It never got to me. The moment I saw that news on Bloomberg, I knew there was a devil in the details. Don’t get me wrong, I admire how he decided to structure the protection of his wealth. However, I find it repulsive that he made it about saving the planet.

Earth Doesn’t Need Saving

First, the planet does not need saving. It was here before any of us got here. And it will be here after we are all gone. I consider it stupid for anyone to think that they want to help the planet. Most of the people involved in that are using that narrative to help themselves.

Now, that is not to say that there is not something wrong with the current structure of human activities. Yes, there is and there will always be something wrong. No generation of human beings will attain optimal perfection in the way they treat the earth. And things will not remain the way they are.

Change is the only constant. And you cannot force change by policy. Change has to be in flow. Throughout history, a few people making a few changes have changed the everyday lifestyle of millions of others. Change never happens by motivating the crowd to do something. Change happens when someone (that is previously unknown) sits in the corner of their room and comes up with something amazing that everybody wants to adopt.

All changes forced by politics and governance did more harm than good.

There is also some foolishness in trying to solve the problem of future generations. This is like people in 1901 trying to solve the problems of 2022. Can you feel how that sounds?

Now, don’t get me wrong. If you are in a position to do something about what you feel is wrong, do it. But if you want to make noise about it or inconvenience the rest of us trying to enjoy our quiet lives, then you are definitely not thinking straight.

How the Rich Protect Their Wealth

One of the reasons for writing here is to show everyday people how big money works. Seeing people jump on the news about the Patagonia CEO is so cringe. Even after Bloomberg came out with the full details, gullible people still kept hailing the man as a hero.

People started saying things like, “in a world of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, be like this CEO”. I couldn’t help myself but find time to write this. Even before Bloomberg published the details, I knew something was wrong with that story.

Listen here and listen hard.

No billionaire wakes up in the morning and says, “how can I save the planet?” There is none. You can be sure that whatever decision the CEO made was made because of this question:

How can I protect and preserve my wealth?

And that is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a good thing. Look at the UK royal family as an example. The Queen died and the heir to the throne is not paying inheritance tax. By the way, the inheritance tax is 40%. That is huge.

Every sensible billionaire who is in their 60s or 70s should be thinking of how to legally avoid giving that money to the government. Since they know that the government will probably spend it on some useless bickering.

One of the options for avoiding that tax legally is to use nonprofits. Now, I don’t know how the Patagonia CEO structured his, but I will share an example of what is possible (with my current level of understanding).

It is very simple. Set up a nonprofit. Make your heirs the leaders or executives of the nonprofit. To be smart, you can listen to your heirs to know what cause is important to them. Then, you set up the nonprofit based on that.

Then, you donate your company through a complex network of trusts to the nonprofit. I don’t do financial engineering, so I can’t say exactly how this is done. Maybe the trusts come in before or after the nonprofit or both, I am not sure. All I know is that it is usually complex and makes use of multiple trusts.

In the end, your heirs run a nonprofit that owns your company. What is the difference between that and them owning the company directly? Nothing! It will just not be on record as part of their personal wealth which will make them evade lots of taxes and stay out of the public eye. And even before the inheritance tax, the usual taxes the man pays would change because he no longer personally owns the wealth.

This is a smart financial move. And honestly, I admire the genius of it. But gullible people thinking it was about saving the environment is so cringe. This is why the rich love the climate change narrative. Narratives like climate change mainly exist for purposes like this.

Most ultra-rich people do this. Or they do some form of it. This is why most of them want to die having as little as possible. In many cases, they don’t make a huge fuzz about it. But this particular one with Patagonia CEO has to be an intentional PR.

As a billionaire in your 70s, what else do you wish for? Good reputation and tax-free wealth transfer to your heirs. The nonprofit would actually do some good things (which are going to be things he or the heirs want to spend money on), but the primary motive is to protect wealth. Not to help anybody or anything.

Conclusion

Please don’t be gullible. The climate change narrative (and others like it) are designed to make you like what some people decide to do with their money. It follows the old advertising tactic of promoting the fear of mice to sell mouse traps.

Patagonia's CEO donated his company to a nonprofit to protect his wealth. This is a good thing that you must learn (and do) when you reach that stage. I will probably do something like that too when I get to that stage. But I will not do any heroic PR about it. I’ll probably write and explain in full honesty what I did and why.

There are several billionaires I know of that you won’t see on the Forbes list. They have trusts that conceal and protect their wealth. I am sure Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos will find their way out of that list the moment they no longer need the billionaire brand.

Think about it. No one wants to die poor. But many people would rather be the richest person in the world without anyone knowing. There are tons of people like that.

I rest my case.