthropy
and his 24-bathroom mansion, see my recent video, “The Game of Capitalism (And How
to Win!)”.
The argument goes, that by producing and distributing the Windows operating system, Bill Gates has
provided the world with trillions of dollars of value. His reward of mansions, private
jets, classic car collections, and ranches, is relatively small in comparison. He’s
added tens of trillions of dollars of value to the world, therefore, he deserves the title
of second-richest man.
Argument over, right? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Although you could superficially
justify the argument, I think there are many things that have failed to be mentioned.
Firstly, customers of Microsoft do not immediately benefit from owning Windows (or Office, or
any other piece of Microsoft software/hardware). The very action of owning or purchasing Windows
does not add value to your life. It’s what you do with that software. You could just
play solitaire all day long, barely contributing to the world. You could also play solitaire
using a $2 deck of cards, but that’s beside the point.
Or, you could go on to found a company that employs 15 people, say. Each of those people
are assigned a computer where they use Microsoft Office every day to perform their duties.
Your company goes on to become a success story and is valued at $10 million. Does that mean
Bill Gates has indirectly added $10 million of value to your company? Of course not. It
was the actions of yourself and your employees that created the $10 million company.
By Bill Gates allowing people the opportunity to purchase Windows, that does not in itself
add value to people's lives. It adds potential. It's what those people choose to do with their
newly bought software, using their own time and hard work, that decides how much value
they gain.
Secondly, Bill Gates wasn’t the only person involved in creating Windows. There must have
been a whole bunch of programmers, managers, and marketing directors. Are they all billionaires,
too? Without the programmers, Windows would never have existed. Without the marketers,
the product would never have been sold and distributed. Everyone in the chain had some
integral part to play in producing the cash cow that is Windows. Why then, did only three
of them deserve to become billionaires?
Thirdly, Bill Gates didn’t just create Windows from thin air. In order for him to create
any software, he needed computers, electricity, an education, a business-friendly environment,
and so on. Without any of these things, Microsoft would never have existed. There had to be
a favourable set of conditions, an appropriate series of events, and the existence of a particular
array of technology before Windows could ever have been invented.
Did Bill Gates invent the computer? Did he discover electricity, or create the electrical
grid? Did he mine the metals and minerals that went into building all the technology
that was required? Without all of those things, he would have been a farmer, or a carriage
driver. He might have been a good farmer, or go on to found a carriage-driving business,
but he certainly wouldn’t have become the billionaire that he is today.
If Bill Gate’s customers have benefited trillions of dollars from his software, then
so too as he from the computer company that made his computer, or the government that
constructed and maintains the electrical grid. A computer consists of thousands of integrated
parts that took millions of man-hours to create. Many, many people before Bill had a direct
role in allowing him access to technology, laws, and a favourable environment, that allowed
him to go on and create Windows. And that’s true of anything that modern humans benefit
from. We all directly benefit from the toil and struggle of millions of humans that came
before us.
The difference is, Bill Gates has billions of dollars and a ridiculous mansion, whereas
most of us who use his products do not. We all work hard. We all strive to be successful.
Bill Gates got lucky. He was born in the right country at the right time. He had access to
the right technologies and the right education. He had the right people supporting him. He
doesn’t deserve billions of dollars more than anybody else. Of course he must give
back to society. He is obligated to be a philanthropist. He benefited from the toil and struggle of
all of those people around him, as well as the millions of people that came before him.
Yes, Bill Gates is smart. Yes, he is business-savvy. Does that mean he should have thousands of
times more wealth than his average countryman? It’s a hard argument to justify.
And that’s what this is all about. Trying to justify the greed that has entered our
society. Trying to normalise the inequality that is plaguing our world. Yes, there has
always been greed, but that’s what our forefathers fought against. There used to be kings and
tyrants that would sit in their castles and horde all the wealth. They would tax the peasants
heavily and imprison, or kill those that didn’t pay. But eventually, the peasants rose up
and demanded fair and equitable treatment. We still haven’t fully reached it, so we’ve
got to keep fighting.
Instead of kings, we have rich politicians who got into their positions of power through
their connections and massive wealth. Instead of evil tyrants, we have friendly billionaires
living in their massive mansions and flying in their private jets. But instead of denouncing
these people, we actively praise them. We praise them for their sound business minds,
or their exceptional leadership qualities. But ultimately, poverty only exists because
we allow them to horde their wealth. I’m not blaming the individual billionaire, but
certainly, the current world system allows this massive wealth gap.
Over the last year in Australia, there has been a record increase in the number of billionaires
from 33 individuals to 43. The total net worth of these billionaires has increased $36 billion
in a single year. Has the average Australian benefited? No. The wealth of the bottom half
of our community has not changed and ordinary workers' wage growth has remained stagnant.
As I’ve found from recent experiences with Centrelink, ordinary Australians are being
hit with unexpected debts. Australia is one of the world’s richest nations, but yet
the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow.
Ten years since the global financial crisis, the number of billionaires around the world
has almost doubled. The wealth of the world's billionaires increased by $900 billion in
the past year alone. Tax avoidance is becoming rife among the world’s elite. One-third
of large Australian companies paid no tax last year. Large multinational companies have
found ways to offshore their tax burden. They operate out of small countries that have much
lower tax rates, even though most of their revenue is earnt in the advanced economies.
By avoiding tax, these individuals and multinationals are directly robbing nations of public services.
They are harming individual citizens by taking funds away from education and healthcare.
Tax avoidance is a moral issue. Being super wealthy is a moral issue. By hording wealth,
you are increasing wealth inequality. Billionaires have gone too far. They have taken much more
than they’ll ever need, but unfortunately, they have got no incentive to fix this injustice.
This is where people must demand that governments step in and fix up the tax loop holes and
the crony capitalism that is plaguing our society.
We have got to do better, but we still have a long way to go. We can’t just sit back
and idly watch the average person’s wealth dwindle away year on year as the super rich
get richer and richer. It’s not fair and is ultimately going to hurt everybody, even
the billionaires.
Call me a communist. Call me a socialist, but this extreme form of capitalism that is
plaguing the world is out of control. The super rich don’t benefit from gaining an
extra $10000, but the average man certainly does. Why then do we allow people like Amazon’s
Jeff Bezos to accumulate $231,000 per minute? That’s outrageous and an insult to all the
hard-working people out there who struggle to make even a quarter of that amount over
an entire year.
What a system we have created! A world of poor people looking up to a handful of billionaires.
We should all be outraged.
Billionaires deserve billions because they’ve added trillions of dollars of value to the
world? How about instead we say, billionaires have made billions of dollars because of the
benefits they’ve received from the toil and struggle of all of those people around
them, as well as the millions of people that came before them.
Nobody deserves to be a billionaire. Almost everyone in the world helps out in some meaningful
way. To say that only a few people deserve the spoils of all this toil is absurd. We
need a fairer, more equitable society, and we need it fast. The world is not a game of
Monopoly where one person can take it all. People’s lives are at stake here. Wealth
is a moral issue, and we have to start treating it as such.
Let’s stop normalising inequality. Let’s start fixing it.