Here’s an idea I’ve been kicking around for awhile and similar in intent to a recent diary on eating the rich. Not as drastic and lower in cholesterol, it accomplishes the same end: finding a useful way of dealing with the useless billionaire population.
Billionaires exist at the top of the economic food chain. Major economic machinery has been created to funnel wealth into their pockets. All well and good; it’s the capitalist dream come true. However, the problem occurs once great wealth has been achieved. Even after a person has more money than they, or the next 5 generations of descendants can spend, it keeps pouring in. This capital, rather than being invested in new ventures or reinvested in the business or used to further develop the society that made this accumulation possible, is often placed in financial institutions or transactions that have nothing to do with equipment or labor.
Worse, once a billionaire has all material needs met, they start to use their wealth in ways that interferes with other people’s lives. They start up Astroturf movements, or propaganda outlets disguised as news sources. Their petty obsessions becomes their raison d’être, fueled by wealth and a belief they are right because they are rich.
Corporations and financial firms are sitting on what, a trillion dollars of wealth that could be used to improve businesses or hire workers? Clearly, when great wealth sits on the sidelines, it’s as good as money lost or stolen and it’s high time a new mechanism was introduced to correct the situation.
Therefore, Be It Resolved, that once a person has achieved a personal wealth of one billion dollars (or whatever), that person is declared a Winner of the Game. This is a person who will never have to search for any material need, be it housing, yachts, food, medical services, solid gold commodes, fully paid education for the little billionarettes, whatever. As a Winner of the Game, this person must step aside and let someone else have a turn. Once you’ve got solid gold commodes in the house, it’s time to stop running up the score and let another person pick up the bat and take a swing. The Winner will cease to sit on Board of Directors, must sell off any stocks and divest themselves of any other means of income. We’ll let them keep their social security. We can even make a ceremony and give them a watch or a copy of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and send them on perpetual vacation.
This will give someone else a chance to become a billionaire and will provide a means of manufacturing a steady stream of billionaires. And everyone below the billionaires in waiting can look forward to moving up a notch or two. Hopefully, this trickle-down effect will even lift a few middle-class people into real wealth.
And new billionaires will bring along with it, new consumer demand. Once the first billionaire has his 24 bathrooms decked out in 24 karats, the gold plated commode manufacturer has limited opportunity for new customers, unless we make him some. Suddenly, the 24 Karat Krapper King has a ready-made consumer base that he can depend on. So too, the yacht builder and many other wealth-dependent industries. And with so many people moving up the economic ladder, we might even make a dent in all those over-priced McMansions left over from the housing collapse.
That’s the basic plan. And no, I don’t think it has a snowballs chance.