34. YES to millionaires, NO to billionaires

Millionaire. Billionaire. These words get thrown around like they're similar, but they're far from the same. 

One is disastrous for the health of local economies, and the other is not.

Listen to hear more about:

• What I learned from the Official Historian of the City of Detroit about the former wealth built by hundreds of Black business owners - which were destroyed
• The difference in the scale of millionaire vs. billionaire wealth.
• How distributed vs. concentrated wealth changes communities
• How your business-building decisions can make a difference

This episode will free you from any guilt you might have had about seeking prosperity, and show you how building ethical wealth isn't just about self-interest — it's about building economic foundations that create resilient communities for everyone.

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You are invited to our virtual retreat TOGETHER to take this work deeper. Check out more details here. 

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol, and thank you so much for listening.

You know, I just got back from hosting an incredible retreat in Detroit, Michigan, and there's something I can't stop thinking about, and that's something that was said by a guest speaker that we had. 

We were enormously fortunate to have someone called Baba Jamon Jordan speak to our group. And Baba Jamon is the official historian of the City of Detroit, and he's an influential historian, tour guide, activist and public intellectual, as well as a lecturer at the University of Michigan who has been for decades educating people about the black history of Detroit.

And you know, he opened the event for us by teaching us about the black history of Detroit. And he told us how black business success and black wealth were wiped out time and time again throughout the city's history. He walked us through, among many other things, the destruction of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, thriving neighborhoods that at their height housed approximately 130,000 residents with more than 300 black owned businesses.

And I'm talking restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, where legends like Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington performed, medical practices, beauty salons, drug stores, an entire economic ecosystem. Then came urban renewal in the fifties and sixties. The city seized this land through eminent domain and bulldozed it all to make way for I-375 and Lafayette Park.

43,000 people were displaced. 70% of them black, 300 black owned businesses were gone. And of course, the new development was three quarters white. And that wasn't even the first time. There were the 1943 race riots where dozens of people, black people were killed. $2 million in property damage. And remember, I'm talking about 1943 dollars.

So each time black communities in Detroit built wealth, each time they created thriving business districts, something came to destroy it. Policy violence, police action, quote unquote "urban renewal," which black residents really knew what it meant was removal of black people.

Then Baba Jamon started talking about the revival of Detroit's downtown area, which we were in — our event was hosted there — and his feelings about the development were quite complicated, and he told us, on the one hand, he said he wasn't gonna say it was bad altogether. Compared to how it was when he was growing up, downtown Detroit is undeniably a better, safer place to walk around, spend time, hang out. The development really brought improvements that couldn't be denied, but also he left us with this haunting question that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

He asked, what would Detroit downtown look like if it had been allowed to be created by the wealth of a hundred millionaires as opposed to a few billionaires? Which is what it is today.

And that question cut right through the heart of what I wanna talk about today because when he asked us that question, he was pointing to something profound about how wealth functions in communities. Because think about it. In Black Bottom, Paradise Valley in Detroit, when you had hundreds of black-owned businesses in a thriving economic ecosystem, wealth was distributed amongst hundreds of business owners who lived in the community. They spent money in the community, invested in the community, hired in the community. That distributed prosperity, created resilience, opportunity, genuine economic power. And guess what? That terrified the existing white supremacist power structure. So they destroyed it, not once, but repeatedly.

And we're living with the consequences of that destruction right now, not just in Detroit, but everywhere. Because when you systematically destroy examples of distributed community wealth, when you wipe out proof that another way is possible, people stop believing that they can build it themselves.

So when we talk about building wealth today, whether you're starting a business, growing your income, or thinking about your role in your community's economic future, we're not just talking about your personal safety. We're not just talking about personal finance. We're talking about how we are able to rebuild what was destroyed, how we're going to be able to create distributed prosperity that makes communities strong and resilient.

So the question isn't whether you deserve wealth or whether building wealth makes you good or bad, or ethical or unethical. The question is, what kind of wealth are you building and how does it serve or extract from the communities around you? Does it strengthen or weaken the community around you?

What We're Actually Talking About When We Say "Millionaire"

So first, let's get our facts straight about what we're actually talking about when we throw around the word millionaire, because that word has become so loaded with bullshit, in my opinion, that we can't even think about it correctly anymore. Like I feel like in our minds, millionaire, billionaire, these words all get blurred and they really shouldn't be. 'Cause here are the facts, right? Here's the math. $1 million equals earning $50,000 per year for 20 years. That's it. $50,000 per year for 20 years.

That's not yacht money. That's not private jet money. That's not exploiting workers to buy your fifth vacation home money. That's security money. We're talking about the ability to take sick days without being terrified that you're not gonna be able to pay rent. It's the ability to know that you're gonna be able to send your kids to college without incurring crushing debt. It's the ability to retire with some dignity. It's the ability to weather economic downturns without losing your home. It's the difference between surviving paycheck to paycheck and having genuine choices about how you're gonna spend your time and energy.

