Stone Age Billionaire Can't Words Good

At the Pro-Billionaire March, Unironically

I was at the Pro-Billionaire march, unironically. Here’s why, what happened there, and how I think it went.

Me on the far left. From WSJ.

I. Why?

There’s a genre of horror movie where a normal protagonist is going through a normal day in a normal life. Ten minutes into the movie his friends bring out a struggling kidnap victim to slaughter, and they look at him like this is just a normal Tuesday and he slowly realizes that either he’s surrounded by complete psychopaths or the world is absolutely fucked up in some way he never imagined, and somehow this has been lost on him up until this point in his life. This kinda thing happens to me more than I’d like to admit, but normally it’s in a metaphorical way. Normally.

Sometimes I’m at the goth club, fighting back The Depression (and winning tyvm), and I’ll be involved in a conversation that veers into:

Goth 1: Man, life’s tough right now.

Goth 2: I can’t believe we’re still letting billionaires live.

Goth 3: Seriously, how corrupt is our government that we haven’t rounded them all up yet?

Goth 1: Maybe we should kill them ourselves.

Goth 2: Haha… for real, for real, if only. We’ll kill them soon enough. Just need a few more Luigi’s.

Everyone In Earshot: Yup, yup. /nodding

I am sad that this is not an exaggeration. Every bit is literally things I’ve heard people say and witnessed myself. It’s horrifying to see normal people you dance with turn into nazis so easily.

Me at Milk Bar in Denver, last year

I know why it happens. I don’t blame people for not understanding the complexities of a global economy that makes it possible to buy a nearly-magic artifact that no human alive can create on their own for just 16 cents¹. It feels like there is a certain amount of Stuff in the world, and so if some people have a lot of Stuff that’s only possible because others have much less Stuff, and that’s unfair. If life is hard, it’s the fault of the people who took all the Stuff.

What shocks me is how socially acceptable it is to openly say that good people should support lynching strangers based on their wealth. Everyone expects that saying this will get you approval. The most racist nationalists keep their slurs to their friend groups, or behind an online buffer, unless they’re looking to start a fight. Proclaiming your hatreds among strangers is risky. Even the ICE cowards wear masks. But when it comes to revulsion for billionaires, everyone expects to be cheered.

I want this to change. I want people to think at least a tiny bit “this might be slightly socially costly to say.” In theory, one way to do that is to be public about the fact that real people exist that find that sort of unthinking hatred repugnant. A group demonstration of this could be one way to do that. I signed up for the Pro-Billionaire march in hopes that it could advance this sentiment.

II. You Get About Five Words

The previous section is aprox 500 words. As we all know, when trying to convince a lot of people of something You Get About Five Words. How the hell do I encapsulate all that in Five Words?

I want to point at the hate directly. My first sign attempt included “Hate is Ugly.” But that is cliche and doesn’t really communicate anything. Anyone could say it. More importantly, I don’t believe that hate is always wrong. It’s good to hate certain things. Nazis. Criminals. Two-Boxers. If you don’t hate anything then you don’t love anything either. The problem is that blanket hate of billionaires is bad. I want to point at the fact that the hate is destructive and stupid rather than appropriately defensive.

I did end up putting it on the back of my sign anyway

III. The Code of Honorable Wealth

The thing I want everyone to internalize, the thing that could let us talk about the future together, is the sentiment behind Paul Graham’s essay How To Make Wealth, which in my memory will always be remembered as Let Nerds Keep Their Stuff

For most of the world's history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. [10] Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. So for the first time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds' lunch money. This was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the second big change, industrialization.

[…] the Europeans rode on the crest of a powerful new idea: allowing those who made a lot of money to keep it. Once you're allowed to do that, people who want to get rich can do it by generating wealth instead of stealing it.

You need to read the whole essay to get the emotional payload that makes this summary deeply salient. But that essay is nearly 9000 words! Not good for a marching sign.

The closest I can distill it to is this:

1. Our society has a Code we live by. The Code says that if you make the world better by creating things for your fellow man that she values, you can sell the thing you made for a price she’s happy to pay. If you create enough value that you get very rich by doing this, then that is Honorable Wealth. You can keep it. You still pay taxes, but we recognize you did an honorable thing and won’t come after you for it.

