There Should Be MORE Billionaires

Bernie Sanders says there should not be billionaires. A lot of people agree with him. So today we'll look at the ethics and responsibility of getting rich. This and more today on Capitalism tv.

Bernie Sanders recently tweeted, there should not be billionaires. Actually, he said this. There should not be billionaires. Well, the news headline should have read, bernie Sanders is in conflict with reality because there are billionaires. And you can fight that all you want, but that's simply the reality of the situation. The reason I open with that is because so often in politics and just in our lives, we put so much energy on what we don't want or what we resist or what we think should not be, and it's a horrible waste of our attention. Now, it would have been much more persuasive for Bernie Sanders to say, we need to address this challenge or we need to have more of this. But to simply be in conflict with reality is a waste of energy. This is also true in our own personal lives. Anytime you're in resistance to what is, it's very, very hard to create change. So when you are fighting with whatever the existing reality is, you give all your power away to that. It's a very, very powerless position. A powerful position is to ca a vision of what it is that you do want. Now, regardless of what my personal feelings are about this, I don't wish to throw shade at Bernie Sanders or to do the typical talking points of calling out his various homes or his wealth. I don't think that's very persuasive. Instead, I want to look at this point of there should not be billionaires or the idea that there should not be these extremes of wealth and poverty that so many people observe. I recently had a conversation with my friend Billie Jean. We sometimes do this fun political debate segment called Black man versus White Man. And Billie Jean said, well, not everybody can be rich. Not everybody can live the lives of billionaires. And I said, absolutely they can. He fought me on this, but here's.

The clip, and it's capitalism by default. That means there's tears. Not everybody can be rich.

Sure they can.

Not everybody can be rich.

Absolutely they can.

It's. How.

Are you evaluating this? On relative wealth or you evaluating on real wealth?

Everyone can't be rich.

Absolutely they can.

How?

Okay, look, a hundred years ago, everyone watching this is living a better life than 100 years ago. You're talking about relative wealth. You're talking about, can everyone be at the top? And that is relative. That. That's like saying, can everyone?

So who Decides what people are like, well, I'm cool with my wealth just being this versus my wealth being that.

So the comparison you're making is can everyone be healthy?

No. Absolutely not. Absolutely.

What do you mean?

It's the same argument. Can, no, can you be healthy or.

Can you be at the top of health? Health is improving exponentially because of breakthroughs.

Yeah, you have a million bucks. Everybody has a million bucks. What happens to prices.

Mr. E. Com? What happens to prices? Everybody has a million bucks. Everyone has a million bucks. Is everybody rich? Or the prices just go. But is everybody broke?

Again, that's a different argument. No, it's the same one argument.

It's the same one.

Look, so compared to even 50 or 100 years ago, lifespans are longer, health is better, standard of livings are higher. We have all of our basic needs met.

Okay?

We can do random things like this that didn't exist. Watch this. And everyone has access to that quote.

Make America great again. Pisses me off. This fucking better than we've ever been before.

The standard of living has increased at a faster rate than it has ever increased because of free markets and capitalism. Everyone, every living person, if you are in a first world nation, vastly richer, vastly wealthier, but by, by.

By a measurement that we can only imagine, okay.

We live the life of kings of.

A couple hundred years ago. Literally everyone in a first world nation right now is living a vastly better life. Everyone can be rich.

Fine.

Now let's back up here a second. Does Bernie have a point? Is there a point to the fact that there shouldn't be poor people when you have all of this wealth concentrated among the hands of a few? Very, very.

Well. If you believe the idea that money is a resource, that money is the source of creation, that money is not a byproduct, but the thing we need in order to create. If you believe that there's a fixed amount of that, then they're absolutely right. It would actually be unethical for me to do what I do. If there's a fixed amount, then me encouraging people to make more money, to create new products, to build new businesses, to advance themselves, it would be unethical of me to do that. If there's a limited number of resources, then you should feel bad about every new dollar that you get that goes to more than covering just your basic needs. I should feel bad about having helped over 500 people build million dollar businesses. I should feel bad about my success stories of people crossing $50, $1 in revenue. I should feel resistant to Bill Gates And Warren Buffet and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and anyone who has more than me, kind of like I'm resentful of every dude at the gym who has bigger muscles than me, and I accuse them of cheating in some way. But the truth is, the dude at the gym having big biceps doesn't prevent me from having bigger biceps. Just like the person who has more money than you doesn't prevent you from having more money. And the reason is because money is simply a byproduct. Money is not a good. Money is a way that we measure value. Value is still there if money disappears. I know entrepreneurs struggle with this because this is beamed into our brain that rich people are bad and that by you getting more, you deprive it from somebody else or you got it off the backs of someone else, but you're actually creating the path for more people. I recently gave a talk in front of 2,000 entrepreneurs, and I knew this was percolating in the audience, and I gave them permission to go make as much as they want. I'm giving you that permission right now. Contrary to what anybody tells you, there is no fixed amount. We are all making this pie as big as we want. I know what it can feel like to come to an event like this and to see someone on stage, the person next to you, lying about how much they're making. Or I know what it's like to be in the audience and play that game where you are comparing yourself to somebody else. That comes from the false belief that someone else, them being successful threatens yours. That's bullshit. We're all making this as big as we want. You can have as much as you want, and your success is not a threat to somebody else's. So you can go make as much as you want. Let me give you permission. Go make as much as you want. You in.

