Yes, we need more rich people.
Before you light the torches and run me out of town, hear me out.
Wealth has become a symbol onto which we project our frustrations, fears, and suspicions. Instead of examining the underlying structure of society, many have been taught to blame the mere existence of wealth as if prosperity itself were an offense. But the problem is not that some individuals become wealthy. The problem is that so few have the opportunity to do so.
A centralized concentration of wealth—especially when fused with political authority—creates a brittle society, one where upward mobility is stifled, and dependence becomes the norm. That dynamic, not wealth itself, is what truly poses a danger.
The Illusion That Equality Requires Limiting Success
Every collectivist theory begins with an alluring fantasy: if equality is the highest virtue, then perhaps we should restrict the heights individuals can reach in order to avoid the discomfort of comparison. But this approach commits a grave philosophical error. It imagines that lowering the ceiling somehow lifts the floor.
Even in societies that claim to suppress inequality, power continues to pool at the top. It merely changes hands—from entrepreneurs and innovators to bureaucrats and political managers. The new elite may not possess extraordinary market wealth, but they command something even more intoxicating: the authority to shape everyone else’s life.
Flattening outcomes never eliminates hierarchy; it only hardens it.
Inequality Is Inevitable, but Mobility Must Be Universal
Differences in drive, temperament, talent, discipline, and risk tolerance naturally produce unequal outcomes. That is not a sign of injustice—it is a reflection of humanity. Trying to erase these distinctions through coercive policies leads not to fairness but to stagnation and resentment.
The moral imperative is not equal results. The moral imperative is a society where any person who wishes to ascend is able to do so. That requires many ladders, many paths, and countless avenues for personal advancement. A society is at its strongest when wealth creation is accessible to the masses, not gated behind institutional privilege.
What threatens the common good is not wealth—it is the scarcity of opportunity.
A Free Society Thrives When Wealth Is Widely Attainable
When millions of people can create prosperity independently, society becomes decentralized and resilient. It becomes resistant to authoritarian impulses because no single institution can control the population. The more individuals who can rise on their own merits, the less dependent people become on political authority.
Prosperity withers when barriers accumulate. It flourishes when people are free to build, experiment, fail, and try again. The path to wealth must not be obstructed by suffocating regulations, excessive licensing requirements, or bureaucratic gatekeeping — obstacles that often trap the most vulnerable exactly where they are.
Freedom, not paternalism, is the engine that lifts people out of poverty.
The Dangerous Temptation to Trade Freedom for Comfort
History teaches us that when a society grows comfortable, its people become tempted to exchange freedom for security. Bread and circuses are always more attractive than work and responsibility. The promise of being “taken care of” becomes more appealing than the challenge of self-governance.
But comfort purchased at the cost of autonomy is deeply corrosive. A population that relinquishes personal responsibility eventually relinquishes personal freedom. Human beings do not flourish in captivity, even a comfortable one. They flourish when life demands courage, creativity, and mastery.
The pursuit of wealth is, in this deeper sense, the pursuit of becoming more capable and more independent.
The American Dream: A Promise of Possibility, Not Guarantees
The American Dream has never been the assurance of equal outcomes. It has always been the assurance of possibility. It is the belief that while we start in different places, our destiny can be shaped by effort, character, and ingenuity.
But when people begin to believe that government must save them from “the rich,” the Dream collapses. Because for government to protect people from economic inequality, it must accumulate power over economic life. It must decide what level of success is acceptable, which ambitions are approved, and how prosperity is distributed.
In such a system, the political class becomes the permanent elite. Prosperity becomes a permission, not an achievement.
When Government Is the Savior, Freedom Becomes the Sacrifice
A society that fears the wealthy more than it fears concentrated political authority has inverted its moral compass. Wealth does not enslave—dependency does. Ambition does not corrupt—paternalism does. The pursuit of prosperity does not erode dignity—surrendering responsibility does.
When the state becomes provider, protector, and manager, it inevitably becomes master. And the population becomes dependent, compliant, and ultimately powerless. A society that demonizes wealth often ends up with an elite far more dangerous than the entrepreneurs it seeks to restrain.
A World With More Rich People Is a World With More Freedom
So yes, we need more rich people—not because wealth is a measure of virtue, but because widespread wealth disperses power. When prosperity is within reach of millions, no small group can dominate the rest. A decentralized landscape of success is the greatest safeguard against tyranny.
The answer is not to resent those who rise, but to empower many more to rise beside them. We must build more ladders, open more doors, and remove the artificial barriers that keep people from achieving their potential. A free society does not fear success—it multiplies it.
The future belongs not to nations that micromanage their citizens into uniformity, but to those that unleash the extraordinary potential within ordinary people.
What we need is not fewer rich people.
What we need is far more of them.
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