The insanity that is capitalism has become so shocking, so outrageous that everyone by now must surely see that the whole concept is a lie that needs to be overhauled like, yesterday.  I mean, here is a system that enables 1% of the population to siphon 50 Trillion from the income of the bottom 90% of the population.  And this, in the most powerful nation on the planet. How did we get here?  Why is nothing being done about this even though we started hearing about these kinds of statistics almost twenty years ago?  It’s absolutely insane that nothing has been done about it all this time.  We still continue to stand by, helplessly wringing our hands, while the elites continue to plunder all the resources of the planet.  Instead of urgently getting to the bottom of this, using our collective energy and resources to find out how this could urgently be reversed, we continue reading the damning reports and then quickly moving on to the next thing.  It’s almost as if we have accepted that nothing can be done about it. During the Covid pandemic, we were again shocked to hear how much the elites were making while everyone else sank deeper into despair.  It seems the rich will always get richer, and this is just the way life is.  Secretly, we wish we were them.  We study them, we want to know what their secrets are, how they became so wealthy, what we need to do to be like them (should we all drop out of college like them, for example), etc.  We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality. Please note that I am not trying to blame anyone or to shame anyone for admiring the rich and wanting to be like them.  We’ve all been there.  All I’m saying is, why can’t we imagine a system that allows all of us to be wealthy, because surely there is enough wealth in this planet to go round, and then we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives wishing for something that will never happen as long as the system remains as it is?

We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality.

Take Elon Musk for example.  To me, he embodies everything that is wrong with the system.  Recently I read an article about how Elon Musk makes a fortune whenever Tesla meets some set targets.  And herein lies the problem.  You see, Musk did not personally do the work that led to the achievement of these goals.  He’s no doubt a great manager, a great CEO who somehow manages to inspire and motivate and strategize and do whatever else he needs to do in order to meet these targets.  But, at the end of the day, the fact still remains he did not do the work himself.  The work was done by the many employees of Tesla.  So, the question is, why is it that Elon Musk, just one guy in a company of thousands of employees gets to be the only one who is rewarded for the attainment of these objectives?  Is it a lack of imagination on the part of the board or what exactly does this mean?  Does it mean that the board could not see that Musk did not do the work himself, or is it that it never occurred to them that anyone apart from the CEO deserves to be rewarded for the exceptional performance of the company?  Does it mean that the board could not stretch their minds just a little bit and see that all employees of Tesla should have shared equally in the rewards that came from the achievement of the goals?

The problem here, which really is the problem with capitalism itself, is a complete lack of imagination.  I mean, it’s stunning that no one even sees anything wrong with this scenario, that it’s reported in the media almost as if it’s the most natural thing in the world that the CEO should enjoy virtually all the fruits of the labour of thousands of people by himself.  As far as I’m concerned, all the employees of Tesla should have shared in the rewards.  Instead of one billionaire, there should be thousands of millionaires.  All the employees, and I mean all of them, from the lowest ranked person in the company to the top ranked person should be able to experience that they work for one of the richest companies in the world.  This should reflect in all their paychecks.  If a company is doing as well as Tesla is doing, then all the good things that come out of this should be enjoyed by everyone not just the top people in the company.  This idea that only the top people deserve to be rewarded handsomely is what has resulted in the 1% phenomenon, pure and simple.  It’s because at some point, obviously because of greed, the top people started keeping more and more for themselves, and the more they got away with it, the more ravenous they became.  No one questioned why the top people were getting millions while everyone else was getting an annual increment of 3% to their already meager incomes.  This was normalized, it was not questioned, we went along with the lie.  Because someone is the CEO, because someone came up with an idea, they should forever more be rewarded for this.  The people who help bring this idea to life are not partners who should share in the rewards but mere employees who should be thankful just for the fact that they have a job.

Now, I am not in any way saying that Elon Musk is not a smart guy, maybe even a genius for creating successful companies such as Tesla or spaceX or whatever else he has created.  All I’m saying is that he may have had the initial idea, but he could never have done it without the people who work for him.  Without these people, he could never have achieved what he has achieved.  An idea is good, but in itself, it is useless without the people who actually work to make it a reality.  So why should the person who came up with the idea continue to be rewarded over and over again ad infinitum for an idea he came up with years ago?  Why shouldn’t the people who are collectively putting their energy into the company also equally share in the rewards? 

