Last Spring I received a mysterious brown manila envelope in the mail. There was a customs declaration and a picture of King Charles on the front. The corner of the envelope was torn open. Inside contained a book with the vague title “Wealth Unpublished”.

I was thrilled to see it.

Just weeks earlier I had met over zoom with the London-based author of the book, Jake Hayman, cofounder of Ten Years’ Time and the Good Ancestor Movement.

What I learned on our call was that Jake had written the book I was trying to write (you know about organizing the rich toward redistribution). I was a little jealous (he had completed what I was just beginning!) and also really excited to get my copy and take a look.

I loved what I found. It offers one of the most detailed examinations I've read of wealthy people and their advisors rebelling against the inequality and wealth hoarding they are organized into, and doing all they can to find another way. It describes how even the best of intentions run up against a complex system of regulations and seemingly endless army of enablers…and offers stories of wealth holders and advisors who forge ahead anyway, giving boldly, drawing down their wealth, turning businesses over to employees and advocating for higher taxes on the rich.

Jake’s book is one of the many versions of this story that is so needed in these times. Jake’s concept of “the end of negotiations” (explained below) is something I want everyone in this work to grapple with and get behind.

I’m so glad this book exists, and after hearing about the roadblocks Jake faced in publishing it, I want to help share it with a broader audience.

Below is an introduction to the book from Jake, info on how to get your free copy, and a short excerpt. I hope you take him up on his offer and share your reflections on the book in the comments below.

I have spent most of the last twenty years working alongside wealth holders as they struggled to connect their values with their money. They almost always held a clear desire for a thriving natural world and (more) equitable society. I worked with them both directly on payroll and as a consultant to try to make their money serve the world they wanted to help create.

Depending on the day, we would look at their philanthropy, tax strategies, investments, or grapple with the fundamental tensions that come with wanting a more equal society and having extreme levels of wealth.

For much of the past two decades I was looking for a “win-win” for wealth holders - how they can “find alignment”, “use their money for good”, and go “total impact”. Together the wealth holders and I were working to make being rich an ethical act so that good would be done, harm would be avoided and they (and I) would sleep well at night. But something always nagged, no one ever got there. The alignment of “extreme ethical wealth” and a more equal society remained a fundamental oxymoron.

After 15 years I began to meet wealthy people who found clarity. They recognized that extreme wealth was incompatible with the world they wanted to live in and gave up on the search for a “win-win”. I got to know wealth holders who had given up on the exhausting chase to manifest their ethics through their (extreme) wealth and instead decided to give it up, redistribute it or simply reject the chance to have it in the first place. Those relationships forever changed my views on the work.

I call that decision “The End of Negotiations.” It is the moment when wealth holders stop trying so desperately to justify their wealth, align their wealth, be worthy of their wealth. They stop trying to find the magic formula that assuages their guilt and maintains their power - that lets them be “good and rich.” They stop that exhausting and endless negotiation with the mainstream wealth advisory community whose own worth, wealth, practice and identity is caught up in the service of more.

Even once they made this decision to stop being extremely wealthy, the complexities of financial structures, family relationships, power, money and ethics made the work of actualizing their decisions hugely complex. Both the political story of why people would step away from wealth and the process of how they did was fascinating to me. As well, of course, as the story of what happened to the money. I heard from people who simply rejected inheritance or turned their businesses into cooperatives so they never became formally “rich” to those who gave their wealth to charity, paid huge tax bills that they would otherwise have avoided, passed the money on to others to decide what to do with or went into wind down mode where they stopped investing for gain so that the money would enter into an inevitable wealth decline. For some the entire decision was made during a ten minute conversation with their family, for others it is a life’s work that will take decades.

