Forbes magazine recently released its annual list of the world’s billionaires — the list of shame! The planet’s 2,640 billionaires are “worth” $12.2 trillion.

There is a new No. 1 on the list, displacing Elon Musk. It is Bernard Arnault from France! (Think: Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, etc.) He pushed ahead of Musk by $31 billion.

To understand why I call this “the list of shame,” I refer back to one of my earlier commentaries about a man who died with 2 billion screwdrivers.

He didn’t actually have that many screwdrivers, just the amount of money that could have bought them at the going price of about $2.50 each. His net worth at that price was 2,320,000,000 screwdrivers.

Arnault, by the way, is now worth 84,000,000,000 screwdrivers. Doesn’t it seem a bit absurd to think of dying with that many screwdrivers? Isn’t it just as absurd to think that anyone living who has the equivalent in dollars should be celebrated?

Going a step further, isn’t it absurd to glorify a list of people who are trying to be on the list and to climb up on it?

Accumulation may not be the main intention of everybody on the list, but that is the only way to get on it. Would you like to be on the list? At what level? Why?

Here’s my thinking: I am not saying that all money accumulation and all money exchange is absurd, because that is what has built society to what it is today.

Some things about society are wonderful. On the other hand, some things are horribly wrong, precisely because of money accumulation.

The metaphor in the financial field, “to make a killing,” is not an accident! It describes a quick accumulation of money.

The problem is that we use the business model of “what’s important” instead of the human model of “what’s important.” What’s important in the business model is the bottom line: money.

Perhaps Forbes magazine has taken its lead from Fortune magazine. The Fortune 500 has been famous for decades — the 500 largest companies in the world. Largest is measured by money.

Not to get too philosophical, or religious, or spiritual, or human. Oh, wait a minute! That’s exactly where I am trying to go with this.

I would like to ask each person on the list, each person on the planet for that matter: what is the purpose of your life?

What are you, we, trying to accomplish in our lives? What do we want it to say in our epitaph? What do we want to accomplish with our accumulation of screwdrivers or money?

If we are too lazy to decide what our life purpose is, other than accumulation, we dump these screwdrivers on our children, so they have to decide what to do with them.

The poor Walton kids have been struggling with that for years, among many inheritors, spouses, etc.

To summarize, in simple terms: What is your purpose in life? Is it to make a living, to make a killing, or to make a difference?

I wonder how many would say: “I am trying to create a world that works for everyone.” I wish one of the features in Forbes would be to have each person on the list declare the difference they are trying to make on the planet.

I suspect that most of the people on the list are trying to make a difference. They contribute, give to charities, establish foundations and so on.

Bill Gates said recently that he will not die a rich man.

“Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point,” he said. “Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.”

I invite everybody on the list to start the transition: instead of trying to move up the list, try to move off the list as fast as possible.

What if all the brainpower, heart power and money power on that list combined forces to tackle the world’s most pressing problems?

I am not ashamed to say that I am not on the list. I suspect that is never going to happen!