You don’t know me, but we’ve been living in the same world for a while now. You helped connect it with your idea for Facebook back in college. I’ve mostly enjoyed the change.
You are also according to Internet sources worth $150 billion as of today in 2025. This brings me to the reason and timeliness of this letter. I heard that you were at an event with Billie Eilish who begged to ask the question: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire.” I could understand that hurting. Guess it doesn’t matter what you do. It’s inevitable that we all get judged. But if this upset you, then you must already see. I can understand striving toward more and more just to maintain a sense of control. But it won’t last. This incident stirred up feelings of curiosity in me. Sometimes my favorite things to do are the things nobody obligates me to do. I suddenly long to connect with you to share a few of these thoughts and ideas.
Of course you’re not the only billionaire that these ideas might benefit, but I feel like you might understand. You put yourself out there and changed the world by connecting. I grew up with Facebook and I’ve defended it at every turn. Memories of most of my whole life is in there through pictures and posts sent to family and friends. It’s gotten so that we don’t even keep photo albums anymore. I can hardly keep up with computer storage. And you’ve never charged making Facebook integral to the world in a very meaningful way.
You are also according to Internet sources worth $150 billion as of today in 2025. This brings me to the reason and timeliness of this letter. I heard that you were at an event with Billie Eilish who begged to ask the question: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire.” I could understand that hurting. Guess it doesn’t matter what you do. It’s inevitable that we all get judged. But if this upset you, then you must already see. I can understand striving toward more and more just to maintain a sense of control. But it won’t last. This incident stirred up feelings of curiosity in me. Sometimes my favorite things to do are the things nobody obligates me to do. I suddenly long to connect with you to share a few of these thoughts and ideas.
Of course you’re not the only billionaire that these ideas might benefit, but I feel like you might understand. You put yourself out there and changed the world by connecting. I grew up with Facebook and I’ve defended it at every turn. Memories of most of my whole life is in there through pictures and posts sent to family and friends. It’s gotten so that we don’t even keep photo albums anymore. I can hardly keep up with computer storage. And you’ve never charged making Facebook integral to the world in a very meaningful way.
At least through your life story, I can see the American Dream. If you ever actually read this that alone would be a testament to your ambition.
Here’s the thing though Mark, you are a billionaire (X150) and there are maybe 8-10 billion people on this shared world of ours.
Many work most of their waking lives just to sustain themselves and give their children a good start. Many purport and promote stupid things just to try to market something and get ahead. I know you probably need more than most others just to maintain. And I know there needs to be some disparity in goods and services to maintain motivation. But things are about to hit the fan. It’s all going to change one way or another.
What if you did change things? You could literally give a billion dollars to every soul on Earth right now. You’d only be down 10-12 billion (with distribution costs) so you’d still be way ahead of the game in general. And everyone would feel connected to you in a much more real way.
But that’s not why I’m writing. See AI is about to replace a lot of jobs. So I asked it how you could fix this problem.
- Taxes and fiscal policy — take more from extreme wealth, redistribute.
• Progressive income taxes, higher top rates, stronger estate/inheritance taxes and targeted wealth taxes reduce concentration and raise funds for services. - Strengthen labour and pay-setting — raise wages at the bottom and rebuild bargaining power.
• Higher minimum wages and stronger unions compress pay gaps more effectively than redistribution alone. - Universal or targeted public services — health, education, childcare, housing, transport.
• Direct public goods improve living standards and reduce the need for private wealth to secure basic needs. OECD analyses stress public investment and opportunity pathways.
So it seems this points to a team you’re not currently on. I know upsetting the norm might be scary, but it’s about to be upset anyway. Why not do your best to empower everyone as much as possible and focus on a different goal? Why not try to reset us all? Think long and hard about what you want and then let the rest go. Pool your money into policy changes for the good of a shared environment instead of a self interest which is beyond you. Be the one billionaire that actually empowers other people. How awesome would that be?