John Steinbeck wrote that we see ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
We Americans really believe that we will become wealthy someday.
In fact, 44% of people think that they will become a billionaire one day if they work
hard.
Is that actually how people get rich?
Hey, there are nerdillionaires.
You love billionaires.
Billionaires have a special place in our culture.
Americans love them.
Why?
Because we think they're deserving.
Because we equate wealth with goodness and we think that we like these deserving good
people, even though they're strangers, we do not know them.
Combined together, this is a potent cocktail of neuroscience that del dilutes some people
into attacking strangers on the internet about Taylor Swift.
She's not a billionaire yet.
.
But do billionaires actually earn it by working hard?
Is that how people get rich?
I wanted to know.
Science actually says wealth is assigned randomly.
It's just luck.
If it were talent, then all talented people in the world would be wealthy.
The smartest would be the wealthiest.
The most beautiful would be the famous.
We would assign resources based on the attributes we care about.
But that's not reality is it?
Nature does have some mathematical norms.
There are just as many tall things as short things with most things hovering around the
average.
Think of a tree, right?
There are just as many tall trees as there are short trees of that same species and most
of them around an average height.
And that goes for everything.
There are just as many geniuses as idiots.
Most of us hover around the middle, right?
This is pervasive across talent, hard work, risk taking, and so on.
It's called the bell curve or normal distribution.
Maybe you remember that from school.
So even though living things typically do follow normal distribution wealth, it doesn't.
It looks like this.
Researchers wanted to know why.
So physicists created this computer simulation where people that they put into the simulation
followed normal distribution in terms of their skills.
There were some talented people, some untalented people.
Most people are in the middle.
In the simulation, Sims had random events that could increase or decrease their wealth.
So after running the program 10,000 times, they found 80% of the wealth landed with 20%
of the sims.
Approximately.
People believe it's solely due to talent, intelligence, risk taking, skill, smartness,
effort, willfulness, hard work.
That's in part a quote.
But randomness was the biggest factor.
And if wealth was only based on talent or iq, it would track to that normal distribution,
but it doesn't.
A separate decade's long longitudinal study agreed, as sim researchers said, quote, people
commonly underestimate the importance of external focus in individual success stories.
Wealthy people, they're more domino than Tony Stark.
So if normal distribution is this and the wealth curve is this, what is that?
It's the 80 20 principle named after Alfredo.
Pareto, a turn of the 20th century philosopher and economist.
It's talked about a lot in business and productivity.
It, it's not a law of nature or even a rule.
It's more of an observational principle.
Think of it this way, 80% of book sales they say are from like 20% of authors.
80% of crashes come from, they say 20% of bugs.
It is a useful if flawed principle.
We know this about wealth, don't we?
We prefer to think that it's not random.
Flip a coin with a friend.
This is a 50 50 probability every time.
But if you get heads over and over, you start to tell yourself that you like deserved it,
right?
But it's literally just random chance.
There's no story there.
No matter how you think.
There is one.
Another example is Eric Yuan.
He made fricking zoom.
He's clearly talented and a billionaire.
But what if there was no pandemic?
He's a billionaire because random things came together for us all to be using zoom in 2019.
Had you heard of it in 2018, it existed for nine years.
That software existed at the right time to make him rich.
It wasn't just talent, it was this other giant thing, this really big global event.
But random events, they aren't satisfying to human brains.
So we say that you want his talented, successful, a hard worker.
He worked for nine years and he deserved to be rich, but none of us knew there would be
a worldwide global tragedy.
That was just chance his software happened to do what people wanted it to do at that
moment, easily enough, and it caught on.
And then we celebritized that individual and tell ourselves the stories that he's talented
and a hard worker, which I'm not saying he's not, but it really comes down to randomness
and the math supports it.
So if billionaires are billionaires because of randomness, then why do we celebrate them
at all?
In the US of A, we conflate wealth with goodness.
We look up to rich people and we tell stories about them, which is why quote people of high
socioeconomic statuses are on average rated as more physically attractive than people
of lower status.
Yay, , which I'm sure plays out even if you lie about who is wealthy and who isn't.
Put another way.
An economist wrote quote, I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid, but I have money.
Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good.
This was in 1844 and we celebrate the wealthy in part because we sort of evolved to do it.
Evolutionary biologists weighed in on why we like it and they think that maybe we think
it's a skill.
Ancient human-like primates would group around leaders who had skills, knowing which ancient
primate had the skills and what they liked and how to stay in the sociocultural fabric
of that little pack was important.
And that evolution, sub-routine may still be kicking around in our ancient brain.
Deep down, if we think of wealth as a skill, then we want to know how to do it.
