Swapnil Devre is an entrepreneur, the Founder and CEO of Upstage Media, who made money during the drop-shipping boom when he sold ready-to-use Shopify websites to drop-shippers across the world, He runs a marketing agency as well where he helps small businesses get customers with the help of paid ADSL. But lately, due to the downturn of the economy and people losing their jobs due to the pandemic, public perception has changed against people who are making money.
Here is his side of the story.
What has changed since the outbreak of the pandemic according to him?
I saw a post on Facebook recently that kind of answers this question in a very neat way. The post was about Jeff Bezos. It was about how an average person will need to work for a few million years to make the kind of money that Bezos has. And how this inequality is a crime against humanity.
The first part of this meme or post was correct, on an average salary it would take an average human a few million years to amass a net worth equal to Bezos. But the second part that this kind of inequality is a crime against humanity is total nonsense.
Extortion isn’t sharing you know because there is no consent. Businesses make money with voluntary consensual transactions with a lot of people over and over again. And if they become rich as a by-product of it and if you wish to redistribute their money against their will that’s extortion. If you rebrand extortion as tax and get a billion people to vote for it, it doesn’t change that fact that it’s still extortion.
Extortion is not a form of sharing because there is no individual consent no matter how many people vote for it.
What is Swapnil Devre’s perception of profit-sharing in companies? Why can’t companies share their profit with their employees to make society more equal?
I have a question about this question. When a company loses money who picks up the bill? If you want to share only the profit and expect the owners to take the losses whenever it happens, I am sorry but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. But you can have stock options and become a part-owner of the company and reap the benefits of the profit in the form of dividends and increased stock price.
Instead of asking for redistribution of wealth through taxes ask for stock options from the company that you work for. And frankly, this is beneficial for companies as well. If employees have a stake in the company then they are more likely to work harder because they have skin in the game. Working hard becomes a matter of personal interest and not something that you have to do.
What according to Swapnil Devre should the youth do to have more income equality in society?
Equality is like a perpetual motor. It’s impossible except in poverty. Everyone can be poor equally but everyone can’t be prosperous equally. If your happiness comes from knowing that you are doing better than others then there is something wrong with that mindset, it’s a sadist mentality.
Similarly, if your disappointment comes from the fact that someone else is doing better than you then too something is wrong with that mindset, it’s an inferiority complex. The silver lining in this is that you can become more prosperous than your previous version. Your absolute income or wealth can increase but your relative wealth is a matter of spending. If there is a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in the name of consumerism then the inequality will be stark.
Germans don’t transfer their wealth from the middle class to the rich class through product purchases, they save hence they have both relative wealth and absolute wealth. If you want to have wealth equality don’t pay the rich in the first place in return for their products no matter how seductive their ads are. Keep your wallets closed.