2. This Code has led to many people pursuing Honorable Wealth rather than the old methods of Conquest, Slavery, and Theft. Because of this Code DIRECTLY, we have immense amounts of wealth. We get infinite hot water in our homes by turning a tap. We get antibiotics, and limitless music, and elastic pants. We can work forty hours a week rather than grinding our bodies to death before our 50th birthday.

3. Following this Code means that, in a global economy of 8 Billion people, some people can and will become billionaires by completely Honorable means. Yes, some will also use conquest or corruption or theft. Those people are evil and should be stopped. But in the USA, the majority of our billionaires have made their wealth by Honorable means.

4. Coming after those billionaires isn’t just bad for those billionaires. It is revoking the Code of Honorable Wealth. It is returning to Rule of the Violent, and slave economies, and grinding global poverty. Protecting the Code is incredibly important NOT because it serves some billionaires, but because it serves every single person in our society that lives above the level of a 16th century peasant.

That’s less than 9000 words, but STILL won’t fit on a sign. ARGH.

IV. Stone Age Billionaire

Maybe a single vivid image can get across what I mean. From Paul Graham’s essay:

A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. […] I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else.

This isn’t just a “surprising number of people,” this is the default. The world is full of Stuff. When you do work for someone they give you some of their Stuff, and when you want something from someone else you give them some of your Stuff. The nature of specialization and global supply chains is such that almost no one sees new Stuff being built in a way that noticeably grows the pool of all Stuff, so it feels constant. For most people their labor adds to the global pool of Stuff the same amount their sweating changes the local humidity level. Technically non-zero, but not so’s you’d notice.

But if you take a longer view it’s obvious that humans have created a TON of stuff. By the standards of our ancestors, we are all absolutely billionaires. We are drowning in wealth, our lives are joyous and easy compared to our forebearers struggling in their caves. Every single one of us is a Stone Age Billionaire. If people stop to think about why we are billionaires compared to our stone-age grandparents, maybe they’ll remember the importance of the Code that created this world. Is there an image that sparks that? Can I convey this image with a sign?

Turns out that no, I cannot. My words not good! There is way too much of an inferential gap. No one got it, and to be totally honest I kinda knew this wasn’t gonna do it. But it was 10am on Saturday, 30 minutes before I was meeting my friends to carpool to the protest, and I was out of ideas. At best I could hope that someone would ask me about the sign. (Very few people did.)

V. At The Protest

Including myself and my friends, there were aprox 25 Pro-Billionaire protestors. Journalists seemed to be about 15? I don’t know if a ratio this extreme is good or bad. It was quite a sight seeing a gaggle of them rushing up around the side of the protest to get photos of us from the front.

What we saw

What they saw.

I believe these two photos were taken at the same place, less than a minute apart. The kneeling guy with the crown is a counter-protestor.

I counted 12 counter-protestors at the initial gathering point. It was hard to tell at first if someone was a counter protestor because the counter protestors didn’t seem to understand why one would be Pro-Billionaire and thus their signs were welcome among the protestors. For example the “Poor and Proud” and “March 4 Hundredaires” signs are sentiments that literally every Pro-Billionaire protestor would gladly endorse. But they (and a couple others) didn’t bother marching to the capital, dropping out once we started moving, which makes me think they were probably not actually there in support of the march. I think eight counter-protestors followed us the entire way, which made the march look a fair bit bigger in photos.

VI. Building Bridges

The best part of the march was the occasional opportunities to talk to the counter-protestors. Over the course of a forty-minute walk it’s hard to stay completely alienated from those you’re walking with unless you retain strong distance-discipline. One counter-protestor commented to me “I bet you can’t wait to accelerate the AIs down onto us.”² I told him no, actually, I want them to pause all development immediately so we don’t all die. He was surprised that we agreed, saying that he didn’t expect long-sighted opinions like that from someone who was so short-term focused that he wanted to protect billionaires. This is exactly the sort of thing my Jehovah’s Witness upbringing had prepared me for! (I cannot believe that training actually came in useful!!!)

