Tom Whyman’s Beef With Billionaires

A Facebook friend of mine and fellow small business owner shared an article entitled, “ The worship of billionaires has become our shittiest religion” by Tom Whyman. I, respecting his opinions for the most part, took the time to read it. This is my response.

Tom Whyman’s Arguments In a Nutshell

1. Nobody should have a billion dollars.
2. The only way you get a billion dollars is by stealing from your employees by paying them less than their labor is worth.
3. Billionaires aren’t really human because their money puts them outside the reach of normal human problems, therefore it’s not possible to dehumanize them.
4. If you don’t oppose billionaires, you’re psychologically primed to be a toady.
5. Aspiring to be a billionaire is a terrible thing to do.
6. Becoming a billionaire is a matter of luck or inheritance and therefore it is unfair to the masses.
7. The billionaire’s salvation and entrance into earthly paradise where they get all the good stuff requires the damnation of everyone else.
8. Being a billionaire is evidence of a “basic glitch in the moral fabric of the universe” where evil is rewarded and good people are damned.

Faulty Premise 1: Nobody Should Be A Billionaire

It’s understandable why Whyman believes this premise is true. He’s a student of Karl Marx and a disciple. He’s bought Marx’s works hook, line, and sinker. The problem is that the statement is based entirely on a flawed understanding of what money is, what it does, and how it is earned.

Money is nothing more than a tool — like a hammer or a car or a computer. The only thing that money tool is useful for doing is measuring two things:

1. The amount of trust earned that the product or service being sold can deliver the results promised in the time frame specified
2. The amount of commitment the buyer has to getting those results in that time frame.

Money cements the contract between buyer and seller, giving both a vested interest in delivering on their part of the bargain. The buyer commits to doing what the seller instructs them to do in order to get the results they desire and the seller commits to providing the support the buyer needs in order to get those results.

The goal of both buyer AND seller is to help the BUYER achieve their dreams. The commitment on the part of the buyer, represented by the money they pay, is not to the seller but to their own dreams.

When you approach money with this understanding, it isn’t greedy or bad to say to yourself that you want to become the single most trustworthy individual in the world in terms of your ability to help other people achieve their dreams. In point of fact, what should be said is that EVERYONE should become a billionaire.

Faulty Premise 2: It Requires Employees To Become a Billionaire

I can understand why both Marx and Whyman make the mistake of believing employees are a necessity in becoming a billionaire. It’s the way it’s usally been done since the time of the Industrial Revolution. However, just because it’s always been done that way doesn’t mean that’s the best, smartest, or only way to do things.

Strictly speaking, not one employee needs to be hired in order to hit billionaire status. Yes, it is a very large number, but it can be reached within a decade by a single person if that person knows what they are doing.

Let’s start with one author. Let’s say that author is very good and sells a million copies of her book a year. She’s a self-published author so she makes $5 a book. That’s $5 million dollars a year from one product.

She records an online course that covers the content of her book and prices that at $250 per person. She sells a million copies of that course a year. Now she’s making $255,000,000 per year.

She offers a special certification course to her best students, priced at $2500, that covers the content in more depth and with greater detail. At the end of that course, they are given a one year license to teach the content to others and she earns 10% of their revenue. Her certification course enrolls 100,000 students and makes her an additional $250,000,000 on top of the $255,000,000 per year she was making from her other sources.

The students she trained get to work that following year. To be conservative, let’s say that only 1,000 of them actually put their training to use. Those students sell just 25,000 copies of her course each. The total made by her students that year is 6.25 BILLION dollars. She gets 10% of that money, just $625 million.

However, she didn’t quit training people and she didn’t quit selling books and she didn’t quit offering her course. So at the end of the year, she’s got 100,000 new students, which made her $250,000,000 and the $255,000,000 from her book sales and course revenue. She has, all totaled, made $1.13 Billion dollars. She hasn’t hired a single employee.

What she’s done, instead, is to create disciples. She’s given them the bulk of the revenue made in exchange for the work done and she’s created a self-generating revenue system that allows everyone to benefit from what she’s teaching. And she can keep doing that, multiplying her revenue making potential, year after year.

Faulty Premise 3: Billionaires Are Outside the Realm Of Normal Human Problems

This may seem true on the surface, but it isn’t true in reality. If you spend a little time talking on a deeply personal level with people who have made and lost fortunes, you will discover that billionaires have no fewer problems than the rest of us do.

Yes, there are many things that money can buy — but money can create just as many problems as it solves. Were it the panacea for all things, as Whyman suggests, you would have no cases of billionaires committing suicide. But you do.

Billionaires cannot buy their way into adding another minute to the 24 hours allotted them each day. Billionaires cannot escape death for themselves or their loved ones. They still die just like the rest of us do, and their children are not immune from death, either.

Money does not solve the problem of how to form healthy, normal relationships with the people around you. If you were an insecure, neurotic mess before you made your money, the money will only amplify your insecurities and neurosis.

Money does not stop you from experiencing rejection or ridicule or hatred or any of the other pains of life. It cannot make someone love you, and it can make it harder to spot those who genuinely love you from those who are there for your money and its comforts.

Having placards with your name inscribed on them or hospitals built or libraries constructed does not equal immortality. And you don’t need to be a billionaire to get those things anyway. All you really need to do is make a difference in people’s lives….which is an opportunity that is free to us all.

Faulty Premise 4: If you don’t oppose billionaires, you’re psychologically primed to be a toady.

Making money is a skill. Billionaires are masters of that skill. That is where they spent their time and energy devoted, and you are seeing the results of that dedication. I would no more oppose a billionaire executing his skills than I would a master painter executing his. Both have value.

I can learn to be a master artist, but if I want to do so I need to be prepared to spend that same time and dedication that they do to master their craft. I can learn to be a billionaire, but I must be prepared to make the same sacrifices that they do to get where they are. I must spend the same time and put in the same effort to get where they are.

As long as you are busy blaming billionaires for mastering their craft and harvesting the fruits of the seeds they’ve sown, you will never be able to sit down and learn from them what they did, how they did it, and what it cost them to do so. I’ve interviewed multi-millionaires who are on their way there and it enabled me to see both the advantages and the disadvantages of their chosen path in life.

Faulty Premise 5: Billionaires Inherit It Or Are Lucky

There are at least 14 billionaires out there who started out with nothing. You can read about them in this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-who-came-from-nothing-2014-9

Here’s the truth: Having money handed to you when you don’t know how to use it wisely will destroy you, it won’t build you up. Most people who inherit wealth end up squandering it and losing it. Just look at the British nobility and you’ll find plenty of examples of family estates lost and gone to ruin because the heirs didn’t know how to manage the wealth they’d gained.

If you want further proof, track the lives of lottery winners. They often end up worse off than they were before because they don’t know how to handle the money since they didn’t learn it before they got it. Money is a tool that can build things, but it can also destroy you if you let it.

Absolutely none of the people who are billionaires that started with nothing did so based on luck. They applied their intelligence, their creativity, their relationship skills, and they looked at ways they could serve the needs of others. They saw a need in the market and they stepped in to fill that need. That is how capitalism works. The better you are at identifying and filling other people’s unmet needs and unfulfilled dreams, the more money you will make.

Faulty Premise 6: A Billionaires Paradise Requires Other People’s Misery

It is true that some people do choose to build their wealth on the backs of other people’s misery. It does not mean that is the best or only way to build that wealth. It means that is how they have chosen to do it.

Capitalism works best when everyone wins with every transaction made. The person who invents the product should win, the person who makes the product should win, the person who sells the product should win, the person who consumes the product should win, the community in which the buyer and seller live should win, the nation should win, and the world should win.

Yes, I want to be a billionaire. I want to make a difference in the lives of all 7 billion people on this planet. I want to teach those who don’t know how to find their value the value hidden inside them so they can unlock that and share it with their communities for the benefit of all.

I want to take those who are already billionaires and teach them the benefit of investing their wealth into the one sure bet they can make — their fellow human beings — and by investing in them, lift everyone up.

Faulty Premise 7: Blaming the Wealthy Helps The Poor

Whyman’s article is another exercise in blaming the wealthy for the problems of the poor. Marx blamed the wealthy for the problems of the poor and I’m sure he thought he was right and that he was helping people who were being crushed by poverty. However, blame is a very dangerous game for anyone to play.

It blinds you to all the things you could be doing to help fix the situation or at least not make it worse. It keeps you from seeing how you are contributing to the problems and it actually keeps you trapped in the very situation you are complaining about.

I spent decades in poverty. I wrote The Poverty Diaries in 2014 to help people who weren’t in that situation see what it was like to be there. Five years later, I was able to get myself into a stable position and turn my problems into profits. You can get a free ebook copy of that book by visiting my website: http://writeyourbook.today/turning-problems-into-profits

Part of what I learned came from the wealthy people who shared with me their stories. I’d never have been able to see where I was going wrong if not for them, and I’d never have been able to get them to open up if I’d kept blaming them for all my problems.

The poor do need help — but it isn’t the kind of help most people assume they need. They need help finding what they have inside them that’s of worth and value to other people. They need help developing the relationship skills that will make doing business possible for them. Last, they need help overcoming the limiting beliefs that are causing them to fail.