Is it possible to live a billionaire-free existence?

Every day I wrestle with the same existential dilemma: Do I have too much money? Have I accumulated far more of the world’s limited resources than any human being has a right to? Am I a greedy m*th*rf*ck*r?

Perhaps you struggle with this as well. So I designed a simple quiz to help figure this out. Do you have too much money? Answer the following questions:

• Did you spend $277 million electing the candidate of your choice in exchange for appointing you to a completely-made-up government post with extreme powers and zero accountability?

• Does your $500 million superyacht have its own slightly-less-super companion yacht, in case it gets lonely?

• Did you buy your own Hawaiian island, just so you can tell people you bought your own Hawaiian island?

• When not running the world’s largest fake news social network, do you raise your own cattle as a hobby and feed them beer, because they’re the only living creatures willing to have a drink with you?

• Did you erect the tallest/ugliest building in San Francisco, which looks kind of like a penis but is in no way compensating for anything? 

If your answer to any of the above questions is, ‘Hell yeah, baby!’ then you clearly have too much money.

Elon Musk (net worth $355 billion), Jeff Bezos ($240B), Larry Ellison ($235B), and Mark Zuckerberg ($214B) are the four wealthiest humans on the planet. With a paltry $11B to his name, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff is only the 213th richest biped on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list. Poor guy. No wonder he had to build that phallic monstrosity.

What all of them have in common (besides too much money) is that they made their billions by riding the technology wave of the last quarter century. Right place + right time + ruthless capitalism = obscene wealth. 

There are now 2,781 billionaires on the Forbes list, with a combined net worth of $14.2 trillion. That’s more than the 2024 gross domestic product of Germany, Japan, and India combined. The total population of those three countries? Roughly 1.7 billion.

When Forbes published its first list of billionaires in 1987, it contained 140 names. The richest of them had a net worth of $20B, equivalent to $53B today.

What is wrong with this picture? Just about everything.

Good billionaires vs evil billionaires

Are all billionaires evil? No. Oprah ($3B) is on that list. So are Taylor Swift ($1.6B) and Steven Spielberg ($5.3B) and Michael Jordan ($3.5B). Jordan is a bit of an asshole, as anyone who watched The Last Dance can attest. But calling him evil is taking it a bit far.

Are all tech billionaires evil? No. I used to hate Bill Gates ($107B) with a passion, because his software sucked so badly, but all the philanthropy he’s done since he retired has turned me around. Also, after several rounds of Covid vaxx injections, I am now fully microchipped and will do anything he asks me to.

Laurene Jobs and MacKenzie Scott (Steve’s widow and Jeff’s Bezos’ supremely pissed-off ex, respectively) seem determined to give most if not all of their respective $16B and $32B fortunes to worthy causes. That seems like a good use of their time and money. 

Are billionaires necessary? Hell to the no.

Listen, I’m no economist. I was an English major in college. If you tried to explain Quantity Theory or the Laffer Curve to me, I would pick up a copy of Finnegan’s Wake and start reading it in a loud voice until you begged me to stop. [1]

But human beings invented money because it was too hard to trade a sow for a half dozen bushels of wheat and get correct change back [2]. It’s designed to be circulated, not hoarded. And the more it circulates, the better off the economy. Ten thousand people each making $100K a year can buy a hell of a lot more houses, cars, smartphones, and flat-screen TVs than even the most materialistic billionaire.

Right now as much as $32 trillion is sitting in offshore tax havens, controlled largely by the people on that Forbes list, plus lord knows how many crime kingpins, crown princes, and corrupt dictators. [3]

Billionaires are a bug, not a feature. The world would be far better off without them. 

How to pay the bills without paying the billionaires

The trouble with billionaires is that they have their fingers in almost everything. So even if they don’t directly control a business, they may own stock in it. That makes reducing your billionaire footprint a real challenge, especially if you happen to use a computer, a phone, or the Internet (ahem).

Still, it is theoretically possible to give less to the 0.001%. I asked ChatGPT how one can live without lining the pockets of billionaires, and the bot came up with a pretty good list. [4]  It’s too long to reprint in full, but here are the key suggestions:

• Support local and independent businesses

• Buy refurbished tech devices 

• Use open source software

• Take public transit when possible

• Grow your own food

• Buy used goods

• Bank with credit unions

• Invest in socially responsible funds

• Support organizations fighting for economic equality

Obviously, you’d have to be very determined (or very Amish) to do all of these things. I do some of these things, and need to do more, but will probably never get close to all. Still, every dollar that doesn’t go into a billionaire’s pocket goes to someone who needs it more than they do.

Can the world survive a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires? Share your thoughts in the comments or email me: [email protected].

[1] Full disclosure: I have never read Finnegan’s Wake. It’s about a dead guy, right?

[2] Fun fact: The first government-issued coins were minted in 600 BCE in the ancient kingdom of Lydia. (Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?)

[3] Not on that Forbes list: Vladimir Putin (estimated net worth $200B+) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ($25B).

[4] Shhh, don’t tell Sam Altman ($1.1B).