That’s What it Takes
This summer, we’ve seen some of the wealthiest men utilize what they have to go on a joyride to space. Both Big Daddy Bezos and Richard Branson went on these trips in July, and then others like Elon Musk and SpaceX only continue to grow and earn more contracts as time goes on. But for this, I’ll focus on Branson and Bezos.
And as much fun as it looked like these guys are all having, multitudes more are angry. Because just a quick search on Google reveals that our Big Daddy Bezos (I’m gonna call him BDB from now on) has a net worth of 191 billion dollars. Another quick search reveals that the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that it would take around 20 billion to solve homelessness in the United States. This means that BDB can solve homelessness NINE times, or just solve it once and still have more than enough money to live his life.
And that’s why people are so mad. BDB and Branson are both billionaires, considered some of the most elite people in society today. These are men that could easily spend a decent chunk of that money to make some major changes in this world and not really notice a difference. The world is literally dying in so many different facets. The world is on fire, we are still in a global pandemic, carbon emissions are still so high, racism is very much alive and rampant, the list goes on. These guys depend on this earth just like you and I do, so why won’t they care more? Why are they being these selfish, greedy, privileged, ignorant ASSH-
Okay. No need to get carried away.
It’s true, these men can do so much to help and they don’t. But why? I’d like to talk about this.
As of right now, both of these men have built their own respective tech empires with Branson having Virgin Mobile and BDB having Amazon. And these started out as small businesses as well. Yes yes, we can talk about how daddy loans 300,000 big ones out to help fund it but that’s not necessarily the point. Because the point is that to grow and scale businesses like these guys have, being nice doesn’t necessarily help.
I don’t make a lot of money. 20 an hour if you recall one of my previous posts HAH. And this isn’t to show how great I am, but just to say that I still try and give my money here and there when I can right? I shop locally, donate to my friends’ ministries, give cash to people on the street. These are all nice and good things sure, but they don’t really help me increase the amount of money in the bank. In fact, if my goal is to be as rich as possible monetarily, this actually hurts me. And that’s just it. To grow and scale to be as big as you can, you take the money you have and just feed it back into whatever you’re investing in. It just so happens that for these guys, they were investing in their own companies. And it’s because of that mindset that they created what they have today in the time that they have. That’s just what it takes.
And habits are hard to break. We expect all these rich tech bois to just start donating their wealth when they make it. But that’s not necessarily the goal they had in mind. The goal was to grow bigger and bigger and become a worthy product or business. As much as I’d like there to be, there doesn’t exist a switch that you can flip once someone makes a certain amount of money to make them start being a good person.
And we have to admit, we’ve benefitted from this kind of mindset of scale. I cannot lie, I use Amazon so often. I cannot believe I used to wait 10-14 days on average for packages I ordered to arrive. Now, if something isn’t available on Prime, I just skip it. Because to me, convenience is king. People love that shit. A small bottle of soda costs more than a two-liter bottle of the same soda, but the smaller one is easier the carry so people will buy it. The companies Branson and BDB have built have helped people. Many of us benefited from having a cell plan from Virgin Mobile or getting things delivered to us fast with Amazon and we have to recognize it. We cannot just demonize these men when we also profit off of what they made. Obviously, not everyone benefits but that’s a later topic. For now, I will generalize and say that many of us use what these guys have created.
And there is no contract that states once you become a billionaire, you have to start donating your money or start working to help solve national or global issues. It could be interesting but it’s just not a thing. I would love to find a good solution that can get these guys to just flip mindsets and start working to end homelessness or this current pandemic, but I don’t have one.
Sorry.
