The Era of Self-Interest
The world is in a strange place right now. It feels as though we have lost our way a little. As humans, as humanity. It seems to me that what is driving a lot of what we see, everywhere in the world, is self-interest.
I have said before that I never really viewed myself as a political person and if you asked me where I fall on the political spectrum, I don’t know how I would answer. But I find myself absolutely fascinated by politics today. Fascinated, depressed and disillusioned.
When we look at who we have as the leader of the free world, and the people who are now by his side, the only answer for the lack of resistance and pressure that he is facing, is ‘self-interest’. Zuckerberg changed the method of fact-checking on Meta a few days after the election, presumably to get on the right side of Trump and make sure his fortune remained intact. Bezos refused to allow the Washington Post to publish an editorial endorsing the Democrat leader, something they have done every year for the past 36 years. Coincidentally perhaps, his company Blue Origin met with Trump the same day that the refusal was made public. And then there’s Musk. The richest man in the world has made it his mission to cut government spending and in the process he has, quite knowingly, cut aid payments to some of the most vulnerable people in the world. A man who, not that long ago, talked about ending world hunger is now responsible for food destined for refugee camps piling up and spoiling in US ports. Talk about a U-Turn!
Everywhere you look there are people who were vocal critics of Trump’s over the last few years and have now rolled over and somehow are voicing their support. I don’t even mean just in America – everywhere. There is no unified voice against the craziness – everyone just quietly hiding, trying to protect their own self-interests.
Somewhere along the line, in my childhood, I was taught to speak-up.
Speak up for what is right. Speak up for people who don’t have their own voice. Speak out for kindness and compassion. To be kind. To be kind is the opposite of self-interest, isn’t it? Where has the kindness gone?
This is relevant to wealth, and how we think about wealth, and what it is for.
We often say ‘you can’t take it with you’. But do we ever ask whether we should take it with us?
Bear with me for a minute.
On a recent ‘The Rest is Politics’ Q&A session, Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell (if you don’t listen to them, I highly recommend starting) were asked by Peter Judge:
Do you agree that the current distribution of power, wealth, and resources is grossly unjustifiable and unimaginably damaging? If not, what objectives would you use to describe the current distribution of power, wealth, and resources?
To answer this question, Rory discussed The Gospel of Wealth, a book written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889. I have since read this book, and it really got me thinking.
Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 and was an industrialist and philanthropist. After selling his company, Carnegie Steel, he became the richest American of all time. He gave away the equivalent of $10.5 billion during his lifetime, almost 90% of his fortune. His book, the Gospel of Wealth was his call to his fellow industrialists and “Robber Barons” of the time, to follow his lead and give their money away.
He argued that wealth was the product of the community and it should ultimately be returned to the community and not passed down through family inheritance.
He wrote, ‘there are but three modes in which surplus wealth can be disposed of. It can be left to the families of the decedents; or it can be bequeathed for public purposes, or finally, it can be administered during their lives by its possessors.’
The third, Carnegie believed, was the best.
Rory explains how he supported massive inheritance tax for those who don’t use their wealth judiciously during their lifetime. Inheritance tax is something that I had always thought was so unfair (you are taxed, taxed and then taxed again) but this framing of it shifted my mind a little.
I think Rory is right that when we look around at those in power today, they are people who feel that they are above the law, above democracy and also above having to do things for their fellow humans. They seem to be above kindness.
These are people who have reached a certain level of wealth where whatever they do (unless they are the Vanderbilts – an extraordinary story about how to squander a vast fortune) they can not actually spend it.
Today it seems, the aim of many of those with great wealth to create a structure so complex that it will preserve the billions for, what, the seventh generation?
Carnegie questions, ‘why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state.’
He goes on to conclude that it is not the welfare of the children, but family pride, which inspires these enormous legacies.
And here’s the real punch in his book – the one line – by taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life.
I mean, that line really delivers doesn’t it? The selfish millionaire’s unworthy life. A punch indeed!
And of course, I am not saying I agree, just that, it really gets you thinking.
Rory goes on in his discussion. I quote:
So I was talking to some very wealthy people on the West coast and trying to understand why they don't give away more money when they're alive because many of them have signed up to this giving pledge, which Bill Gates and Warren Buffett did. And the weirdness is they've all signed up to it, but they're just not handing over the money. And initially they said, well, it's just that we can't find projects good enough to absorb our money. So for 10, 12 years they are trying to find the right kind of project to give their money to.
But here’s what it’s really about.
One of the West Coast billionaires shared the truth with Rory. What it is, he said, is that the amount of money you are worth has an incredible influence at the very top level of American society. And if you give your money away, it’s not just the money that has gone, it’s your influence, your admiration. Some of the people who are worth, say 4 billion, are spending just a tiny fraction of that. But if they give away 3.9 billion, their fear is that suddenly nobody wants to talk to them. They wouldn’t get invited to the White House, they wouldn’t appear on the right lists, they wouldn’t be able to influence things.
And it’s always a competition. And it’s a movement that says, if you are rich, you are clever. The richer you are the cleverer you are. Musk, then by definition, being the cleverest of them all.
It’s kind of depressing really, isn’t it?
But it shouldn’t be. Wealth should be something to change your life and those around you. But once that’s done, once we have taken care of those we love, perhaps we should look outwards.
If the struggle is, I don’t know what to do with it, Carnegie had some recommendations in his book. Recommendations from the early 1900s that still apply today. Things like:
Build schools where none exist
Fund out-of-school projects in underprivileged areas
Build hospitals where none exist
Buy land and rewild it
Bestow a park upon a community
Fund research into underfunded diseases
Fund the arts – galleries, museums, theatres
So, what do you think – are we in an era of self-interest? How do we as individuals move out of it and help those around us move out of it? And whilst we know we can’t take our wealth with us, should we even be trying?
Georgie
georgie@libertywealth.ky