What is truly pathetic is the sad state
of the 1%. Imagine, for a moment, that you are the billionaire, B. G.
Your multiple dwellings are vast and carefully tended. You can go to
many cities and be home. Your yacht has not one but two helicopter
pads. It burns one hundred gallons of fuel per mile. Important
people meet you in the middle of the ocean, then fly away. Back on
land you almost never touch ground, always arriving via the roof,
except when you step upon manicured lawns in gated communities within
gated communities. Carefully arranged flowers decorate every room you
enter. Bodyguards accompany your every step. When you walk from one
crowded room to another you are on high alert, for you fear
kidnappers. Every move must be planned, every venue thoroughly
vetted, and all this done with the utmost secrecy. Much of your time
is taken up with the precautions the security guys assure you it is
absolutely essential that you take. You enter rooms from side
entrances; often make your double take your car; and find it
necessary to pop up unexpectedly at gatherings of the movers and
shakers.
You have long ago passed on operational
control of the source of your wealth. You were tired of keeping up
with the waves of innovation, and anyway you simply didn't have the
time. When you make a surprise appearance at company headquarters
everybody ohs and ahs. Then they go on with what they were doing.
Nothing you say is ever contradicted. Nor does any of it any longer
affect company policy, though everyone makes an enormous effort to
make it seem as if it did. Nobody dares to note how thoroughly out of
date you are.
You like to pop up in the news cycle in
occasional interviews. You like the way interviewers defer to your
wisdom. Aside from business they talk to you only of the subjects
everyone knows interest you: your horses, golf, the good things you
do for children, and pictures by Van Gogh, whom you adore. You lead a
vibrant life, full of energy, everybody avers. Your passion for golf,
especially, is truly astonishing for a man of your age. Of course
when you do drop pearls you are careful to always remain banal or off
the record for fear of stirring up a hornets nest. When you depart
you invariably get an obsequious grin.
You have a mistress, but fearing the
tedium of scandal, must transport her through roundabout routes to
secret rendezvous. Never can you appear together in public or you
would spook a stampede of image thieves. Although those photogs are
great for making moments of fame, and at the same time make fame seem
not to be worth it, they really are a pain. Your girl is, of course
beautiful with the current standard of beauty, but when you kiss her,
you read, on her lips, her knowledge that she will not even be known
as having been your mistress. In the end, she knows, you will just
drop her with a gold tiara, and that is why she soaks you for
everything she can get now. She pretends to adore you and that's
fine, indeed necessary given how hurried are the meetings you must
share. Admittedly, she executes a wordless blackmail. But you know
it is not her. Any other mistress would do the same, and this one is
quite a gymnast. You do fear that she might write a memoir. You chose
a girl who would be too stupid to do so, but if an agent and a
ghostwriter ever got a hold of her...
Sometimes they put you on TV to make
wise pronouncements to the investment scavengers who dog your heels.
Then you merely paraphrase the words of Michael X, a whizz with
numbers and a trusted retainer. Your billionairiness has deprived you
not just of the ability to keep up with developments, but of the
leisure to ever use your mind beyond what is necessary to form
completely unfounded opinions. Cleverly, you have hired other very
wise men, like Michael, to form wise opinions for you. For you simply
haven't got the time to think, what with all the thising and thating
you do and the security guys always around warning of whatever.
About the big things, like global
warming, you'd rather not say. It is beyond your area of expertise.
Among serious people such a thing is never mentioned, for what does
it have to do with business? That it portends human destruction is
dubious. In all honesty you can say you really don't know anything
about it and you're not worried. It would be better not to say you
really haven't had the interest to find out. That might antagonize
people. And anyway, among the people who matter that is understood.
The mere fact that the little people care about this problem proves
that concern is overblown. Though, you remind yourself to add, if the
occasion ever comes up, that you too are concerned about the
possibility of human extinction. Anyway, the interviewers, who are
good at their job, have long ago learned what to ask you and what
not.
Of course you are aware that a growing
number of people are blaming you and people like you for things that
are going wrong. Well, what can you expect. The lower orders are
always scapegoating for their own failures. Do they expect me to
propose something as absurd as ending all hydrocarbon use? Why I
would be laughed out of my own boardroom. They would think I had gone
completely bonkers. People don't realize how really powerless I am
when it comes to these extra-business concerns. And they just don't
understand how the system works. The really important people, like
me, and the really top people in government, can actually do far less
then anyone outside the beltway can realize. In fact, we powerful
ones are really quite powerless to do anything that matters about
global warming even if we wanted to. I mean be realistic, preventing
human extinction is just not on the agenda. It's not even on the
radar.