And the truth is this level of wealth is absolutely achievable for so many people through care-based business practices. This level of wealth is achievable without doing evil things. You can reach financial security by creating genuine value, paying people fairly and serving your community well. You don't need to exploit anyone to build a life of dignity and choice for so many of us.

But because we've seen so much of the wreckage created in the world by the billionaire economy, because we ourselves are victims of it in so many ways, we've been conditioned to believe that wanting financial prosperity makes us greedy and evil, and that to be wealthy means flying private, owning multiple vacation homes, exploiting workers, destroying the environment. That if you really cared about equality and justice, you'd just stay small and broke. That building wealth is inherently selfish and greedy.

And I have to say that is a serious distortion because what we've been conditioned to associate with wealth — like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — that is a grotesque scale of billionaire wealth that is actually incredibly new to human history, and it's not natural and it is not at all what it has to look like for people to build a level of financial security that affords us dignity and choices.

And most importantly, when wealth is distributed amongst many, many, many more people, rather than concentrated in the few hands of billionaires, it creates completely different economic dynamics and social dynamics, and that is where things get really interesting.

Two Towns: A Tale of Wealth Distribution

So let me paint you a picture that's gonna make this crystal clear, right? Let's imagine two fictional towns, each with 50,000 people. These two towns are very similar, but let's say the only difference is how wealth is distributed. But that difference alone creates totally different realities for everyone, everyone living there.

So let's say Town A. Town A depends on a single billionaire's business empire. There's a massive fulfillment center employing 5,000 workers at 15 bucks an hour with shit benefits, right? The landscape is dominated by chain hotels, franchise restaurants, big box stores. Most profit flows to distant shareholders who've never even visited this town. The billionaire owner lives somewhere thousands of miles away in some gated bullshit compound, makes decisions based on quarterly returns.

The local government survives on tax breaks, constantly kissing ass to the billionaire, praying that the major employer doesn't leave. And then one day, surprise, corporate headquarters decides to automate the fulfillment center. 3,000 jobs disappear overnight. The billionaire moves operations somewhere cheaper. Local businesses that depended on those workers spending money start to close rapidly. The tax base collapses. The community has no economic cushion and no local decision makers with any power to change course.

Sound familiar? Are you like, wait, you said this was a fictional town, it sounds like where I'm from, it sounds like so many towns in my state. Yeah, this is what late stage capitalism looks like. It is happening. It has happened in so many places.

Now, let's talk about the other fictional town, Town B — I mean fictional in quotes — where wealth is actually distributed. In Town B, there are 200 businesses owned by local residents who've built sustainable wealth as contractors, medical practices, consulting firms, manufacturers, restaurants, service providers, tech companies. These business owners live in town. They actually live there. They send their kids to local schools. They make decisions based on long term community investment, not some distant shareholders' profit margins.

When a recession hits, these local owners work together to maintain employment where possible. They have savings to weather temporary downturns. They're invested in local suppliers and service providers wherever possible. They give a shit about their community 'cause they live there. They are the community.

When some businesses struggle, others can expand to absorb workers and maintain the local economy as much as possible. The difference isn't just who owns the wealth. It's about how wealth concentration versus distribution affects every single aspect of community life.

Which town would you rather live in? Which town is more resilient? Which town offers opportunities for your children? The answer's obvious, right? So why the hell are we perpetuating the myth that building wealth is inherently bad and evil and greedy when what we actually need is more people rebuilding models of distributed prosperity that has come to be replaced by billionaire capitalism.

The Multiplier Effect of Distributed Wealth

When wealth is distributed at human scale across many, many people, it creates what economists call a multiplier effect. So let me break this down in real terms. Local millionaires spend money in their communities, like we said, right? They hire local contractors to renovate their homes. They eat at neighborhood restaurants, they send their kids to local schools. They actually invest in making those schools not suck. They shop at community businesses. Support local services. You can have, like you can imagine, a millionaire neighbor. Can you imagine a billionaire neighbor? You probably don't have a billionaire neighbor if you're like most people.

Every dollar a local millionaire spends generates additional economic activity as it moves through the community. The contractor they hire to renovate their home can afford to take their family out to dinner. The restaurant owner that where they ate dinner at, can afford to give their employees raises. The employees then can afford to shop at local businesses and the cycle, right, the beautiful cycle that can lift everyone up.

When you build wealth through ethical care-based business practices, you are not extracting value from your community. You are letting it flow through your community. You are creating a foundation for broader prosperity.

Now look. I am, let me be very clear. I'm not saying that every single millionaire automatically is good for the community. I'm not saying every millionaire is inherently like a community hero. I think that's naive. You can absolutely be a millionaire and hoard your wealth. You can be a millionaire and live in a gated community in isolation from your community. You can refuse to hire locally. You can shop exclusively at big box stores and send your kids to private schools while lobbying against public school funding and generally act like an asshole. I happen to remember that slave owners were millionaires too, so it's not like anyone who's rich, but not a billionaire is automatically a good person who's good for the community.

