Ideas Under Threat: Ethical Wealth Creation is Possible

The engine of human advancement

I've noticed that it's becoming cool to hate on rich people. Many of my peers have expressed anger and even disgust towards the existence of billionaires. There is a growing belief that billionaires, or even millionaires, shouldn't exist, and anyone that is one must have done bad things to get to where they are. The media is also writing more hit pieces on billionaires like Musk and Bezos, seemingly because hating on rich people is in style.

I think this rising sentiment is dangerous. Ethical wealth creation is possible, and it is good for humanity. How did we get to where we are today? The bottom ten percent of the world today has it better than the top ten percent 200 years ago. This is true across many metrics¹.

Poverty:

In 1820, only a tiny elite enjoyed higher standards of living, while the vast majority of people lived in conditions that we would call extreme poverty today. Since then, the share of extremely poor people fell continually... For last year, the research suggests that the share in extreme poverty has fallen below 10 percent.

Infant mortality:

In pre-modern times around half of all children died... in 1800 the health conditions were such that around 43% of the world's newborns died before their 5th birthday... In 2017 child mortality was down to 3.9% – 10-fold lower than 2 centuries ago.

Education:

In 1820 only every 10th person older than 15 years was literate; in 1930 it was every third and now we are at 86% globally. Put differently, if you were alive in 1800 there was a chance of 9 in 10 that you weren't able to read; today more than 8 out of 10 people are able to read.

Even without these statistics, the eye test holds. Two hundred years ago, we didn't have antibiotics, the internet, or cars. We have less suffering and greater quality of life because of technology.

Today, the most effective way to create wealth is to provide value at scale. People are rewarded for creating and/or scaling technologies that improve life. Contrast this with hundreds of years ago, when a common method of wealth creation was extracting high economic rents from a small population, typically through force/violence (e.g., conquering land or enslaving groups). Of course, we still have this type of wealth creation, but it's not the primary way, and it's not the most effective way. There are social norms and institutions in place that make waging war and using violence less feasible.

Providing value at scale is a more ethical and sustainable form of wealth creation because you can impact lots of people, and each person doesn't have to pay much for what they receive. In many cases, people pay far less than the value they get.

Fundamentally, wealth should be something we strive for, not look down on. An economic system that rewards people massively for providing value at scale trends towards greater wealth for all. What have the most significant technological advancements done? They have given more people more opportunities. The internet raised the floor and ceiling for access to information, antibiotics raised the floor and ceiling on lifespan, and electricity raised the floor and ceiling on productivity.

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine a world where everyone is educated and healthy. What would that world look like? It would be brimming with abundance. We would 10x the number of smart people working on new technology, and the quality of work would be higher. Eventually, we would be able to build technology to solve every problem—fast transportation, clean energy, sustainable agriculture. All that comes from healthy, educated people innovating and providing value at scale.

In this world, everyone would be free to work as whatever they want. There would be so much abundance that people wouldn't have to work if they didn't want to. That is the ultimate form of wealth, and it is a noble, not unethical, pursuit.

1. https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts