I’ve met one Billionaire in my life. I was in graduate school studying film, and I was offered a sweet weekend gig by my professor. He offered me 500 dollars to assist him on a documentary shoot. The shoot took place in Jacksonville, Florida, and involved capturing footage of a giant metal sculpture. When I say giant, I mean thirty feet tall and close to a football field long. As one of the worst, most orange wardens we’ve ever had would say, “It was yuge!”
My professor and I flew on a private jet out of a private airport in South Miami. In addition to us regular Joe filmmakers, there was the director of the documentary, who himself is worth millions, the billionaire’s money manager, the pilot of the jet, and the billionaire’s daughter. The billionaire bought this piece of art with the intention of shipping it to Miami on giant barges to be the centerpiece of some bullshit foundation that was set to open soon. The billionaire’s daughter, who was roughly my age - late twenties at the time - was to be the director of said foundation, which I have no doubt came with a six figure salary and great benefits.
Now, this woman certainly had the requisite knowledge of the art world required to perform the job of director of an art foundation, but let’s be real, she probably didn’t duke it out for months in a grueling interview process with dozens of other candidates. She was probably handed the job. Fine. Whatever. What fascinated me was the thought of how secure her life was.
How many of us have felt the shame of asking a friend or loved one for money to pay for food, bills, or to get bailed out of jail? How many of us have felt the unforgiving sting of a landlord kicking us to the curb, or a debt collector stalking our homes, or a manager at work keeping a close eye on us in case we, god forbid, exercise our right to demand fairness and decency in the workplace? This woman’s father is a billionaire. Whether she is aware of the plight of the average American or not, she is not subject to the perils of life on the margins of our socioeconomic infrastructure.
There are a lot of people in this prison, some of which are a part of my life, that are perfectly fine with the existence of billionaires. They think that their money is hard earned through intelligence and ingenuity and not being born into generational wealth. I’m sure some billionaires are intelligent in their own way, but no one accrues that level of wealth, and I mean NO ONE, accrues that level of wealth without exploiting someone or something. Foreign sweatshops, prison slavery, child labor, racist employment practices, environmental abuse, lobbying for looser regulations that always end with some sort of exclamation point disaster, like a noxious train derailment or mass shooting. All of these concepts exist today because of capital owners, royalty, oligarchs, and billionaires.
For any irrationally devoted subscribers to capitalism and the “free” market who aren’t even on the highway that leads to the exit that takes you to the auxiliary parking lot that you have to take a trolly from to get to the ballpark of being a billionaire; if this doesn’t adequately contextualize the pointlessness of money for you, then enjoy living a life dictated by red and green arrows that you aren’t rich enough to rig in your favor.
I live in West Hollywood. At the time my brain conjured this thought, I’d strolled by a sparkling new apartment building on Santa Monica Boulevard. I checked Zillow to see rent prices. A 1000-1200 square-foot, two-bedroom abode with all the fixins’ ran for about 10,000 doll hairs per month.
Now, Back to the billionaire’s daughter. I think it’s apparent that she’ll never want for shit. But, let’s imagine a scenario: She asks her billionaire father to pay for said 10,000 per month apartment.
Let’s say her billionaire father has one billion in liquid cash to burn on said apartment. How long could he pay for that apartment before the money ran out?
With 1,000,000,000 doll hairs, he could pay for that 10,000 dollar per month apartment for approximately 8,333 years.
The three ages of Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkein’s legendarium encompasses roughly 7,000 years depending on who you ask. That means this billionaire could pay rent on this place for the entirety of the three ages of Middle Earth and still have 159,960,000 dollars left over.
Real quick. For one moment, imagine a world where we still pay rent instead of owning things, like we do now, but shit is at least affordable. Let’s call this a “sensible world”, for lack of a better term.
With that 159,960,000, in a “sensible world”, I could rent a solid as fuck, two-bed, two-bath, fifteen-hundred-ish square foot home with ALL the fixings, at 3,000 per month, for 4,400 years. ***Understand that the home I just described would exist in the price range of the 10,000 dollar one in our current reality***
If we return to our Middle Earth analogy, that means I could rent that home for the entirety of the third age of Middle Earth, from the destruction of Sauron’s physical form at the hands of Isildur all the way to Frodo destroying the One Ring, roughly 3,000 years later. After the longest age of Middle Earth I’d still have 50,400,000 dollars left over.
With that 50,400,000, in a ‘sensible world”, I could rent a cute one-bed, one-bath, 750 square foot home with all the fixings, at 1500 per month, for 2800 years. ***Understand that the home I just described would exist in the price range of the 3,000 dollar one in our current reality***
The gray wizard, Gandalf, an undying, divine being known as a maiar, walked Middle Earth in physical form for about 2,000 years, culminating in helping the fellowship destroy the one ring and defeat Sauron for good. I could rent that 1500 per month home for the entirety of Gandalf’s time on Middle Earth and still have 14,400,000 dollars left over.
With that 14,400,000, in a SENSIBLE WORLD, I could rent a 500 square foot tiny home with all the fixings for, let’s say, 1,000 per month, for 1200 years!!!
After Isildur was killed and separated from the One Ring that he cut from Sauron’s hand, the magical relic faded from memory or thought for thousands of years until the creature Gollum, once known as Smeagol, found it. The ring’s magical properties stretched Gollum’s lifespan to a ghoulish 600-ish years, ending with his fall into the fires of Mount Doom. I could rent that 1000 per month tiny home for the entirety of Gollum’s miserably wretched lifespan and still have 7,200,000 dollars left over.
Before I move on, I have to admit something. I’m not as strong-willed as your typical billionaire. I naively took out student loans to pay for undergraduate and graduate school, and let's just say, the amount is enough that it shames me to speak it out loud. It’s a “he who shall not be named” level of debt that I refuse to pay back not because I don’t want to, but because I literally can’t. There’s no room in the budget.
With that 7,200,000, I could pay off my student loan debt nearly 18 times over!!! And I’d still have 3,600,000 dollars of walking around money to blow on the arcade and milshakes!!!
Jeff Bezos, who created a company that has made people indifferent to the struggles of overworked manufacturers and laborers, who union busts, skirts his taxes, and fucks outer space with a rocket shaped like the dick he wishes he had, can do everything I just laid out above - not some of it, all of it: the 10,000 dollar apartment, the 3,000 dollar apartment, the 1,500 dollar apartment, the 1000 dollar tiny home, and my student debt in 132 other parallel Earths, and STILL have ONE BILLION dollars left over to do all of it again.
People who admire billionaires, who think that their wealth was well-earned, or that they have a certain level of merit that makes their wealth acceptable, who strive to attain that level of wealth, I’m sorry to say, have their heads screwed on wrong. You went to the knowledge fountain, unscrewed your head from your neck, popped open the ‘ol skull cap, and filled up on the capitalism spout, then you screwed your head back on improperly, like the cap to a juice bottle. And, like grabbing a juice bottle with an improperly screwed-on cap that dribbles juice all over the place, you probably spout dumbass bullshit promoting the virtues of capitalism to anyone unfortunate enough to be close enough to smell your breath when you talk about fucking crypto currency. But, because you screwed your head back on wrong, your arguments are pointless dribble that all of us, including you, are currently drowning in.
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