For the ultra-wealthy, money is effectivey not finite.
It's just a resource to be pointed at any burning thing.
The most counterintutive thing is that, ♦️not only is the money faucet #boundless for them,
but in fact,
♦️most of the money coming out of the faucet is #not #their #own.
👉 People who control large pools of money are very, very eager to let billionaires use their money.
Once we understand this fundamental difference, everything becomes clear.
⭐️Having access to a nearly limitless flow of funds lets you exert power over things that can be controlled by money. ⭐️
And that's a lot of things.
In economics, there's even terminology for the different ways of looking at resources: 🌟stock and flow. 🌟
For you, money is a #stock, a bucket of dollars you can carry, and that you try to make sure isn't empty.
For the ultra-wealthy, money is a #flow, it's just a hose of dollars that you can point at anything that isn't suiting your preferences.
With that context in mind, revisit your assumptions about how the ultra-wealthy influence things like policymaking and social norms.
Even in the most positive, charitable case, you may wonder,
"If this person has a bilion dollars, why don't they just pay for [good things for people in need]?"
But in many cases, even if they were inclined to help with that particular cause or need,
♦️dropping a large sum of money at a particular moment would require them to treat their money on hand as a stock instead of a flow,
♦️and that reduces their economic power over time.
In a "nice framing", this is about ensuring they're leveraging other people's money over time to sustain their ability to give to that cause.
Put more "cynically", 💥 you can't exert control over something if you've already stopped paying for it.
The next time you're trying to understand the decisions that the ultra-wealthy make when they are attempting to shape our world,
challenge yourself to rethink the assumptions you may have about the way that they use money.
It is a fundamentally different tool for them than it is for anyone who only has a limited bucket of bucks.
https://www.anildash.com/2024/07/02/money-flows/
