The billionaires club

Journalists and authors Gus Silber and Jonathan Ancer recently brought out The Three Comma Club: How Billionaires Think, Act and Shape Our World. They spoke to the SA Jewish Report about it. 

Why did you write this book now? What was the appeal? 

Gus: Mostly out of a compulsion of curiosity, which is the traditional instinct of any writer. When Jonathan asked me to collaborate on the book with him, the first image that popped into my mind was Scrooge McDuck diving into his vault full of banknotes and coins. 

I wanted to find out whether that is an accurate picture of the way billionaires live and what they do with their money! What fascinated me from the start about billionaires is how few of them there are in the world and what a huge influence they have over almost every aspect of our lives, from technology to finance, to politics, to celebrity culture. 

But firstly, I was curious to even find out what a billion is. It wasn’t too long ago that a billion meant a million million. Now it means a thousand million, so it took a while to iron out that little disparity. 

Jonathan: When publisher Jeremy Boraine suggested a book on billionaires, my first task was to get a grip on what a billion actually was. It’s an absolutely staggering number. When you realise that a million seconds is 11 days, while a billion seconds is 32 years, you begin to get a sense of the scale. And then you start wondering about the people who have managed to accumulate that kind of wealth – who they are, how they did it, what they spend it on, and what influence they wield over the rest of us. That curiosity was impossible to resist. 

What made the two of you collaborate on this book? 

Jonathan: I’ve long been a fan of Gus. I’ve collected his books and followed his writing from his days at Style and The Weekly Mail. I thought working with Gus would be a lot of fun – and I was right. 

Gus: Jonathan was asked to write the book and when he asked if I’d like to collaborate, I was immediately attracted to the idea of only having to do half a book. I’ve always enjoyed Jonathan’s writing. He is an excellent journalist with a deft comic touch. 

How did you make writing it together work? 

Gus: I think we have a similar worldview and we are both journalists, which means we are used to the collaborative nature of working in a newsroom. 

Thanks to the fact that we live in a digital era, it was fairly easy to work together. We built a massive Google doc that grew as we added angles, articles, themes, and comments to it. Then we chose the angles we’d like to individually focus on. We took it from there, working closely together while at the same time working apart, since we live in different cities, me in Johannesburg and Jonathan in Cape Town. 

Jonathan: We were able to bounce ideas off each other and give feedback on each other’s chapters. It was a fairly organic process, chapters led to more chapters, and one billionaire’s story would open a rabbit hole that led to another fascinating character we hadn’t considered. What made it work is that Gus and I have a similar sensibility and sense of humour and we know a good story when we see one. 

What did you each bring to the party? 

Gus: Firstly, I think we brought the fact that we aren’t economists or financial or business journalists. This allowed us to approach the topic from the fresh perspective of the ordinary person in the street. As for the actual writing, we each brought our own style to the project, which allowed for a contrast in the way the chapters are written, and at the same time hopefully for a universal understanding of the theme. 

Jonathan: We brought ideas, creativity, and a sense of fun. Between us, I think we balanced the serious and the playful, which is exactly what a book about billionaires needs. 

How did you come up with the name The Three Comma Club and what does it mean? 

Gus: My first encounter with “The Three Comma Club” as shorthand for billionaires comes from one of my favourite sitcoms, Silicon Valley. There is a scene in which the principal investor in the small start-up company discovers one day that his net worth has gone down from $1 billion to only $986-million. “I’m financially ruined!” he says. “I’m not a billionaire anymore.” 

He laments the fact that he is no longer a member of The Three Comma Club. In other words, his net worth no longer consists of nine zeros, separated by three commas. 

His main concern is that this means he can no longer drive a car with gullwing doors. Instead, his doors have to open side to side just like anybody else’s. This is the scene that inspired the title. 

How did you select the people you wrote about? 

Gus: We used the Forbes Billionaires List as our main source. There are more than 3 400 dollar billionaires on the list, which updates every year and in real time every day as well. 

We wanted to go beyond its top 10, which consists mostly of white male tech billionaires. We wanted to be as diverse as possible and find lesser-known billionaires who don’t fit the traditional stereotype. Hence, we have a chapter on women billionaires and a chapter on black billionaires. There are only 27 in the world and only one, Patrice Motsepe, in South Africa. 

