2025-11-08.4_rich people don’t work

rich people / capitalists don’t work. they’re busy, sure. but they do not actually work.

what do i mean when i say rich people don’t work? i mean that – in their role as rich – they don’t add anything of value to the world, to their communities. they don’t add anything that people actually need.

(waged or not,) work is an activity that creates (unique) value with/in the world. and what an e.g. finance capitalist does when he “works” does not qualify as such. what the finance capitalist does instead is manage and re-distribute value co-created by, and subsequently stolen from actual working people.

a key aspect to this argument is that of the unique necessity of actual work.

if a community needs/wants a library (or more generally a place to meet, learn and exchange knowledge), there is no getting around work that must be done to build it, fill it and staff it. and for any aspect of this work process, specific workers / types of work are uniquely necessary. you can’t build a library building without carpenters, you can’t fill a library with books without writers, you can’t staff a library without librarians. these are all people that actually work. by comparison and contrast, no one in this process actually needs the finance capitalist. there is no uniquely necessary work he does. one could argue that he contributes the necessary capital to pay the actual workers or provide the building materials, and that constitutes necessary work as well. but does he add, does he create unique value? i would argue that he does not*. because there is nothing the community members cannot do / cannot organize among themselves (including compensation/reward for actual work and provision of materials) without the finance capitalist. on the other hand, there is a whole lot that the finance capitalist (in his role as rich finance capitalist) cannot do that the community (even “just” individual members), can.

and that’s the point: we don’t need them. we never have.

to clarify again what i mean when i say “them”: it’s not that we don’t need the people themselves, we just don’t need them in their roles as rich. they are not needed as rich-people.

no one needs the rich, not even they themselves. although they do try to convince us (and themselves) otherwise*. but we don’t. and they know this. which is why they enlist the state and other actors to indoctrinate and discipline us into believing in the necessity of their existence and to ignore the detriments they present to our communities. and for those who cannot be sufficiently indoctrinated or disciplined through (in this moment) capitalist education in state schools, coercion and violence will do. if there is a willing state, that coercion and violence can be done with the “legitimacy” of institutions like the police. if there is no state, or if it’s too expensive to enlist it, mercenaries will usually do. all of this is what rich people (continually) do and have done for centuries. none of it is actual work* that contributes necessary value to the world.

one final clarification: “rich” in this text does not only mean having a lot of money or capital, but also power in a broader sense.

* not even asking where he got the capital he has from.

** unfortunately successfully a lot of the times.