Voltaire Was Right: The Comfort of the Rich Depends on an Abundant Supply of the Poor
Without the working class, the elites have nothing
I posted something on my personal Facebook wall last week that absolutely infuriated many of my friends and family members:
“People don’t like to hear it, but if you have a 401(k) or an RRSP, there’s a 99.99% chance you’re straight-up robbing the poor.”
I don’t know if it’s because I’m an Enneagram Eight, an ENTJ, an A-Type, or if I really am “on the spectrum” like my mother insists, but I just don’t understand why people get so worked up about things that are obvious, rational, and long-established mathematical facts.
It’s like getting mad that gravity exists.
If someone creates wealth and then someone else takes that wealth because they have an advantage, that’s literally exploitation.
People should just A.) stop pretending like they’re good people and own the fact that they’re parasite-predator-exploiters, or B.) they should do everything in their power to stop being evil.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do. I used to be a stock investor, a land-lorder, a mortgage broker; all sorts of horrible economic exploitation.
But not anymore.
Motivated by love for the poor and a deep hatred of corruption and exploitation, I don’t own stocks, bonds, pensions, or any rent-serf properties. I loudly advocate for the end of for-profit land-lording and a total ban on interest. I don’t own a cell phone. I only buy used laptops. I refuse to use Airbnbs. I only engage in partnerships and cannot morally turn a profit off employees. I’ve made over 350 interest-free loans ranging from $20 to five figures. I haven’t stepped foot in a Walmart in more than a decade. I shop maybe once every three years and only own one pair of jeans. I offset my flights. I buy my vegetables from a walkable farm market and my beef from a family that grazes their cows on commons land that’s been sustainably creating soil and feeding humans for 5,000 years.
I’m trying to live blamelessly, but whenever I bring up the idea that most modern investments are just pure theft of the poor, people immediately try to point the finger at my (many) imperfections.
As the saying goes: “If you can’t attack the issue, attack the person.”
Because let’s be honest — there’s no moral defense against economic exploitation.
And our entire economic system is built on exploitation.
As the French revolutionary Voltaire put it:
“The comfort of the rich depends on an abundant supply of the poor.”
Ain’t that the truth?
Where would the food monopolies be without sugar-addicted customers?
Where would the giant Pharma companies and private health services be without millions of increasingly sick and diseased people?
Where would land-lorders be without hard-working tenant-serfs to pay their mortgages?
Where would banksters be without a world of debt peons enslaved by $300 trillion in interest-bearing loans?
The rich are nothing without the poor.
The rich depend on the poor for wealth
Biological material + labor = wealth
That’s the formula for real wealth creation.
Capitalists like Warren Buffett don’t create wealth. They monopolize natural resources in order to extract wealth from wealth-creators.
Really think about this.
Warren Buffett doesn’t create and contribute any real wealth to society:
He doesn’t frack and bottle natural gas.
He doesn’t harvest sugar for Coca-Cola.
He doesn’t mine for iPhone minerals alongside children.
He takes rich people’s money, uses it to monopolize natural resources, and then weaponizes his monopolies to extract wealth from wealth-creators.
The rich depend on the poor for income
Not only does the zero-wealth-creating parasite class require an abundant supply of poor people to physically create the wealth they enjoy, but they need an abundant supply of poor people to provide a regular income for them as well. They derive this income in one of three ways:
Interest (typically in the form of bonds.)
Rent (typically in the form of monopolizing human shelter.)
Profit (typically in the form of stocks.
Notice what all three sources of income have in common?
All are based on exploitation where the rich receive wealth without contributing value to society, based on capital advantage.
The rich depend on the poor for physical support
The rich require an abundant supply of poor people not only to create their physical wealth and provide them with a steady cash income, but they also require an abundant supply of poor people to maintain their physical lives as well.
The “jolly anarchist” Peter Kropotkin pointed out that if every worker was allowed to keep 100% of the wealth they create and no one was allowed to rip them off, people who live in mansions wouldn’t have anyone to clean their houses, maintain their properties, and landscape their lands, and would be desperate to trade houses with a large family crammed into a two-room cottage.
Jeff Bezos cannot physically maintain his $500,000,000 hyper-yacht without the help of the working poor.
The rich depend on the poor for worship
This last one is part of the billionaire mental health crisis that is often overlooked.
In addition to requiring an abundant supply of poor people to physically create wealth for them, provide an income for them, and physically maintain their lifestyles, the rich also need the emotional support of millions of poor people.
This takes many forms:
Praise (mostly by the media they control)
Adulation (mostly by the institutions they donate to)
Name recognition (on the buildings they sponsor)
Respect (the best tables at restaurants, VIP seats at sporting events, first class on planes, suites at hotels)
Awards (Pulitzers, Oscars, Nobels, etc… all handed out by elites)
Titles (British monarchists are the absolute worst for this)
The rich require an abundant supply of poor people to make them feel better about themselves by making them feel superior to others.
Never forget the Solnick and Hemenway Experiment: Half the population would accept a 50% lower salary so long as they made more than their colleagues.
And it is clear that the working poor can no longer afford to support the non-contributing rich.
The rich need to pick themselves up by their homemade bootstraps
Imagine what would happen if the working poor were allowed to keep 100% of the wealth they created and didn’t have to hand it over to the rich in the form of unearned interest, rents, and profits.
Imagine what would happen if the masses invested in the co-ops and partnerships and for-benefits they collectively owned, instead of spending their entire lives laboring to create wealth, income, maintenance, and emotional support for the rich.
Dare I say we might actually see fewer parasites and less inequality in the world?
Dare I say we might see some meritocracy, where the best and brightest really do rise to the top and propel our civilization to new heights?
Voltaire was absolutely right — the comfort of the rich depends on an abundant supply of the poor.
But the opposite is also true:
The comfort of the poor depends on the right-sizing of the rich.