A plutocrat warns that if the top 1% keeps growing their share from today's 20% to 30% of wealth, violent backlash will follow. After the Titanic sub disaster, people were callous toward rich victims. The question: is it moral to be rich if it makes you a target?
You probably don't know me, but I am one of those 0.01 percenters that you hear about and read about, and I am by any reasonable definition a plutocrat. And tonight what I would like to do is speak directly to other plutocrats, to my people, because it feels like it's time for us all to have a chat. Like most plutocrats, I too am a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded co-founded or funded over 30 companies across a range of industries. I was the first non-family investor in Amazon.com. I co-founded a company called Quantive that we sold to Microsoft for $6.4 billion. My friends and I— I tell you this because it's unbelievable, right? I— to show that my life is like most plutocrats. I have a broad perspective on capitalism and business, and I have been rewarded obscenely for that with a life that most of y'all can't even imagine. Multiple homes, a yacht, my own plane, etc., etc., etc. But let's be honest. I am not the smartest person you've ever met. I am certainly not the hardest working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all. I can't write a word of code. Truly, my success is the consequence of spectacular luck, of birth, of circumstance, and of timing. But I am actually pretty good at a couple of things. One, I have an unusually high tolerance for risk. And the other is I have a good sense, a good intuition about what will happen in the future. And I think that that intuition about the future is the essence of good entrepreneurship. So what do I see in our future today, you ask? I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks. Because people like us plutocrats, because while people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99% of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind. In 1980, the top 1% of Americans shared about 8% of national wealth. While the bottom 50% of Americans shared 18%. 30 years later, today, the top 1% shares over 20% of national wealth, while the bottom 50% of Americans share 12 or 13. If the trend continues, the top 1% will share over 30% of national wealth in another 30 years, while the bottom 50% of Americans will share just 6. You see, the problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today, and it's getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks. So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world. Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us. For no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It's not a matter of if, it's when. And it will be terrible when they come for everyone, but particularly for people like us plutocrats. I know I must sound like some liberal do-gooder. I'm not. I'm not making a moral argument that economic inequality is wrong. What I'm, what I'm arguing is that rising economic inequality is stupid and ultimately defeating rising inequality.
Welcome back to the channel, guys. I hope you're all having a great day. So the Titanic submarine disaster, if you saw my last video, you know I spoke a lot about the, uh, out the, the reaction, you know, of people, uh, and how it surprised some of us that people have become very insensitive to people's tragedies, right? And the only underlying thing I saw that made this particular tragedy different than any other tragedy was that the participants were very wealthy people, right? And so is it that the rich doesn't deserve our sympathy like the other people that perish in tragedies, right? So I've posed the question in this video, is it moral to be rich if that's the reason why these people have been attacked? I kind of thought the issue was going to go away. People seem to be doubling down. Now, interesting enough, um, whereas I thought this was a sign of the times, it was seen that this actually went on during the time of the original Titanic, which occurred in about 1912, where you had society making fun of the very wealthy, all these very wealthy people centralized to the Titanic that perished in the Titanic. So this is nothing new. Also, I kind of see a pattern here. A decade later, uh, the world slipped into the Great Depression, right? And many of us feel like we're on the verge of one of the greatest recessions we've ever seen in human history, uh, that this is the prelude to it and actually the reactions of the people, right? So this video is going to be about what you walk away with, your opinions on the— if you think being rich is moral. And I know it's a loaded question. It's a question that immorality— we don't really have objective morality, at least some, some of us believe we do. But at the very least, we have this type of social contract, right? Whereas there seems to be a level many of us won't go below, right? Or go beyond. And so in this video, we're going to present some information, but the idea isn't so much to say which, which one's right or wrong, but more so, I guess, to in a mindful way think about where you belong. Like, you know, are you one of those people that are making jokes about these wealthy people that perish, you know, calling them ridiculous or stupid or something like that? And if so, uh, why are you doing that? What is the, uh, uh, the root of that, right? Where does that come from, right? Again, not saying about right or wrong or who's, you know, if it's, you know, one person's morality or view of it is above another's, but just where you stand and why, right? Maybe a consideration of that and some of the viewpoints we have gotten online, maybe on both sides, right? So let's explore that a little bit today.
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