An Ethical Alternative To Getting Rich Quick

In our last blog, I talked about how true happiness and sustainable success results from helping others. I also clarified that we won’t likely feel inclined to help them until we connect with a higher power. Why? Because the super intelligence running the universe employs an operating system based on cooperation, not competition. It’s automatic and constant. For instance, our bodies contain an estimated 10,000 unique microbial species totaling over 30 trillion cells. Somehow, incredibly, they all get along and even help each other, 24/7. If they can do it, we can do it.

I had to hit rock bottom before I quit trying to play God, surrendered to that higher power, and began reaping the incredible benefits of humility, personally, and in my business—including a huge boost to my bottom line. In our book, The Success Paradox my co-author Will T. Wilkinson and I tell the story of how it all happened. In this blog, I want to offer a radically different perspective on “wealth.”

The pandemic created unprecedented suffering for many of us, especially financially. But not for the super rich. “The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion—a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day—during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty.

“Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher said, “If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet.”

Many of the super rich start foundations and give money away. But they remain financially bloated themselves, often profiting from their “investments”. Meanwhile, there are scores of industrious people and worthwhile projects that could literally transform society if only they had the funding.

Imagine if 1% of the cells in our bodies hoarded resources like the super rich do? We’d be sick. Well, society is sick, the mental illness epidemic being just one heart breaking indicator.

According to a January 2023 CBS News article by Aimee Picchi, “In the past decade, the richest 1% of Americans have seen their wealth grow 19 times faster than the bottom half of the population. On a dollar basis, that means $37 of every $100 has gone to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% received $2… The U.S. has about 64,500 people with more than $50 million in wealth and 728 billionaires…”

If the super rich aren’t inclined to share more of their wealth, maybe we can. Some of us have a little extra money floating around. How about connecting with organizations like Kiva.org, a leader in the field of microlending? They have loaned over $1.6 billion from 1.7M lenders to borrowers in 77 countries with a 96% repayment rate. These microloans are made by ordinary people, not primarily to make money but to create social wealth.

The sanctity of profiteering is often justified by referencing Adam Smith, the so-called father of laissez faire capitalism. But Smith has been radically misunderstood. As Deborah Boucoyannis, Assistant Professor at the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, clarified: “Smith thought high profits denoted economic pathology. The rate of profit, he said, was ‘always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.’ ”

Profits are essential to growth and to personal, corporate, and cultural health. But accumulation isn’t the primary measurement of true success. And true wealth includes so much more than money, as I discovered, like a loving family, personal health, and a sense of meaning and purpose, following a calling in my life.

Let’s share the wealth, not because we are “good people” or think that we should, but because we start doing what Life is doing everywhere except in civilized society. Throughout a cosmos of immeasurable complexity and within our bodies, teeming with trillions of micro-organisms, sharing resources freely is the norm and order (success) prevails. Let’s get with the program!