Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West

by Justin Farrell

What most people don’t know is that the grandeur of its wilderness is matched by the awe-inspiring concentration of wealth and a canyon-size gap between the rich and poor there: It is both the richest county in the United States2 and the county with the nation’s highest level of income inequality.

The first set of problems the rich seek to resolve are rooted in economic concerns: how best to enjoy, share, protect, and multiply the wealth they’ve acquired. The second set of problems are more social in character: how to wrestle with and respond to the social stigmas and personal guilt sometimes associated with great wealth. Nature comes to play a unique role in their struggles to deal with these ongoing financial, political, moral, and existential dilemmas.

First, whatever their good intentions, those at the very top of the socioeconomic pyramid leverage nature to climb even higher. Ironically, environmental conservation becomes an engine for multiplying wealth and gaining social prestige for wealthy people and wealthy institutions. And seeking to enjoy their wealth, landscapes and wildlife are transformed into ultra-exclusive enclaves, where money ensures private access to the healing tonic of nature and a sanctuary from crass materialism.

Second, burdened by social stigmas, status anxiety, and feelings of inauthenticity or guilt, the ultra-wealthy use nature and rural people as a vehicle for personal transformation, creating versions of themselves they view as more authentic, virtuous, and community minded. They model their personal transformation on a popular idea of the working poor in rural, outdoors-oriented places in the West—people who, despite their low-status careers and lack of material comforts, seem free from the snares of wealth and power, and are thought to live a noble life of contentment, frontier authenticity, pastoral simplicity, community cohesion, wilderness adventure, and kinship with nature.

As Plato wrote in Book Four of The Republic, “For indeed any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.”

For example, all things being equal, a household making $10 million annual income could potentially save around $700,000 every year just by relocating at least part-time from Connecticut to Wyoming.

As evidence, Julie explains that she “has many friends who are not as financially fortunate … ones who struggle to make ends meet,” citing as examples her caretaker, ski instructor, and the manager of their favorite local restaurant. When I asked if she feels guilty when she sees these people she calls friends, she says that money doesn’t really come up. Certainly, everybody is generally aware of the financial gulf that separates the haves and have-nots.

He typically works twelve hours each day, six days a week, laying brick for a construction company that specializes in elaborate homes, and then, to help make ends meet, he picks up a few more hours at night doing catering jobs for folks like Julie. Dolorita also works for Julie and a few other well-to-do families, cleaning and doing domestic odds and ends around their homes, as well as helping out with childcare. Between the two of them, they just barely cover rent for the small trailer they share with two other families, where they all take turns sleeping on the bed, couch, or floor.

He wonders aloud whether wealthy people care more about saving a moose or a bear than helping him and other immigrants who are suffering.

Yes, the ultra-wealthy treat them kindly, call them friends, and at times even dress down like them. Yet at the same time, people like Hector are seeing more clearly how these same friends who have so much extra money and power to help nevertheless support the status quo and perpetuate a system that is making it increasingly difficult for Hector and his family to live a decent life.

During the early and mid-twentieth century, income from investments in Teton County mirrored that of the rest of the United States. But come the 1980s, investment income began to climb, making up 30 percent of all income in the area. It accelerated further, hitting the 40 percent mark in the 1990s, and still even further in the 2000s, when investment income made up more than half of all income in 2004.

To the first main cause, it is well-known that the state of Wyoming does not collect personal income tax. Nor does it levy a corporate income tax. It also has one of the lowest sales tax rates in the country.

On top of all this, they remind potential transplants that with no “formal set of residency requirements for tax purposes,” Wyoming makes it easier than ever to “legally” qualify as a Wyoming resident, which is why Teton County regularly has the nation’s largest discrepancy between the number of people claiming to live here for tax purposes and those who actually live here as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Most notable is that the majority of the ultra-wealthy here support further restrictions on development—either out of stated concern for the environment and/or concern for the character of the town. In later chapters, we will unpack the complex cultural, political, and economic meanings of environmental “concern” and town “character.” Not going unnoticed by most, however, is the fact that restricting development, either through private conservation easements or otherwise, creates even greater scarcity, maintains the scenery for the wealthy who already have homes, continues to drive real estate prices even higher, and creates roadblocks for building affordable housing.

The luxury of free time, and the ownership of land, has allowed avid recreators like Jim to cultivate high levels of what we might call “nature capital.” Similar to other noneconomic forms of cultural and social capital, it is a particular way of experiencing nature, and involves the right combination of wealth, land, free time, recreation capability, romantic attachment, and gilded environmental concern.

Club members I interviewed, like the tech CEO Larry Samuel, believe that the environment and wildlife are actually better off because of the club’s strong presence on the land. “Surprisingly, animals thrive where people are. They feel safe around the Yellowstone Club because there are humans around. Wherever there are humans, animals thrive and feel safer.”