I began with “I think we agree on a lot, actually. We both want to protect the long-term future, and we think the other side is being very short-sighted and destroying the long-term future for short-term gain.” Then I launched into my opinion on The Code that has created the society we have today, and how that Code means that we will have billionaires who came by their fortunes Honorably, and that we must stand true to the Code and allow those billionaires to retain the wealth if we want to remain a Just and Wealthy society. I drew attention to the fact that we are all Stone Age Billionaires (and pointed out my sign) and that this is because we have kept faith with the Code. Our descendants can all be billionaires by today’s reckoning, if we don’t destroy the thing that let us create this level of cooperation and coordination in the first place.

He listened, and seemed to be contemplating. When he nodded and walked away, I felt like I’d managed to actually bring this idea into his consideration. Maybe there’s a seed that’s been planted there, which will grow over time.

Equally importantly, two of the highly-costumed counter-protestors were directly behind us as we talked. I believe they overheard us, because they stayed quiet the entire time, which was unusual for them. Likewise, later in the march I saw the crown-wearing counter-protestor talking with Aella, and having a similarly open-exchange discussion. I am hopeful that they all will have new perspectives on why good people might really care about property rights.

VII. The Counter-Protestors

There were about 8 counter-protestors, to roughly 25 protestors. However at least some initial media outlets tweeted that the protest was “swamped” by the counter-protestors. I’m not surprised, because the counter-protestors had a VERY outsized presence.

For starters, most of them were in elaborate costume. Fancy suits & crowns, or royal garb. One had the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show on her back as a giant marionette, and was dancing the whole time while feeding mock human flesh to anyone who would take it. This sounds horrific in text but her vibes were great, she absolutely had the air of someone you’d love to party with. Next time I’m gonna wear something far more visually interesting. Maybe full goth gear.

More importantly, they were extremely energized. They stayed together near the front and shouted at the top of their lungs at every stoplight. The Pro-Billionaire protestors were rarely able to drown them out. The counter-protestors had fury and righteousness on their side, they were here to Smash Evil, and the rest of us were struggling to figure out how to fit Paul Graham’s nine-thousand-word essay on the Code that gave us modern society into a five-word chant.

Their chants did a good job of demonstrating (and spreading?) the mental hellscape they live in. Their favorite one was “Eat The Poor,” showing the “there’s only X amount of Stuff” fear. I tried “Don’t Eat Humans!” for a while, which was OK I guess, but not catchy.

In comparison to their chants, ours were pathetic. “Grow The Pie” just doesn’t have any emotional heft to it. It feels made-up. “Build More Housing” was good, but not directly relevant. “Property Rights Are Human Rights” requires an essay of context to understand and isn’t Inspiring out of the box. We didn’t have any unified rallying cry to respond with.

But most important of all, they had the power of social approval on their side. Maybe there were three times as many of “us” as there were of “them” marching down the street, but they had every single resident of the city on their side. The media was on their side. The cops were on their side. On any given day on any given street corner, if someone were to stand up and yell “Fuck the billionaires, kill them all!” they would get cheers from at least half the people around, and no dissent. The amount of intimidative power this gives you is impressive to watch in action. It felt like most of the protestors didn’t have the willingness to rise against that. It obviously felt very good for the counter-protestors to get to exercise that power.

VIII. Final Speeches

The worst part of the march was the period of final speeches outside the capital building. The speeches themselves were OK, the second one in particular was exceptionally well delivered. The counter-protestors, however, got to demonstrate who owned the streets and what this really means.

Initially the Pro-Billionaire protestors attempted to unfurl the large banner and give a few quick speeches in front of it. The five most zealous counter-protestors pushed their way in front of it to take up the space and prevent anyone from speaking. When the banner moved they just moved with it. At this point the protestors were kinda stuck, because what exactly are you supposed to do? Whatever in-roads we may have made chatting during the march, the counter-protestors weren’t going to listen to words right now, they were just here for maximum physical disruption. In theory we could push them aside, but by the rules of polite society that would make us the aggressors. It would give them exactly the media attention they want. It seemed that either they could just shut down the final speeches indefinitely with heckling, or they get media coverage of being assaulted by violent billionaire-lovers, and either way they win. NGL - it was legit embarrassing.

