DailyJim: The financially powerful disproportionately influence society but we can choose who we want to be financially powerful

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gem. Today is Monday, March 3rd, 2025. Today I want to talk about how the financially powerful disproportionately influence society, but we can choose who we want to be financially powerful.

So I was watching a video on YouTube earlier today talking about how the wealthy in Germany are influencing society through philanthropic donations, trying to build different buildings here and there, etc., etc. And one guy described himself as a self-made man. He has worked very hard to make all of his money. He earned everything that he got. Now, if we look at society, often these are the people who have the most money in society, and money just being another way to say financial power. So a lot of times the people who have the most financial power in society are the ones who believe they have earned it, believe that they are self-made, that they have done it themselves, that it didn't come from other people. It came from transactions. It came from, I give you this thing and you give me money in return. I only give it to you if you give me money in return. What happens is then we get society filled with the ones who are the most financially powerful tend to be the ones who get it through more transactional ways. This is not to say they are good or bad people. It's just saying that when people receive money in more transactional ways, they probably have a more transactional mindset towards life. Again, as this person said, a self-made man doesn't realize that his success and wealth comes literally from receiving money from other people. But that's a topic for another conversation. And so there aren't that many ways for someone who has a much more loving perspective, much more communal, we are one, I'm on your team, we're all on the same team perspective to obtain so much financial wealth. Because the main ways have been to start a business and reap a lot of profits from the business or own a lot of assets, whether that's real estate or that's stocks and hope that the assets appreciate in value and then sell the assets. Um, or sometimes becoming a very large CEO of a very large corporation and trading our time for money, again, being much more transactional in that way, um, conditional transaction. Um, so these are the main ways I would say of accumulating wealth. Also there's possible inheritance where someone in your family has accumulated it and passes it onto you, gifts it onto you. Now that may be one of the ways that creates people to be the most giving the most, uh, generous in a way, but who knows. But regardless, from a societal standpoint, all of those ways aren't us choosing these people to be financially powerful. So if you use, say for example, you shop at a place, maybe you'd like to go to McDonald's. You're not choosing the investors in McDonald's or the owners of a place like that to get rich, to get financially powerful. You just like the hamburgers. Or maybe a more relevant example, you buy a Tesla. You're not hoping that by buying the Tesla most of the time that Elon Musk would therefore become one of the most financially powerful people in the world. That's not your intention necessarily. Maybe you're not against it, but you're not choosing that specifically or choosing it directly. You're choosing to buy the car. Same thing with people who own stocks or own properties. You're not trying to, you know, you just want to buy the house. You're not trying to make that person rich. And I think this is how it tends to work in more transactional ways. And then if you look at the inheritance, you're not choosing the Carnegie's to be rich. They got rich again through Carnegie with steel, through steel trading, buying and selling of steel, I believe. But regardless, it wasn't a decision that you as an individual made. It wasn't a decision that we as a collective society made either to choose these people to be financially powerful. But the thing is, we can. We can choose who we want to have financial power in society.

It's simple. Instead of having to hope that if you buy a product from their company and then they will gain profits from it and that profits will go to a specific individual you want to go to, or that they'll start a nonprofit organization and you donate money to the organization and then the organization will give them a salary that will make them more profitable. Or instead of realizing that they own a specific stock and so you buy more of the stock to try to raise up the stock to help them become more financially powerful, we can just simply give them money directly. We can just give the money to the individual.

We can just give them money and we can give them enough money that they become more and more financially powerful.

How would society look like if we chose who had financial power in society and who had the most financial power in society.

How could these people influence and change our society?

This is a question I've asked here when I'm in Kenya. I was at the cafe and I asked two of the waiters.

How they thought society would have been different in Kenya if this woman Wangari Mathai had been the richest person in Kenya. Now, if you're not familiar with Wangari Mathai, I'm not super familiar, but I know she was very involved in the environmental movement here, really encouraged a lot of planting of trees and taking care of the environment. I believe she won the Nobel Peace Prize. And I also believe she didn't have that much money or access to financial power. And I asked both of them and they were, I think their eyes sparkled a little bit, just thinking the possibilities of somebody like that having financial power, how that could influence society, how it could pull society in the other direction. Because whether we want to admit it or not, those who have financial power can influence society strongly, whether that's through political donations, whether that's through philanthropic donations, whether that's through what they buy, whether that's through how they manage the businesses they own or the properties that they own, what they do with them. A thought experiment I've had is, okay, what if Martin Luther King Jr. Had been the wealthiest, richest, most financially powerful person in the United States at the time. How would that have affected U.S. society then and now?

