For the ultra-wealthy, money is effectivey not finite.

It's just a resource to be pointed at any burning thing.

The most counterintutive thing is that, not only is the money faucet #boundless for them,
but in fact,
most of the money coming out of the faucet is #not #their #own.

People who control large pools of money are very, very eager to let billionaires use their money.

Once we understand this fundamental difference, everything becomes clear.

️Having access to a nearly limitless flow of funds lets you exert power over things that can be controlled by money. ️

And that's a lot of things.

In economics, there's even terminology for the different ways of looking at resources: stock and flow.

For you, money is a #stock, a bucket of dollars you can carry, and that you try to make sure isn't empty.

For the ultra-wealthy, money is a #flow, it's just a hose of dollars that you can point at anything that isn't suiting your preferences.

With that context in mind, revisit your assumptions about how the ultra-wealthy influence things like policymaking and social norms.

Even in the most positive, charitable case, you may wonder,
"If this person has a bilion dollars, why don't they just pay for [good things for people in need]?"

But in many cases, even if they were inclined to help with that particular cause or need,
dropping a large sum of money at a particular moment would require them to treat their money on hand as a stock instead of a flow,
and that reduces their economic power over time.

In a "nice framing", this is about ensuring they're leveraging other people's money over time to sustain their ability to give to that cause.

Put more "cynically", you can't exert control over something if you've already stopped paying for it.

The next time you're trying to understand the decisions that the ultra-wealthy make when they are attempting to shape our world,
challenge yourself to rethink the assumptions you may have about the way that they use money.

It is a fundamentally different tool for them than it is for anyone who only has a limited bucket of bucks.

https://www.anildash.com/2024/07/02/money-flows/