We Need a New Creed

1. The accumulation of wealth is the universal metric by which mankind appraises its members and is sanctioned by all legitimate elements of society.

2. The ratio between the top to median national household net worth in the United States currently approaches 1,500,000:1. In 1776, this ratio was around 1,000:1.

3. We do not think that mankind could be trained to abandon pursuit of great wealth. But we do think it absurd for any household to possess more than 10,000x the national median net worth.

Why would anyone hoard more wealth than could ever improve their security, their comfort, and their luxury?

Because they are insatiable.

Mankind’s occupations do not satisfy its preoccupations. The chief preoccupation of mankind is to improve its status. Those who are insecure desire equality. Those who are inferior desire equality. Those who are equal desire superiority. And those who are superior are insatiable. Quoting Aristotle:

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior.

Mankind’s pursuit of higher status finds expression in various forms, but finds fullest expression in the accumulation of wealth. Of all the metrics by which status is measured or compared, whether by intelligence or wisdom or courage or compassion or something else, wealth has been the most universal, most useful, easiest to obtain, and easiest to display. It’s easier to buy bread with money than with fortitude or show off a grand estate than to display temperance. By operation of the lowest common denominator, wealth has become the main standard by which mankind appraises its members.

The universal desire for wealth confers upon great fortunes and rich men the sanction and approbation of all social institutions: Household. Church. School. Government. Media. In every legitimate quarter, the more wealth, the more success.

Wealth can improve everyone’s absolute status. It can lift all from precarity, to security, to comfort. But the competition for relative status, the comparison of success, rages no matter the level of prosperity and technology. The threat of revolution won’t cease just as soon as every household has two cars, 5G internet, or universal healthcare. Every man’s anger at being cheated and every man’s desire to be noticed – what Thorstein Veblen described as the “invidious comparison” and what Montesquieu described as vanity – increase the risk of revolution with every passing moment during which many are abused by few. Man’s disgust of iniquity goes back much further than Ancient Greece, but all the way back to the monkeys:

For those who are acquainted with the methods by which wealth is frequently obtained, the personality traits most conducive to relentless pursuit thereof, the importance of luck and timing, and the reckless disregard for one’s own homeland endemic in the age of globalism, the possession of great wealth becomes revolting in the presence of abject poverty and unrequited labor. As Balzac has been paraphrased:

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

When one considers how many great fortunes have been and will be made and lost by so many nameless men, how utterly forgettable the fortunes of all rich men are compared to the achievements of genius and talent – of art, science, music, scholarship, painting, and writing – the accumulation of great fortunes becomes inevitable and pedestrian.

Even though, upon reflection, the accumulation of great fortunes is no great thing, we should not imagine that the bulk of mankind can be weaned off their obsession for wealth or trained to a different object. Neither the history nor the psychology of mankind can sustain any philosophy which can seriously challenge the utility or legitimacy of great fortunes and rich men. Rome’s greatest lawyer easily cut down the communistic idealism of Greece’s greatest philosophical work, Plato’s Republic:

His State may perhaps be an excellent one, but it is quite unsuited to men’s actual lives and habits.

Cicero

But while the utility and legitimacy of wealth will always endure in all free and stable societies, both human psychology and history recommend that we establish and enforce a line of absurdity. Since the building block of political society is the household, let that line of absurdity be expressed as a ratio of the top to the median household let worth.

Today the fortunes of the richest Americans approach 1,500,000x the national median household net worth. I can think of no other aspect of human existence, whether within or among nations, where such a wide range exists. No nation is 1,500,000x more populous than the median. No nation is 1,500,000x wealthier than the median. No person is 1,500,000x smarter, faster, stronger, bigger, more industrious, more talented, or in any other respect more excellent than the median.

When the United States declared independence, the ratio between the top and the median household net worth was closer to 1,000:1. (My own rough computation, which must be verified.)

Look at the United States now. When one considers the strife, polarization, precarity, and the dissolution of the middling virtues of modesty, trust, and civility, the death of our middle class, and the erosion of our democratic institutions, there’s only one word to describe a republic which permits this ratio to approach 1,500,000:1: insane.

Let the line of absurdity be set at the wealth of 10,000 middle class households. Going forward, let no household accumulate more than 10,000x the national median household net worth. Let mankind’s ambition for higher status and more wealth continue to raise our species to new heights as it has always done. But let it be moderated by this one ratio, this one multiple, this one new creed:

10,000:1