I remember a while back reading a Twitter text post by Mikel Jollett who said “Ok how about this: No more billionaires. None. After you reach $999 million, every red cent goes to schools and healthcare. You get a trophy that says, ‘I won capitalism’ and we name a dog park after you.” While this was probably meant as a satirical suggestion let’s take a moment to analyze how this could possibly work for real.

First of all, I don’t believe the accumulation of wealth to such degrees, such as billions of dollars, is reasonable. Accumulating wealth for the sake of financial stability is one thing, but hoarding money simply as a means to flaunt status is ridiculous. I would argue that the rich these days are also using their massive wealth for political power and influence. This could be stopped by setting an upper limit to how much wealth one individual is allowed to accumulate. This would also solve the problem with exploitation and the means of acquiring wealth. It’s no secret that big corporations and companies are only able to reach such heights through exploiting the working class.

Now allow me to explain why the Zelda Wallet Theory could work. First of all, it incentivizes spending. When playing a video game, inventory management is an important skill and a limited inventory size forces players to actually use consumables. We are hardwired to optimize and save money in case we need it later. But if we have a limited wallet size, we have an incentive to spend the money before we reach the limit. Otherwise, any currency we collect after reaching the limit is essentially wasted. This actually increases game enjoyment as we are engaging with the game world.

In real life, this would encourage rich people to spend money and circulate the wealth back into society. But there is more to the Zelda Wallet mechanic. You can increase your wallet size by completing tasks. In Ocarina of Time, you can increase your wallet size by helping some cursed spiderfolk. This can also be applied to real life rich people. In the old days you heard a lot more about wealthy individuals funding hospitals and libraries and using their wealth for public displays of “flexing” by building elegant fountains or magnificent parks. This is essentially the same thing as Jeff Bezos building a penis rocket. But unlike the penis rocket, big fountains are pleasant to look at. How about if rich people complete side quests such as funding public projects that benefit society as a whole, they are able to increase their wallet size. The justification being that those who have larger wallets would be using the money to help build society.