And thus we celebritize the wealthy and tell stories about their deservedness to convince
ourselves that they earned it.
Because if they earned it, then we can learn to earn it too.
They didn't, and it's probably random.
They're definitely not like hunters or amazing athletes or artists.
They're just randomly wealthy.
Hiltons Trumps generic venture capitalists CEOs.
They have skills.
Not saying they don't, but why do we care about them?
Because they have money.
We weirdly allow them to claim the wealth as a skill for fame.
There are lots of celebrities whose main stat is wealth, but when you apply the study that
shows with 10,000 repetitions that people get their wealth randomly, it means that you
will probably never learn that skill because it never was a skill at all.
And yet breaking that story is so hard.
Note, I keep kind of defending billionaires and rich people here.
I don't know why I'm doing that, but it's because of cognitive dissonance.
I do know why I'm doing it actually now that I think about it.
It's really hard for our brains to hold that.
A billionaire deserves it, but somehow it's random.
We hate those two cuz they are mutually exclusive ideas.
But we actually do technically hate billionaires.
So maybe it's fine.
.
Let me explain.
Look at this human.
They are a billionaire.
How does that make you feel about them?
Do they have a story?
Where did they come from?
Okay, how about this gaggle of the gazillionaires.
They all flew in on private jets.
They spend more money in a week than you will in your whole life.
How do you feel about this group of billionaires?
Do they have a different story, a different feeling?
Cornell and Ohio State showed 2,800 people pictures like this and found we like rich
individuals.
We fantasized that they worked hard.
They're smart or creative.
Sound familiar in a group though?
Billionaires give us the icks .
And the reason we like individuals is called the streaking star effect.
We want to see a person do well.
They're the star.
But a group people generally like, I don't know, Rhianna.
Rianna is a billionaire.
3 in 10 Americans think billionaires, as a group, are bad for the United States.
Is she bad?
No.
But billionaires, they aren't great.
That feeling is cognitive dissonance--
Ooh Primey...…
I don't like that
Buddy, you've been here this whole time?!
Of course I've been here the whole time where you're not paying attention?
I definitely love Rihanna.
Uh, some random glut of billionaires though?
Take 'em or leave 'em.
Okay, great.
I'm glad you're here.
Why do you love her?
Like do you love her music?
Yes, I of do.
Of course
I do too.
But why do you love her?
You know, like what do you know about her?
Are you friends?
Uh, okay.
No, not .
Not as such.
I like her work.
And as a clone of a child of immigrants, , I like her story.
Okay.
Oh my gosh, you're right.
What I like is what she represents . This story is really about me and what I am and
how I feel.
Not about her.
Exactly.
Whoa.
She's an amazing artist with a relatable background, but you don't her and you chew loudly.
What if she has misophonia?
You'd hate each other.
Okay, pump the brakes.
I don't chew that loudly, but come on, I have to think about this for a bit.
Come back to your thing.
And this thinking can apply to anyone you don't really know.
Athletes, politicians, actors, tweeters, musicians.
This is a feature, not a bug.
We form parasocial relationships with people we like.
Even if we don't know them personally.
We're not in little primate social groups following a skilled leader anymore.
We're millions thinking that some jerk is somehow good because of their wealth.
We think we know someone because of the constant drip of traditional and social medias.
But they don't know you.
We don't know them.
.
And they're basically strangers.
Our primate brain though doesn't have different lanes for parasocial and real relationships
as far as our brain is concerned.
We know Beyonce, we're friends, , and you know we're ride or die.
So we will dismiss information we dislike and we will defend those friends in public,
private, wherever fanboys think they are friends, they have vested personal time and resources
into the support of a human.
And that human or even brand has no idea who they are, but they benefit from these parasocial
connections.
Again, feature not buck.
I have a master's in this and let me tell you, the super wealthy pay people to build
these stories on their behalf constantly.
So how do you feel about Elon Musk?
How do you feel about Oprah?
How do you feel about the Waltons Walmart?
Less good.
How about the 1% or elites?
They are the same thing, but they don't elicit the same story in our heads.
The stories are reinforced by the pair of social relationships and then also cognitive
dissonance as an example.
Let's use somebody who's a little polarizing right now.
.
Elon Musk first hit the scene a long time ago, decades ago.
Young men, myself included, we told ourselves he was amazing.
He was doing what NASA wouldn't.
He wanted to smash that boomer gas car culture.
He wanted us to buy flame throwers cuz we could, when that happened, we wanted him to
be this like starky and hero genius.
Even if Musk is kind of an ass---
Whoa, Primey.
Come on.
Do you want the trolls banging down our door?
Geez, just say this.
