Billionaires Love Libertarians

Disclaimer: what follows is not an attempt to paint billionaires or libertarians as evil. Also it's not intended as guilt-tripping of any kind; I just want to explore with you why, generally speaking, libertarians and billionaires share the same ideals.

_{source: The Blue Diamond Gallery}

Let's do a little thought-experiment. Bezos is the richest man in America, worth maybe 100 to 150 billion Dollars. Let's say 150 billion. America has approximately 330 million people in it. What I want you to think about is this: what would the effect be on the life of Jeff Bezos if he only had 10 billion Dollar? What if we took 140 billion of his dollars? Would Bezos suddenly be at his wit's end figuring out how to pay for his private plane trip to wherever he's gonna be tomorrow? And what would the effect be on the 330 million people if we use the 140 billion Dollar we stole from Bezos to make their lives better by funding whatever needs funding to make their lifes better?

Answering these questions can give us an idea about why libertarianism is so popular among billionaires. Taxes are theft. What I've just described is theft, worse even, it's pure communism, Stalinism! This is how billionaires and libertarians will react, and not only them I believe. And yes, 140 billion out of 150 billion might be overdoing it a bit... maybe... So I don't blame you, libertarians and others; I blame the billionaires for doing what they're supposed to do. I know how that sounds... bear with me...

As you know, many billionaires do good by donating to charities, and by founding foundations, schools, hospitals and so on. Generally though, that's not done out of the goodness of their hearts, but to increase prestige by attaching their name (and brand) to those charities. They say, in unison with the libertarians, that they don't trust the government to spend their tax-dollars in an effective manner, and they much rather donate their Dollars themselves, to the people they think need it most. They leave out that they donate in stocks instead of Dollars to increase the amount they can deduct before paying their taxes. Or what's left for them to pay after using every other trick in the book to evade them that is...

But billionaires are often self-made. They earned their Dollars fair and square and it's just wrong to steal from them what they've built up with their own two hands, sweat and tears. This would be a typical libertarian defense. And they would be right if what they claim could even be possible. No one earns billions of Dollars by themselves. No one. It's scientifically impossible. It can never happen. No single individual is capable of creating that amount of wealth. Period. I'm willing to debate almost anything, but some things are not debatable, and this is one of them. If you want to know what does create wealth, read my post Origins Of Wealth from a few days ago. Bezos and other billionaires got their wealth by extracting surplus value from labor and by extracting resources from the planet we all share. Libertarians and others adhere to a theory wherein every exchange is voluntary, including the exchange of time and effort for wages, and wherein every individual agent chooses rationally with the intent of exchanging value in a way that's beneficial for themselves. But regardless, the fact still remains that the surpluses all funnel to this one person, and that's where the billionaires wealth comes from. Not one single billionaire is self-made, even the self-made ones. And that's leaving out the ones that simply inherited their wealth. So, we can debate the extent to which taxes can be called "theft", but it's not all that much in my book.

_{Image by David Sanabria - source: Flickr}

Libertarians typically believe that government should be as small as humanly possible, basically having just two tasks: the protection against foreign aggressors, protection of the national borders so to speak, and the protection of private property. This is yet another reason why billionaires and libertarians think so much alike, generally speaking of course. Once I heard a libertarian say something like this: "we believe that every individual should be able to own their own heroine-plant, and have enough guns and ammunition to protect them!" I know, this is only anecdotal, but it's not to prove a point, rather to paint a fairly widely held mindset among libertarians. This is also where the billionaires and most other libertarians part ways, and why this post isn't called "Libertarians Love Billionaires". Billionaires don't really want a small government, they couldn't care less about its size, they want an obedient government. If big government keeps playing the game on their terms, they won't stop donating. And if they need their government to protect their interests over multiple nation-states, or against their own population, they gladly aid in bloating that government and its military, its police and its surveillance capabilities.

But don't blame the billionaires either; they are just doing what they're supposed to do. They do what is necessary to maximize their personal profits, as is their duty as a rational agent in the game we call capitalism. A game in which we are only individuals and we make choices as individuals and are individually responsible for the consequences of those choices. Therefore Bezos has individually earned all those billions and why he owes no one, and taxing him is theft... But is it? Going back to the thought-experiment, I'd say Bezos will be perfectly fine if he's left with "just" 10 billion Dollars, his day to day life won't change one iota; even if it is theft, he's not the kind of victim I'd prioritize in any way, shape or form, especially if the perpetrator is We, The People...

I think it's not that black and white and it ultimately should be measured against what we see as our shared future. Do we want to keep moving in a direction where income inequality keeps growing, an ever more failing democracy in which the people lose their voice because they're not heard over the amplified voices of the few who own almost everything, including the public square which has now become their private square? Or should we admit, in some way, that we're not JUST individuals, that there is something called a "shared space"? Should "freedom" be enough, or do we by all means need to make all freedoms "individual" or "personal" freedoms? Can freedom even be enjoyed individually, and if not, why call it "individual"? Can billions even be made individually, and if not, why assign them individually? Just something to think about, for all of us, not just the libertarians and the billionaires; that's what thought-experiments are for... I think... Aren't they..?

_{Joseph Stiglitz: Trickle-down economics is 'absolutely wrong'}

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