The complexities of office banter
I recently had a conversation with my manager that I have been thinking about for some time. It was one of those conversations where if I had not been holding onto my seat I would have fallen off of it. You know the type I’m talking about. When someone says something so outrageous that you can barely get to grips with the words that came out of their mouth. The kind of sentence that if it took on a physical form it would be that of a Lovecraftian horror. My boss said that she thinks billionaires should exist.
How did you get to this topic I hear you shout from the other side of the internet. Well I had been explaining that AI was bad for the environment (a topic for another day) and like dominoes falling you arrive at billionaires are bad. So now that you are all caught up and some context has been provided lets continue.
It’s a classic debate and one that I am sure is had everyday all around the world. We have been conditioned to believe that one day we to could rise beyond our station to the dizzying heights of richer than god. Billionaires and to a certain degree millionaires occupy a space in society that is admired by a lot of people. They have worked hard and by the sweat of their brow pulled themselves up by the bootstraps to make all their money. These plucky 3028 people as of 2025 have shown us that it is indeed possible to become ungodly rich. If that is, you have generational wealth, abuse political, financial and legal loopholes and in the case of my argument to my manager, use slave labour.
Lets take a quick look at Elon Musk. So it is no secret that he acquired money from his fathers dealings in emerald mining. Regardless of whether he admits it or not he was born into wealth, a big step up from your average joe. According to the internet he co-created many of his early projects an important fact to take into account when looking at his business dealings. He did not take on all the risk but had some other people to help along the way. Sure you can call it business savy but when you have been gifted with wealth early on you are more resilient to risks.
Lets look at the current number 5 on the top 10 list. Bernard Arnault. He is currently worth a paltry 178 billion. That’s the GDP of Morocco if you were interested. Well Bernard, surprise surprise, was born into wealth also. He started working in his fathers civil engineering company, Ferret-Savinel, in 1971 and by 1978 was its president. Sounds a bit like nepotism to me. Over time they pivoted towards luxury goods and from there it expanded. Just look at those opportunities! Again a decent leg up from generational wealth.
At this point I should make it clear that I do not care for billionaires or people rich beyond measure. These people hoard wealth and use it to mold the world to their benefit. You don’t need to take my word for it because Oxfam did a study on billionaire wealth and released a 92-page report on their findings. The results will absolutely not surprise you, unless you are my boss, which reminds me we need to get back to her.
One of her arguments was that Billionaires worked hard for their money and therefore deserved it. This is not true I replied because if that were the case then we would be rich.(This is confirmed by the Oxfam report. I also followed the sources which are free to download if you are that way inclined.) We work hard so why aren’t we rich? Well they are very smart was her rebuttable. Oh no I have been bested in this battle of wits I thought but then luckily I remembered the richest man in the world is a complete and utter moron who has demonstrated this at every possible moment. No I explained this is not true. Need I remind you that I was holding onto my chair for fear of toppling over from shock. I should also mention at this point that I work in social care.
Yes that’s right. My boss is a manager in the social care industry and believes that billionaires should exist and looks up to them. In the process of explaining that billionaires are evil I had to explain how they control the media and lobby government to bend politics and narratives to their benefit. At this point we were well past debating the ethics of billionaires but this is the complexity of our world now. Seasoned debaters will know that I was not going to convince her to see things differently. We view the world completely differently but I think that some people try to remain completely ignorant of how our world operates. This is entirely to the benefit of the ruling class. I don’t claim to have all the answers but I do think that we are at a point in our society where we need to be more aware of how our world functions.
If you are still reading then thank you for sticking around. I want to try use this space as a way to discuss these and other issues I run into on a daily basis. Like the name says. I am not a professional but I don’t think you need to be to express opinions in a well thought out manner. It also doesn’t hurt to throw in a bit of research which I intend to do when I find the time between work and studies.
PS: I discovered the oxfam report late and was gonna shoehorn some of the facts into this piece but honestly it might require its own post once I have had time to peruse it.