"Millionaire" is a Synonym For "Saint"

The accumulation of wealth is a holy act.

As we go through life, we help others and are helped by them. It is an inherent part of the human condition that life is a collaborative enterprise. One man alone can’t do much by himself, but working together can accomplish great things.

These we help and those who help us aren’t always exactly the same people. In our modern atomized society, we often labor for people we’ll never meet, just as our own lives are enriched by the efforts of countless anonymous contributors. The immediate bonds of kinship that defined collaboration for much of human history have largely given way to a social technology that allows for collaboration on a civilizational scale—money.

Whenever you earn money honestly, you’ve done something good for someone else. For every dollar you make, someone gave you that dollar because you provided them something they valued more than the dollar itself. Maybe it was a product, a service, or your labor, but whatever it was, they willingly parted with their money because what you provided them was worth more to them than the money. That’s the power of voluntary exchange—it makes everyone involved better off.

Money is the primary way we keep track of who has helped others, and by how much. It isn’t the only way, but it’s a pretty important one. And it has the crucial property of rewarding those who do good; by earning a dollar through helping others, you now have the right to have someone else give you a dollar’s worth of goods or services in turn.

There’s a deep fairness to this system: each person helps others and is helped by others to an equal degree. Even though the beneficiaries of your work and those who aid you in return are different people, the balance holds: each person spends what they earn, asking for themselves only as much as they’ve contributed to others in turn.

But what if you don’t spend that dollar?

You’ve done a good deed for others, but choose not to ask for any recompense. You’ve done a dollar’s worth of good for someone else and yet not asked for what you stand to receive in turn.

A dollar bill is an IOU from society: as you’ve helped others, so may you be helped. By not spending your justly-earned money, you’re not taking society up on its offer of reward. You’ve converted the act you performed to earn that dollar into one performed without a return—one done altruistically.

None of this applies if you’ve come by your money dishonestly, of course. If you made your money by providing value for others, turning down your reward is an act of altruism. If you’ve made your money by force or deceit, there is no underlying good deed for others that you’re generously providing without recompense.

A millionaire, by definition, has assets worth at least a million dollars. These assets—often investments in factories, businesses, or infrastructure—represent deferred consumption. The money tied up in productive machinery or enterprise could, in theory, have funded indulgent parties or extravagant luxuries. But instead, it’s been turned toward creating value for others. Each expensive machine in a factory required great effort to make; the money investors spent on equipping the factory went to making the world a better place for everyone rather than on their own personal happiness.

But all that aside, to legitimately amass a million dollars without spending it is to have contributed over a million dollars’ worth of value to others while asking for less in return. It is an extraordinary act of delayed reciprocity, a refusal to cash in chips that society stands ready to redeem. Even if for some reason you don’t set your money to a productive purpose, that seven-figure bank balance still represents a million dollars’ worth of good that you’ve done for others above and beyond what you’ve asked for from society in return.

You could cash out at some point, if you wanted. You could spend that money, and when your bank balance hits zero the scales of karma will have balanced; others have done for you a million dollars of good, just like you had previously done yourself for others to earn that million. The moment your bank account empties, you are, morally speaking, back to the same baseline as everyone else.

Most rich people don’t do that. They make very sure to stay well in the black. They go to great efforts to not cash it all in, to request back from society far less than what they’ve contributed. This saintly behavior often goes unappreciated, but when has a saint ever performed his saintly deeds for the sake of applause?

Above and beyond this simple virtue lies the additional benefits of investment, which is the practical purpose to which almost all the wealthy put their wealth. In terms of sheer magnitude, this is probably an even greater good, though it comes with fair compensation, a commensurate return on investment. Fair enough, but investment aside, do not forget that underneath it all lies the rarefied virtue of doing great good for others and asking for less in return.

The millionaire is the modern-day holy man, whose quiet, often underappreciated contributions elevate everyone around him. The next time you meet a millionaire, be sure to shake his hand for me.