I saw their journeys as a chance to expand the possibilities for what “we” as a society might expect from those with extreme wealth. I wanted, with their permission, to share their stories. I am not a writer. I am sure I’ll never write another book. But speaking to people - from all walks of life - about this work, led to amazing conversations about morals, politics, family and the way we organise money in our society. I felt these stories could be valuable for wealth holders with unease they couldn’t express, advisors who wanted to understand their clients differently and a broader public dealing with the extreme concentration of wealth around them.

In 2024 I finished my final interviews and completed my book to tell their stories. All told, the book includes stories from 12 families - from entrepreneurs to principals of multi-generational family offices, including families from Asia, North America and Europe.

I submitted the manuscript and waited with anticipation to hear the reaction from my publisher but was greeted with silence. I had already been told to take out the bits where I had named a number of investment banks, private banks and law firms who were targeting clients' (very young) children with workshops designed to equate wealth to identity and purpose. I found these requests deeply frustrating but reluctantly agreed and thought I was good to go.

After a number of months I got a 2 sentence email saying that the company lawyers had red-flagged the book and that they were tearing up my contract.

The publisher was unwilling to speak to me. I never got a full explanation but was unofficially told that it had been flagged as a potential ‘high friction’ book. The lawyers for their new private equity owners held fear about publishing anything that named wealth holders in case it became litigious.

I spoke to a couple of other publishers who told me that it’d be another year before they would get the book on shelves and that the subject matter wasn’t of interest to a broad enough public for it to be worth their while. I gave up. The book as an official project was dead. Originally titled Enough, it is now called Wealth Unpublished.

I had promised the wealth holders in the book I’d never just put their stories freely available on the internet and I myself was now a little nervous about self-publishing if any lawyers did come knocking. I applied for a small grant to print 500 copies and distribute them to people who were interested in extreme wealth and what to do about it.

My hope is that those (like you?) who are interested in the subject might read the book, find some value in it and pass it on to others so it’ll still serve some use in the world even if it’s never on bookshop shelves. If you are one of those people and would like a copy, just send us an email (details below).

I wrote this book because I felt we’d reached a breaking point on extreme wealth. Even with my interest in these issues I was shocked to hear [former] President Biden refer to economic inequality so directly in his farewell address:

‘Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.’

I have no doubt that many leaders around the world will be uttering similar words on their way out of office over the years to come: seeing clearly for the first time what is already all around them. The issue is not new, it is not just in America, it is not just about a handful of household name billionaires and it is getting worse.

For “progressive” voices around the world the challenge is clear - can we effectively challenge the idea of extreme wealth without building a movement that relies on it? Is taking part in a “bidding war” of funding between wealth holders of different politics on every issue, every media platform and every election an inevitability or can extreme wealth be fundamentally rejected?

Money is shifting further and further from the state and accumulating more and more in private hands.

Within that private wealth the distribution is concentrating. In twenty years of doing this work I have never met a greedy rich person. And yet the entire system is working in service of those “at the top”.

A number of those who the system is so loyally serving are now rejecting its spoils. I do not think their voice should be the defining voice for why or how to change this economic system but for me there is something deeply hopeful about the phenomenon.

If anyone would like a copy of the book, they are free until they run out. To grab a copy please get in touch at stevewilliamsinbox@gmail.com and he can send one over if you cover the postage cost. If you want to contact me directly I’m at jakehaymanemail@gmail.com.

I’ve included below a short excerpt from the book that tries to bring to life some of ‘the problem’. This excerpt is about ‘the Wealth Trap’. I’m honoured to share about the book here on Organize the Rich whilst also cross-posting to my own substack.

THE WEALTH TRAP

If you walk into almost any private bank today, they will have ready-made brochures, pamphlets, printed case studies, and staff ready to tell stories of their very wealthy clients who have ‘given back'. They don’t want to ‘push philanthropy down anyone’s throats', but for those who are interested, the message is always there: be rich so you can be good. Next to them perhaps there’ll be a handout profiling their new Head of Sustainable Investing, printed on recycled paper.