Longtime members Sharon and Tom Hayes—private equity financiers from California—spoke with me at length, mostly aiming to demonstrate to me the fundamental “normalcy” inherent to club culture, which applies to all members, whether one is a CEO, a celebrity, or just a financier. Tom excitedly told me two stories. The first was the time he saw a nationally famous club member setting his ego aside. “There he was, bent over on one knee, tying his own kid’s shoe. Not his nanny nearby, but himself. It was unbelievable to see.”

Or viewed from another angle, the average club member household donates about $571 annually to the community, despite the billions owned by many of its members, and the billions the club has sold in real estate.

wrong. I found that this all leads to a mild, but pervasive, sense of paranoia and persecution complex among the ultra-wealthy, symptomatic of Colin’s defensiveness about three particular myths: (1) the ultra-wealthy aren’t deserving people; (2) the ultra-wealthy aren’t integrated into the community like other “normal” people; (3) the ultra-wealthy deserve to be taken advantage of.

In his view, popular criticism is based on jealousy, but also because people just don’t take the time to get to know the ultra-wealthy to truly understand how hard they’ve worked.

The myth is that ultra-wealthy are deserving targets of exploitation. By “exploitation,” I mean people thinking they can, and should, take a slice of people like Colin’s wealth just because he has too much of it. For example, supposed friends duping them and treating them as a means to an end; the government taxing them at higher rates than those who have less; or contractors unfairly charging them more for the same work.

“Economics 101,” he says: as housing supply is constrained, prices goes up.

“It is important that a bunch of very powerful people get to experience the area so that it will ensure the area remains environmentally healthy and happy.”

The Jackson Hole Land Trust alone has conserved 55,000 acres in the region, and 25,000 in tiny Jackson Hole alone. This is a staggering amount in a county that was already made up of 97 percent federally protected land. Nearly all of the remaining 3 percent of private land is now developed or under easement.

A lawyer, originally from northern California, but now a longtime permanent resident of Teton County, summarizes the economic incentives quite clearly, acknowledging that “There’s a group that wants to put up affordable housing somewhere,” but dismissively recounts, “But nobody wants it in their area, you know. People are afraid it’ll lower the property values.”

As another example, a committed free-market advocate from San Francisco believes that some places in the United States should be off limits from this type of free-market thinking. For this reason, he has become involved in local environmental conservation, especially through the Jackson Hole Land Trust. He explains, “I’m already probably showing my cards with my involvement in the Land Trust and my environmental views. I believe that there ought to be places where … somebody advocates for no development or no growth.… You know I have a career that is very much free markets and allocating capital where it is best employed, you know that’s deeply embedded in the way I think but as I said earlier there has to be overrides, there has to be limits placed on that otherwise we will chew up every available square foot of this country and exploit it.”

First, conservation has directly and indirectly intensified wealth inequality by making the area uniquely attractive to the ultra-wealthy, creating intense housing demand and land scarcity that has dramatically reshaped who lives in the community, and how people make their money.

I found that nature provides a special dispensation for purchases and practices that may otherwise be viewed as morally suspect, opulent, or greedy. Nature is priceless, but priceless experiences can be quite expensive.

For example, is it morally permissible to build an 8,000-square-foot house if the home is meant for reconnecting with nature, or if you’ve set aside part of your property as an easement for wildlife migration? Or, is ordering a $75 steak less ostentatious, so long as it comes from an ecologically progressive rancher?

And the irony, especially for those respondents who made their money in industries that are ecologically destructive, is that conserving nature in Teton County is a drop in the bucket relative to their global environmental impacts as members of an economic and political system that has left a trail of natural destruction.

Through all of this, I discovered a worldview I call “Connoisseur Conservation” to define how the rich relate to and use nature. More specifically, this worldview is made up of three interconnected aspects: (1) Feel Good Altruism, meaning the vague feeling that purifying and protecting nature is a selfless act of virtue, and that land conservation is a primary way this happens; (2) Conservation Therapy, meaning that conservation preserves nature for its medicinal therapeutic benefits for stressed out hard-working professionals, where nature is akin to other highbrow experiences enjoyed by the ultra-wealthy; and (3) Selective Science, meaning that what is best for nature is based on a vague “everything in balance” approach to environmental science that aims to preserve a local Garden of Eden, yet tends to ignore the rest of environmental science about the realities and systemic causes of global environmental problems.

Most interestingly, I found that because these goods and services are purchased with a practical aim to access the therapeutic benefits of nature, they are not as likely to be considered impractical opulence or crass materialism. Money spent on nature can be a moral loophole. Opulence with an ethical twist.

Many times, ultra-wealthy relationships to nature were presented as a split personality of sorts. These often mapped onto the classic dichotomy—between polluted society and the purity of nature—that is ubiquitous in American culture,

First, among the ultra-wealthy, I found that there is a strong but exceedingly vague and selective commitment to science. Especially ecological science. Their decision making does not often originate from scientific evidence, but from an informal and sometimes hollow ecological commitment to keeping “everything in balance.