Jonathan: We chose themes rather than people ‒ and then the people found us. As we were doing our research we would stumble on billionaires who had interesting and fascinating stories. One story would lead to another and suddenly we had more material than we could fit in the book. 

How do you feel about the people who are billionaires and their impact on the world? 

Gus: One thing I learned from researching and writing the book, which took me by surprise, is that not all billionaires are inherently evil and bad for the planet. There are many who are very generous with their money and who have invented products or services that make a difference to the world. 

But in general, billionaires wield an extraordinary amount of power, purely because they have so much money. They seem unable to say “enough”, which is a concept we go into in the book. 

With the money that they have, they are able to make a positive and meaningful impact on the world. But just looking at the example of Elon Musk, their impact is often negative. In his case, his direct involvement in US policy meant that many charitable organisations in South Africa and other countries lost their funding. This is not to say that Musk doesn’t give money to charitable causes, but in this case, his impact can only be considered as negative. 

Jonathan: As a popular Facebook status relationship goes, it’s complicated ‒ which is what makes them such fascinating subjects. There are good billionaires, bad billionaires, and in-between billionaires. Some have changed the world by solving problems. Others have extracted wealth, gamed the system, and used political influence to protect their fortunes while ordinary people pay their taxes. 

What are the similarities that make them members of a particular club? 

Gus: As hard as it may be for some people to accept this, billionaires are as human as the rest of us. They have different backgrounds, different motives, and different things that they do with their money. 

But they do seem to have a restless drive in common. 

Jonathan: They have an extraordinary tolerance for risk. They aren’t scared to fail and when they do, they move on without the shame that stops most people from trying again. They think long-term. While most of us think in days, they think in years and decades. They are also hands-on. The drive that builds a billion-dollar company doesn’t come with an off switch. 

What does it take to become a billionaire ‒ luck, rich parents, a great degree or what? 

Gus: Having good genes is very useful! A third of the billionaires on the Forbes list get their money from family fortunes. The rest are self-made. 

But there are also many who come from backgrounds of struggle and poverty. An example is Oprah Winfrey, who grew up literally wearing rags. 

Many of the contemporary billionaires on the list come from the current AI tech boom. So sometimes it is being in the right industry at the right time that creates billionaires. 

It also, at least from the outside, takes an incredible amount of hard work. I doubt that Elon Musk gets much sleep. 

Which are your favourite billionaires in the book and why? 

Gus: Mine are: 

1. 1.Chuck Feeney, who co-founded the duty-free shopping empire and then went on to give awayalmost every penny of his money through his philanthropic institute. A condition of his giving was that the donor would never be revealed. He gave a lot of money to South African causes such as the Constitutional Court and HIV/AIDS charities. He grew up in New Jersey, in humble circumstances with a strong religious background. He felt as he grew older that he had too much money and that there were too many deserving people in the world who could benefit from his fortune. 
2. 2.Sara Blakely. She was a door-to-door fax salesperson in Florida in the US. In a Eureka moment, she cut the feet off her pantyhose and invented Spanx, the foundation garment that went on to make her a billionaire. She had a dream of becoming rich by inventing something that would be of benefit to people, and she achieved that.

Jonathan: Mine are: 

1. 1.Chuck Feeney‒ successful, generous, and humble. In a world of virtue signalling and public relations philanthropy, he did it all secretly. 
2. 2.Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street.She’s in the Guinness World Records as the stingiest person. The stories about how mean she was are  It was said that her greatest joy was making money, and her greatest pain was spending it. But after researching her life, it turns out that she was actually misunderstood and unfairly treated. In fact, she bailed out New York three times, and her billions have been quietly absorbed by hospitals, libraries, educational institutions, and charities, many of which have lost track of the source of the largesse. 

Having studied these people, does money bring happiness? 

Gus: I would say there is no great correlation between money and happiness. Money can certainly bring moments of joy and contentment, which is not quite the same thing. 

But Elon Musk, who is the wealthiest person on the planet with a net worth of $840 billion (R13.6 trillion), comes from a dysfunctional background and that dysfunction is a strong part of his personality, including with his own family. So, he doesn’t seem happy in that sense. 

Happiness is such a complicated and elusive concept for any human, no matter their station in life. One example of a happy billionaire, I think, is Richard Branson, who always seems to have a mischievous smile on his face and who seems to be content with his lot in life, which he worked very hard for. 

As Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, it’s no great shame to be poor, but it’s no great honour either. The same applies to being rich, I suppose!