What If You Could Trade Places with Jeff Bezos?
Would you live in the lap of luxury, or change everything for the better?
Lying awake in bed at 4am I found myself entertaining a rather enjoyable fantasy. I imagined what I would do if I could trade places with Jeff Bezos, presently ranked the second richest man in the world. But the fantasy wasn’t about what I’d buy or do with the money, but how I would fundamentally change his organization.
First, I’d initiate a company-wide initiative to improve worker safety and working conditions. Second, I’d replace the Amazon board with a group of highly accomplished and diverse social entrepreneurs. The board presently consisting of mostly white guys.
I would initiate a re-branding process (well, of course, I’m a brand guy). I’d dig deep into what Amazon could be, what it could stand for and believe in. I would even change the name of the company, as its namesake being the largest river in the world sends a message about being the biggest. I’d make the company about more than that. Maybe we call it something like “Hummingbird,” which is actually a pretty badass bird.
I would set up a team to explore how the company could work in partnership with small retail establishments. Instead of running them out of the business, we would find ways to help them succeed by exposing them to a worldwide audience via the highly sophisticated system we know as Amazon dot com.
I would set up a non-profit to run the Washington Post and donate the paper to the non-profit. Its board would consist of real journalists, community members, and more of those accomplished social entrepreneurs. I would donate his brand-new half-billion-dollar yacht to an organization researching marine biology, maybe one looking at the effects of global warming on the oceans. And Blue Origin? Don’t get me started.
But all of this would just be the warmup. The real change would be to convert the company to employee owned and led. Which would mean a rotating leadership committee consisting of a cross-section of employees.
The Billionaire Dilemma
When we hear about these mega rich billionaires like Bezos, most people don’t understand that their wealth is mostly derived from the stock they hold in their companies. If you own a giant share of stock in say Facebook, Tesla, Microsoft or Amazon, each time the stock ascends so does your wealth. But it’s not liquid, meaning you can’t just go to the bank and make a withdraw. To access the wealth you have to sell stock, which means your share of ownership diminishes.
So, when a noted thought leader suggests these guys need to pay their fair share of taxes, what’s usually missing is the understanding that in order to pay an amount of taxes related to their actual wealth, they need to first sell shares in the companies they own for their wealth to become taxable income.
And . . . if these mega-rich sell off huge chunks of their ownership, those sales adversely affect the value of the stock, and by extension the value of their company.
Let’s Give It to the Employees Instead
Instead, we could convert the Amazon behemoth to employee owned by donating the lion’s share of Bezos’ stock in the company to an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). ESOPs give employees a stake in the company and a growing investment portfolio for retirement. They tend to reduce turnover, provide employees with a sense of agency, and broadens the purpose of an organization by design.
Now, you might be thinking: Why convert to employee owned? Well, before you dub me a wealth redistribution commie, let’s just think about it for a minute. Jeff Bezos is currently worth an estimated $183.6 billion. That’s an astronomical amount of wealth. One comparison is that an individual earning an average U.S. salary of $51,480 per year, would need to work for more than 3.5 million years, saving 100% of their income to amass such a sum. Or if you were to stack 183.6 billion one-dollar bills, it would stand 12,460 miles high, or roughly the distance from New York to Beijing and back.
Why gift Amazon to the employees? Because it’s the right thing to do. Because employees make companies happen.
“But wait a minute,” you say, “money makes companies happen — that initial $300k his parents gave him to launch Amazon. Without that there would be no Amazon.” Right? You could also say all those VCs and individual investors who chipped in pre-IPO made Amazon happen. And you could say that all the customers who go click, click on their phones, and then head over to checkout make Amazon happen. But it’s the employees who toil away day in and day out to make the machine work.
Is It Right to be That Wealthy?
But here’s the real question: Is it right for someone to hold more wealth (and all the power that goes with it) than the entire GDP of 132 countries on the planet? If it were you, would you want to help lift up the poorest of the poor, or kick up your feet on your half billion dollar boat while being served breakfast octopus by one of your staff of 40?
It's not about morality. It’s simply about what kind of people we want to be. Could you make billions of dollars every week while your employees are suffering? Could you require a historic bridge to be dismantled so your 417-foot skiff could make it out of the boat yard? Could you intentionally create a work culture that drives a 150% annual turnover? Could you sit on so much wealth while you hold the power to make lives better?
Surely, we could retain a billion or two in change for the “Bezos Estate” to keep him living in the lap of luxury once I trade places again. A couple billion would enable him to rent a yacht every now and then, or maybe let him keep his $58 million support yacht. In either case, once I reverse the trade he’ll no longer be in charge, the employees will hold the reins. The Washington Post, gone. The mega yacht, gone.
Amazon?
Amazon will be a B-Corp, which means its charter will have been amended in perpetuity. It will be about serving all stakeholders, not just the shareholders. The new highly seasoned diverse board won’t have any part of him. They may even have him escorted out of the building when he jumps up and down about what he’s owed.
But check this out. Amazon, or rather Hummingbird, will become one of the most desirable companies to work for. Turnover will be less than 5%. The company will run like a Swiss watch on cloud nine. Profit will be lower, but stock value will grow, and Main Street USA will be all the better for it because Amazon (rather Hummingbird) will serve a public benefit.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at companies like Southwest Airlines, Chobani, Patagonia, REI or Zappos (an Amazon subsidiary by the way).
REI is set up as a cooperative, which means it’s owned by customers and employees. It’s a large company and it runs well. Is it a perfect company? Of course not. No company is or ever will be, but REI engenders great loyalty from both customers and employees.
Amazon allowed Zappos to continue to run itself without interference after its purchase in 2009, and since then Zappos has continued to strengthen its culture and do well financially.
It’s About Consciousness
It all comes down to consciousness. It always does. If Bezos focused on raising his consciousness, he would have cultivated humility and compassion alongside business savvy and experience. He still would have built a successful enterprise, because he is of course quite brilliant, but his organization would be exemplary of the kind of leadership we need more of. He would be like a Tony Hsieh or Yvon Chouinard who ran a full-page ad in the New York Times that said, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”
“Consciousness is the irreducible substrate of the human capacity to know or experience, to perceive or witness, and it is the essence of the capacity for awareness itself.” — David R. Hawkins
Instead of being known for his wealth, he’d be remembered for his work. Instead of being disparaged for his ruthlessness, he’d be celebrated for his vision.
Am I a commie because I want to give his billions away? Or do I just have a desire to do business to do good? Which path would you choose if you could trade places with the billionaire of your choice? What change would you bring?
If you’ve read this far, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be tooling around the Caribbean in an extravagant flotilla of excess. Maybe you’d become a badass philanthropist like MacKenzie Scott, or create art, or buy half of the Amazonian rainforest and donate it to the indigenous people who have inhabited it for thousands of years. Whatever you would do, I’m imagining you would bring change and have fun with it. Whatever we do, it can be healing and good for humanity.
Thanks for the share, Glenn. I'd like to believe I would be generous with that sum too, and I think it would be difficult to avoid falling into my ego with it.
I can just hope to learn how to manage the resources I have now and maybe one day I'll be blessed to steward a larger sum. I'll come ask you for advice then :)