Technology - The Real Wealth of the Common Man
You and Elon Musk have the same phone...and toilet.
Wouldn’t it be great to be as rich as Elon Musk? You could have the best phone in the world, the best watch, the best TV, the best car…
Except you might already have the same watch, phone, TV, and perhaps even the same car as Elon Musk.
When Joe Rogan asked him why he bought Twitter, part of Musk’s response was, “What else is there to buy?”
While housing is unaffordable and the expense of food goes up, it is easy to forget the kind of wealth that has been delivered to the common man by technology unleashed through the power of free markets.
Besides having the same phone as Elon, you also use the same kind of toilet. Think about the luxury of the toilet for a moment. A hundred years ago, a flush toilet was a modest luxury for most rural people, and two centuries ago it would be an unthinkable convenience. Now, it is considered a necessity so basic that we feel inclined to find ways to provide toilets to even the poorest people among us. Only the very rich got to avoid this base task in centuries past; when there was no running water there were running servants.
The kings of old were the only people prior to the industrial revolution who got to enjoy the lifestyles that are standard for the majority of people in the modern west. A king could pay servants to cook him delicious food and he could enjoy meat at every meal. He didn’t have to walk; he rode in a carriage and didn’t have to tend to the horses himself. He didn’t have to launder his own clothes or wash his dishes when he was done with them. He had court musicians ready to entertain him at his leisure, and he could attend all the best plays and operas. He never had to fetch water from the well or rush his own water (ahem) to the sewer. If it got too hot, he could travel to his summer home.
Consider your life today. You have a machine that wakes you when you wish. You use a phone or other device to listen to world class musicians play your favorite songs for you according to your whims. Maybe you listen to a professional actor read a book to you as you ride in your car to your job, or wherever you need to be. On your lunch break you watch a show on Netflix at your computer. On your way home, you pick up some take-out. When you are finished with it, you put the dishes into the dish-washing robot. You put your clothes in a hamper to then put into a clothes-washing robot later. You realize you need some more milk and other groceries, so you whip out your phone and put in an order at the HEB. A worker comes out and puts your fresh food into your trunk and you drive through the coffee shop for a treat before going home to explore a foreign land using a game console. Before bed, you watch part of a movie, but decide to pause it and finish tomorrow.
And you go to the bathroom and flush the toilet.
Such luxury would be unthinkable even to a king in 1750.
Technology has made us wealthier than we realize, and more than that, it has democratized wealth in a way that is not readily apparent even now.
What is there to buy?
Well, the super wealthy can buy yachts, but the little guy can buy a trip on a cruise ship for a tiny fraction of that price and possibly have a better time because there is more on a cruise ship than on even a private yacht. And what does the rich man’s yacht do when he isn’t in it? It sits, doing nothing, still needing maintenance, still needing his attention in some small way. How many days per year does the rich man really enjoy his yacht?
Private jets? Well, plane tickets exist, and planes are leaving to wherever you want to go all the time. There is also first-class seating if you need a few hours of luxury. If you just had to have the private jet experience you can actually save up charter (rent) one with some friends.
Musk drives a Tesla. They aren’t cheap but they aren’t in the realm of a supercar, and in a lot of ways are better. Yeah, supercars are cool. Did you know you can rent them? Then not only do you save a million dollars, you don’t have to worry about maintaining them, storing them, and you don’t have to spend your mental energy worrying about if your expensive car gets stolen. Can’t afford a limo and a driver? Rent one for a special night.
What about a big house? Housing is the least affordable part of modern life, but even so, consider how much of a mansion you would really use. When I was single, I used two rooms: my bedroom and the kitchen. Chances are you wouldn’t be using much of that 10,000 square foot home. While you use two of the rooms, you’ll pay for all of them in property taxes, utilities, and upkeep. And if you still wanted to enjoy that home? Well, guess what? That can be rented as well.
When I lived in Las Vegas I knew Dan Bilzerian through a couple of my close friends, and he lived in a penthouse near the strip and also had a giant house in San Diego – both were rented properties. Why own when next year you might not want that home? There are giant, expensive, luxury homes that are… Air BnBs. And really, what is a hotel but a vacation home you rent?
One of the wonderful things about the free market is the efficiency it can unleash, and in this case, it is renting the luxuries formerly available only to the super rich. This means you have to have less money to have similar benefits to those in the top 1%.
So, the flip side to “You will own nothing and be happy” is that most of the luxuries of life you don’t have to own to enjoy, and in many cases not owning them is less stress than owning them.
I will point out that you don’t always want to rent everything; certain things you probably want to own for various reasons. A home is one, since you spend most of your time there, and another is a car, since most people use their cars every day. Real property is one of the things that you can pass onto the next generation that has immediate utility, compared to equities or other intangible items that must be converted to money to be used by your descendants.
This is also the crux of the argument regarding the impoverishment of younger generations: they can’t buy a home and have to finance their cars. Yes, you have the same phone as Elon Musk, but that’s a tool everybody at this point needs to have to interact with the economy. What you don’t get is a house where you can place your possessions (if you can afford to own any) and life with your family. Minimalism makes sense for single adults but not so much for families. The fact that most millennials grew up with a lifestyle they can’t replicate for their own children is galling.
Yes, you have a giant amazing TV and it didn’t cost that much, but it is much more expensive to buy into a safe neighborhood.
There is also the reality that much of the technology we “buy” we effectively rent because of obsolescence. That thousand-dollar iPhone is not a durable good in the same way a car is. My car is approaching 20 years old. Can you imagine using your computer from 20 years ago? Tech is temporal. It isn’t an investment.
Even so, it is that technology, that ability to pull out your phone and gain access to things unimaginable to the kings of yore, that convenience of sending bodily waste away at the pull of a lever, that opportunity to enjoy luxuries for a tiny fraction of their true cost, that has elevated the station of the man and so improved his life. You reading this essay is a function of those same amazing systems unleashed by men who were free to utilize their ingenuity to the benefit of all. It’s amazing, and we should be thankful for it.
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