When we talk about ideas like this, whether they're politically driven or economically driven or we're talking about business, I find it helpful for us to frame the discussion, to frame the argument of the fact that we all want the same things. We all want to be happy, to be wealthy, to have health care, to ensure that the least among us are taken care of. Can we at least start our conversations around this idea and then have a discussion about what are the best uses of our time and our resources to be able to do that? At one of Bernie Sanders rallies, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez made this statement. She said, quote, it wasn't until I heard of a man named Bernie Sanders that I began to question and assert and recognize my inherent value as a human being that deserves health care, housing, education, and a living wage. Now, there's a lot in this statement, and this is a really good highlight for what I think is the danger of believing in the fixed amount when AOC says, it wasn't until I heard a politician that I began to realize that I deserve health care, housing, education and a living wage. Listen, our rights do not come from government. They don't come from politicians. They don't even come from other people. A right is something that is inerrant to us, that is inherited. It's our birthright. It's something that we are born with. That's what our right is. The word deserves, deserves. Health care, deserves. Housing, education, living wage. The word deserve means worthy of. So if we read this differently, AOC says, it wasn't until I heard a politician that I began to recognize that I, the human being, am worthy of health care, housing, education, a living wage. Look, we're all worthy of those things. We're all worthy of whatever it is that you want. You're worthy of mansions, you're worthy of a successful career, you're worthy of riches, you're worthy of. Of whatever it is that you want to experience because you're a human being. But that doesn't mean you're entitled. You are entitled to the things that you create. Well, where does this fall when it comes to other topics like climate change or health care or the things that we fundamentally need, how does that apply? That's what we're going to talk about right now. When it comes to hot button topics like climate change or health care or the things that we really want to change, There are some who want to blame capitalism or success as being the cause of those problems. Michael Moore, for example, has endorsed Bernie Sanders, has created various films about the free market's role in creating these problems. He spoke at the same rally I referenced earlier for Bernie Sanders, and this is what he had to say.

And the polls will show you that there's four or five Democrats consistently. It shows head to head can beat Trump, but beating him isn't enough. Hillary beat him. It's not enough. We need to not only crush Trump at the polls afterwards, we need to fix this rotten, corrupt economic system that gave us Donald Trump and everything else we're dealing with.

I just want to point out for a second that the system that created Donald Trump, that was Barack Obama.

Who.

Spearheaded health care, and then George Bush, who also expanded government. And now Michael Moore is Endorsing somebody who wants to expand government.

I agree with him. We should get rid of the system that caused all these problems and that was caused by government. The expansion of government, the siphoning of resources away from individuals making decisions and trading with one another and allocating them towards less efficient solutions that are usually run by government bureaucracies. I was once asked by my buddy Aubrey Marcus, who runs the company Onnit, about the correlation between capitalism and climate change. If we assume that it's man made and that it's a problem, what do we do about that? And here's what I had to say.

How do you navigate when someone questions you on environmental policy as it pertains to force and it pertains to regulation?

Yeah. So where I think the role of government does exist is the protection of freedom and the protection of property. And if you pollute my property, I have the right to call in a third party and say, he needs to knock this off. He's violating my freedom. So the gray area is who owns public waters, who owns the air? No one does.

So who takes care of it? And I would say the problem is not necessarily that government isn't more involved. The problem is that there's a lack of ownership.

And when was the last time you.

Cleaned a public restroom?

I did in high school. But I was compelled because when you were late to math class, you had to serve fucking two hours of community service. And I decided to serve it in the public parks because I thought I was gonna like, I don't know, be like trimming flower bushes. Instead I was just cleaning the steaming shitholes at Zilker Park.

Instead they had to use force to get you to clean the bathroom.

100%.

Right. And when was the last time someone cleaned your bathroom?

I mean, well, I pay somebody to clean my bathroom once a week or.