Do you think if Martin Luther King had that much money, he would have bought a mansion with it or a Ferrari? Maybe a mansion. But what do you think he would have done with the mansion? Do you think he would have just sat at home with him and his wife and his kids in the mansion, turned off the TV, disconnected from society and just retreated in almost like a hermit into his wealth?

Or do you think he would have invited people over? Do you think he would have invited politicians over to have deep, serious conversations about not only racial inequity in society, but also economic inequity? Do you think he would have maybe even paid people for their flights and give them extra money just to come over and sit down and have a conversation? Maybe former KKK members sitting down with Black Panther members and had really hard conversations and hosted people. Do you think he would have trained people in nonviolence? Do you think he would have, you know, brought people from different sides together? How would he have used that asset?

And this is kind of the essence of the question.

How would society be different if we chose who were financially powerful?

We chose the people who we wanted to have the financial power. How would society be different? How would these people use that financial power differently than the ones who currently have financial power? And again, this is not to say that the people who currently have financial power are bad people. It's the question how they receive the financial power. Because if somebody receives a lot of financial power by tricking and lying and cheating other people and being in a very cutthroat industry where other people are cheating you and it's back and forth backstabbing, how can we expect that this person is going to be very generous and loving when they get to the top? Often they'll probably get to the top and say that they're a self-made man, that they didn't give help from anyone, which again is probably not true, almost certainly not true, but it's a perspective that one can gain after being in a place where there's a lot of hatred and backstabbing and lying and hiding and cheating. So what if we could choose who had financial power in society? How would society look different?

That's the question I'm asking to you today? And for me, the answer is simple. Yes, we can choose who has financial power in society. And it's very simple. We can just directly give them money. It is the essence behind Leading Hearts Fund. How do we find the people? We can find the people who we believe are pulling society in the direction we want to go, especially emotion, especially related to our hearts, and we can just give them money so that they have the financial power to pull society in that direction, to help culture be more open and loving and better at resolving a conflict, better at fighting for each other instead of fighting against each other or giving up. And we can find these people and we can just give them the money. What could they use the money for? I even told some of the waiters here in Kenya, I said, you know what? I would love to just put up billboards around Kenya that say it's okay to cry. It means you're a human being.

Why? Because a lot of people in Kenya literally have the tears beaten out of them as kids. One Uber driver told me, it was a woman, she told me that when she was a kid, if she cried, she would be beaten. If she stopped crying, her mother would think that she was being too proud or too strong and then would beat her. So she was beaten if she wasn't crying and she was beating if she was crying.

How many people hear the message that it's okay to cry that it makes them a human?

So I would love to do something like that, something very creative, almost like propaganda, almost like advertising, but towards love, towards unity, towards realizing how to fight and resolve conflict and fight for each other.

But how many people are just going to give me that billboard space? The thing about financial power is it doesn't require as much buy-in from a lot of people. To get political power requires, what, 50%, depending, right, of support. To get social power often requires a lot of support as well by individual humans. But financial power doesn't require as much as ardent, as solidified support. It allows people to come up with new things, for better or for worse, that the society doesn't necessarily want at that time, but lets them start to percolate the ideas slowly, slowly.

And so this is a question for today. This is beyond 10 minutes, so I'm going to end here. But really, what would happen in society if we chose who had financial power and we can do that by just directly giving them money? Check out leadinghearts.fund or leadingheartsfund.com

and learn more about me, learn more about Roman, learn more about Pavel, and try to think of somebody in your life that you think is giving so much love to the world that would bring society much closer towards unity, much closer to being open and loving and resolving of conflict.

And just give them money. Just give them the financial power and let them use the financial power to pull us in that direction. So take care, y'all. Talk to you tomorrow.