I often find myself, as I’m sure many others do, fantasizing about what I would do if I had bills in the bank akin to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos. First, of course, the personal shopping list of exuberant and frivolous novelty items to amuse me. Then perhaps a hit list of shenanigans to be perpetrated around the globe. Some of the more benevolent minded may try to put the cash to use in solving some sort of national or international problem, developing a new technology to innovate the daily lives of others, or even sparking a social campaign to elevate a new way of thought. I prefer the more whimsical problem-solving that Bill Gates exhibited when contemplating shooting a missile of dust into the Earth’s atmosphere to blot out the sun’s rays and hedge against solar effects on climate change. In a similar but more sincere vein, I certainly admire the leaps and bounds in technology made by Musk’s many companies in a concerted effort to help bring humanity into the future.

Eventually, thoughts alight on the Lex-Luthor-looking business magnate, Jeff Bezos, and what he had done to earn and grow his fortune. Under government health officials’ projected agoraphobia (fear of going outside), we have seen a rise in the utilization of many services designed to cut out the middleman and what remains of his whole pitiful existence. Amazon has been at the forefront of this new shift in economic infrastructure, facilitating the transport of goods conveniently to your front door. The Scrooge McDuck piles of cash that have been accumulated by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos has raised many an eyebrow, with his net worth at a current estimate of 183.6 billion dollars U.S. Keep in mind, that his net worth is not an accounts’ statement, which would actually be more than that, but net worth is rather a measurement of the value of Bezos as an entity should you point a financial ray gun in his direction and set it to liquidate. So why is that number so mind-bogglingly large when many on the planet are barely able to scrape through rent and get by? The empathetic ask. Capitalism!? Yes, but perhaps with a less sinister tone.

I remember reading an article compiled in The Salmon of Doubt, by the late great Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) who often wrote out of a fascination in tech development. Adams mused in the ’90s about the amazing and innovative development of early Amazon, which at the time had functioned as an internet book and movie service and was just beginning to expand its services to other goods. Amazon functioned brilliantly in this respect, in adapting to suit consumer demands and meet them with competent supply. To pose a simple contrast, ordering something from Amazon may only take a few days to arrive, while instead, the national postal service will have hardly assured the delivery before the recipient has expired due to natural causes. Obvious hyperbole aside, the services of Amazon have grown to such an extent because of the demand that they meet; capitalism at work, you want a thing, he has a thing, you exchange money for the thing. Bezos’ came along and fostered a convenient means of thing and money transfer, and because we all unabashedly utilize this hyper-convenient service, we pass money along to Bezos in the process.

There is a point to be made about tax breaks and how Bezos pays a negligible amount of taxes in proportion to Amazon’s profit margin, but tax breaks are implemented by the government as a boon for doing work to help the economy in some manner, which Amazon inarguably does. I have seen many socialist-minded fellows shake their fists at the billionaire however, a simple reaction to coax if you simply present a person with the contrast of Bezos’ wealth with their own poverty. The truth of the matter, however, is that there was a time when the now-billionaire once sat behind a less than glamorous foldable table at a nerd convention with a paper printed Amazon banner when the company was still an itty-bitty start-up. While many would credit the company’s success to some sort of capitalist villainy, the makings of billionaire level success are rather due to a recognition of the internet’s potential and an innovative idea which revolutionized modern merchandising. At a certain point, it is very true to say that money begets money, but the only entity permitted to lawfully take money outside the bounds of purchase is government. Otherwise, we are all complicit in the financial elevation of people with bright ideas, and if we want to continue to benefit from the bright ideas that may not be such a bad thing.

The public imagination loves to run wild when it comes to billionaires and their misdoings. Between missiles of dust, AI warnings, dark crimes on private islands, Pinkerton investigations, and polarizing presidencies we do seem to possess plenty of material on which to ruminate. My personal favorite is Bezos’ creation of the richest woman in history when Mackenzie took a sizable portion of his wealth through a divorce. There is plenty to be said and speculated about where we may find ourselves when it comes to the roles that billionaires will play in the murky future of the road out of the pandemic. But it is important to consider the realities of the commerce and economics which have led to the state in which we find ourselves before we begin to wave the flag of the disenfranchised and spout rhetoric on wealth transfer or joining the mob trying to build a literal guillotine outside Bezos’ home anytime soon. In the wider scheme, a billionaire is just a point through which a lot of wealth flows and polarizes. To try and tear them down for crimes committed in the imagination is rather unlikely and most probably fruitless. Rather, perhaps we need to enable more people to become billionaires so that we can benefit from what they do as we have from Amazon. Speaking of which, I must now run to retrieve a package; one of my frivolous novelty items has just arrived.