Griffith and Billionaires

One particular scene from Kentaro Miurya's Berserk comes to mind when I think of billionaires. If you're not familiar Berserk is a story about struggle and the cost of ambition. In the scene im referencing, Griffith, a low born man obsessed with attaining power is in a dream. Griffith sees himself as a child lost in the streets where he grew up. He asks an elderly spinster for directions and she follows him to a mound with a view of a distant castle high up on a cliff. As he climbs the mound stretching toward the castle Griffith realizes with horror that the mound is built of dead bodies. The spinster admonishes him for his reaction. "you stacked all these bodies to reach the castle remember?" she continues "you've still got a long way to go." Griffith takes a moment to reconsider his actions but instead of taking responsibility he purges his compassion and justifies his ruthlessness. Then he carries the body of a young price he'd killed in his ambition to the precipice and adds him to the growing mound.¹

Becoming a billionaire isn't possible without exploiting individuals, be that one at a time or en masse. That exploitation has more serious consequences. That is to say: there's no way to become a billionaire without killing people. Obfuscating responsibility for causing a person's death behind a few bureaucratic decisions doesn't wash the blood off the money. Wage suppression kills people. Subpar healthcare kills people. Subpar working conditions kill people. Cutting corners for profit kills people. The list goes on, feel free to add your own.

When I was a kid I was pretty sure I'd get rich and I was dead set on being the first one to do it morally, I'd be a benevolent billionaire. As I became an adult I realized that most of what I found "immoral" about wealth accumulation wasn't optional, it was required. I gave up that dream realizing I wasn't willing to do what it would take to get there. I doubt I could have gotten lucky enough to get anywhere close to becoming a billionaire. Even if I did get lucky though I knew I'd fall short when it was time to crank up the exploitation. Something real life billionaires, and the character of Griffith have no problem with.

Looking back at the story of Berserk I see many parallels between Griffith and billionaires. Failing upward comes to mind (if you know you know), but maybe more obviously Griffith never admits to doing anything wrong. Despite knowing deep down that the only way to get to the top is through sacrificing others he persists in the pursuit. Billionaires continually justify or deflect their responsibility for the suffering of others in a similar way. Surely most real life billionaires have never had quite as explicit a callout as Griffith, but they still arrive at the same excuses. They're justified in their choices because their goal is more important than any cost that might be incurred along the way. Conveniently those costs never seem to affect the beneficiary quite as much as those sacrificed in the name of their ambition. Hmm, interesting!

So what's the point of all this rambling? As conversations about the validity, value, and existence of billionaires become more common I want readers of this to consider the answers to these two questions: