Exhibit A: Kanye West
From a Dutch news article:
“Daarna stapte West over naar Adidas. Inmiddels levert de Yeezy-schoenenlijn van West Adidas per jaar naar schatting 1,7 miljard dollar op. West verdient daar een kleine 200 miljoen dollar aan.”
Translated:
“After that West moved to Adidas. Now the Yeezy brand brings in around 1.7 billion dollars on a yearly basis, of which West pockets a small 200 million dollars.”
West is getting rich, Adidas is getting richer.
Exhibit B: Jeff Bezos
IT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE are naturally curious about, but I have never sought the title of “world’s richest man.” I was fine being the second-wealthiest person in the world. I would much rather be known as inventor Jeff Bezos or entrepreneur Jeff Bezos or father Jeff Bezos. Those kinds of things are much more meaningful to me, and it’s an output measure.
If you look at the financial success of Amazon and the stock, I own 16 percent of Amazon. Amazon’s worth roughly $1 trillion. That means that over twenty years we have built $840 billion of wealth for other people, and that’s really what we’ve done from a financial point of view. We’ve built $840 billion of wealth for other people, and that’s great. That’s how it should be. You know, I believe so powerfully in the ability of entrepreneurial capitalism and free markets to solve so many of the world’s problems. Not all of them, but so many of them.
Bezos is getting rich, its shareholders are getting richer.
Moral of the story
I have this hypothesis that the price of getting rich is someone else getting richer. At least this is one way of getting rich and I would argue the most ethical one. Create a big amount of value, and capture a small portion of it. Good for all parties involved.