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in.  The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others.  Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer.  As I said before, capitalism suffers from a serious lack of imagination.  We seem to be unable to imagine a situation whereby everyone who puts their energy into the achievement of a goal is considered an integral part of the collective effort and is considered worthy to be rewarded just as much as the person at the top.  We are unable to imagine a situation whereby the billions that are earned from these shared efforts are spread out among all the people who put in an effort.  We somehow think, or have been taught to think that there is something wrong with equitably sharing the earnings of a company.  We have been taught to consider some people’s contribution as lowly, therefore not worthy of being rewarded generously, while it’s okay to be generous with others who are considered more worthy, more deserving of generosity.

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in.  The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others.  Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer.

And this is exactly how capitalism has deceived us all, by telling us that only a few people should enjoy the rewards of success, that everyone else should just be grateful to be earning a salary.  So, let me ask you this, if the company were to share out the billions equitably among the employees, what would be so wrong with that?  Oh, maybe you think that if the cleaner was paid a million dollars a year, they would not know what to do with it, is that it?  Or maybe you think the administrator would not be able to spend a million dollars because it is too much for them?  Or perhaps the accountant wouldn’t find things to do with a million dollars?  Does it make you feel uncomfortable when I talk about the lowest-ranking members of a company being paid handsomely?  Do you automatically dismiss it as impossible or unrealistic?  If so, then you are the victim of programming.  We all are.  We have been programmed to think that not everyone is worthy of being paid well, that generosity cannot extend all the way to the bottom of the company and should only remain at the top levels of the company.  The idea that some people’s effort is more important than others is a construct we have all come to accept, and maybe it’s time we started questioning it.  If you sense this type of programming in yourself, I invite you to pause for a moment and read my article here to learn more about this mindset.  Suffice it to say that each and every person deserves to be treated generously by the company they work for, exactly the way the top people are treated generously by the company.

I know I have used Elon Musk as an example, but I hope you can see that this same principle applies to all the elites who enjoy all the fruits of the successes of their companies by themselves.  Take Jeff Bezos as another example.  During Covid, Amazon made billions which made Bezos the richest person on the planet.  Now, I’m pretty sure that Jeff was not personally packing and shipping all those packages to every corner of the planet in the middle of a pandemic.  It was the hard-working employees of Amazon who did this.  So, why is it that he gets to enjoy the rewards all by himself?  Granted, Jeff came up with a great idea in creating Amazon, but does that mean he has to continue enjoying the fruits of the company’s success all alone forever?  No!  There are thousands of people who are everyday giving their energy to the company, turning Jeff’s idea into reality and they too should get to enjoy the fruits of working for such a successful company. 

We need to rethink the whole idea of employee compensation.  How do companies come up with their compensation schemes?  Well, it’s simple.  Most companies use bench-marking, which is whereby they do a comparative analysis of what other companies are paying their staff and from there, decide what they want to pay their own staff.  This is one of the factors that has allowed the highest earning companies to get away with paying their staff only a fraction of what they are actually capable of paying.  If a company that’s making billions pays the same or a comparable amount as a company that makes much less, then this allows the billion-dollar company to keep much more for themselves, which is exactly what allows the CEOs to pay themselves whatever they want.  This whole system needs to be overhauled.  Companies should be made to pay a percentage of the company turnover to their employees in recognition of the fact that it is the employees who enabled the company to make that money in the first place.  The current practice of bench-marking should not be used to shortchange employees.  The more successful a company is, the more the employees should be paid, whether this is a hundred times above the market rate or whatever.  This is what has been missing, and this is why inequality is getting worse and worse.  No one is looking closely at what portion of a company’s turnover is used on compensation; we are being hoodwinked by being told that the company is the best payer in the market, forgetting that we are comparing billion-dollar companies with companies that are earning much less.

The biggest problem with capitalism is our collective impotence when it comes to dealing with the problem of the 1%.  It’s almost as if this problem has no solution, it’s a problem that defies solutions.  We talk about taxing the mega-rich more, knowing full well that higher taxes will only benefit the government not the people.  In my opinion, it’s not taxing the mega-rich that will lift everyone up, it is forcing the mega-rich to compensate their employees according to how much the company makes.  It’s about regulating these companies and not waiting for ‘trickle down economics’ which will never happen.  It’s about not paying lip service by telling employees that ‘this could not have been achieved without you’ while actually not rewarding them for their efforts.

We need to stop being over-awed by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world.  What we need to realize is that they are ordinary people who came up with extra-ordinary ideas, and who did not bring these ideas into life on their own but utilized the energy and time and attention of the people who work for them. It’s time they stopped enjoying all the benefits by themselves.  It’s time for a different approach, a new approach to employee compensation that recognizes and rewards them generously for the role they play in the success of the company.