Whatever, so this week. So when there's ownership, there is care. And when no one owns anything, when you have public goods, there's a lack of ownership. Unless you're outsourcing, taking care of that to usually white haired white men in Washington D.C. not really an effective strategy of taking care of public things. So the issue is a lack of ownership. Who does own the oceans, who does own the air? And I would say that a better solution is creating more ownership and removing the government from that, from that process. Now that's, now let's look at the future of what we do. I think the wrong approach is to try to go backwards and try to limit what we can do. The solutions to global Warming or climate change are going to come from the market. I would argue that Elon Musk has probably done more to facilitate change in this area than government ever could. It will come from private solutions and the marketplace will determine what those solutions are.

When Greta Thunberg gave her famous speech to the United nations, she said, I quote, in entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you. Now, I mean this in all seriousness and with all respect. This is exactly how a 16 year old should see the world. If you've only been around for 16 years and been analyzing the last 10 10, it would be completely reasonable to see that economic growth contrasts with the health of the climate. But if you take a real macro view on this, the reason why we've had economic growth is because we continue to get more and more innovative. We continue to get more and more efficient, we continue to get access to more and more resources. So what is going to happen as the free market corrects for new forms of alternative fuel? The economy is going to continue to go up. It's not like the economy is dependent upon oil and fossil fuels. As we get more and more innovative, we'll continue to get more and more efficient. We'll continue to grow at faster and faster rates. Companies will go up in value when they can solve that problem. So we'll continue to have more and more eternal fairy tales of economic growth as a result of solving this challenge. And it will come from entrepreneurs, it will come from capitalists, it will not come from governments stifling economic growth. Economic growth is the indicator for where we put more attention. And that is why the free market will address climate change much more efficiently than any other way that we could solve the challenge. There was an article on the New York Times that asked the question, why don't rich people just stop working? This caught my attention. So I read the article and the entire article was simply about the reason why rich people keep working is because they want more and they know more rich people. And the more they know rich people, the more they say see everybody else succeeding. So their brains won't let them slow down because greed compels them to get more and more and more and more and more. This is an example of somebody who believes that there's a fixed amount and so those at the top must be really greedy. But I would like to pose a different question. What if the rich stopped working a long time ago? And I don't mean an Atlas Shrugged, they're going to stop working as a complaint kind of thing? I mean, what if rich people, legitimately, in their minds, stopped working a long time ago? What if the people who were really rich were rich because decades ago they started doing what they enjoy the most? What if decades ago, they started just following what was really exciting to them and that happened to look a lot like solving problems, and it looked a lot like growing exciting businesses that they were proud of? What if the purpose of business was simply to sustain good work, to sustain what mattered, and entrepreneurs at the top were simply doing what mattered? What if the people who are driving change the most knew that the way that you continue to drive that change was to do it profitably? What if it wasn't work to them at all and they were simply having a good time solving challenges and creating solutions to the challenges that face us the most? Because that's the case. The people who make the most amount of money in this world aren't doing it because they need more money. They aren't doing it because they wake up in the morning stressed that they want to get more. They believe in something so much that they would do it regardless of how much they were getting from it. Elon Musk has been very public about this, that Elon Musk has almost gone bankrupt several times, but he believes in his causes so much that he lays it all on the line. And he would do it regardless of the results. And even if he does fail, he has pioneered new innovations and new technologies that have radically changed our world. And that's what the entrepreneurs at the top do. It's not because they have this relentless greed for more. It's because they have found the thing that they want to do regardless of the results. And that is the secret to success and happiness. Because money and freedom conspires to reward that. The universe is stacked for us to work together, for us to collaborate, and together we move forward. There's no fixed pie, there's no fixed amount. There is simply us collaborating to create. So the idea that rich people just get up in the morning because they have a relentless pursuit for more completely misunderstands the fact that when rich people get up in the morning, they're compelled. They're driven for something, they feel pulled in a direction. That's when you know you're living on purpose, when you don't have to think about it, when you're being drawn in, when you're being pulled towards something that's your purpose. That's when you get rich, that's when you're happy. And the people who demonize that are simply living out of alignment with that. They've never felt it. They've never felt the purpose, they never felt the drive. They've never felt the excitement of what that looks like. And so all they can do is demonize those at the top. We don't need to give any energy to them. We simply need to feel empathy for them. Keep on living your example. Keep on living on purpose. That's why you're here. That's why entrepreneurs create change. It's like capitalism is the greatest force for good. If you want to create change, it starts with you. If you're ready to get started, go to capitalism.com. start with a bunch of free resources there to help you create the change that you want to see in your world. If you want to create change, it starts with you.

Thanks for watching.