why it’s time to ditch the myth of the heroic billionaire
- Written by Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of Technology Sydney
In February, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, wielded a chainsaw at a conservative gathering as he gleefully spoke of his new role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he’ll soon reach his legal term limit. The chainsaw metaphor is brutally apt as he slashes government spending, jeopardising the future of health care for low-income citizens, consumer protection, education programs and humanitarian aid, among other things.
Musk’s DOGE has instigated what has been called a lawless assault on United States public services, threatening the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people while undermining the institutions of American democracy. While other tech billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have ingratiated themselves with Trump, Musk has become his chief henchman, seeking to axe up to US$2 trillion from the US federal budget.
But as a special government employee, there is a strict 130-day limit on his position, expected to expire in late May or early June. “He’s got a big company to run … at some point he’s going to be going back,” Donald Trump told reporters on Monday. “I’d keep him as long as I could keep him.” A senior administration official told Politico on Wednesday that Musk will likely retain an informal role as an adviser.
Musk, an unelected official with multiple business interests, including his companies Tesla, X and SpaceX, presents himself as a billionaire version of the vigilante hero – a cultural icon that looms large in the American imagination.
A vigilante takes the law into his (it is usually his) own hands, professing a personal morality superior to the one inscribed in society’s laws and enacted by its officials and institutions. Vigilantes believe individual action taken outside the functioning of government is the only way justice can be achieved. The classic vigilante usually achieves this through brute force.
In pop culture, vigilantes come in many forms, from superheroes like Batman and Superman to Zorro, The Lone Ranger, Mad Max and the stars of vigilante films, perhaps most famously Death Wish (1974), starring tough-guy character actor Charles Bronson. Death Wish, like many other vigilante movies, is based on the premise society is under a moral threat and the authorities who are meant to protect citizens – the government, the law, the police – have failed in their duty. In this genre, in the wake of this kind of crisis, one person (generally a white man) emerges as a saviour who can achieve justice.
In Musk’s case, while he is not using physical violence, he positions himself as an exceptional hero leading a fight against government inefficiency, fraud and waste.
Touting his own achievements, he said recently: “This is a revolution. And I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution.” (Presumably he meant the American Revolution, of 1775–83.)
Trump, of course, is a billionaire too. (His net worth was valued at around US$6 billion at the start of this year.) Alongside Musk, his “first buddy”, Trump has recruited a whole lot more billionaires to help run his administration.
Musk may be the most conspicuous of the new MAGA plutocrats but other billionaires with key roles in the Trump administration are:
Our cultural moment has been described as a “golden age for billionaires”. Epitomised by Musk and Zuckerberg, in particular, the new class of elite global billionaires are viewed by many as uniquely special visionaries.
But as billionaire political power and global economic inequality reach new heights, it’s time to debunk the myths portraying billionaires as heroic forces for good.
Outrageous fortunes
Today’s world is one where the outrageous fortunes of billionaires are growing daily. Oxfam reports that between 2020 and 2023, the richest 1% of the world’s population sequestered almost two thirds of new wealth created in that time. That is US$42 trillion.
Between 2020 and 2024 the world’s five richest men more than doubled their wealth. In that same time, the wealth of five billion people around the world fell. Meanwhile, almost one in ten people in the world live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than US$2.15 per day.
The reality of a billionaire-driven world economy is not one of democratic emancipation and shared prosperity. For too many, it is about hunger, poverty, homelessness, exploitation and lack of opportunity. To make things even more unequal, despite just under a quarter of the world’s population living in the Global North, as of 2024 these nations were home to three quarters of the world’s billionaire wealth.
According to Oxfam, 60% of billionaire wealth comes from “either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power”. This undermines the common trope that billionaires should be looked up to because their wealth is self-made and “deserved”.
Billionaires are also lauded for their often excessive philanthropic giving. In 2024, the lifetime giving of the US’s top 25 billionaire philanthropists added up to more than US$240 billion. The Gates Foundation, for instance, made grants worth more than US$77 billion from its inception to the end of 2023, funding healthcare, education and access to technology. Investment magnate and sixth richest person in the world, Warren Buffett, has pledged to give more than 99% of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime through his Giving Pledge.
Clearly these gifts are significant and make a real difference to the lives of many people. Whether it be medical research, poverty alleviation, disaster relief, climate change or arts and culture, billionaire philanthropy goes a long way. But there is more to that story. Ironically, there is a correlation between economic inequality and billionaire philanthropy. Giving is a symbol of inequality, not fairness. As billionaires give more and more, their personal wealth continues to grow.
