Oh agreed. I think we’re talking past each other to a certain extent. I certainly don’t think that we can expect billionaires to ever be the ones to help. Andrew Carnegie’s act of giving most of his stolen money back under very specific directions on how to use it, after repressing wages and worker actions and literally having people killed his whole adult life, is considered a high bar for them. They have an addiction of some sort. I think it’s obvious if you read Carnegie’s journal—he talks early in his career about how his success has been beyond expectations and he’ll only need to work a few more years and then he can just travel the world on that nest egg and be a business consultant. Lol.

But still some disagreements. Religions have been around for a long time, but they’ve come in quite a few varieties. Christianity in most implementations is very top-down authoritarian in nature. I don’t think that’s something “the people” decided on and then elected to hand over autonomy to meritocratic leaders, and I think this is evidenced by the many other religions that do not work the same way, like Earth Lodge religion, Malagasy spiritualism and spiritual warfare, Mahayana Buddhism, or even subsets of Christianity like Quakers that eschewed hierarchy. Unless there is something in our blood that makes certain “races” of people think differently, then it’s cultural. If it’s cultural, then the loudest voices shape it the most.

No, I think within Christianity and Christian territories people established themselves as rulers by co-opting the desires of humans to have some greater story such as religion that helps explain their lives. Likewise, I think senses of entitlement and beliefs in justice were co-opted. Reinforcing the notions of justice by constantly emphasizing its importance in your culture explains away many of your despotic actions. It provides a shield that slows the tide of revolt. Your political enemies are simply getting what they deserved; the people starving must be unrepentant sinners. In the U.S., the people who are directly responsible for so many people having less than what’s needed for a comfortable life are able to avoid scrutiny precisely by focusing on how those people deserve so much more. They do! It’s true! They know it, and hearing someone admit it feels very liberating! But listening to those voices allows billionaires and their mouthpieces to coax people into believing in their twisted idea of what society should look like—that instead of being entitled to live a good life, people should be entitled to pursue a great one.

I think the proliferation of billionaires points to a cultural problem, but not a grassroots groundswell of belief in billionaires. Too much of culture is asserted surreptitiously through native advertising in the news and PR in our newsfeeds. We haven’t adapted quickly enough—we still think these voices are our peers. We don’t realize how few voices there are, or how many parrots repeating them.