Then my friend Ben realized that this is a giant game of “I’m not touching you” for adults. Which is the stupidest dang thing IMO, but is pretty symetrical. A few of us just stood close together in a line, and we moved the speeches to the other side of that line. The counter-protestors would have to walk through us to block that speech, and we just didn’t move. When they tried to go around us we shifted to be in front of them. And they couldn’t actually touch us because that was against the rules, so this worked?? It was bizarre. It made me feel again like I have absolutely no social awareness or acumen. This is a stupid way to win a stupid game.

It didn’t work perfectly. We didn’t have any structure or leadership, no one had foreseen this, so there wasn’t any way to actually coordinate the cordon. Only like four of us actually did this, entirely ad hoc. I’m frankly surprised it was enough. Also we were actually interested in the speeches, so we didn’t keep a sharp eye on the hecklers and a couple of them edged around to get close to the speech-givers. They continued to shout heckles between lines of the speeches. At least once I turned around to nudge someone back again, and I heard the ominous line of “Don’t touch me.” There’s a small spike of adrenaline that comes with those words when you realize they are a warning that we’re on the verge of an escalation that can only benefit them. All in all it was poorly executed, like if a gay pride march had Fred Phelps with a “god hates fags” sign edging into every photo of the final speech, while yelling slurs between lines from ten feet away.

IX. How’d It Go?

IMO the march had a couple problems.

The first was that there was no unified message. Ostensibly it was about the California Billionaire Tax Act confiscating 5% of billionaire net worth. And yes, that’s fucking nuts.

But that’s a symptom of the real problem, which is breakdown of the social code. I didn’t come here because of that one Act, I came here because, as outlined in Section 1, I’m horrified by how much of the population talks about lynching people to take their stuff, and that this is viewed as normal or good! I refused to repeat Derik’s words when he said “Thank you Billionaires.” I’m thankful to the social code that created this, not to individual men. There was a lack of unified message that made it much harder for everyone to be enthusiastic together.

On the one hand, maybe this helped. The march was thrown together with just one week’s notice and it needed to gather the biggest tent possible. If the march was just about the California Billionaire Tax Act, I probably wouldn’t have come. Since it was about the right for billionaires to exist honorably, I did.

On the other hand, the ambiguity meant that when opposition showed up there wasn’t a central unifying core that everyone could rally around. We were easy to overwhelm with just a third of our numbers.

The second was that there was no preparation. It would have been good to have everyone ready with a few chants that we could all practice before we left and really get behind. Some thought of what to do if hecklers showed up would’ve been good. Ideally there should be several people picked out beforehand, who had gathered the day before to practice linking arms to create a cordon, and were instructed in whatever is best practices when running into this sort of harassment. People that the march-leader could look to when in need of back up. Things turned out surprisingly well given that no one had any idea what they were doing!

All that being said, this was all thrown together in a week over a group chat and got a surprising amount of media coverage. I’m very pro-people-doing-things. The default is that nothing happens, and for someone to actually try something and get this going on such short notice is amazing! The world is better than it was the day before, even just a tiny bit, because a few people were willing to risk failing publicly at something hard. They cared enough to do it anyway, and maybe now a few people are a little more interested in how it is we’re so much better off today than our ancestors ever were.

We’re all Stone Age Billionaires, and it’s not because any one of us works a billion times harder at picking berries and hunting deer than our ancestors. They all worked far harder than we did, and they would weep with joy to see how rich we are. To see how few hours we need to work to feed ourselves, how we don’t wear out our bodies from grinding labor and harsh environments. We can weep with joy at how wealthy and happy our great-grandchildren will be. If we keep true to the Code of Honorable Wealth that makes this cooperation and creation possible, our great-grandchildren can all (yes all) live life as 20th Century Billionaires.

1. Which includes the cost of having it brought to your door within two days! But you gotta buy 2 dozen at once.

2. Or similar, I don’t recall his exact words