It’s easy to dismiss a problem when it doesn’t impact you. But what excuse would there be for defending an unethical occurrence when it, in fact, does impact you on a daily basis? 

     The paradox of marginalized communities submitting to the actions that oppress them is hardly a new concept, but increases importance in online discourses about the existence of billionaires. Middle-class American civilians fail to grasp the fact that their favorite billionaire celebrity simply existing is unethical and is marginalizing them by the second. Each of the hundreds of vintage cars they these billionaires buy, costing millions of dollars, decreases the probability of buying another load of groceries for those in impoverished communities. 

     So why defend these billionaires? Blame human psychology and the effects of capitalism for curating a distaste in consumers’ mouths: cognitive dissonance. This phenomenon describes the occurrence of an individual externally supporting an action that does not coincide with their beliefs, morals, or values. For example, a middle-class citizen developing a parasocial relationship with a celebrity to escape from the struggle of daily living may feel tense when reading an article about how unethical the icon’s financial inheritance is. As a result, the person will feel uncomfortable and distressed. The brain seeks out comfort by default, so it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the person turns a blind eye to the article and refutes the emotion from a place of convenience. 

     That’s not to say it’s an uncommon thing – thousands if not millions of people defend the existence of billionaires due to the sheer fact that it is uncomfortable to think about the aftermath. The environmental impacts, the stark and sensible economic inequality, the corporations that these billionaires build which fund the suppression of societies across the globe, to name just a few.

     However, to the defense of those justifying the existence of billionaires, it’s almost impossible for the human mind to grasp the concept of numbers like one billion. It would make a small amount of sense for the average American citizen to infer that all is good in the conscience of billionaires, as long as they don’t register the true proportion of what a billion dollars amounts to. To put it in perspective, if a person stacked one billion one dollar bills on top of each other, the pile would be 12 times higher than Mount Everest, well above the flight paths of commercial jet liners, and reaches into the lowest portion of the Earth’s atmosphere, according to ABC News. 

     The ethical considerations of being a billionaire is far from a new debate. Ever since John D. Rockerfeller, the world’s first confirmed billionaire, came into the spotlight, people started to look at this inequality head-on. However, these sentiments have faded alongside the urgency for reformation. 

     So what is there to do? What happens when the gap between the rich and the poor only continues to increase? There’s not much that can be done about the system that enables the occurrence of billionaires, since society encourages inevitable corporate greed. However, by simply acknowledging the injustices in the world, a bigger audience can form to extend awareness and in turn, a larger collective solution.