Our Irrational Obsession with Billionaires Needs to Stop

Here’s the thing: I like Kanye West’s music (his pre-god music) but I don’t care what he thinks about planned parenthood and abortion. 

I want to drive a Tesla and hope that SpaceX gets humanity to Mars, but I don’t care what Elon Musk thinks about the global pandemic. 

I shop at Amazon, but I don’t care if Jeff Bezos believes that investing in cryptocurrency is a good idea or not. 

I would wear Kylie Jenner’s lipstick before I listen to her opinion on politics. 

Yet when these billionaires comment on anything, we listen. When they announce presidential races, we indulge them. Forbes recently interviewed West about his run for office in the USA and the interview is absolutely batshit crazy. It’s so crazy that the best they could do was quote West in incoherent chunks and avoid writing an actual story, because his meandering smashing together of words was practically unusable. 

Another potential American president who babbles on incoherently. Great. 

As a society, we need to place much more importance on what experts say about topics that they have dedicated their lives to. We need to stop listening to wealthy people about everything. 

I want to hear Jay-Z’s views on the evolution of music. I’m interested in what Kylie Jenner has to say about growing a brand from zero to a billion – that makes sense. 

When it comes to things like global pandemics, medical procedures, quantum physics and international relations, I want to hear from people that have dedicated their lives to these fields… not someone who is dipping their toe in for a lark. 

I do not want to read about Kanye West telling Forbes that vaccines are “…the mark of the beast,” and that planned parenthood has “…been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work”.

Here’s another unqualified rich man who is anti-abortion telling women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies. Why are we indulging his ill-informed opinions and giving him a microphone on some of the most important platforms in the world?

We let these people speak because they are billionaires. We have become obsessed with wealth as an indicator of all-encompassing knowledge and experience. 

I was recently sent a press release that triggered this column. The PR agency pitched this and similar headlines: 

Can Billionaires Teach Us How to Thrive in Crisis? 

No, they can’t. 

They’re billionaires and they live on their isolated islands, football field-sized yachts that float in international waters to avoid the global pandemic, and in mansions that could house hundreds of people. 

They cannot teach me or anyone else how to thrive in a crisis because they don’t live in a crisis: in fact, they barely live on the same Earth as the rest of us. Not any more. To these people, Earth just looks different. 

There are 2,095 billionaires in the world that we know of, but I’m sure there are many more who don’t want us to know who they are. That’s 0.000027% of the population. These people have unthinkable wealth and are only earning more of it, yet now we’re also giving them our minds.

My frustration extends beyond the click-bait headline of desperate PR people. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I support freedom of speech that allows people to say what they want and when they want, and to receive fair and reasonable criticism. But I’m sick of listening to wealthy, famous and good looking people with tens of millions of fans on social media talk about things they know nothing about. 

I believe in democracy but I do not believe in politicians. I am borderline libertarian in my views of governance, but where is the line? When do we prevent crazy people like West, Musk and others from dictating how we see the world and using their billions to win office and change laws?

The unchecked impulse of the wealthy and famous to tweet whatever comes to mind does real societal damage, all in the name of ego-stroking. 

Let’s talk more about Kanye West’s announcement that he’s running for president of the USA. West is a verified billionaire (Forbes calculates his net worth to be around $1.3bn). He has also recently emerged as a religious zealot who believes that the coronavirus can be cured by prayer, and that his god elects the president of the USA (his god, not the other roughly 2,999 gods that humans believe in). 

This same guy is running for president (although it seems his run has come to an abrupt end, thankfully) and has a good shot at gaining votes. HE HAS NEVER VOTED IN HIS LIFE. He is barely equipped to run a household, let alone a country. Yet he has a platform because he sells a lot of sneakers and can rap over a beat. He’s damn good at rapping and he sure knows how to brand himself, but outside of this, he has no qualifications that justify his destructive messages. He is scientifically bankrupt and morally questionable. Have we learned nothing from Donald Trump?

Why are we empowering billionaires? Why are we giving dogmatic nut jobs a microphone? Is it because we are so empty of our own opinions that we need the rich, famous and good looking to think for us? 

Is it easier to allow populists to make decisions for us than to formulate our own views and act accordingly? Or are our democratic institutions ready for disruption? Is this not exactly what democracy is? An individual who believes that they should run for president and can do so without hesitation. 

I believe in democracy but I do not believe in politicians. I am borderline libertarian in my views of governance, but where is the line? When do we prevent crazy people like West, Musk and others from dictating how we see the world and using their billions to win office and change laws?

There is no line here. We have let the crazies run the insane asylum. This is our doing.

As I have said already, I believe that everyone has the right to their own opinions, but outrage is engagement. Social networks, news organisations, YouTubers, influencers and anyone trying to gain traction for their opinions seek to spark outrage. Outrage stems from polarising people, not galvanising them. The middle ground is boring. 

The extremes incite violence, rage and retweets. Sadly, people do not understand the difference between having an opinion and having facts. You can have your own opinion, but you cannot have your own unique facts. Social media and traditional media outlets are rewarded for inciting outrage. 

The old version of this used to be, “if it bleeds, it leads” but we have progressed far beyond this now. Where does the responsibility lie? Is it with our governments? Are the laws ripe for change and ready to be upended? I don’t think so. More laws won’t fix this problem. 

I implore you to read as much as you can stomach. It is your democratic obligation to be informed. Take in opinions that disagree with your own and challenge your core beliefs. Vocally challenge things that you think are dangerous but remove your ego and try to listen and learn wherever possible. 

Is it with our educational institutions? Perhaps. Maybe we need educators to prepare impressionable minds for the onslaught of fake news, made-up facts and wealthy uninformed power-houses pushing agendas to make them richer. 

Or does responsibility lie with the wealthy who should be editing themselves to save the masses? That will never happen. Billionaires become billionaires because they are ambitious, egocentric and mostly selfish. These are not traits that serve a community very well. 

I believe that the ultimate responsibility lies with each of us. It’s our job to know who is talking to us and what has informed their view of the world. It’s our job to question everything we read and question why it’s being said in a specific way on a specific platform to a specific audience. 

It’s our job to challenge politicians, to challenge laws, to fight for change, to openly debate things that upset us and to indulge other people with differing opinions as long as they aren’t causing harm to other people. 

I believe that opinions stemming from the Trumps, Musks and Wests of the world are causing more damage than the world can manage. Social media has made it too easy for unchecked opinions to gain traction and muddy the facts so that most people can’t tell which way gravity is pulling them.

I implore you to read as much as you can stomach. It is your democratic obligation to be informed. Take in opinions that disagree with your own and challenge your core beliefs. Vocally challenge things that you think are dangerous but remove your ego and try to listen and learn wherever possible. 

Finally, do not agree with everything you see online (even this column) just because it has appeared online. Dig deeper, find out who the author is, find out what they believe in, find out why they hold this opinion – and then see if you still like what they’ve said. 

This is how we overcome idiocy and dangerous extremism. It’s on us. No one is going to save us from ourselves.

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This article was originally published in The Daily Maverick.

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