So You’ve Won Capitalism: An Open Letter To The Billionaires

“Democracy is supposed to be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. Capitalism is ‘of the capitalist, for the capitalist’. Period.” – Jerry Ash

This blog post previously appeared in The National.
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a bird's eye view of a beachfront home

Dear Billionaires,

I think we can all agree that you’ve won Capitalism. If the goal of Capitalism is to accumulate wealth via the canny deployment of capital (yours or someone else’s) for the purpose of spending that wealth on goods and services to improve your own lifestyle then you have been successful beyond measure. As a billionaire, you now possess more wealth than can be reasonably spent by any individual in a lifetime. In fact, you passed that measure a long, long time ago.

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The Dragons Ate Your Lunch

“The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.” – George Monbiot

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Dragon

One of the arguments in favour of billionaires is that while they are wealthy beyond any possible realistic need, they in turn generate even more wealth by creating and supporting jobs. They might take a share of the production generated by you, their workers, but you wouldn’t be able to generate that production without the risk they took in employing you and providing you with the tools, the capital, that you need to do that job.

What if it wasn’t true?

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