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Success

In today’s world, where there are 1.4 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, what kind of success does it mean for just one person like Carlos Slim to accumulate a fortune of around $80 billion? As Albert Camus writes in The Fall, success is easy to obtain. The hard part is to deserve it. Slim smiled dispiritedly when he spotted the word “success” in my notes for our interview, and read me part of a letter he wrote in the ’90s, addressing young people: “Achieving success in material, business or professional terms: that is not success. Success is balance, harmony, family and friends, which are what matters.”

I asked him to talk about success in its most basic definition. “I think happiness is a path,” he said. “And along the way we fall, get stuck, encounter severe difficulties, and what we need to do is focus on becoming stronger through these crises so we can keep moving forward.” Then, seemingly moved, he described his life philosophy: “The important thing is to love life and everything it has to offer. Not to narrow-mindedly focus on just one project or activity, but rather to love life, to experience and understand life itself, because it’s by experiencing and understanding it that you enjoy life more profoundly.”

“What would you say to people who view you as an example of success?”

“Look, if success is seen as a way of having a family, an active family that works and has feelings and a sense of responsibility, in which all family members love each other deeply, I believe it’s a very good example: having a very functional, close-knit, deeply loved family, with good relationships, and I’m talking about ‘family’ in the broadest sense, because I believe it’s important for all of us to have one, and old friends you can depend on. In that sense, it’s good to be able to serve in a way as an example, especially when it comes to a way of life. I think that anyone who enjoys any kind of privilege, whichever it is, has a duty and social responsibility…”

“But I think the admiration some people have towards you is not because of your family, but your huge accumulation of money. To many, that is a symbol of success.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think money is a symbol of success, because you can have a lot of money, and yet be miserable and alone. Someone said of a person: ‘He was so poor, so very poor, that all he had was money.’ I think that sums it up very well. Also, we need to make a distinction between money and business. It’s one thing to have X million or billion in the bank, or in cash, or in investments, or in whatever you like, and it’s another to have a business, where what you have is an important investment for society.”

Slim went on, now commenting on the difference he saw between the concepts of income and wealth. He characterized income as the fruit of wealth, while wealth should be managed in such a way that it bears fruit, so that it can be distributed among others. “It’s the fruit that should be distributed, not the wealth itself. Does that make sense?”

“I think so.”

“If you distribute all the shares of Pemex among Mexicans tomorrow, what would each Mexican do?” Slim’s example wasn’t accidental. Pemex (Mexican Petroleum) is the previously state-owned company that is currently entering a period of competition, since the government opened up the energy market to private investment. Slim’s is one of the companies that will participate.

Slim claims that if Pemex shares were distributed out among all Mexicans, most who received them would sell them immediately: “They’d sell them, because what you want is to have a better life for your family. So the important thing is for Pemex to be a very efficient, prudent company that creates more wealth, and for the fruit of the wealth that is being created to be partly reinvested and partly redistributed. Just as in private companies. When you create wealth, it’s about the wealth staying within society.”

In Slim’s view, the important thing is that wealth “generates employment, generates more wealth, generates services or important assets for society, and when there are shareholders, that they participate in the product and that the taxes remain, and that there is still an independent part of the company—I believe we as businesspeople have that obligation. Even if sometimes the business cooperates in some way to resolve important social projects.”

“That sounds interesting: in a time when there’s a love for easy money, for consumerism, you, one of the richest men in the world, have this vision, which seems contrary to what you represent to many people.”

“What matters is not that people possess wealth, but what they do with it and what kind of wealth it is. If what you have is a lot of money in cash or investments to amuse yourself and hang out, you turn into a kind of social parasite. That’s quite different to the situation of a businessman who is working on the development and structure of the company. So, taking Americans as an example, some of them [Warren Buffet and Bill Gates] are going to donate half of their capital. I say: OK, but why half? Why not 70 or 80 percent? It’s not so much the percentage that I might object to. My question is: Why don’t they give their time? Why not, instead of giving money, give time and commitment, so that together, with the money they have, they might solve some problems? All that money being donated to people is not functional, it doesn’t solve anything. Maybe it’s just to make themselves feel good or avoid feeling ashamed of having resources, of having wealth.”

In the same train of thought, the man who has accumulated a fortune equaling the GDP of several poor countries, concluded by telling me about his view of his own wealth: “I am not ashamed of what I have, although many are critical because they say I’m favored and this and that, but ask me whatever you like about that and I’ll answer.”