brendan halpin

A common argument for a confiscatory wealth tax is that it will save society from billionaires. This is both true and a good argument, but there’s a side benefit here that is not really discussed: confiscating obscenely hoarded resources will save billionaires.

Well, it would save the people who might otherwise become billionaires. Because here’s the thing about billionaires: they’re fucking miserable. Bezos, Zuck, Thiel, Gates, Musk, Rowling—these aren’t happy people. Because they have everything they could possibly ever want, they focus on the one thing they can never have: a world that reshapes itself to fit their whims. So they give speeches and go on podcasts and back political candidates and write manifestos but are perpentually unhappy because the world just refuses to completely fall in line. Why won’t we just listen to our betters and do as they say?

And, I mean, look at them. Enormous wealth clearly distorts a person, draining them of their humanity until what’s left is a surgically-enhanced simulacrum of a person. A lot of these guys are trying to hack death because how dare life end until they are goddamn good and ready for it to happen?

And, of course, they also don’t see other people as people. Sure, people have died because Musk was too stubborn to put a non-electric door handle in Teslas. Small price to pay! Yes, Zuck knows damn well that scammers use facebook to fleece vulnerable people out of their savings—but oh well, they should have been more skeptical, and those scam ads bring in a lot of money.

Even here in Boston, one of our local Billionaires, Bob Kraft, forced his hapless son Josh to run for mayor, a job he clearly didn’t want, because Michelle Wu played political hardball with him. He subjected his own child to investigation, ridicule by the likes of me, and, ultimately, public humiliation because the world failed to bend the knee. These are not the actions of a happy person. Or a good person.

Or look at JK Rowling, who has devoted her life to spreading hate and who can only write screeds masquerading as mysteries, where her (male, always male, but don’t ask questions about that) protagonist mouths Rowling’s grievances at length. She’s re-launching everything Harry Potter because she has lost touch with whatever it was that made her able to create a beloved character whose series went completely off the rails after three books.

These billionaires have forfeited their right to be referred to as human. Musk would, I think, be the first to argue this: after all, he famously sees us all as NPCs in a game where he’s the player. They probably think they’re some sort of superhuman. But what they are is monsters.

I know most of the powerful people in our society are too busy barking at the billionaires’ table for crumbs to do anything that might benefit society as a whole, but what if we pitch it this way: we can prevent these people from turning into monsters. Unchecked, they will become grotesque, so we have to tax the hell out of them for their own good.

Worth a try!