PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - Not all billionaires are bad.

0:00Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast. Please give us views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. Today is a day of my take. This is a Members Only Friday edition on whether billionaires should exist. Let me start by saying that I get it. A few years ago, I read a fascinating piece about how the NBA had lost its cool factor. The current stars of the league like Jason Tatum or Shakey, Gilgis, Alexander, they just don't have it. They aren't charismatic in the same ways Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or Dr. J. Word. They aren't eccentric or captivating or culture defining. No aura as the kids say. Spend a few minutes watching Elon Musk work a room or

1:01Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress and it's hard not to get a similar feeling. These guys do not exude aura. They don't present as classy or high-minded or suave, which frankly is how we prefer our rich people to be. They are awkward and make bad jokes and laugh in uncomfortable ways. It at least feels like it was different before. The elites we grew up reading about operated in a classy manner. They offered timeless wisdom or express humility when reflecting on their station in life. Andrew Carnegie was known for reciting poetry from memory, holding dinners where he'd debate Shakespeare and the merits of socialism, waking his entire household with a bagpipe every morning. He's credited with saying, quote, as I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do. And quote, JP Morgan was famous for walking bankers in his library during the panic of 1907 and not letting them leave until they solve the crisis. He once said,

2:06a man always has two reasons for doing anything, a good reason and the real reason. Elon Musk, on the other hand, wielded a chainsaw while bragging about cuts to USAID and once entered Twitter HQ during a hostile takeover while carrying a sink, he tweeted, entering Twitter HQ, let that sink in. These people are not the same. Recently, I was in Italy for a friend's wedding. I visited the great synagogue of Florence, one of the largest synagogues in southern Europe, a true architectural masterpiece. I was struck by its history, the building survived the first and second world wars, and it even took a few direct hits to its roof. But also, it's a origin. It was built after a wealthy Jew donated his entire estate to building a synagogue worthy of Florence. What a magnificent thing, I thought. In the old days, rich people would build great, big, beautiful synagogues or schools or libraries or museums and donate their entire life's fortunes to build something meaningful in

3:08a city they love. Today, our billionaire spent their wealth on pissing contests, 400-foot yachts and sports teams and a private space race. I realized that I hold old wealth in a certain esteem. I have a kind of base-level belief that money and wealth used to be accumulated with hard work and merit earned by the best of us all before they left behind some great thing. Timeless wisdom, inventions, railroads, mausoleums, or other feats of ingenuity or philanthropy. Today, it's all about extracting cheap labor than buying everything you want and trying to live forever society be damned. But it turns out that's not really true, at least not anymore. Paul Graham, a billionaire himself, wrote a fascinating piece in 2021 about how America's richest people in 1982 predominantly inherited their wealth. But things have changed. Today, as in the early 20th century, they are making it themselves. The number of airs in the top 100 wealthiest Americans dropped from 60 to 27 between 1982 and 2020. And only about a quarter of

4:14new fortunes were made through investing smaller fortunes. The other three quarters were made by people starting companies. Before we get into the debate about the validity of an economic system that creates billionaires, one point seems fundamental. A lot of billionaires made their fortunes by creating something awesome in the truest sense of the word, something that causes mixed feelings of all reverence and fear. Sergey Bryn puts search engines in everyone's home, unlocking limitless knowledge. Jeff Bezos completely changed how consumer goods are bought and sold. Musk reshaped the auto industry and made satellite internet accessible to millions. Zuckerberg reshaped the cultural fabric and connected the world via social networks. This kind of fortune is not the same as a multi-million dollar basketball contract and these billionaires are not the same as athletes famous for playing a sport that is unlikely to impact your daily life in any meaningful way. But differently, if you were to create a scale for how much did this person change the world and how much are they worth, many billionaires' wealth is closely proportional to the impact they've

5:19had, whether you are in all of them, revere them or fear them. And yet, the scale of this wealth is still hard to comprehend. While writing this piece, I was astounded to learn that I am probably in the top 1% of all Americans when measured by wealth. I had a pretty humble and normal upbringing, but if Tangled without you. Hey everybody, this is John, Executive Producer for Tangled. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangled.com and send up for a newsletter subscription or you can send up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad-free daily podcast, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more.

6:23Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offering, so stay tuned. I will join you again for the daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Mall signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our Executive Editor and Founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive Producer is John Mall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzvin with Senior Editor Will K-Back and Associate Editor's Audrey Morehead and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by diet 75. To learn more about Tangled, sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com. Music