Blog/2026-06-12/Thou Shalt Not Covet

Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren

Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire.

The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk's level of wealth.

We need a wealth tax.

Jun 12, 2026

The Tenth Commandment is quite well known in various forms in various cultures. The fact that almost every successful culture has a version of this abnegation of envy or desire does imply some degree of memetic stability. Of course, whose it is that you should not covet is the big question here.

In the Abrahamic tradition you start with re‘ekha (your neighbor's) and that is back then your fellow Israelite and then this citizen rule is extended to their version of the permanent resident ger and then onward as the tradition spreads and requires co-ordination of larger units, it is extended even to the Samaritan, and then onward to humanity in general. The later Abrahamic religions like Islam add greater strength to closer relationships but you are still instructed not to covet that of your neighbour with neighbourhood defined widely. The South Asian traditions from the Upanishads to the later works of Gautama Buddha exalt a lack of attachment to wealth, one shared by the tradition of the Greek stoics.

Interestingly, the universalist tradition was not dominant in China. There, the Mohists lost in time to Confucians and Taoists and the Legalist tradition formed the administrative structure below. And the manner in which these traditions fight covetousness is different: the first has it written in as the base source of all evil, the second and the third say it arises from other conditions (inequality or even just prizing some things above others), and the last one doesn't really fight it at all. Like a modern capitalist ordered society, Legalism aims to harness this acquisitive nature to drive social outcomes.

I've had this thought for a long time after something my friend Ben said made me think about inequality as not a thing of great significance. I, personally, have often gladly participated in a small way and reaped a large reward small in percentage of some great outcome. I have never resented those who gave me this opportunity. Was it unequal that a founder makes hundreds of millions while I make a hundred thousand? Yes. Was this a problem? No.

In fact, I have a hard time resenting Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk solely because of their wealth. Musk is a polarizing figure but his actual contribution is pretty similar to Bezos in this respect: his wealth is a small fraction of the value he has provided the world. I am reminded of a now-famous Bill Gates quote about platforms:

A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it.

— Bill Gates, as described by Chamath Palihapatiya

A similar and related thing is that the economic value accruing to the users of what these people have built far exceeds the value that accrued to the company itself. In effect, we are (collectively) paying these people a tiny amount to make real a thing that gives us a lot of value. Perhaps this is a lesson these societies all learned together, and they each had a legible structure through which to disperse this concept to their people: religion in most cases. That allowed them to not get trapped in the constant envy and lust for others' things, and perhaps that is why these societies were successful.