The Ultra-Rich are Cowards

I feel confident saying it at this point, the ultra-rich are all cowards. Weenies, the lot of them. And it’s high time the rest of us started using that to our advantage. 2026 is the year to remind the ultra-rich why their predecessors spent so much money on projects for the public good: they were afraid.

The most compelling evidence I see for the cowardice of the ultra-rich is their pathological fear of losing any of their wealth. These are people who could stop engaging with society tomorrow and still have enough to live out their lives in unfathomable luxury, and yet the prospect of being taxed at a higher rate on their income going forward has them organizing entire political movements. Is there a meaningful difference between take-home pay of $500 million a year and $200 million? I’m sure the private jets get a little nicer, the yachts are probably larger, and the real estate somewhat swankier and better-located. But in terms of practical differences, in ability to house, feed, and get healthcare for one’s immediate family? Nah, $200 million works just as well as $500 mil.

A brave person might buy a newspaper and let them report and whatever they wanted, wouldn’t be threatened by opinion columnists writing negative things. A brave person wouldn’t attend a secretive meeting about a young mayoral candidate who’s threatening to tax the richest people in one city in America in order to organize against him. A brave person wouldn’t take down an entire media empire out of spite. A brave person would care more about the well-being of their workers than their own capital investments.

Especially in the tax brackets we’re seeing in this 21st century Gilded Age. There is no journalist who can truly take away Zuckerberg’s wealth and security. There is not a single mayor of a single city in the United States who has the ability to meaningfully affect the lifestyles of the ultra-wealthy through taxation. Congress is well and truly bought, with a few exceptions, and individual senators and representatives are granted enough wealth through totally legal above-board means to understand the plight of the wealthiest of the wealthy and sympathize.

Truly, if I woke up tomorrow a hundred-millionaire, or even a tens-of-millionaire, you would never hear from me again. I would buy a farmhouse somewhere remote and spend my days writing mystery novels under a pen name. And there are wealthy people who do similar things, I’ve met a few of them. But they’re all still scared of their wealth disappearing. There is no greater tightwad than a rich guy, truly. Even when an amount of money that they will make passively in a month could be life-changing for a non-profit, a mutual aid group, or an individual person, they’d rather hold onto it just in case.

Meanwhile, down here in the real world, we all know people who’ve taken incredible risks with their relative security. Spending all your savings to move your family across the country for your kid’s well-being? Braver than Zuckerberg has ever been. Passing up a high-paying job to stay close to loved ones, because you know yourself enough to know the high-paying job in another city would make you unhappy? Bezos could never. Being comfortable with not being the center of attention for several minutes to an hour? Elon Musk cannot fathom it. If you’ve ever lived paycheck-to-paycheck and quit your job anyway, you’ve got bigger metaphorical balls than any of these tech founders.

Practically speaking, for your average person who has social media accounts but doesn’t have a large following, I recommend first-amendment-protected cyberbullying (no actionable threats, nothing you wouldn’t want a judge to read back to you). Criticize these people, publicly and frequently. Make your poor opinions of them clear. Public shaming doesn’t work as well as it used to, but it still works. It works beautifully on men with low self-esteem who want to be cool more than anything. We can browbeat the ultra-rich into giving away more of their wealth. We can browbeat politicians into passing laws to tax the ultra-wealthy. It won’t be quick, it will certainly be tedious, but it’s one of the most effective tools we have right now.