Last week, and while walking toward the Pavilions grocery store at the Montecito Country Mart, I passed by Clic. Its website describes it as “a globally acclaimed home décor and lifestyle brand.” Its signage lists shops in prominent locales including St. Barth, Marin, and East Hampton.
It doesn’t insult Clic one iota to point out that the business serves the very well-to-do. Which is the point of this opinion piece.
Though globally acclaimed, no one would expect Clic to eventually have the reach or sales volume of retailers like Best Buy, Target and Walmart. How could it? Though thankfully growing all the time, the rich are very few in number, which explains where Clic locates its shops. It has to be where the money is simply because the wares on its shelves are out of reach for the vast majority of us. Once again, what’s been written so far doesn’t insult Clic, nor does it insult rich people.
In truth, it’s meant to open people’s eyes to how the rich become rich, so that the rich will properly be revered. Clic indirectly explains why.
While Montecito (and other places like it) is full of shops meant to meet and lead the needs of the very few, the very few who patronize Montecito’s shops have the means to patronize them precisely because they’ve met, led, or are meeting and leading the needs of the many. Which is not nothing.
More realistically, it’s something to be thrilled about. It’s a reminder that readers should open the Forbes 400 with excitement, and that they should flip through the pages in celebratory fashion as they see why wealth inequality continues to grow. The rising inequality is a sign of progress.
As the gap in rich versus poor wealth increases, the lifestyle gap between rich and poor is rapidly shrinking. Inequality is a byword for the democratization of former luxuries, and that’s a beautiful thing.
What’s beautiful exists as a further reminder that as opposed to the rich getting that way by exploiting the common man, the much happier and much more accurate truth is they get that way by expertly serving the common man. Better yet, the greater the wealth the greater the number served. Which is no insight.
Consider Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He was born in 1984. Imagine if he’d been born in 1884. If so, it’s no reach to say that someone possessing his immense talents would have been rich and successful, but it’s similarly no reach to speculate that Zuckerberg’s wealth would have been a tiny fraction of his present net worth.
While enterprising ways translate in all manner of business environments, the world wasn’t nearly as connected 140 years ago. And it wasn’t nearly as connected in 1904, which was 100 years before Zuckerberg started Facebook.
Where does this lead? The easy, and hopeful answer is ever greater wealth inequality. The latter will be a consequence of technological advances that bring the world even closer together, and in doing so make it possible for the very few to become even richer by virtue of reaching ever more people with their brilliance.
If and when, watch the Clics of the world serving the relatively few multiply as happy evidence of an explosion of goods, services and brands that prospered by virtue of serving everyone. Which is just a comment that Montecito’s beauty should be measured in ways well beyond what’s visual to the naked eye.
