--- title: Do You Have to Be Unethical to Get Rich? | TIME description: Author and economist Sam Wilkin compares robber barons of old to today's hedge funds. canonical: https://time.com/video/SDX4QVT8/ og:title: Do You Have to Be Unethical to Get Rich? og:description: Author and economist Sam Wilkin compares robber barons of old to today's hedge funds. og:url: https://time.com/video/SDX4QVT8/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SDX4QVT8/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Do You Have to Be Unethical to Get Rich? twitter:description: Author and economist Sam Wilkin compares robber barons of old to today's hedge funds. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SDX4QVT8/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Do You Have to Be Unethical to Get Rich? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Do You Have to Be Unethical to Get Rich? [Watch (HLS stream): Do You Have to Be Unethical to Get Rich?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SDX4QVT8.m3u8) (1:38)  _Published 2015-09-23. Author and economist Sam Wilkin compares robber barons of old to today's hedge funds._ --- Jul 27, 2023 6:51 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Today's Word of the Day is BERSERK](/video/sdZE9xtO/) ### Today's Word of the Day is BERSERK [Today's Word of the Day is FUSTY](/video/6UlxcXhu/) ### Today's Word of the Day is FUSTY [Today's Word of the Day is RETRONYM](/video/D2MTbzUF/) ### Today's Word of the Day is RETRONYM --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] So the robber barons that you describe in the book, The Early Captains of American Industry, they really do kinda sound like robbers so is there an ethical way to become rich, to become super wealthy. It is actually hedge funds that are really the modern ethical billionaires. And I know that sounds crazy because hedge funds have such a terrible reputation. But as you probably know, the hedge fund sector as a whole kind of consistently underperforms the market. And to an economist, that is really refreshing. You hear a lot about individual hedge fund owners getting really, really rich. But there are also a lot of them that are failing. That means there is a lot of competition. The good ones are winning. Maybe the lucky ones The good ones, or the lucky ones are winning and the bad ones are losing. And that's the way a market should work. What are some of the most ethical ways to become rich? A lot of the strategies that people pursue are somewhat questionable, but often the ethics are not as clear cut as you would expect. Going to Carlos Slim, owner / part owner of the New York Times, very rich Mexican billionaire. He had this monopoly on telecoms in Mexico, and most people think Carlos Slim did something bad to get this monopoly awarded by the Mexican government. But actually what happened is the Mexican government is desperate to raise money from privatization. And so they essentially are off the right to exploit Mexican people. So yes, Carlos Slim buys into this and yes, there's a lot of negative press about Carlos Slim after that but it wasn't him who set it up. 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