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Billionaires are a product of the dangerous ethic we are slowly accepting. That life is about the pursuit of infinite wealth, a good life is measured in the number of zeros in your bank and confirmed by flaunting your grandiose living standard. Exploitation becomes a necessity.
I generally take a long term analysis of wealth patterns. I struggle to understand where we are headed as this generation as we proclaim people as ‘role models’ in the grounds that they are rich and have obscene wealth on display. It’s an attack on the moral senses because...
If we accept on the one hand that South Africa is a seriously unequal society with low wages, mass poverty and unemployment; how do we, on the other end, presume the wealth stacked out on Instagram and elsewhere is accumulated? Billionaire figureheads are criminals.
Theory of ‘super exploration’ as basis of South African wealth is valid because the model here demands, of necessity, that there be mass poverty. It helps keep wages in check, limits options in the producer market, thereby condemn everyone to high prices that fund billionaires
This model plays out even in sports, music, film, fashion etc. It’s an operational ethic of ‘squeeze them dry.’ The product of this, being the celebrated rich person, tells me that we are lowering the guard of collective morality. We’ve accepted misery as a fair input for wealth
This ethic breeds corruption. Because they must live celebrity lifestyles (aiming to be social & style icons) an orgy of corruption between business, politicians and senior government officials plays out. The binding ethic is extraction of ‘rent’ regardless of public consequence
The moral crisis for society is this: we incentivize wealth [mostly criminal] by celebrating its holders. We also wake up to realize the devastating impact of corruption. By some weird snapshot of logic, we don’t see the relationship between the two: wealth and public corruption
That old hooligan Karl Marx was correct when he said “all property is wealth.” At least if you see ‘property’ as wealth accumulated in a sea of mass poverty. How do we imagine SA high ballers fund their lifestyles if not by some unfair extraction of wealth at the expense of many?
Anyway, if you want to get rich by all means necessary: knock yourself out. Lose yourself, exploit, kill, run. Just entertain the possibility that one day, when society is truly fed up with nonsense, we may nab and hang you 