Second, and building on these points earlier, this approach to environmental science also includes an assumption that improving nature, or maintaining “balance,” affects only the nuts and bolts of nature itself, in isolation from associated societal impacts—such as how conservation might impact the low-income community, or affect downstream political decisions.

This important philanthropic paradox—can wealth solve the very problems wealth creates?—has implications far beyond Teton County itself, in a nation increasingly defined by wealth imbalance. Are George and so many others I interviewed right? Is the concentration of wealth among a select few actually quite effective at solving problems that extreme wealth creates, so long as the ultra-wealthy are philanthropically aware and generous? Might extreme disparity actually be a good thing for those at the bottom? Is plutocracy—meaning a society controlled by a small minority of its wealthiest citizens—not getting the credit it deserves? In other words, are those perceived to be the villains really the heroes?

Philanthropy became a valuable form of social currency in the community, and a status market emerged that conveyed higher prestige on some charitable issues, but not others.

In 2000, the top 1 percent of nonprofit organizations owned 23 percent of all charitable assets, and the top 20 percent of organizations owned 91 percent of all charitable assets. This means that the bottom 80 percent of organizations made do with the scraps of the remaining 9 percent of assets.

So money is certainly flowing to organizations and foundations, but it is largely flowing to those in conservation, wildlife, and the arts.

The top 10 percent of organizations (twenty-eight nonprofits) account for half of all social connections. In other words, nonprofits at the top—conservation and arts—enjoy a disproportionately large slice of social and human capital that all organizations rely on to raise money and carry out their mission.

My claim here is simple: the engagement with these Old West traditions and nature is not just some fleeting cultural taste, but connects to, and can even mitigate, the deeper cultural and moral loss expressed in the words of ultra-wealthy people like Duane, “Oh my God, what have I sacrificed in my life to get to where I am?”

Furthermore, there is an ethic of contentment that is built into this Old West myth, which again, is an especially attractive antidote for the ultra-wealthy, who are constantly presented with opportunities to make even more money or attain more power.

best summarized by a well-known fundraising director in Teton County: “the ultra-wealthy tend to view conservation through the lens of simple romance, equating conservation with the purchasing of large tracts of private land to be set aside under protection.” But we know from research in environmental studies8 that successful large-scale conservation often requires a focus on a less romantic, and more complicated, set of processes that involve much more than purchasing expensive lands.

For some nonwealthy people, this brand of private conservation can bring negative side effects, such as sealing off the land from the public, forbidding access to these large areas for hunting, hiking, cycling, snowmobiling, and other forms of recreation.

Not all see this as a good thing, however, and the ubiquity of charitable concern and political activity can drive some ultra-wealthy crazy, such as one retired CEO of a Fortune 100 company I interviewed over breakfast in Jackson Hole town square. “My assessment of Jackson is that it’s full of type A personalities with not enough to do, so there’s [environmental/political] controversy because these people are sitting around, and they have opinions and they write letters to the editor, and they organize in various subgroups.

Ironically, extreme wealth disparity can render social problems invisible, creating the illusion that all is well in paradise. There is very little authentic interclass contact on a day-to-day basis, making it difficult for human services organizations to even convince those who hold the majority of the purse strings that the problems are real and could use more support.

As a result, local charitable organizations, who rely on immense amounts of economic and human capital from the ultra-wealthy, are prone to becoming captive to a particular view of the world promoted by their donors and board members, which tends to sustain the status quo, and nullifies efforts for more groundbreaking change to address the roots of social problems brought on by such wealth disparity. Importantly, I found that all of this can happen with the best of intentions by all parties involved, and that the institutionalization and normalization of these patterns make them appear as the standard modus operandi. They have become the new normal. Meanwhile, organizations with agendas that challenge the status quo, either by promoting more dramatic political changes, grassroots organizing, or direct action, or pointing out the roots of social, economic, and environmental inequality receive drastically less charitable support, and thus wield relatively little power.

Probing more deeply, I found that their desire to assimilate into “normal” rural culture was hardly trivial, but signaled something fundamentally important, revealing anxieties among the ultra-wealthy about whether money had fundamentally changed them.

As I will show, this is a complex process whereby the ultra-wealthy attempt to reconcile their great fortunes with the associated social stigmas of greed, elitism, and savage ambition, which place them at a social and moral distance from normal people. To bridge this gap, they attempt to have their cake and eat it too, by both remaining ultra-wealthy and striving to attain the honorable attributes they associate with normal people, such as authenticity, simplicity, contentment, purity, tranquility, and closeness to nature.

In contrast to previous American generations, wealth is no longer viewed as innately evil or corrupting, but is simply an amoral tool to be used for individual self-fulfillment, self-actualization, and happiness.