I think the idea that billionaires are created by any kind of motive is the wrong lens.
Their wealth doubles faster if they lack egalitarian values. So the millionaires who end up becoming billionaires are the ones who lack egalitarian values.
The values they do hold could be anything from, “everyone wants to win; I’m just winning harder” to “God told me to” and it won’t matter as long as they keep reinvesting and growing their wealth faster than the economy or ecosystem can sustain.
What we’re witnessing right now is not a set of ideas or beliefs, but an exponential growth equation – with all of the overwhelming speed and transformative power such an equation carries.
Exponential growth is the reason for everything from the mammoths’ extinction to rotten food and the lethality of cancer. It transforms entire systems, outgrowing (and often destroying) its own host.
If your society has currency but lacks any chemotherapy / surgery to remove concentrations of the aforementioned currency that start growing at a cancerous rate…
Then it won’t matter what values are common or uncommon: your society is eventually doomed.
It could take a hundred years or a thousand, but eventually, a pile of wealth will emerge that multiplies until it consumes everything.
I think the idea that billionaires are created by any kind of motive is the wrong lens.
Their wealth doubles faster if they lack egalitarian values. So the millionaires who end up becoming billionaires are the ones who lack egalitarian values.
The values they do hold could be anything from, “everyone wants to win; I’m just winning harder” to “God told me to” and it won’t matter as long as they keep reinvesting and growing their wealth faster than the economy or ecosystem can sustain.
What we’re witnessing right now is not a set of ideas or beliefs, but an exponential growth equation – with all of the overwhelming speed and transformative power such an equation carries.
Exponential growth is the reason for everything from the mammoths’ extinction to rotten food and the lethality of cancer. It transforms entire systems, outgrowing (and often destroying) its own host.
If your society has currency but lacks any chemotherapy / surgery to remove concentrations of the aforementioned currency that start growing at a cancerous rate…
Then it won’t matter what values are common or uncommon: your society is eventually doomed.
It could take a hundred years or a thousand, but eventually, a pile of wealth will emerge that multiplies until it consumes everything.