The Leadership – Empathy Gap

As billionaires are being invited by Trump to fill key roles, the result will be wealthiest administration in US history. So far, the combined wealth of the group has passed $340 Billion and Trump hasn’t finished recruiting yet. So, what does this all means?

It has never been more important to understand the implications of the Wealth-Empathy Gap, given research concluded that as people climb the ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline. Our moral compass comes from our ability to identify with others. While greed is a universal human emotion, research indicates it may have the strongest pull over the wealthiest in our societies. What will be the consequences of billionaires being handed the power to cut spending to the services needed by the poorest and most vulnerable? In addition, these spending cuts will be used to roll-back regulations, including environmental protections; no surprises here because if you don’t care about people there is no way you have any empathy for non-human species.  

So as a billionaire, how do you justify to yourself that you have the right to be ruthless in removing protections from those who need them the most? You simply follow ideologies such as that proposed by Ayn Rand, “that rational selfishness is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one’s self-interest”, and “that the moral purpose of one’s life is the achievement of one’s own happiness”.

Yet even Rand’s vulgar ideology, which many define as the extreme end of free market capitalism, states, “an individual should exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself”. How do you conveniently ignore the part of, “nor sacrificing others to himself”? For that you need another ideology, that of René Girard.  

Girard’s Theory of Mimetic Desire, claims, “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires”. Girard has proposed that, “all desire is merely an imitation of another’s desire, and the desire only occurs because others have deemed said object as worthwhile”.

In today’s language, followers simply mimic influencers and celebrities in the desire for objects and outcomes. This allows the influencers to ‘sacrifice the followers to himself’ because they would reciprocate if the tables were turned. So, the sacrifice of one’s followers is ok because they would do the same if the roles were reversed. How convenient.

Rand’s and Girard’s theories are capped off with their commitment to the ideas proposed and predicted in the 1997 book The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State. The book, which is loved by many of the tech bros, was reprinted in 2020, with a preface from Peter Thiel. Interestingly the title had been altered, to The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age. Maybe the previous title was deemed a bit too obvious on what the real agenda is?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the rich and powerful will find a suitable ideology to justify their disdain for ‘ordinary’ people (who many seem happy to simply corral and exploit); the widespread adoption of this thinking has implications for all of us. It is in the best interest of the believers in Rand’s ideology of “maximizing one’s own self-interest” to socialise the desire to pursue personal wealth, power and status. But as that path is closed now to those outside the ruling class, a substitute has to be found and relentlessly promoted to provide the illusion that such opportunities are available to all – (over)consumption is the substitute.  

It is this overconsumption, in the wealthy countries, that has created the climate and biodiversity crisis we are faced with today. As natural resources shrink and too many people are driven to desire too much of the same stuff, instability sets in. In this case, rivalry for resources to make unnecessary stuff is driving ecosystem and climate collapse. But those profiting from overextraction, overproduction and overconsumption don’t want it to stop.

Those who want to maintain the status quo because they profit handsomely from it need to allocate blame to what is driving us towards planetary tippling points. Certainly, such blame can’t include the real, root-cause of the existential crisis we are facing, because that will interfere with maintaining laissez-faire capitalism. Instead, devotees of maintaining the status quo, maximise their own narrow (wealth, power, status) self-interests, by finding convenient scapegoats.

Whilst this is nothing new, the nature of the chosen scapegoats changes throughout history. Today it is regulations, science, activists and wokeness. Corporate capture of the media – both traditional and social – sells regulation as the problem, that scientists are too ‘risk adverse’ or the ‘science isn’t proven’ and that peaceful activists are acting illegally or irrationally. The scapegoat mechanism has a singular purpose, it buys time to maintain the status quo. Those who should be shouldering the blame have perfected the art of distraction. Like the magician they misdirect the eye and give themselves another term in office or another profit cycle before they must invest in misdirecting again.

Whilst each of us in the rich countries must shoulder some blame, due to our addiction to consumption, it is important to be aware of the massive budgets that go in to keeping us addicted and pretending that we can continue to consume for now (and forever). The strategy has been to distract us from the lack of effective action by focussing on ‘token actions’. Governments distract us with announcements, announcables, pledges, international agreements and new policies on paper. And there is the thing, most of these never leave the page, they are only on-paper, rarely in-action. G7 or G20 pledges are hardly ever enacted; they don’t have to be because nobody follows up anyway and there are no consequences.  

Most announcements disappear in the endless media cycle, providing a short ‘feel good’ factor and are then conveniently forgotten by all. Even international agreements such as the Paris Agreement, for Climate Action, or Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for Biodiversity Protection, see little actual follow-through. Current pledges (not actual policies), under the Paris Agreement, amount to a trajectory for 2.4 degrees warming, not 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Similarly, business and industry distract us with corporate social responsibility, multi-stakeholder initiatives, pledges, pacts, forums, certification schemes and glossy sustainability reports. All of this again makes for great announcements and keeps plenty of PR firms in business, but it has not resulted in any effective action. Most certification schemes are ‘self-certification’, ‘voluntary compliance’ or compliance is not independently monitored. CSR and sustainability reports have proven worthless over the last 3 decades. Multi-stakeholder initiatives have been found to be ineffective after a comprehensive analysis conducted recently. Pledges, pacts and forums appear to be no more than elite networking and PR opportunities than any attempt at serious action. Companies are in the business of making profits, not saving the world.

Businesses let themselves off the hook by publicly calling on governments to adopt policies, whilst lobbying in secret against any policies detrimental to profit or growth. Governments have for 40 years taken a hands-off approach with business, saying that the free market will fix everything and there is no need for them to be prescriptive. Together, business and government, have created an illusion of an ‘effective’ system, whilst basically doing nothing that would impede growth or profits.

The ruling elite’s problems started a decade ago, as more people stopped believing this mantra because they could see the growing crises in society and the natural world. The US election clarifies that the billionaires know they now need to be inside government to get what they want; it can’t be maintained at the level they want by simply lobbying from the outside. And they are now there, both overtly, in the case of Elon Musk or covertly, via proxies, such as JD Vance.

Their billions have bought mainstream and social media – both platforms and content – to sell their Rand – Girard – Sovereign Individual agendas. They are the billionaires who want decentralised, market-oriented solutions but lobby relentlessly for government handouts and tax breaks for their projects and businesses.  

And while all this is happening, on platforms such a LinkedIn there are comments from the PMC (the Professional Managerial Class) that “I’d back these guys [Trump, Elon et al] to run my country”, stating that countries could be run like companies and these guys “have ran corporations [and] businesses”. In reading the hundreds of comments, if was a surprise how many people, including CEOs, MDs and Directors who agreed with these statements; I also note that there were thankfully many who didn’t.

But the fact this statement got so much support is a critical example of the Leadership – Empathy Gap. You really have to wonder about the foundations seeded in business schools and expanded in executive development programs, when so many of the PMC can believe a country should be run like a business. This lack of understanding of how a country works is not new. Just think about how many MPs, Presidents and Prime Minister relentlessly regurgitate the myth about the need to balance the country’s budget in the way households must manage their budgets.

It seems like we need some education on the basics:

1. A country isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one.
2. A country’s budget isn’t the same a household’s budget.
3. Wealth reduces compassion.
4. Unlimited growth isn’t possible on a finite planet.

All this points to the urgent need to tackle the Leadership/Wealth – Empathy Gap.