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| Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, DC (2025) "I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust." |
In the 1935 essay In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell wrote that "The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than their own."
In my reading of Russell, it's not that the notion of duty is bad, it's that those who cease to contribute – Russell's "holders of power" – are no longer doing their duty, and instead use the concept of duty to manipulate others to do their bidding. They have broken the social contract and should not be allowed to participate on equal – and especially not greater – footing relative to the rest of society.
Beyond a certain point, ownership of something should no longer be classified as contribution. In a world where capital is valued far more than labor (and taxed far less, to boot), owners of lands, companies, and stocks can no longer be said to be contributing to the value of society, not directly, at least. They are merely extracting and collecting ever-increasing rents.
Let me illustrate the passivity of capital and how it is favored over continuous effort or ingenuity in our society. Own a social media platform or an e-commerce monopoly (or inherit a big-box retail chain), and you can profit off of it indefinitely, and then further benefit by passing ownership down to your heirs with a step-up in cost basis so they don't even pay taxes on the appreciated value of the stocks. But write a book and your copyright will expire 70 years after your death, meaning you and your children/grandchildren can perhaps profit off of your stroke of genius, but it will enter the public domain and be freely reproducible after that. Invent something new and your patent will expire in a mere 20 years, meaning you have just two decades to scale production before competitors can copy your idea and perhaps take away market share.
America in 2026 is a society dominated by the rent-seekers, Russell's "holders of power." Ours is a world in which 55% of Americans express that their financial situation is getting worse. At the same time, wealth ownership has stratified into roughly three bands, with 31.9% of the nation's wealth held by just the top 1 percent, 36.4% held by the next 9 percent, and just 31.7% held by the bottom 90 percent of society in Q4 of 2025. This marks a trend of increasing wealth owned by the top 1 percent of society, further supporting feelings by more than half of us that our financial situation is worsening.
And what do the wealthiest among us do with all this accumulated wealth? They certainly aren't charitably giving it back to the society that made them so wealthy in the first place. Instead, they are finding creative ways to avoid taxes, executing stock buybacks to the tune of $1 trillion collectively in 2025, blasting off to space, buying mega-yachts, and buying political influence, having spent an estimated $3 billion towards the 2024 election.
By any measure, this cannot be considered to be contributing to the good of society, and it certainly does not rise to the high-minded language of "doing one's duty." The private jets, the mega-yachts, the push for AI data centers when the public resoundingly does not want them, the derision for climate policies, all point to "masters" who are woefully out of touch with the common man and the good of society.
One is left asking, how did we come to this? While there is no simple answer, I think insight can be found in the nature of capitalism and a diseased public mindset. Let me explain.
Capitalism values outliers, not consistency. Wealth does not easily accumulate to the person who shows up every day and does their work in the background, but also values work-life balance and the chance to spend time with their family. Instead, capitalism values the so-called visionaries, the self-promoters, who very visibly sacrifice their home life for extra hours in the office, or make a heroic effort to push something across the finish line, or who simply aren't shy about tooting their own horn. Extreme long-term consistency could be treated as its own form of outlier in the form of dependability, but unfortunately ours is a society in which being dependable is not valued as highly as being a "visionary."
The outliers capitalism values, then, are those willing to work (or claim to work) long hours and shamelessly leverage their networks and good fortune to get a leg up. And undoubtedly, some individuals who have "made it" likely worked very hard in the early going of building what they built. But does that mean they should get to go on profiting indefinitely, with little to no contribution back to the society that made them wealthy in the first place?
Let me just say that I don't hate wealth. I hate obscene wealth. For instance, e-commerce is built on an internet system that has its origins in publicly-funded research and development. Should corporations such as Amazon not have to pay a fee for its use then, or at least their fair share of taxes? Should founding a successful company get to enrich the founder in perpetuity and without limit?
Mind you, this is the same Amazon where warehouse workers and delivery drivers are said to urinate in bottles because grueling productivity mandates don't leave them with sufficient time for bathroom breaks. The "holder of power" throws himself a $50 million wedding, but the "duty" of earning a living is forced upon desperate workers who subject themselves to harsh working conditions for a paycheck and (depending on whether they work directly for Amazon or are a contract worker) healthcare benefits.
It calls to mind the story of It's a Wonderful Life, where Mr. Potter ("a warped, frustrated old man") is buying up the town and using unethical business practices to get ahead, while the other citizens of the town fight just to have a roof over their heads. In the immortal words of George Bailey, "Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?"
It concerns me that today's "holders of power" would likely see George Bailey as a tale of a man avoiding hard decisions and thereby allowing his dreams to slip away. When in reality, he's a symbol of the modern worker fighting the system to get by and trying to do the right thing while a few enrich themselves on the backs of others. He's fighting the good fight. He sees his duty as first and foremost the duty to his family and his community rather than to the masters who would induce him to live for their interests. What further concerns me is that in our hypercompetitive modern times, there's probably another Building & Loan business down the street who would only be too happy to take their cut and sell out to Mr. Potter, leaving George further weakened in his attempt to live for his and his family's interests. This is the "I got mine" mindset – more on that in a future post.
With that in mind, where do we go from here? I will admit that it can feel pretty hopeless at times. We live in a world where money is speech, and those with money are using it more liberally than ever to create the world they want and ensure that they remain the "holders of power." This post is far too short for me to lay out a complete road map for how to push back and reclaim our collective humanity.
I can say, however, that it will take a collective effort. All of us must have a clear-eyed view of who actually represents the interests of the people versus who represents only their own or those of their corporate donors. We must then collectively support and vote for those who are honest and upright. No one can say, in good conscience and in good faith, that the current political administration is honest and upright – it is as far from it as can be.
But it is up to we the people to firstly hold them accountable, and secondly, to vote for the interests of the people over the interests of the masters. Learn to tell the difference. Become informed. The conception of duty that Russell writes about isn't a misguided concept when we apply it toward the betterment of our society. Don't allow it to become the tool of warped, frustrated old men. Do your duty, then, in the sense of supporting honest and upstanding individuals who will truly work for the good of society.