A new wave of wealth holders (not just younger inheritors but also entrepreneurs, people of all ages) sit in those private bank lobbies feeling uncomfortable despite the expensive chairs. They hear the case studies, see how they themselves could be celebrated and yet it just doesn’t click with them. Something doesn’t feel right. The sense of exceptionalism and celebration of the wealthy feels out of touch with the world they read about in newspapers. They face a constant struggle to understand what their investments actually represent, to understand why their tax bills are so far below the headline rates and why it is that they face such a deafening silence when they want to talk to anybody about justice. They see the world hurtling in the wrong direction and can’t help but feel that it is doing so in their service.

They feel the growing social distaste (particularly in the UK and Europe) for ‘the rich', ‘the millionaires', ‘the billionaires', ‘the 1%', the ‘elites'. There is even a growing disregard for the philanthropy of the wealthy. This wave of wealth holders struggle with the hypocrisy of trying to use some of their money for good when the rest of the world has such a problem with them having that money in the first place. They feel this groundswell of public outrage against ‘people like them', yet their life experience is completely sheltered from it - it is one where everyone is at their service. Everyone is nice to them. In fact, they live in a world where everyone, everywhere, is always so nice to them that it breeds a fundamental mistrust in niceness.

They turn to their advisors for help. They feel their unease is taken seriously - invitations to engage in philanthropy, workshops on ESG investments, nourishing volunteering opportunities, and CSR roles in family businesses. Processes are set up that take years to navigate and understand. At the end of it all they arrive at a point where they realise that the private banks, the law firms, the family offices, and the accountancies do not even know how to offer them any substantive change from the norms of self-interest. They are being forever placated and never heard. They are stuck on a path into a world that they don’t want to inhabit, filling a role that they don’t want to fill.

They get beaten down by it. They are given access to recommended therapists whose remit is to help them feel better about their wealth. The therapists themselves are unable to see beyond the idea that rich is ‘what they are and always will be'. They are given therapeutic support in processing guilt and other negative emotions associated with their wealth but denied support in responding to their fundamental socio-political problem with the wealth itself. Their politics are dismissed as emotion. The conversation about the world they want to live in is replaced by one about how they better ‘manage reality'.

A ray of hope comes as a consultant comes in to help create family values and mission statements… something to rally around. Our values are ‘generosity, community and compassion', and our purpose is to be a light in the world, a force for progress. With a sleight of hand, the words on the wall of the family office and the email signatures change, but the fundamental deeds do not. The money keeps doing what the money does best - growing in service of self. The words on the wall are only permitted to operate within the parameters of family primacy.

The more progressive wealth holders exhaust themselves looking for avenues to be ‘good', to make those words on the wall mean something. They yearn to connect to that more equitable world they see when they close their eyes - to de-centre themselves, and stop being so important simply because they are rich. They tend to fail, life tends to take over, the system tends to win. They climb into bed at night or turn the news on in the morning with a pang of guilt and frustration. Stuck. Unable to escape the wealth trap, unable to escape the primacy of the rich.

Very few realise it or dare to say it out loud, but a few streets over, many of their advisors are tucking into bed with the exact same pangs. Knowing that the morning brings work that leads them away from their own values, the society they want to live in, and the future they want to create. They, too, are stuck in the wealth trap.

Want to read on and learn about those finding solutions to the wealth trap!? Email stevewilliamsinbox@gmail.com to get your copy.

Jake Hayman was born and raised in Camden Town, London in a professional middle class home in a mixed class neighborhood. He moved to New York in 2004 for a non-profit role but found himself working for someone who made incredible wealth.

Jake went on to become a co-founder to a number of organisations advising wealth holders on issues connected to the ethics of wealth, including Ten Years’ Time, The Social Investment Consultancy, Impatience Earth and the Good Ancestor Movement. He was a founding partner of the 2027 Coalition, founded the non-profit Future First and helped launch the Progressive Advisor Movement. For a number of years he supplemented his income by playing (low stakes) poker.

Jake no longer works in private wealth.

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