His public persona has made me reconsider ever supporting him or his efforts into the
future.
You're right, Buddy.
I'm sorry.
You're right.
Cognitive dissonance makes it painful to see and hear it.
At least he's not as terrible as Allison and Dave.
You know what I'm saying?
They're the worst.
What the [%!@&$] Primey?!
Everything they do is gold.
You're talking about , Alison Brie and Dave Franco, right?
?
Yes.
Okay.
Maybe I recognize I'm not literally friends with DALISON I know
But here you are defending them...
…Why did you feel the need to do that?
Oh, their public personas...
I hate it when you're right.
Oh, Primey.
Okay, .
So when I said I love them, I should have probably said that I love their and their
public story, their positive forces in my life.
Bingo.
Oh my God.
Okay.
My mind is fracking right now.
I just, I, oh my gosh.
This is classic cognitive dissonance.
The brain is a physical thing.
So regardless of where the narrative came from, if you've accepted it and you've start
to run those neural pathways over and over again, they become harder to deconstruct like
a road in the mud.
It gets more and more channels and it takes effort to remove them.
Rihanna is a billionaire.
Maybe we don't like billionaires, but we like Rihanna.
And now I have to figure out how t--
Werk werk werk werk werk
Woah!
Buddy!
We do not have license for that.
What are you're trying to get us sued?!
So how do we square our love of Rihanna's work in spite of our dislike of billionaires?
Do we become critical of Rihanna?
Is it okay to be your fan?
This conversation is hard, but it's important.
Cognitive dissonance, parasocial relationships and worship of the wealthy together create
these armies of jerks who will defend strangers by attacking other strangers even when the
critiques might be legitimate.
Fenty is cool.
Do they release ethical statements about their company?
Do you know?
It's a conversation and we should be able to discuss it.
I don't wanna pick on her, by the way.
Rihanna's amazing.
But there are tons of billionaires.
She's just famous enough that you would know who she is and she's less political right
now.
Replace her with any billionaire and and try to be honest with yourself.
It's just for the video and sure it's easier to ignore or deflect and say, I love this
person and blah, blah, blah.
But deserved and talented are not mutually exclusive from lucky.
And speaking of luck, I literally lucked into making YouTube.
I've been doing it 10 years now.
Can you believe that I use my own money to make these videos and I am very much not a
billionaire.
So if you like them and you get anything out of them or you wanna support me in any way,
the best thing you can do is join Nebula.
Nebula is a creator, owned and built streaming service that I invest in and I'm a part of.
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You'd be supporting me just by doing what you were gonna do anyway.
Plus, there are no ads and a bunch of other amazing things that only can exist there.
We've got videos from over a hundred creators, so you can support a ton of humans by watching
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Plus some creators release extra content on Nebula, for example, they might have a full
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So it's not that we can't celebrate successes or admire people.
Luck is important, but it's not end all.
Be all.
Part of living in a healthy society is recognizing each other's awesome.
But statistically, a huge chunk of our society literally don't love billionaires.
The Pew study I mentioned earlier found one in three people under 50 and one in two under
30 believe billionaires are bad for our country.
So what does that mean for them long term?
Once the bulk of the population realizes we don't actually like billionaires at all, ,
what are we gonna do?
As my brother said, anyone who's accumulated that amount of wealth, they've done some thanks.
But we use these stories either real or fake, to sort of put lipstick on that pick the best.
Inoculation of propaganda is critical.
Thinking of understanding how billionaires got rich with a bit of luck.
Why we think wealth is good or a skill when it's not, and why it's hard for us to hear
all of this stuff.
, cognitive dissonance.
If you can break all of those things down and start to think about thinking about them
, knowing why and how we feel anything for the super wealthy might help us look more
critically at ourselves.
And once we know why we think things , honestly, it's a little confusing.
But it's like seeing the code of the matrix, really.
You start to see these things everywhere.
So now when I see a news story about a wealthy person, I ask myself, is this news?
Is this just because they're rich?
Why should I care?
I remind myself that this wealthy person is in that position, not necessarily because
they're talented, but they're also randomly lucky.
That makes me feel good because I can see them as lucky people, not mythical beings.
And something that maybe you've already commented about is if you're born wealthy, does that
change this?
Not really.
If you think about their parents, we're also randomly lucky.
In the end, y'all, I hope this changed a little bit about how you see the world.
I, if you need somebody to look into the science, psychology, sociology, whatever, behind something
that you're curious about, that's my job.
So let me know.
I'd love to make a video that a viewer has told me to make.
I read every comment I get all my emails.
I'm on maced, on Twitter, Instagram, wherever.
So thanks for watching all y'all, and I'm trace and I will see you in the future!