Individual millionaires' choices and consciousness matters enormously. How they treat their workers matters. Whether they choose to circulate their wealth locally or extract it matters. Whether they see themselves as part of a community or separate from it and above it matters. The truth is that plenty of millionaires are selfish and their selfishness absolutely does harm the communities around them.

But here's the crucial difference. When you have many millionaires in a community, instead of having dependence on one billionaire, you can create multiple decision points where people can choose differently. When wealth is distributed amongst hundreds of people and hundreds of decision points, rather than concentrated in one person's hands, communities aren't held hostage by a single person's moral character, a single person's decision, right?

And compare that to a world run by a billionaire, where wealth gets extracted from communities, moved up top and to offshore accounts where it does absolutely nothing for anyone except for the billionaire themselves. The structural advantage isn't that distributed wealth necessarily guarantees great outcomes for everybody. It's that it creates more opportunities for different choices when economic power is spread across more people as opposed to concentrated in fewer hands. Communities have more chances to have more people make more decisions that serve local interests rather than distant profit margins.

Creating Resistance to Extractive Power

Also, and I think here's another powerful point. When enough people build wealth at a human scale through ethical practices, it creates resistance to extractive corporate power, and it creates genuine alternatives to systems that are crushing working families. Communities with many financially secure households are more resilient during economic downturns.

When local business owners have savings, they can maintain payroll during slow periods rather than immediately having to lay off all their workers. When many residents have financial cushions, they can continue supporting local businesses even when times get tight. This distributed financial security creates stability that benefits everyone, including those who haven't yet reached financial independence themselves.

Yeah, so think about it like this. Instead of one billionaire extracting value from thousands of workers, you have hundreds of prosperous business owners creating opportunities for thousands of employees and customers. Instead of wealth leaving the community to sit in some offshore account, it circulates locally.

And this isn't some kind of idealistic utopian fantasy. When you look at the most economically stable cities and even countries across the world, they share these exact characteristics. Diverse local ownership, multiple small and mid-sized employers, local banks that keep deposits in the community. Business owners that reinvest profits locally instead of shipping them off somewhere else. These communities are far more resilient in times of economic downturns. They have lower inequality. They offer real economic mobility for people because economic success isn't dependent on having to kiss up to one single behemoth of a massive employer who's off somewhere far from where the people actually live.

And more importantly, I think they prove that prosperity and communal wellbeing don't have to compete with each other.

What This Means for You

So here's what this means for you. Every time you choose to build wealth through ethical practices, you can be participating in creating alternatives to extractive billionaire economies. The question isn't whether it's good or bad to create wealth. The question is whether you're gonna use your business and wealth to extract from your economy or to strengthen it, whether you are going to hoard your wealth or to circulate it to make your community stronger and more resilient.

You know, stepping back a little bit, I think what struck me most about Baba Jamon's question was that it wasn't just about Detroit, right? It was about the power of imagination. I mean, that sounds so cheesy, but honestly it was about our ability to envision, imagine what's actually possible when we dare to ask questions about like what if it could be different? What happens when we stop accepting the world that we've been given, and start asking questions about what else could emerge.

And the critical thing is that you can't do it alone, and I can't do it alone either. I think the same kind of hyper individualism that created these broken systems won't be what dismantles them, and real change happens through community, through networks, through people connecting their gifts and resources and their imagination.

Invitation 

And so if what I said in this episode resonated with you, and if you're ready to think more strategically about your role in building the world that's coming, I wanna invite you to join me and my guest teacher, Rashida Bonds, for the online version of the retreat that we did together called Together. It's happening September 10th through the 24th, and it's about practicing what I call radical hope, not the kind that waits for better circumstances, but the kind that creates them.

We're exploring how to build businesses that circulate resources instead of hoarding them. How to deploy your true wealth. Not just money, but the advantages, inner outer spiritual resources that you have, the connections that you might not even recognize, and how to connect with other people who see the vision for the world that you see.

And I've been talking about care-based ethical business practices in this episode, all that stuff. We're gonna dive deep into what that actually concretely means for you and your business. Not just the theory, but real practical decisions that you're gonna make every single day in terms of how you price, how you market and sell, how you think about growth.

And so you can find more details and the registration link at the link in my show notes. It's a hundred dollars for two weeks of live calls, all the teaching and lifetime access, as well as a community of people who get it, people who are committed to building a better future together. And if you're listening to this after September 24th, 2025, you can access the self-guided version of the retreat through the same link.

Remember, a different world is possible, but only when we dare to dream it first. Hope for it. And back up that hope with action and joined hands, and I hope you'll join hands with me. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.