In 2010, 62 billionaires signed up with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to give away at least half of their fortunes by the time they die. All well and good, but in the ten years that followed, the collective wealth of those 62 people almost doubled.
According to a 2020 report on this pledge:
Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have given an estimated US$7 billion to charity over the past decade. But Zuckerberg’s giving has been strikingly outstripped by the growth in his net worth, which increased by 59% in the first four months of the pandemic.
In 2015, Zuckerberg may have pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook shares in his lifetime, but since then his net worth has grown almost sixfold, from US$33.4 billion to US$199.3 billion today. In that same ten-year period, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded an average of just under US$700 million per year in grants.
While billionaires may be making significant philanthropic donations, this does not change the underlying system of inequality that made them rich in the first place. And in many cases, their philanthropy contrasts starkly with their behaviour when it comes to paying tax.
American billionaires, in general, pay a lower rate of income tax than most working families. A 2021 White House Study, the average federal individual tax rate of the top 400 billionaire families was a paltry 8.2%. The nationwide average was 13%.
If we look at tax paid in relation to wealth growth, the picture looks even worse. Recently released data from the US Internal Revenue Services, analysed by the Americans for Tax Fairness campaign, shows in the five years to 2018, the average true tax rate of the richest 26 Americans was just 4.8%.
No wonder they have plenty of money to direct to the charitable causes of their own choosing. Those paying the lowest effective tax rates, according to this analysis, included Jeff Bezos (1.1%), Michael Bloomberg (1.8%) and Mark Zuckerberg (1.1%).
While individual billionaires like Buffett have advocated for the ultra-rich to pay more tax in order to lift the burden from ordinary citizens, it is clear hardly any have headed the call. Despite his pronouncements, Buffett’s own effective tax rate on wealth growth in the five years to 2018 was estimated by Americans for Tax Fairness to be 0.1%.
What to do?
Democracy is built on the idea of popular sovereignty: the insistence the “people” are collectively the ones ultimately responsible for self rule. Central to this is the rule of law, whereby all citizens, no matter how powerful or wealthy, are subject to the same laws. Leaders like Trump, however, seem to believe themselves to be above the law.
And when New York Attorney General Letitia James blocked DOGE from having access to Treasury Department payment systems, she declared:
this morning, we won a court order blocking Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, from accessing Americans’ private data […] I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: no one is above the law.
Musk is not the first billionaire to position himself as a heroic “revolutionary” for whom the laws don’t apply; the wealthy have long claimed they can solve the world’s problems better than democratic institutions. Where hope lies, however, is that Musk has taken this vigilantism to such extremes, a fightback is occurring. He may have gone too far.
Musk’s chainsawing of the American government means the majority of Americans now view him negatively. They believe he lacks both the judgement and experience to do Trump’s DOGE dirty work. Shareholders of Musk’s Tesla are getting nervous, as Tesla stock prices are freefalling to 50% of their former value.
Tesla owners around the world are selling their cars and new vehicle sales are plumetting. Musk himself had to plead with his own employees not to sell their Tesla stock. There is an activist organisation in the UK called “Everyone Hates Elon” orchestrating an organised campaign to discredit the billionaire. Last weekend, a global day of action targeted Tesla showrooms around the world. Protest organisers asked people to do three things, reported the Guardian: “don’t buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the ‘Tesla Takedown’ movement”.
Beyond Musk, there is increasing public scrutiny and distrust of billionaires and the unjust economic system they represent. Distrust, which began with activist movements such as Occupy Wall Street in 2011, is evidenced today in the “tax the rich” movement and the so-called “eat the rich” genre of movies, like Parasite (2019) and Triangle of Sadness (2022), that explore themes of capitalism and inequality.
Economist Thomas Piketty, whose extensive studies of inequality put him in a position to understand the true devastation it can cause, has argued:
History teaches us that elites fight to maintain extreme inequality, but in the end, there is a long-run movement toward more equality, at least since the end of the 18th century, and it will continue.
While global inequality has been increasing since the 1990s, there is no reason to believe we cannot get back on track with this longer-term trend.
Hopefulness, combined with a faith in the possibility of progress, can animate a political will to change things for the benefit of the vast majority of the world’s citizens. No seemingly entrenched and immovable state of injustice is fixed.
As the world tumbles into climate disaster, economic inequality and political populism, the ultra-wealthy need to be held to account by society. More radically, a new political vision is needed for a future where the wealth created by human activity is shared by the many, rather than hoarded by the few.
As acclaimed author Ursula Le Guin said in 2014:
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
Carl Rhodes is the author of Stinking Rich: the four myths of the good billionaire (Bristol University Press)
Authors: Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of Technology Sydney
