Following up on the previous post about the birth rate among billionaires.
In the previous post, we figured out why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy have a good birth rate compared to the general population—they successfully bypass the problem of state regulation that suffocates the psyche. Other people, living as if in a cage under the supervision of a “civil servant-trainer,” begin to behave like hunted animals with a lost instinct for procreation.
Why, then, do billionaires successfully bypass this problem? Because they have an antidote to state oppression—money and influence. With great fortunes, they buy themselves an immunity and peace of mind unknown to mere mortals. What is an inevitable obligation for us is, for them, a solvable organizational matter involving a couple of phone calls.
Here is how the elite free themselves from the problems that stifle everyone else:
1) An army of lawyers: For a wealthy person, any legal battle with the state ends before it even begins. Fines will be contested and overturned; loopholes in the law will be found. Billionaires do not fear laws—they turn them to their advantage. If it is necessary to bypass stupid regulation, they hire the best lawyers and lobby for the necessary amendments.
2) Personal assistants: You won’t find the wealthy in queues at clinics or government service centers. They have assistants who handle all the paperwork for them. Bureaucratic routine is outsourced to paid employees. The stress from bureaucracy for them is zero—they don’t immerse themselves in it personally.
3) Private jets and drivers: They are not threatened by the loss of their driver’s license for speeding—they have personal drivers who deal with the traffic police themselves. They don’t stand in stuffy buses or squeeze into the subway. A private jet saves them from humiliating border inspections. They do not feel the “shepherd’s whip” with which the stationary bandit drives us in everyday life.
4) Private schools and medicine: Their children study in elite schools and universities, outside the system of mandatory standards to which everyone else is subjected. They don’t need to worry that a state school will negatively affect the child—they simply move to the private sector. The same goes for medicine: any problem is solved for money in a private clinic, bypassing the queues and low quality of state hospitals.
5) Tax minimization: While income tax is automatically deducted from your salary, large corporations and their owners hide profits in offshore accounts and use tax breaks.
6) A billionaire pays the state relatively less than you do as a percentage of their income—even though it would seem it should be the other way around. But they have the best accountants, financial consultants, and the ability to move their business where the tax is lower. As a result, the super-wealthy often avoid the bulk of the tax burden, shifting it onto the middle class.
7) Private security: Many billionaires simply don’t need the state police—they have their own private security service. Security often has access to weapons, special control systems, and high-tech surveillance (from CCTV systems to internet tracking tools). Consequently, a billionaire can set the rules on their own property (mansions, corporate campuses, “closed” gated communities), often ignoring state laws.
8) Influence and connections: Finally, the cleverest install and remove rulers. If a law hinders them, they will see to it that it is changed. If a regulator pressures their industry, they will find a way to the right minister. The state serves big capital rather than commanding it. In a sense, billionaires keep the state on a short leash, using it for their own interests.
Taken together, this produces a striking effect: most state restrictions practically do not apply to the super-wealthy. They live as if outside the state—or above it. The rules are written for you, not for them. That is why their hands are free where you are bound hand and foot.
P.S. Specifically for the authoritarian-right who see no problem in this: Elon Musk’s 12 children in no way compensate for the zero children of millions of ordinary people.
