I’ve had the good fortune of knowing a few deep-pocketed individuals in my lifetime. Up close, some of them are just like you and me. They have a working-class mentality of making a living, investing, taking care of family, and giving back to others. A couple of individuals I’ve come to know have been consistently active in supporting youth with their words and funds. As one old-timer told me, “They’ve got more money than God, but they do good things with it.

The accumulation of wealth is not an unusual phenomenon. Whether in land, shells, food, people, coin, or some other type of asset, there appears to be an internal drive to preserve ourselves via various historical signs of prosperity.

I once asked a visiting guru from India about the role of money. He sat colorfully robed with his legs crossed in a stereotypical fashion of what one would think a wise man from the top of the mountain would appear as. The classroom at FSU was sterile compared to him but it was full of inquisitive students. I asked him whether a person could be super wealthy in this life and still make it to heaven or nirvana or the next level.

He answered that money in itself is not a sin, just like man himself is not inherently evil. It is what the person does with that wealth that is the challenge of living a worthwhile life. The Bible gives some parallel examples of both wealth for wealth’s sake and the expectation of sharing, pointing to the love of money being at the “root of all kinds of evil.”

Our Founding Fathers, for example, were wealthy by many means. Most had a wealth of academic knowledge, being educated in literature and philosophy or apprenticed in fields of medicine or law. Some had inherited wealth, either by family or from the largesse of the monarchy. Others had the wealth of ears, serving as ministers of various religions, publishers, and appointed officials. A few such as Benjamin Franklin started with very little and worked their way up by ambition, ability, and curiosity. Franklin was so successful that his quotes such as “early to bed, early to rise,” are still in our thinking today.

When the government back in England took what was deemed as too much for too little representation, the rebellion arose. Men could not be free to make a living if their wealth was usurped by unseen hands and Kingly decisions across the ocean. While the actions of the first American patriots led to something great in common and that still lasts, today’s men of wealth appear to have varied and individual goals.

Some like Elon Musk have true genius characteristics and have pushed complacent industries such as aerospace and automotive to be better. Others such as Jeff Bezos, though not a genius, had the vision to see the power of the internet and the blind spots of the old icons such as Borders, Sears, and numerous publishing houses. Though he has created a more efficient system of buying and selling, his accumulation of wealth has come with the downfall of these companies.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin, great coders and programmers, accumulated wealth by creating Google and Facebook, two applications built on digital language. Both have had an outsized effect on American culture, putting the world’s library at our fingertips and friends from across the world on our screens. Though we still do not know if applications such as Facebook will ultimately be seen by history as a positive or detrimental force, immense wealth has been created and accumulated.

With these innovations, today’s world economy is probably the most transactional in history. Almost anything anywhere at any time can be bought in the blink of an eye. For freedom lovers and economists everywhere, it is the stuff that dreams are made of.

But how solid is that freedom? The money makers of old created eyeglasses and published papers, or built railroads and drilled for oil. Today’s wealth makers are digital kingpins, not necessarily creating or building stuff, but forming and controlling artificial access points.

The grave danger with today’s moneymakers has some similarities to the turn of the last century when a few men who controlled the mechanisms of energy and transportation colluded to fix prices and elect their own candidates. Teddy Roosevelt bucked his party and the system, realizing that when the actions of one or a few have the power to constrain both a free market and an elected form of government, then there is no real freedom.

We can’t have a functioning democracy without economic freedom. The image of American exceptionalism has been built on equality in opportunity and under the law. If too few have outsized treasures to promote singular visions, then the system becomes less free, less open, and more oligarchical. Because controls against monopolies, political action committees (PACs), and becoming too big to fail have been politically neutered, I found this next piece to be relevant to the discussion, so stay with me.

I know some of you do not follow the war in Ukraine, but you do have an interest in understanding how such a conflict impacts the U.S. I would encourage readers to go through this article and compare it to our current political system and the role of wealth in the United States. What kind of similarities or differences come to mind? Has the United States reached a level where our freedoms and way of life could be constrained by a few wealthy, connected individuals? Do the decisions of Musk, Bezos, the Koch brothers, Buffett, or Gates have an outsized effect on American lives now?

I was reminded again of President Theodore Roosevelt, who established his legacy by breaking the outsized power of a small cabal of men. It could very well be, just as the Ukrainians are finding out, we have reached another such point in our own history.

While Ukraine has had to endure an invasion at a high cost, per this article, one silver lining is the reigning in of their oligarchs. I find it ironic that removing their power has been one of the significant conditions for further partnership with NATO and the European Union, while we in the United States are facing some very similar problems.

This is the lesson not to be missed.

For the Ukrainians to become more democratic in their law and culture, it has had to suffer through war. It reminded me of an American soldier during the Vietnam War, when asked about the constant bombing and shelling of a city they were trying to take, he stated, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Lest we in the United States learn another such lesson the hard way (we’ve already been through one civil war), I suggest at least one course of action.

Singular issues are what give power to a very few. Do not vote for singular social issues such as abortion, crime, immigration, or sexuality. That works to keep the current inequalities in place. For example, while migrants at the border are the daily talking point, your ability to find and keep a good-paying job, affordable healthcare, and affordable insurance, continues to shrink.

Look for individuals with a track record of protecting free markets, treating people as human, and using wealth for purposes toward the greater good. Again, as the wise old man of India said, it is not wealth that’s the problem, it is how wealth is used.

Benjamin Franklin, upon signing the Declaration of Independence, lay his quill pen down and took up his coat. He turned to the other rebels and said, “We must all hang together, or we shall surely be hung separately.” He knew by signing the declaration, they were dead men walking should the British win the war.

Democracy anywhere must stand together everywhere. And as MLK, Jr., once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere….Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Life cannot be treated as purely transactional. Freedom cannot be kept without struggle. Standing with countries like Ukraine is the right thing to do. Passing laws that protect open access to markets and enforcing principles of fairness are paramount to freedom. After all, we have and will continue to face similar threats both internally and externally, against letting freedom ring.

You don’t have to read the entirety of this short piece, but there is one major finding that speaks volumes:

“These gains at the very top are mirrored by data on CEO pay in the United States. Compustat, a financial database, tracks executive pay at all publicly owned US firms. In this data, inflation-adjusted pay for CEOs of the 350 largest publicly owned US firms grew 1,209% (not a typo) between 1978 and 2022. Further, the gap between CEOs and typical workers has grown dramatically over the last few decades. In 1965, CEOs were paid 21 times as much as the typical worker. By 2022, CEOs were paid 344 times as much as the typical worker.”

I don’t think this is the kind of American Exceptionalism built upon a rock, and this kind of inequality is what leads to chaos and collapse. Lest we fall to the age of the oligarchs, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must not be if we can afford it.

As we are just a few days past MLK, Jr. Day, I always try and reflect and remember just how young he was when he died. What he accomplished during his short life was exceptional. These great American leaders like MLK, Jonas Salk, the Roosevelts, Frederick Douglass, and Lincoln teach us perseverance in a life spent in service to others.

And I love this Julia Roberts story.

And Now….

 Hope to see you next time. Keep up your reading habits, and remember: Be a good human.